Every Oscar Best Picture Winner in History
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out 23 awards on Oscar night, one of which gets pride of place as the real star of the show: Best Picture. Studios spend millions of dollars on campaigns they hope will crown their nominee the winner, prognosticators spend 365 days a year trying to divine which movie will take home the top prize, and millions tune in to see what all the fuss is about.
The coveted award has had several official names since ending the first ceremony on May 16, 1929, including the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture and the Academy Award for Outstanding Production, and it took on its current moniker in 1962. The number of nominees increased from five to 10 in 2009, likely in response to complaints that the usual slate was too rarefied after popular favorites such as The Dark Knight and WALL-E failed to be nominated. The most recent winner is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which took home a total of seven Academy Awards in addition to grossing $976 million at the box office — proof that commercial success and Oscar glory are far from mutually exclusive. Here, we look back at the film that won Best Picture every year in Oscar history.
1920s
1928: Wings (directed by William A. Wellman)
1929: The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)
1930: All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
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1930s
1931: Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles)
1932: Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding)
1933: Cavalcade (Frank Lloyd)
1934: It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
1935: Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
1936: The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard)
1937: The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle)
1938: You Can’t Take It With You (Frank Capra)
1939: Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming)
1940s
1940: Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
1941: How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
1942: Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler)
1943: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
1944: Going My Way (Leo McCarey)
1945: The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder)
1946: The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
1947: Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan)
1948: Hamlet (Laurence Olivier)
1949: All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen)
1950s
1950: All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
1951: An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli)
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille)
1953: From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann)
1954: On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan)
1955: Marty (Delbert Mann)
1956: Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson)
1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
1958: Gigi (Vincente Minnelli)
1959: Ben-Hur (William Wyler)
1960s
1960: The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961: West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins)
1962: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
1963: Tom Jones (Tony Richardson)
1964: My Fair Lady (George Cukor)
1965: The Sound of Music (Robert Wise)
1966: A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann)
1967: In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison)
1968: Oliver! (Carol Reed)
1969: Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)
1970s
1970: Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner)
1971: The French Connection (William Friedkin)
1972: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
1973: The Sting (George Roy Hill)
1974: The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
1975: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman)
1976: Rocky (John G. Avildsen)
1977: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
1978: The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino)
1979: Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton)
1980s
1980: Ordinary People (Robert Redford)
1981: Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson)
1982: Gandhi (Richard Attenborough)
1983: Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks) *
1984: Amadeus (Miloš Forman)
1985: Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack)
1986: Platoon (Oliver Stone)
1987: The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci)
1988: Rain Man (Barry Levinson)
1989: Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford)
1990s
1990: Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner)
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme)
1992: Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
1993: Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg)
1994: Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis)
1995: Braveheart (Mel Gibson)
1996: The English Patient (Anthony Minghella)
1997: Titanic (James Cameron)
1998: Shakespeare in Love (John Madden)
1999: American Beauty (Sam Mendes)
2000s
2000: Gladiator (Ridley Scott)
2001: A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard)
2002: Chicago (Rob Marshall)
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)
2004: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
2005: Crash (Paul Haggis)
2006: The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
2007: No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
2008: Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle)
2009: The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
2010s
2010: The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper)
2011: The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
2012: Argo (Ben Affleck)
2013: 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2014: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
2015: Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
2016: Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
2017: The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro)
2018: Green Book (Peter Farrelly)
2019: Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
2020: Nomadland (Chloé Zhao)
2021: CODA (Sian Heder)
2022: Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
2023: Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
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