“It’s Great Not to Be Nominated”: The 100 Best Films Not Nominated for an Academy Award (Revised Version)

Max Von Sydow and Bibi Andersson in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957).

In 1957, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster introduced the Best Actor nominees with a song called “It’s Great Not to Be Nominated.” And if you look at this list, you might agree, because this is a great list of films and none of them received even a single Academy Award nomination. They all were completely shut out.

To show how much the Academy got it wrong I list each film, complete with the year it was eligible, and then list all the awards I would have nominated them for (I put the category in bold if I would have given them the Oscar). I played fair to the Academy and only list categories that existed in the respective year to each film. I also only include films that I have been able to verify were eligible (either through official lists, or counting on the research of Inside Oscar). And I give them the nominations I thought they deserved that year – which is why some films lower on the list I nominate for Best Picture, and others that are higher are not — some years are tougher than others.

2010 Update:  (1 Feb)  I am going to type everything I update in green, which for this is not much, but will be hopefully quite a bit with all the History of the Academy Awards series starting tomorrow.  For most of the last year, I have tried to see more of the Oscar nominees that I haven’t seen, so there aren’t very many truly great films I’ve seen that I hadn’t seen before and weren’t nominated for any Oscars, but there are three that I want to mention.  I’m not revising the list, just adding these three as an addendum.  This is also a dry run to see how well it works to re-post things at the top.  So, click on through.

 

Lecturing AFI: The 100 Best Comedies

Sterling Hayden explaining the way things are to Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove (1964).

You’ll notice I didn’t say the 100 Funniest Comedies. Because it’s the 100 Best. That was the problem with the way AFI did their Comedy list; they tried to make funniest mean the same things as best. Now the funniest films, in order from 1 to 5 for me would be: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, A Fish Called Wanda, Airplane, The Producers and Blazing Saddles. They’re not the 5 best (though all are on this list), but they’re definitely the 5 funniest. As for the best? Well, since I have so much a longer list to choose from for this category, I went with a top 100. I’ve attached a quote for each film. Some you may not find funny. Some won’t make sense unless you’ve seen the film. And I don’t include films I’ve already categorized in another genre’s list (like The Princess Bride or Almost Famous). So here they are – the 100 Best Comedies.