THE BIGGEST OSCAR SNUBS: BEST DIRECTOR/BEST PICTURE
A Look At Who Should Have Won The Academy Award For...
BEST DIRECTOR
5.) 1990
WHO WON? Kevin Costner - Dances With Wolves
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Martin Scorsese - Goodfellas
Until his win in 2007 for The Departed, Martin Scorsese had never won a Best Director Oscar. He had been nominated seven times before but always got beat out by another film and director who had the momentum. Commonly, Best Picture and Best Director go together.
In 1990, Scorsese endured the most stinging loss, when Kevin Costner went from in front of the camera to behind it for Dances With Wolves. The movie also won Best Picture, but many felt it was underserved, especially alongside Scorsese’s classic Goodfellas.
Dances With Wolves was Costner’s directorial debut, and winning over the much more polished Scorsese for arguably his best movie yet left a bad taste in many mouths. Nevertheless, Dances With Wolves had momentum that night, winning five Oscars before the top two awards were given, which was hard for Scorsese’s little mob film to overcome.
Goodfellas ended the night with only one award, Joe Pesci’s for Best Supporting Actor.
4.) 1952
WHO WON? John Ford - The Quiet Man
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Fred Zinneman - High Noon
People often complain today that there’s too much politics in the film industry. There was rarely a time where that wasn’t true. The early 1950s was definitely not one of those times.
The 25th Academy Awards in 1953 saw a lot of upsets and bad choices and was one of those rare instances when Best Picture and Berst Director went to different movies. John Ford took home his record fourth Oscar for The Quiet Man over critic favorite Fred Zinneman for High Noon, a film that lost a number of upsets.
What was even more bizarre was Vincente Minnelli failed to even get a nomination for The Bad And The Beautiful, which would have been an even more worthy winner than Ford.
It may very well have been McCarthyism that corrupted the 25th Academy Awards. Held at the height of the Korean War, notable anti-Communists like Hedda Hopper and John Wayne lobbied against High Noon, which screenwriter Carl Foreman admitting was a critique of McCarthyism.
3.) 2013
WHO WON? Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Steve McQueen - 12 Years A Slave
It’ll be mentioned a few times here, but the Academy very often gives Best Director and Best Picture to the same movie. It’s rare to do otherwise and usually happens when there is an exceptional case. The 86th Academy Awards didn’t feel like one of those cases.
Up until 2010, only men ever won the Best Director Oscar and only one non-white man, Ang Lee (more on this later). That year, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win for the wartime drama The Hurt Locker, which also won Best Picture. Several years later, there was an opportunity for the first black director wining, when British director Steve McQueen was nominated for 12 Years A Slave. The film was expected to sweep the Oscars and give the Academy a chance to finally highlight black filmmakers, something it had been harshly criticized for not doing. 12 Years A Slave did win Best Picture, but in a bizarre move that goes against Academy tradition, they awarded the Best Director Oscar to someone else, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón for the sci-fi drama Gravity. He was the first Latino winer.
Cuarón would end up winning a much more deserving Best Director Oscar for Roma several years later alongside another controversial Academy decision. More on that also later.
As of 2024, no black director has yet won Best Director.
2.) 1999
WHO WON? Sam Mendes- American Beauty
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? M. Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense
American Beauty was probably one of the most undeserving movies to ever be awarded with a slew of Oscars. The film is cynical and badly aged and the only bright spots about it, the performances by Annette Benning and Thora Birch, were not recognized.
Sam Mendes’ direction may be the only other thing about the movie that might warrant praise, but not up against the breakthrough film by one of the most well-regarded directors of the supernatural genre: M. Night Shyamalan.
The Sixth Sense was such as transformative film for its time, it deserved this recognition and Shyamalan deserved the Oscar, even if his follow ups were not as well regarded.
Mendes himself would direct several more critically acclaimed films, including Road To Perdition, Revolutionary Road and 1917.
1.) 1941
WHO WON? John Ford - How Green Was My Valley?
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Orson Welles - Citizen Kane
There were many years where the Academy Awards got it all wrong, but the 14th Academy Awards were perhaps the most egregious. Nearly cancelled due to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was expected that Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane would sweep the awards but ended up winning only one out of nine nominations.
Ford, who had previously won Best Director a year earlier for The Grapes of Wrath, was a major underdog, but came out the winner. It was a shocking result that some Hollywood historians believed might not have happened but for the potential cancellation of the awards.
While the awards were in limbo, the mood of the Academy changed. Citizen Kane was considered too political and too close to the subject of fascism and war for the moment, so Academy voters leaned more toward to more lighthearted film.
It was a mistake that now lives in Academy infamy.
BEST PICTURE
5.) 2005
WHO WON? Crash
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Brokeback Mountain
It was a massive surprise when Crash won the Best Picture Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, the story of two closest gay men who fell in love in rural Wyoming, was controversial, but it did win Lee the Best Director Award and also picked up an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
It should have been an easy Best Picture win for the film that garnered rave reviews and was considered brave at a time when gay rights was a struggling movement seeking not just tolerance, but acceptance.
Yet the Academy chose to go with a complicated parable about racism, setting itself up for accusations that it was too cowardly to take a stand, accusations that would dog Hollywood for the next decade.
4.) 2018
WHO WON? Green Book
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Roma
You can’t hype up a dynamic film as much as the Hollywood press did for Roma in 2017 and then have it lose the Best Picture Oscar to a movie soaked in the concept of white saviorism. Yet the Academy did just that.
Alfonso Cuarón’s film about an indigenous housekeeper of a rich Mexican family won him a second Best Director Oscar, but the fact that it didn’t win Best Picture was perplexing.
The theory here is that the Academy, who for years deflected criticism that it was not celebrating black performances saw Green Book, a film about life in the Jim Crow South, as a chance to highlight black stories. In doing so, they overlooked another movie about a marginalized group’s life experience.
It was one of the many times the Academy miscalculated on this issue.
3.) 1952
WHO WON? The Greatest Show On Earth
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? High Noon
I already covered this nonsense in the Best Supporting Actress and Best Director sections. You can thank McCarthyism for this.
4.) 1941
WHO WON? How Green Was My Valley?
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Citizen Kane
Also previously discussed. It was all Japan’s fault.
1.) 1998
WHO WON? Shakespeare In Love
WHO SHOULD HAVE WON? Saving Private Ryan
Shakespeare in Love might be the least good movie to ever win an Oscar for Prest Picture. Though a fun romantic jaunt that tells a cute fictional story of the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s most famous play, it did not reach the caliber of other films that year including the war epic Saving Private Ryan, which in my opinion deserved the award, or Elizabeth.
It’s strange today to see the movie alongside classics like Gone With The Wind and
The main reason the film won might have been the fact that these awards were held at the peak of now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein’s power and he was one of the film’s producer. Inm fact, this Oscar was his first.
That’s just my theory though *sips tea*