Correlation Between Oscars Best Film/Director

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards are only two days away and I am complete Oscar mode.  While prepping for tomorrow’s movie marathon, where I will see the final nominees up for Best Picture this year, I was wondering in the 81-year history of the awards how many Best Picture winners didn’t correspond with its filmmaker in the Best Director category. As of last year’s ceremony honoring the best movies made in 2009, there have been 21 mismatches when it came to the best picture and best director winners, which is to say that slightly more than 25 percent of ceremonies end with the unmatched Best Picture/Director combination.  While the first few years it was quite normal for the Best Director to not see the movie he helmed win the most coveted Best Picture Oscar, since about the fourteenth annual event on it has become quite sporadic.
The most disappointing example of this phenomenon was in 1998 when Saving Private Ryan didn’t win Best Picture, despite being the superior film to Shakespeare in Love, although Steven Spielberg was named Best Director of the year.  Another shocking case was in 1972 when Francis Ford Coppola didn’t win Best Director for The Godfather, my favorite film of all time.  However, the Academy made up for that oversight two years later with the sequel.
Below is a list of the years in which the winning director didn’t see his film win the top prize.

1928 (1st Annual Academy Awards Ceremony):
Picture – Wings (William A. Wellman)
Director – Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven)
Note: Frank Borzage was the winner for Best Director of a dramatic film; Lewis Milestone won Best Director of a comedy for Two Arabian Knights; this was the only year the Academy separated the director awards into genres.

1929 (2nd):
Picture – The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)
Director – Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady)

1931 (4th):
Picture – Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles)
Director – Norman Taurog (Skippy)

1932 (5th):
Picture – Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding)
Director – Frank Borzage (Bad Girl)
Note: Edmund Goulding was not up for a Best Director nomination.

1936 (9th):
Picture – Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
Director – John Ford (The Informer)

1937 (10th):
Picture – The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard)
Director – Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)
Note: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was not up for a Best Picture nomination.

1938 (11th):
Picture – The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle)
Director – Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth)
Note: The Awful Truth was not up for a Best Picture nomination.

1940 (13th):
Picture – Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
Director – John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)

1948 (21st):
Picture – Hamlet (Laurence Olivier)
Director – John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

1949 (22nd):
Picture – All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen)
Director – Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives)

1951 (24th):
Picture – An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli)
Director – George Stevens (A Place in the Sun)

1952 (25th):
Picture – The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille)
Director – John Ford (The Quiet Man)

1956 (29th):
Picture – Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson)
Director – George Stevens (Giant)

1967 (40th):
Picture – In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison)
Director – Mike Nichols (The Graduate)

1972 (45th):
Picture – The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Director – Bob Fosse (Cabaret)

1981 (54th):
Picture – Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson)
Director – Warren Beatty (Reds)

1989 (62nd):
Picture – Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford)
Director – Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July)
Note: Bruce Beresford not up for Best Director nomination.

1998 (71st):
Picture – Shakespeare in Love (John Madden)
Director – Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)

2000 (73rd):
Picture – Gladiator (Ridley Scott)
Director – Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)

2002 (75th):
Picture – Chicago (Rob Marshall)
Director – Roman Polanski (The Pianist)

2005 (78th):
Picture – Crash (Paul Haggis)
Director – Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)