9 Favorite Best Picture Losers

Just in case the previous list of favorite Best Picture Winners wasn’t difficult enough, I expanded my options by 400% for this list to make it even more heartwrenching. I do not claim to have seen all or even most of the nominees for Best Picture (or winners, for that matter), but here is my completely subjective list of favorites anyway. As with the Best Picture Winners, I limited myself to one choice per decade with only one exception that begged for a tie.

Rachel’s Nine Favorite Best Picture Losers

1) Stage Door (1937)

I haven’t seen this movie in ages, but it was so creepy and over the top that it has stayed with me, including a few lines about calla lilies that I must quote verbatim every time anyone mentions the flowers. I recently read the script for the play and found that the movie retained almost nothing from the play beyond the title.

Honorable Mention: None, because I could not get over the fact that State Fair was nominated for Best Picture. State Fair!?! Terrible movie, and I have a very high threshold for cheesy musicals. I could name a dozen movies from the 30s that I prefer to State Fair.

2) The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Popular critical opinion overwhelmingly goes with Citizen Kane here, but I beg to differ. I’m not a technical cinephile and my opinion is generally more influenced by characters and dialogue than camerawork, so the poignant farce The Philadelphia Story overrules the technically brilliant Citizen Kane in my book. That said, this is only my second favorite movie with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, but I’ll get to the other one in a different post.

Honorable Mention: The Maltese Falcon, a truly great noir, and Citizen Kane, because it is Citizen Kane, after all. It may seem less technically impressive to me since I saw films that liberally borrowed from Orson Welles before I saw anything by Welles.

3) Auntie Mame (1950)

This is when it starts getting really hard to choose just one. Auntie Mame is very frequently ridiculous, but the one woman hurricane that Rosalind Russell puts forth is comically impeccable as well as tender and vulnerable.

Honorable Mention: Sunset Boulevard, 12 Angry Men, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (see aforementioned cheesy musical comment)

4) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Intimate and cringingly painful, the performances in this movie are all stellar. This is the only film that received an acting nomination for every credited member of the cast. I’ve never seen A Man for All Seasons, but I would be shocked if it could convince me that Virginia Woolf was not robbed of the Best Picture Oscar.

Honorable Mention: The Lion in Winter, Bonnie and Clyde

5) Chinatown (1972)

I’m a sucker for Film Noir, and Chinatown does noir better than anyone since Huston and Bogart, and hasn’t been topped by anyone since (with apologies to Veronica Mars, L.A. Confidential, and Brick).

Honorable Mention: A Clockwork Orange, Dog Day Afternoon, Cabaret

6) Tie: Raging Bull (1980), Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

I had to allow for a tie in this one instance. Raging Bull was so much better than Ordinary People (which was an excellent character piece but not a solid film as a whole) that its loss of the Oscar almost feels like a practical joke. Unlike Taxi Driver, another much-lauded DeNiro film, Raging Bull has held up very well and is still a powerful and heartbreaking story.

Hannah and her Sisters is not a better film than Platoon and rightfully lost the Oscar, but I have a softer spot in my heart for it than I do for Raging Bull, so both must be included. Hannah and her Sisters is a mess of largely unsympathetic characters that somehow weaves together beautifully, and is in my opinion, Woody Allen’s best film.

Honorable Mention: Tootsie, The Color Purple

7) Pulp Fiction (1995)

The 90s is the hardest decade for me to narrow down. It could be because I’ve seen all but 3 of the nominees for Best Picture (okay, 3 ½, since I could not for the life of me stay awake for the entirety of The Thin Red Line) and generally enjoyed nearly all of them. But, like Raging Bull, Pulp Fiction is a nearly infinitely better film than the movie that took home the Oscar, Forrest Gump. The much lauded non-linear structure had been done before Tarantino, most notably in Kubrick’s The Killing, but Pulp Fiction made the unique structure feel fresher and hipper than ever before, even outdoing his own Reservoir Dogs. Pulp Fiction changed the future of filmmaking while Forrest Gump has largely been forgotten.

Honorable Mention: Babe, which was very nearly my choice since I have a deep and abiding love for that pig; The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, L.A. Confidential.

8) Lost in Translation (2006)

It deservedly lost the Oscar to the Lord of the Rings juggernaut, but Lost in Translation is a fantastic small film that paints a vivid and realistic picture of a short period of time and a connection between two people. This is a rare movie of which I remember very little of what actually happens, but very strongly remember the characters and the emotions the film evoked.

Honorable Mention: In the Bedroom; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Moulin Rouge!

Disagree? Which unrewarded gem did I miss that you feel needs to have someone speak up on its behalf?