Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Reviewed!

“I have come to you tonight from the capital of our country to pay my respects to the creative minds of the world’s greatest and most influential enterprise, the motion picture.”

– U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis at the 1931 Academy Awards

The very first Academy Awards ceremony took place on May 16th, 1929, in Hollywood. And perhaps the most notable thing about it was the food. There were a mere 270 guests at this gathering of famous faces, organized by MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, who hoped to use the event as self-censorship to class up an industry that was in danger of upsetting conservative mothers and clergymen. A golden statue seemed a novel way of proving to the public that film was art, not smut.

Interestingly, the statue (dubbed “Oscar” by Bette Davis [or so she insisted] on account of her first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson) itself hasn’t changed since it was first designed by art director Cedric Gibbons. But virtually everything else has – from the membership (beginning with 230 members in 1929, before rising up to more than 600 in 1934, and then plummeting to a mere 40 during protesting against the Academy’s stance toward unions in 1935; by 2023, the voting body is nearly 10,000), to the award categories (such as the ill-fated Best Director for a Comedy Picture), to the terribly corrupt judging process (which saw recipients feign surprise, having posed for publicity photos with their Oscar days before the official announcement), to the presentation itself (which began with episodes of confusion, most famously when Frank Capra, for the 1932-33 ceremony, rushed to the stage to accept the Best Director Oscar, when it was intended for another Frank – Frank Lloyd), to the infamous physical assault of a host in 2022. Even the award dates themselves were a mess – until in 1934, the calendar year was finally observed for nominee selections.

But the Oscars quickly became a competent marketing tool, notably propelling (for the first time) a flop, “The Informer,” into a moneymaker after Victor McLaglen’s Best Actor win, while also succeeding in drawing bigger and bigger crowds and greater recognition via radio broadcasts, and finally through television programming. And though politics and collusion continued to – and continues to – mar the impartiality of recipients (quite blatantly in the earlier days), the Academy Awards have since become a much-revered affair. And they’re certainly the most popular of all movie awards.

As such, it has become a tradition for critics and movie enthusiasts to debate the merits of the nominees and predict the eventual winners. Since the most coveted prize is for Best Picture, The Massie Twins have gone back to rewatch and review every single winner of that top accolade since the inception of the organization (in some cases, the majority of the nominees were also reviewed). Click on the titles to read the full reviews!