Academy Award Best Picture Winners (Best to Worst)
by elephant999 | created - 07 Aug 2013 | updated - 29 Sep 2017 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Gone with the Wind (1939)
Passed | 238 min | Drama, Romance, War
A sheltered and manipulative Southern belle and a roguish profiteer face off in a turbulent romance as the society around them crumbles with the end of slavery and is rebuilt during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood | Stars: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 333,994 | Gross: $198.68M
10/10
2. Ben-Hur (1959)
G | 212 min | Adventure, Drama
After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet
Votes: 253,412 | Gross: $74.70M
10/10
3. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 605,465 | Gross: $1.02M
10/10
4. All About Eve (1950)
Passed | 138 min | Drama
A seemingly timid but secretly ruthless ingénue insinuates herself into the lives of an aging Broadway star and her circle of theater friends.
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Stars: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm
Votes: 138,657 | Gross: $0.01M
10/10
5. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Approved | 170 min | Drama, Romance, War
Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright
Votes: 70,474 | Gross: $23.65M
10/10
6. The Sound of Music (1965)
G | 172 min | Biography, Drama, Family
A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s Austria to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn
Votes: 260,519 | Gross: $163.21M
10/10
7. On the Waterfront (1954)
Approved | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
An ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate's victims.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger
Votes: 164,681 | Gross: $9.60M
10/10
8. It Happened One Night (1934)
Passed | 105 min | Comedy, Romance
A rogue reporter trailing a runaway heiress for a big story joins her on a bus heading from Florida to New York and they end up stuck with each other when the bus leaves them behind at one of the stops along the way.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns
Votes: 112,147 | Gross: $4.36M
10/10
9. Rebecca (1940)
Approved | 130 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
Votes: 146,599 | Gross: $4.36M
10/10
10. Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Approved | 134 min | Drama, Romance, War
A British family struggles to survive the first months of World War II.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, May Whitty
Votes: 19,449 | Gross: $13.50M
10/10
11. Marty (1955)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama, Romance
A middle-aged butcher and a school teacher who have given up on the idea of love meet at a dance and fall for each other.
Director: Delbert Mann | Stars: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti, Augusta Ciolli
Votes: 26,990
10/10
12. From Here to Eternity (1953)
Passed | 118 min | Drama, Romance, War
At a U.S. Army base in 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his commanding officer's wife and top aide begin a tentative affair.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed
Votes: 50,778 | Gross: $30.50M
10/10
13. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
G | 120 min | Biography, Drama, History
The story of Sir Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and remarry.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Robert Shaw, Leo McKern
Votes: 37,134 | Gross: $28.35M
10/10
14. The Apartment (1960)
Approved | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston
Votes: 196,549 | Gross: $18.60M
10/10
15. You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Passed | 126 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The son of a snobbish Wall Street banker becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family not realizing that his father is trying to force her family from their home for a real estate development.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold
Votes: 27,894 | Gross: $4.66M
10/10
16. Titanic (1997)
PG-13 | 194 min | Drama, Romance
A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates
Votes: 1,278,767 | Gross: $659.33M
10/10
17. West Side Story (1961)
Approved | 153 min | Crime, Drama, Musical
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
Directors: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise | Stars: Natalie Wood, George Chakiris, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn
Votes: 121,096 | Gross: $43.66M
10/10
18. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Passed | 152 min | Drama, War
A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.
Director: Lewis Milestone | Stars: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy
Votes: 67,621 | Gross: $3.27M
10/10
19. Schindler's List (1993)
R | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall
Votes: 1,448,872 | Gross: $96.90M
10/10
20. The Lost Weekend (1945)
Passed | 101 min | Drama, Film-Noir
The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva
Votes: 40,163 | Gross: $9.46M
10/10
21. The Sting (1973)
PG | 129 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
Two grifters team up to pull off the ultimate con.
Director: George Roy Hill | Stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning
Votes: 279,602 | Gross: $159.60M
10/10
22. Hamlet (1948)
Approved | 154 min | Drama
Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.
Director: Laurence Olivier | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, John Laurie, Esmond Knight
Votes: 18,366 | Gross: $7.09M
10/10
23. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Approved | 218 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins
Votes: 313,990 | Gross: $44.82M
10/10
24. My Fair Lady (1964)
G | 170 min | Drama, Family, Musical
In 1910s London, snobbish phonetics professor Henry Higgins agrees to a wager that he can make crude flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, presentable in high society.
Director: George Cukor | Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White
Votes: 101,747 | Gross: $72.00M
10/10
25. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
PG | 161 min | Adventure, Drama, War
British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.
Director: David Lean | Stars: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa
Votes: 233,104 | Gross: $44.91M
9/10
26. Patton (1970)
GP | 172 min | Biography, Drama, War
The World War II phase of the career of controversial American general George S. Patton.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young, Michael Strong
Votes: 107,873 | Gross: $61.70M
9/10
27. Grand Hotel (I) (1932)
Not Rated | 112 min | Drama, Romance
A group of very different individuals staying at a luxurious hotel in Berlin deal with each of their respective dramas.
