At some point in the last two years I decided to that I should focus some movie-watching time and energy in watching all the Oscar Best Picture nominees. I had already seen a majority of them just through my regular watching habits over the last 15 years. What was left was mostly the pre-1970s, and by the start of this year I was basically left with only pre-1950s films.
Note: there are three films that can't be viewed either at all or the only version you can find is incomplete (The Patriot, East Lynne, and The White Parade).
Completing this task became much harder towards the end when the only films left were Shakespeare adaptions, early sound films and war melodramas. I would not recommend others do this unless you are particularly obsessed with the Oscars.
My rankings for all the films are in the link below.
https://letterboxd.com/toro913/list/best-picture-nominees-ranked/
The best of the whole list are too obvious, so they are not particularly interesting to write down.
But my least favorite 10 were:
- Trader Horn (1931)
- Disraeli (1929)
- Alibi (1929)
- The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
- Fanny (1961)
- Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
- Wilson (1944)
- Naughty Marietta (1935)
- Cavalcade (1933)
- Gigi (1958)
And the top 10 discoveries:
- The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
- A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
- Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
- Elmer Gantry (1960)
- The Emigrants (1971)
- Jezebel (1938)
- A Thousand Clowns (1965)
- The Heiress (1949)
- Darling (1965)
- Hello, Dolly! (1969)
Looking at the stats the 1970s on average ranked the highest while the 1930s ranked the lowest (I combined the 20s and the 30s as the 20s are so small)
2010s: 7.6/10
2000s: 7.5/10
1990s: 7.5/10
1980s: 7.2/10
1970s: 7.8/10
1960s: 6.7/10
1950s: 6.4/10
1940s: 6.6/10
1930s: 5.9/10