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Thu Mar 08 2012 13:20 Worst Best Picture:
Well, prepare for a dream come true, because when I woke up I created that comparison in real life, using my old standby, IMDB data. I also brought in Wikipedia data, because it looks like IMDB doesn't publish any machine-readable information about awards or nominations. Wikipedia doesn't either, but you may have heard of a little library called Beautiful Soup.
Without further ado, here's the table. Well, I need a little more ado to explain what the headings mean.
- BPIMDB is the IMDB rating for a given year's Best Picture winner.
- If you sort all of a year's movies by their IMDB rating, then BPrank is the Best Picture winner's rank in the resulting list. So according to IMDB, 1927's winner was actually the 9th best movie of my 1927 dataset. (This isn't all of 1927's movies—see below—but it should be all the big ones.)
- BIRIMDB is the IMDB rating of a given year's highest-rated movie
- BIRnom is ✓ if the highest-rated movie was also nominated for Best Picture, and ✓✓ if the highest-rated movie actually won Best Picture. If it's blank, the highest-rated movie didn't even get a nomination.
- "Alignment" is semi-complicated so I'll explain it after the table.
| Year | Best Picture | BPIMDB | BPrank | Best IMDB Rating | BIRIMDB | BIRnom | Alignment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1927 | Wings | 7.80 | #9 | Metropolis | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1928 | The Broadway Melody | 6.50 | #8 | La passion de Jeanne d'Arc | 8.30 | 0% | |
| 1929 | All Quiet on the Western Front | 8.10 | #1 | Chelovek s kino-apparatom | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1930 | Cimarron | 6.30 | #20 | All Quiet on the Western Front | 8.10 | 0% | |
| 1931 | Grand Hotel | 7.70 | #11 | City Lights | 8.60 | 12% | |
| 1932 | Cavalcade | 6.40 | #24 | Trouble in Paradise | 8.20 | 10% | |
| 1934 | It Happened One Night | 8.30 | #1 | It Happened One Night | 8.30 | ✓✓ | 25% |
| 1935 | Mutiny on the Bounty | 7.90 | #4 | A Night at the Opera | 8.10 | 41% | |
| 1936 | The Great Ziegfeld | 6.90 | #57 | Modern Times | 8.50 | 30% | |
| 1937 | The Life of Emile Zola | 7.40 | #31 | La grande illusion | 8.20 | 50% | |
| 1938 | You Can't Take It With You | 8.00 | #4 | The Lady Vanishes | 8.10 | 30% | |
| 1939 | Gone with the Wind | 8.20 | #3 | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | 8.40 | ✓ | 40% |
| 1940 | Rebecca | 8.40 | #1 | Rebecca | 8.40 | ✓✓ | 40% |
| 1941 | How Green Was My Valley | 7.90 | #7 | Citizen Kane | 8.60 | ✓ | 60% |
| 1942 | Mrs. Miniver | 7.70 | #12 | Casablanca | 8.80 | 30% | |
| 1943 | Casablanca | 8.80 | #1 | The Ox-Bow Incident | 8.20 | ✓ | 30% |
| 1944 | Going My Way | 7.40 | #31 | Double Indemnity | 8.60 | ✓ | 20% |
| 1945 | The Lost Weekend | 8.10 | #4 | Les enfants du paradis | 8.30 | 20% | |
| 1946 | The Best Years of Our Lives | 8.30 | #2 | It's a Wonderful Life | 8.70 | ✓ | 40% |
| 1947 | Gentleman's Agreement | 7.40 | #25 | Out of the Past | 8.10 | 0% | |
| 1948 | Hamlet | 7.90 | #12 | Ladri di biciclette | 8.50 | 40% | |
| 1949 | All the King's Men | 7.60 | #18 | The Third Man | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1950 | All About Eve | 8.50 | #2 | Sunset Blvd. | 8.70 | 20% | |
| 1951 | An American in Paris | 7.30 | #44 | Strangers on a Train | 8.30 | 0% | |
| 1952 | The Greatest Show on Earth | 6.70 | #86 | Singin' in the Rain | 8.40 | 20% | |
| 1953 | From Here to Eternity | 7.90 | #10 | Le salaire de la peur | 8.30 | 0% | |
| 1954 | On the Waterfront | 8.40 | #3 | Shichinin no samurai | 8.80 | 20% | |
