All 85 Best Picture Oscar Winners Ranked

Some movies are The Godfather , and some are Crash . The comments section is open for yelling!

Justine Zwiebel/BuzzFeed

Gigi (1958)

Directed by: Vincente Minnelli

Written by: Alan Jay Lerner

The other Oscars it won: Minnelli (Best Director); Lerner (Best Adapted Screenplay); Joseph Ruttenberg (Best Cinematography – Color); William A. Horning, E. Preston Ames, Henry Grace, and F. Keogh Gleason (Best Art Direction); Cecil Beaton (Best Costume Design); Adrienne Fazan (Best Film Editing); André Previn (Best Score – Musical); Frederick Loewe and Lerner (Best Original Song)

What it beat for Best Picture: Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Defiant Ones, Separate Tables

Yes, the creepiest, most pedophiliac movie ever to win Best Picture is this list's worst. How to define "worst" in this context, especially when judging Gigi — a movie musical some people love now, and certainly many people loved in 1958 — against films that were barely movies as we currently recognize them? This list is, of course, totally subjective: I factored in my personal feelings about each movie, along with how well it has held up, how influential it is, and what it was up against. And then there's the ineffability of common wisdom, which I also have taken into account. No matter how I feel about Annie Hall or about Schindler's List, for example, I know I'm in a minority view in my dislike — and that matters. Not with Gigi, though, in which Leslie Caron plays a Parisian girl being trained to be a courtesan who ends up in a push-and-pull relationship with the much older Gaston (Louis Jordan). This is the movie that gave us that disturbing cultural artifact, the song "Thank Heaven For Little Girls." If you want disturbing psychosexual movies from 1958, let's agree that Vertigo, which was nominated only for Best Art Direction and Best Sound, is preferable. To reiterate: Gigi is the worst.

MGM

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Directed by: Cecil B. DeMille

Written by: Fredric M. Frank, Barré Lyndon, Theodore St. John, and Frank Cavett

The other Oscars it won: Frank, St. John, and Cavett (Best Story)

What it beat for Best Picture: High Noon, Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man

Produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille on a huge scale, this movie is often cited as one of the worst movies ever to win Best Picture. I say it is second worst. Jimmy Stewart as Buttons the clown is a complete travesty for sure. Note that Singin' in the Rain, a classic that also came out in 1952, wasn't even nominated for Best Picture.

Paramount Pictures / Everett Collection

Crash (2005)

Directed by: Paul Haggis

Written by: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco

The other Oscars it won: Haggis and Moresco (Best Original Screenplay); Hughes Winborne (Best Film Editing)

What it beat for Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Good Night, and Good Luck; Munich

It's one outrage that the superior, devastating tragedy Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture prize; it's another that Crash won instead. These are two separate terrible things that happened, and the fact that these movies are forever associated taints the beauty of Brokeback Mountain. Crash wields its message with a mallet's touch — every nominated movie was better (and I don't like Munich much).

Lionsgate Films

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