Director: Edmund Goulding | Stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery
Votes: 20,859 | Gross: $2.69M
9/10
28. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Passed | 118 min | Drama, Family
At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans, he stern, she gentle, raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp
Votes: 26,462
9/10
29. An American in Paris (1951)
Passed | 114 min | Drama, Musical, Romance
Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman.
Director: Vincente Minnelli | Stars: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary
Votes: 36,828 | Gross: $4.50M
8/10
30. Ordinary People (1980)
R | 124 min | Drama
The accidental death of the older son of an affluent family deeply strains the relationships among the bitter mother, the good-natured father and the guilt-ridden younger son.
Director: Robert Redford | Stars: Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, Timothy Hutton
Votes: 56,630 | Gross: $54.80M
8/10
31. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Approved | 110 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A black Philadelphia police detective is mistakenly suspected of a local murder while passing through a racially hostile Mississippi town, and after being cleared is reluctantly asked by the police chief to investigate the case.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant
Votes: 83,497 | Gross: $24.38M
8/10
32. Gandhi (1982)
PG | 191 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life of the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent protest.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Ben Kingsley, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth
Votes: 240,105 | Gross: $52.77M
8/10
33. Going My Way (1944)
Passed | 126 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
When young Father O'Malley arrives at St. Dominic's, old Father Fitzgibbon doesn't think much of the church's newest member.
Director: Leo McCarey | Stars: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, James Brown
Votes: 13,435 | Gross: $16.30M
8/10
34. Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
Not Rated | 118 min | Drama, Romance
A reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism, and personally discovers the true depths of bigotry and hatred.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield, Celeste Holm
Votes: 17,759
8/10
35. Oliver! (1968)
G | 153 min | Drama, Family, Musical
After being sold to a mortician, young orphan Oliver Twist runs away and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by an elderly mentor in 1830s London.
Director: Carol Reed | Stars: Mark Lester, Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed
Votes: 41,370 | Gross: $16.80M
8/10
36. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Passed | 152 min | Drama, Family, Romance
The dramatic lives of trapeze artists, a clown, and an elephant trainer are told against a background of circus spectacle.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille | Stars: James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde
Votes: 16,027 | Gross: $36.00M
8/10
37. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
PG | 105 min | Drama
After his wife leaves him, a work-obsessed Manhattan advertising executive is forced to learn long-neglected parenting skills, but a heated custody battle over the couple's young son deepens the wounds left by the separation.
Director: Robert Benton | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry
Votes: 154,556 | Gross: $106.26M
8/10
38. Argo (2012)
R | 120 min | Biography, Drama, History
Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1979.
Director: Ben Affleck | Stars: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin
Votes: 638,731 | Gross: $136.03M
8/10
39. Gigi (1958)
G | 115 min | Comedy, Musical, Romance
Weary of the conventions of Parisian society, a rich playboy and a youthful courtesan-in-training enjoy a platonic friendship which may not stay platonic for long.
Directors: Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters | Stars: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold
Votes: 24,458
8/10
40. All the King's Men (1949)
Approved | 110 min | Drama, Film-Noir
The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.
Director: Robert Rossen | Stars: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek
Votes: 16,566
8/10
41. The King's Speech (2010)
R | 118 min | Biography, Drama, History
The story of King George VI, his unexpected ascension to the throne of the British Empire in 1936, and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch overcome his stammer.
Director: Tom Hooper | Stars: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Derek Jacobi
Votes: 707,513 | Gross: $138.80M
8/10
42. Dances with Wolves (1990)
PG-13 | 181 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
Lieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote western Civil War outpost, finds himself engaging with a neighbouring Sioux settlement, causing him to question his own purpose.
Director: Kevin Costner | Stars: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant
Votes: 290,218 | Gross: $184.21M
8/10
43. Braveheart (1995)
R | 178 min | Biography, Drama, War
Scottish warrior William Wallace leads his countrymen in a rebellion to free his homeland from the tyranny of King Edward I of England.
Director: Mel Gibson | Stars: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan, Angus Macfadyen
Votes: 1,090,475 | Gross: $75.60M
8/10
44. Platoon (1986)
R | 120 min | Drama, War
Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict.
Director: Oliver Stone | Stars: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Keith David
Votes: 439,060 | Gross: $138.53M
7/10
45. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
G | 175 min | Adventure, Comedy, Family
A Victorian Englishman bets that with the new steamships and railways he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days.
Directors: Michael Anderson, John Farrow | Stars: David Niven, Cantinflas, Finlay Currie, Robert Morley
Votes: 29,662 | Gross: $42.00M
7/10
46. Cavalcade (1933)
Passed | 112 min | Drama, Romance, War
A portrayal of the triumphs and tragedies of two English families, the upper-crust Marryots and the working-class Bridgeses, from 1899 to 1933.
Director: Frank Lloyd | Stars: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin
Votes: 5,969 | Gross: $7.63M
6/10
47. The Broadway Melody (1929)
Passed | 100 min | Drama, Musical, Romance
A pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit try to make it big time on Broadway, but matters of the heart complicate the attempt.
Director: Harry Beaumont | Stars: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King, Eddie Kane
Votes: 7,996 | Gross: $6.12M
4/10
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