Best Films Year by Year
(* = Academy Award, only 29 of 80 matched)
1928: Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
1929: Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)*
1930: All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)*
1931: Little Caesar (Mervyn Leroy)
1932: Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)
1933: Duck Soup (McCarey)
1934: The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
1935: The Informer (John Ford)
1936: My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
1937: Captains Courageous (Fleming)
1938: You Can’t Take It With You (Capra)*
1939: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra)
1940: The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
1941: The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
1942: Mrs. Miniver (Wyler)*
1943: Casablanca (Curtiz)* (Note: released end of 42, Miniver was also a 42 release, so I kept the years the same as the Academy)
1944: Double Indemnity (Wilder)
1945: Lost Weekend (Wilder)*
1946: The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler)*
1947: Out of the Past (Tourneur)
1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston)
1949: Adam’s Rib (Cukor)
1950: All About Eve (Jos. Mankiewicz)*
1951: A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan)
1952: Singin’ in the Rain (Donen)
1953: Shane (Stevens)
1954: On the Waterfront (Kazan)*
1955: Mister Roberts (Ford)
1956: The King and I (Lang)
1957: The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) Japan
1958: Auntie Mame (DaCosta)
1959: Ben-Hur (Wyler)*
1960: The Apartment (Wilder)*
1961: West Side Story (Wise & Robbins)*
1962: Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)*
1963: Hud (Ritt)
1964: Tie: My Fair Lady (Cukor)*; Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
1965: Doctor Zhivago (Lean)
1966: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
1967: Oliver! (Reed)*
1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
1969: Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger)*
1970: The Conformist (Berlolucci) Italy
1971: A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
1972: The Godfather (Coppola)*
1973: Paper Moon (Bogdanovich)
1974: The Godfather II (Coppola)*
1975: The Man Who Would Be King (Huston)
1976: Network (Lumet)*
1977: Annie Hall (Allen)*
1978: The Deer Hunter (Cimino)*
1979: Apocalypse Now! (Coppola)
1980: Raging Bull (Scorsese)
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg)
1982: Gandhi (Attenborough)*
1983: Heat and Dust (Ivory)
1984: Once Upon a Time in America (Leone)
1985: A Room With a View (Ivory)
1986: Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen)
1987: Raising Arizona (Coen Brothers)
1988: Cinema Paradiso (Tournatore) Italy
1989: Tie: Field of Dreams (Robinson); Parenthood (Howard)
1990: Dances with Wolves (Costner)*
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (J. Demme)*
1992: The Player (Altman)
1993: Schindler’s List (Spielberg)*
1994: The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont)
1995: Babe (Noonan)
1996: Kolya (Sverak) Czech Republic
1997: As Good As It Gets (Brooks)
1998: Shakespeare in Love (Madden)*
1999: October Sky (Johnston)
2000: Traffic (Soderbergh)
2001: A Beautiful Mind (Howard)*
2002: Tie: Chicago (Marshall)*; Hero (Yimou, China)
2003: Lords of the Rings: Return of the King (Jackson)*
2004: Finding Neverland (Forster)
2005: V for Vendetta (McTeigue)
2006: Tie: The Departed (Scorsese)*; The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck) Germany (Listed as 2007 release)
2007: No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers)*
2008: Wall-E – tentative, haven’t seen many
Directors with Multiple Winners
3 each: William Wyler, John Huston, George Cukor, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, Frances Ford Coppola
2 each: Capra, Ford, Lean, Kazan, Coen Brothers, Spielberg, Scorsese, Ivory, Ron Howard, Woody Allen
Foreign Language Winners
57-Seven Samurai (Japan), 70-The Conformist (Italy), 88-Cinema Paradiso (Italy), 96-Kolya (Czech Rep.), 02-Hero (China), 06-The Lives of Others (Germany)
Note: Best Picture was the only oscar that Traffic lost, winning 4 of 5, losing picture to Gladiator. Winged Migration belongs somewhere, released in 2000 or 2001, was years in the making.
