Classic movies that never won the Best Picture award


You’ve seen them, you’ve loved them, and you knew they were going to win that most coveted of awards, right? Well, the problem is they actually didn’t! If we go back through the annals of the Academy Awards, there are some great movies that have scooped the Best Picture Oscar. But, we would argue that there are even more movies that haven’t won it and should have done.

There’s a good bet you’ve seen a movie at some point that you feel should have won the Best Picture award. In fact, you maybe even thought it was a shoo-in that it was going to win. Then you sat in front of the TV in shock as something else swipes the award from under its feet. The Oscars have always been political, but there have been some grave injustices throughout the years, even by their standards. Here are some classic movies that were criminally robbed of the Best Picture award.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Everyone knows about this classic movie about tensions in the Deep South during the 1930s. It’s hard to believe when thinking about it that this movie didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, and, in fact, many people believe it did. The movie scooped the Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction Oscars, but lost out to Lawrence of Arabia in the Best Picture category. It’s difficult to mourn a loss to Lawrence of Arabia, which is pretty much a perfect movie, but To Kill a Mockingbird would probably have been a shoo-in if it had been released any other year.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Surely there’s some kind of mistake here, right? Citizen Kane is widely regarded as the most influential movie in American history, there’s no way it didn’t win the Oscar, right? Well, actually, incredibly it didn’t. The award that year for Best Picture went to the lesser known How Green Was My Valley. Sure, that was a great movie and all, but this is Citizen Kane we’re talking about! It’s fair to say the loss hasn’t hurt the way people view the movie, but we think it was absolutely robbed, and we bet Orson Welles thought the same!

The Color Purple (1985)

This was the first venture by Spielberg into non-blockbuster territory, and it remains arguably his most important piece of work. This tale of a young African American woman trying to make her way in the world in the early 20th Century is a staggering movie. But, in one of the biggest Oscar travesties of all -time, the movie was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and didn’t win a single one! It lost out on the Best Picture Oscar to Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa, but we feel it should have scooped the golden statue.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Sure, many people may not agree with this, but the movie is a modern classic. Tarantino’s finest hour came with this sizzling, wonderfully made venture into the criminal underbelly of the LA hinterland. It’s over the top, cool, wonderfully quotable, and, of course, very violent. QT scooped the Best Original Screenplay award for the movie. But Forrest Gump, brilliant though it is, should have handed that Best Picture Oscar over to Pulp Fiction; at least, that’s our view on the matter!

Everyone has a list of what they feel are their favorite movies, not to mention the best movies to be denied Oscars. This is a list of just some of the great films we feel should have scooped the Best Picture award at the Oscars that year. But, as a result of accident or design, they were denied. In some cases, their defeat was understandable, and deserved, in other cases, they were totally robbed!

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