| 1955 | Marty | 7.70 | #18 | Les diaboliques | 8.30 | 0% | |
| 1956 | Around the World in 80 Days | 6.8 | ? | The Killing | 8.20 | 0% | |
| 1957 | The Bridge on the River Kwai | 8.40 | #5 | 12 Angry Men | 8.90 | ✓ | 60% |
| 1958 | Gigi | 6.90 | #77 | Vertigo | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1959 | Ben-Hur | 8.20 | #5 | Ningen no jôken | 8.80 | 20% | |
| 1960 | The Apartment | 8.40 | #2 | Psycho | 8.70 | 20% | |
| 1961 | West Side Story | 7.70 | #28 | Ningen no jôken | 8.80 | 20% | |
| 1962 | Lawrence of Arabia | 8.50 | #1 | Lawrence of Arabia | 8.50 | ✓✓ | 40% |
| 1963 | Tom Jones | 7.00 | #74 | Pour la suite du monde | 8.50 | 0% | |
| 1964 | My Fair Lady | 7.90 | #15 | The T.A.M.I. Show | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1965 | The Sound of Music | 7.90 | #20 | Obyknovennyy fashizm | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1966 | A Man for All Seasons | 8.00 | #8 | Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. | 9.00 | 20% | |
| 1967 | In the Heat of the Night | 8.00 | #8 | Cool Hand Luke | 8.30 | 20% | |
| 1968 | Oliver! | 7.50 | #41 | C'era una volta il West | 8.80 | 20% | |
| 1969 | Midnight Cowboy | 8.00 | #8 | Le chagrin et la pitié | 8.40 | 20% | |
| 1970 | Patton | 8.10 | #4 | Brigada Diverse intra în actiune | 8.10 | 20% | |
| 1971 | The French Connection | 7.90 | #12 | A Clockwork Orange | 8.50 | ✓ | 20% |
| 1972 | The Godfather | 9.20 | #1 | The Godfather | 9.20 | ✓✓ | 20% |
| 1973 | The Sting | 8.40 | #1 | The Sting | 8.40 | ✓✓ | 20% |
| 1974 | The Godfather Part II | 9.00 | #1 | The Godfather: Part II | 9.00 | ✓✓ | 40% |
| 1975 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | 8.90 | #2 | Hababam sinifi | 9.00 | 40% | |
| 1976 | Rocky | 8.10 | #8 | Tosun Pasa | 8.70 | 20% | |
| 1977 | Annie Hall | 8.20 | #9 | Star Wars | 8.80 | ✓ | 20% |
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter | 8.20 | #5 | Selvi boylum, al yazmalim | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1979 | Kramer vs. Kramer | 7.70 | #27 | Apocalypse Now | 8.60 | ✓ | 20% |
| 1980 | Ordinary People | 7.90 | #8 | The Shining | 8.50 | 40% | |
| 1981 | Chariots of Fire | 7.20 | #74 | Raiders of the Lost Ark | 8.70 | ✓ | 20% |
| 1982 | Gandhi | 8.10 | #8 | Maratonci trce pocasni krug | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1983 | Terms of Endearment | 7.40 | #42 | El sur | 8.20 | 0% | |
| 1984 | Amadeus | 8.40 | #4 | Balkanski spijun | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1985 | Out of Africa | 7.00 | #83 | Zügürt Aga | 8.50 | 0% | |
| 1986 | Platoon | 8.20 | #4 | Aliens | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1987 | The Last Emperor | 7.80 | #17 | Muhsin Bey | 8.40 | 0% | |
| 1988 | Rain Man | 8.00 | #12 | Nuovo Cinema Paradiso | 8.50 | 0% | |
| 1989 | Driving Miss Daisy | 7.40 | #45 | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade | 8.30 | 0% | |
| 1990 | Dances with Wolves | 8.00 | #3 | Goodfellas | 8.80 | ✓ | 40% |
| 1991 | The Silence of the Lambs | 8.70 | #1 | The Silence of the Lambs | 8.70 | ✓✓ | 60% |
| 1992 | Unforgiven | 8.30 | #3 | Reservoir Dogs | 8.40 | 20% | |
| 1993 | Schindler's List | 8.90 | #1 | Schindler's List | 8.90 | ✓✓ | 40% |
| 1994 | Forrest Gump | 8.70 | #4 | The Shawshank Redemption | 9.20 | ✓ | 60% |
| 1995 | Braveheart | 8.40 | #3 | Se7en | 8.70 | 20% | |
| 1996 | The English Patient | 7.30 | #73 | Freebird... The Movie | 8.30 | 20% | |
| 1997 | Titanic | 7.40 | #51 | La vita è bella | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 1998 | Shakespeare in Love | 7.30 | #83 | American History X | 8.60 | 20% | |
