It has been an Oscar-year worthy of celebration. The nominated films have been excellent, and 2008 may well go down in the Academy's cellars as the finest vintage the decade has produced.
Celebrating 80 years of the golden boy, we thought it was time for a look back at the best Oscar years: years where the most glorious cinema gathered under that Best Picture Nominees umbrella. While the very finest films -- we judge with the advantage of hindsight -- may have lost out, the collective was always awe-inducing.
So skipping the 30s and early 40s, where 10 or 12 nominees routinely jostled for the honour -- only since 1944 was the decision taken to limit the number to 5 -- here are the greatest Best Picture years in every Oscar decade:
1946
The 19th Oscar ceremony rewarded issue based cinema, with William Wyler's post-war drama The Best Years Of Our Lives beating out Laurence Olivier's perfect Henry V, Edmund Goulding's fantastic Somerset Maugham adaptation The Razor's Edge, Clarence Brown's The Yearling and Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life -- the now epochal Life losing in all five nominated categories.
Text: Raja Sen | Design, Imaging: Uday Kuckian
Column: 2008: Celebrating the best Oscars in ages
Advertisement
