With the 82nd Academy Awards less than a week away and the Oscar season in full swing, I took it upon myself to construct a list of the top 5 Oscar years ever.
For the past eighty-one years The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have held their annual Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the achievement in motion pictures over the previous calender year. Some years have been quite strong, others relatively weak, while still others have been simply outstanding. Presented here are what I believe to be the superlative years the Academy has put forth.
Before we can get to the list, however, a couple of notes on the criteria of its creation. Each movie in consideration had to be nominated for at least one Academy Award, no matter the category (hence the best Oscar years). More importantly, though, the year is to be judged by the aggregate class of nominated motion pictures put forth by the Academy that year.
We begin with those years deserving of honorable mention:
1951/1952 (24th Academy Awards)
An American in Paris (Best Picture Winner); A Place in the Sun; A Streetcar Named Desire; The African Queen; Rashomon; Alice in Wonderland.
1967/1968 (40th Academy Awards)
In the Heat of the Night (Best Picture Winner); The Graduate; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; Bonnie and Clyde; Cool Hand Luke; In Cold Blood.
The List:
#5 1994/1995 (67th Academy Awards)
Partly in a move to eliminate pretense and partly an acknowledgment of merit, we begin our list with the 67th instillation of the Academy Awards. It is probably the best of the more modern classes of pictures.
Forrest Gump (Best Picture Winner); Pulp Fiction; The Shawshank Redemption; Ed Wood; Bullets Over Broadway; Trios Couleurs: Rouge; The Lion King.
#4 1976/1977 (49th Academy Awards)
A year of great thrills all around. Yet, in a class that features pictures from Bergman, Scorsese, Fellini, Lumet and even Pakula, it is the then unknown Stallone who takes the prize – and I believe quite deservingly so.
Rocky (Best Picture Winner); Taxi Driver; Network; All the President’s Men; Face to Face; Fellini’s Casanova; The Omen.
#3 1959/1960 (32nd Academy Awards)
The year of the Academy’s leading ladies. Simone Signoret, Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe (although not nominated as such), Elizabeth Taylor as well as both Audrey and Kathrine Hepburn all shine in their respective works. The epic wins – as is almost always the case with the Academy – however, this class of pictures holds perhaps the greatest comedy in Some Like it Hot and the greatest thriller in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. The others aren’t so bad themselves.
Ben-Hur (Best Picture Winner); North by Northwest; Some Like it Hot; Wild Strawberries; Nun’s Story; The Diary of Anne Frank; Room at the Top; Anatomy of Murder; Suddenly, Last Summer; The Bridge; Pillow Talk; Sleeping Beauty.
#2 1962/1963 (35th Academy Awards)
A most impressive class of pictures. Yes, the epic wins again, but this time it is hard to argue against the pick. Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence both provide us our great motion picture heroes, while Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin offers us a most despicable and unforgettable villain. Sinatra, Lancaster, Bancroft, Hepburn, Davis, Brando and Lemmon round out a wonderful cast of characters from a most enjoyable and memorable collection of films.
Lawrence of Arabia (Best Picture Winner); To Kill a Mockingbird; The Manchurian Candidate; Lolita; Mutiny on the Bounty; Birdman of Alcatraz; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; The Longest Day; Days of Wine and Roses; The Miracle Worker.
#1 1939/1940 (12th Academy Awards)
I know it has been said a thousand times, but let’s make it one thousand and one. The class of 1939 is far and away the most celebrated year both in the history of cinema and by extension of the Academy Awards – and with good reason. There perhaps exists no more extraordinary a compilation of cherished movies and renowned motion pictures than those put forth in the calendar year of 1939. The movies speak for themselves:
Gone with the wind (Best Picture Winner); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Of Mice and Men; Ninotchka; Stagecoach; Young Mr. Lincoln; The Wizard of Oz; Wuthering Heights; Goodbye Mr. Chips; Intermezzo: A Love Story.
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