And the Oscar goes to…..

This article is mainly for all those who unanimously think Oscars are the ultimate prize for movie perfection.

Let’s start with a trivia…..


Q: Best Film ever?

A: Citizen Kane
(Selected by BFI Critics Poll and Directors Poll which include most of the great directors and critics of the world.)

Citizen Kane lost Oscar for Best Picture in 1941.
(The film’s director Orson Welles also never won an Oscar for best director and regarded widely as one of the greatest movie directors ever.)


Q: Who is the best movie director of all time?
(Just think of English films, otherwise my argument becomes brutally strong even in the beginning of this article and I would like to keep suspense till the end as a movie dharma.)

A: Most probable answer is Alfred Hitchcock.
Never won an Oscar for the best director... great isn’t it
The interesting fact is that none of Hitchcock’s films except Rebecca won a Best Picture Oscar and the classics like Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho never got best picture awards.

Q: Best Acting Performance?

A: Peter O’Toole as T.E Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia
(Selected by Premiere Magazine and also widely regarded as the greatest.)

Unfortunately Peter O’Toole not only lost Oscar competition for best actor for this iconic role but he also lost all the eight times he was nominated.


I can go on the trivia for so long (courtesy of the great Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)
Instead I am pointing out some more stats..
• Stanley Kubrick never won best director Oscar.
• Martin Scorsese had to wait for that achievement for 30 years of his illustrious career.
• John Ford won best director Oscar the most number of times, but for second rated films he made. The films he made which is widely considered as classics were thrown away by the academy.
• In Sight and Sound top ten film lists (one by directors and one by critics), only three films won Academy’s approval. Godfather I and II and Lawrence of Arabia were those won best picture Oscar out of the entire shack of English films in these lists.
• Only five movies out of the illustrious list of top 50 movies by ‘They shoot pictures, don’t they?’ had won Best Picture Oscar.


In a nutshell, we can say that the most of the greatest movies ever filmed in English, weren’t able to win Best Picture Oscars. May be, Godfather I and II and Casablanca were the only American ultra classics that got Oscars. This is a list of American classics that failed to win Best Picture Academy Award.

• Citizen Kane
• Vertigo
• Psycho
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Dr. Strangelove
• The Searchers
• Singing in the Rain
• Raging Bull
• Touch of Evil
• Some like it Hot
• City Lights
• Gold Rush
• Taxi Driver
• The General
• Third Man
• Sunset Blvd.
• Apocalypse Now
• Chinatown* (no offence- lost to Godfather II)
• To kill a Mocking Bird* (no offence- lost to Lawrence of Arabia)
• Rear Window
• Goodfellas
• It’s a wonderful life
• King Kong

These are unarguably the greatest American classics. I have selected these films from the list of ’They shoot pictures: don’t they’ which is a compilation of all credible great movie lists in the world. I think all movie buffs around the globe will be pretty univocal about quality of these movies and only Godfathers or Casablanca can match them.
Why all these great movies snubbed by the Academy?

Swindle of Foreign Movie Category

Until now I haven’t said a word about non English films and the numerous classics. These non English films and auters like Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Renoir, Lang, Eisenstein, De Sica, Godard, Ray, Truoffaut and many others contributed majestically to global film field. It was great, when Academy invented this foreign film category.
But the fact is that there is no language restriction for best picture category. That means, the Academy stated for years that English films are better than non English movies.
This according to me is an absolute movie crime.

Oscars and now…

Screwing and snubbing continues royally. Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption
lost to Forest Gump. Memento and Dark Knight didn’t even got nominations. Fargo lost, so does Saving Private Ryan. They snubbed Brokeback Mountain for homosexual content and the story goes on and on and on…

And the Oscar goes to…

It is no one but the great Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences that fabricate Oscars as the final word of cinema. Don’t get fooled that Oscars prefer commercially successful to artistic movies. May be Titanic got awards in that standard but King Kong was snubbed denying even a technical achievement award. Oscars are based on just one thing - prejudice.

What Oscars really is not the greatest film recognition but the greatest promo for the studio driven Hollywood Industry. It is evident from the Academy’s attitude towards independent movies. Oscars is just a 3 hour trailer of Hollywood. It is entertaining, attractive and glamorous.
Millions enjoy the show and me too. Even this year, I am thrilled to watch it. I love the speculations, predictions and every entertaining bit behind it. But I will not be deceived by the notion that it is the ultimate prize.

Be there on March 7th and remember this:-

“Just enjoy the sip and don’t ask the price”