1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Beaten by How Green Was My Valley.
The big one. When respectable publications such as the AFI and Sight & Sound’s poll “The Greatest Films Ever Made,” lists complied by the kinds of people who are members of the Academy, Orson Welles‘ classic Citizen Kane rightfully claims the ownership of the Number One spot. And yet the ‘Greatest Film Ever Made’ walked away on Oscar night with one lonely award: Best Original Screenplay.
There are political reasons why Citizen Kane did not win the Best Picture Oscar. Namely because the person that the lead character, Charles Foster Kane, was based on: William Randolph Hearst, wasn’t particularly happily with the parallels drawn by Welles. Also, the film’s bleak outlook won’t have gone down swimmingly with an audience who were looking towards films as escapism from World War 2. But in hindsight the Academy made a foolish error in not giving Welles the Best Picture award.
For a 26 year old and for a debut work, Citizen Kane is massively ambitious, wonderfully confident and sublime in every single way, and Welles had control of it all. Although they wouldn’t have known it at the time, the film has gone on to be perhaps the most influential film ever put on screen and even 70 years after its original release young filmmakers are aware of the power that Welles’ Kane has. The peerless film and the one a great number of people consider to be the pinnacle of cinematic art was not a Best Picture winner. Academy out of touch? I think so.