| 1999 | American Beauty | 8.60 | #3 | Fight Club | 8.80 | 60% | |
| 2000 | Gladiator | 8.40 | #3 | Memento | 8.70 | 20% | |
| 2001 | A Beautiful Mind | 8.00 | #13 | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | 8.80 | ✓ | 20% |
| 2002 | Chicago | 7.30 | #155 | The Last Just Man | 9.40 | 40% | |
| 2003 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | 8.80 | #1 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | 8.80 | ✓✓ | 20% |
| 2004 | Million Dollar Baby | 8.20 | #7 | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | 8.50 | 0% | |
| 2005 | Crash | 8.50 | #12 | Babam Ve Oglum | 8.70 | 0% | |
| 2006 | The Departed | 8.50 | #3 | Das Leben der Anderen | 8.50 | 20% | |
| 2007 | No Country for Old Men | 8.20 | #8 | Jogo de Cena | 8.70 | 0% | |
| 2008 | Slumdog Millionaire | 8.20 | #7 | The Dark Knight | 8.90 | 0% | |
| 2009 | The Hurt Locker | 7.80 | #30 | Puskás Hungary | 8.60 | 30% | |
| 2010 | The King's Speech | 8.30 | #17 | Inception | 8.90 | ✓ | 20% |
| 2011 | The Artist | 8.20 | #15 | Drive | 9.00 | 0% |
Ok, "Alignment". Take 1941 as an example. There were ten Best Picture nominees in 1941 (although it was called something different back then). So we take the top ten movies of 1941 by IMDB rating. Six of the Best Picture nominees are also in the top ten by IMDB rating, so the alignment for 1941 is 60%. At the other extreme, none of the five 1983 Best Picture nominees are in the IMDB top five for that year, so the alignment for 1983 is 0%.
For a few years I couldn't calculate BPrank, generally because the IMDB year of the Oscar winner differs from the year it won an Oscar. Early on this happens a lot because until 1933 the Academy Awards covered parts of two years. That's why "All Quiet on the Western Front" got the nod in the 1929 Oscars, and then showed up as the best-rated IMDB film of 1930. The "1929" Oscars weren't just held in 1930, they actually covered some movies released in 1930. But sometimes the dates just don't match up. Casablanca is the top-rated film of 1942 and the winner of the 1943 Oscar. This still happens: The Hurt Locker won Best Picture in 2009 but IMDB says it was released in 2008. In most cases I was able to find the year the film was released, according to IMDB, and put down down its ranking within that year for BPrank.
My dataset excludes TV shows, video games, direct-to-video releases, and shorts. (Excluding shorts required cross-referencing against IMDB's genre.list file.) I also excluded movies with fewer than 150 votes on IMDB. I did what I could to exclude movies that are mainly concert footage, although Freebird... The Movie still made it on there. I did not exclude documentaries or foreign films.
Finally, to fulfil the promise of this post's title. According to IMDB, the worst movie ever to win Best Picture is 1930/1931's winner, "Cimmaron" (IMDB:6.3). But if you look relative to what else came out the same year, the worst Best Picture is "Chicago" (IMDB:7.5), which IMDB data ranks at the 155th-best movie of 2002. However you look at it, the best movie ever to win Best Picture is 1974's The Godfather: Part II (IMDB:9.00).
PS: Why are the Oscar nominees linked and the IMDB champions not linked? Because IMDB DATASET DOESN'T INCLUDE ANY URLS ARGH.
PPS: I did something similar for board games as part of Loaded Dice. I called it the "People's Spiel des Jahres." I didn't put up the table because the results were uninterestingly full of wargames. But wargames generally don't get nominated for Spiel des Jahres, so maybe I should exclude them and try it again.
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