Call A Cop, Cuz They Were Robbed

As the Oscars are approaching I have started to think about past ceremonies and some of the decisions made by the Academy. It's no secret that mistakes have been made in the past and the group's stuffy decisions haven't necessarily represented the feelings of normal moviegoers.
While watching a movie I had no particular interest in, I started thinking about great films that were nominated for Best Picture, but lost. I went through the historical archives of the Academy Awards and dug up 10 years that wonderful movies lost the Best Picture award whether it was to an inferior film or a victim of a stacked year.
I would like it noted that since I haven't seen all the films ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, I can't give a complete list and this is obviously my opinion. However, I have seen the winners from each year and can decide among the films nominated that I have seen if they are better than the winner.

1933: 42nd Street and She Done Him Wrong lost to Cavalcade
While both 42nd Street and She Done Him Wrong aren't the most spectacular and moving pictures, they are certainly more enjoyable than Cavalcade.
Mae West is certainly the best thing about She Done Him Wrong and her screen time is what makes this movie so delightful. It is one of the few films West was in prior to the Hays Code censorship era of Hollywood.
42nd Street is the original backstage musical that has spawned so many clichés those who hate musicals complain about. With a loaded cast that included Ginger Rogers before she was known as Fred Astaire's leading lady it revitalized the musical genre.

1938: Grand Illusion lost to You Can't Take it With You
I'm not going to get much love for picking a French war film over a Pulitzer Prize-winning comedic play turned into a Frank Capra film starring Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore and James Stewart. Yet, Grand Illusion is a magnificent film dealing with class relations among French soldiers captured in a German prisoner of war camp. The film's action that is made up of soldiers trying to plan and execute an escape should keep the casual watcher interested, but I urge everyone to truly pay attention to the relationships between the characters and the story being told, you will experience one of the greatest anti-war films of all time.
This would be one of those years that a lot of great films were made, as You Can't Take it With You beat out not only Grand Illusion, but also Boys Town and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

1940: The Great Dictator lost to Rebecca
The Great Dictator is hands down Charlie Chaplin's greatest work. It blends slapstick comedy with anti-war satire and anti-Hitler farce. I personally love Rebecca, thinking it is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films prior to his golden years of the 1950s and 60s. But when compared to Chaplin's The Great Dictator it just doesn't stand up.
Chaplin crafts a gem of a film that brought to the forefront the star's feelings about the repression taking place in Europe toward the Jewish people. He started filming one week after the start of World War II.
The ending monologue reversing the anti-Semitic views of the antagonist are one of the most rousing in film history.

1941: Citizen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley
I really like How Green Was My Valley. I really do. But what Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane changed filmmaking forever. There are lots of technical aspects about movies today that come naturally because of what Welles started with this movie, but those are too tedious to really go into detail about that. What the everyday moviegoer cares about that Citizen Kane pioneered includes the credits being placed at the end as they are today, dialogue overlapping in a scene like a more normal conversation and the advent of frames being completely in focus so the viewer can see action both close and far away clearly.
While Citizen Kane might not have been appreciated in its time, it certainly has held the test of time better than How Green Was My Valley and its contributions to the film industry is why it deserved the Oscar for Best Picture.

1951: A Streetcar Named Desire lost to An American in Paris
I've got no problem with Gene Kelly and tap-dancing musicals. In fact, Singing in the Rain is one of my favorite movies of all time (and second in the musical genre next to My Fair Lady), but how An American in Paris beat out Marlon Brando's method acting and Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama I'll never know. Nothing about An American in Paris stands out today, whereas Brando screaming out "STELLA!!!" and Vivien Leigh's quote about the kindness of strangers has lived on for decades.

1956: Giant, The King and I, and The Ten Commandments lost to Around the World in 80 Days
Choose any of these and you'll find a better Best Picture than Around the World in 80 Days. I haven't even seen Friendly Persuasion and I feel pretty confident that it is better than Around the World in 80 Days.

1964: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb lost to My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is probably my favorite musical (in a close race with Singing in the Rain), but Stanley Kubrick's anti-war dark comedy is simply the superior film. The Academy loved Audrey Hepburn (and so do I), but this snub would be the first of many Kubrick received throughout his career. He won only a single Oscar in his lifetime and that was for Best Special Visual Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, despite receiving 13 nominations total.

1969: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lost to Midnight Cowboy
In my opinion, Midnight Cowboy is the worst movie to ever win the Best Picture Oscar. The subject of a male gigolo or hustler or whatever in New York City who befriends a petty thief is simply not for me. I can admit the acting and characters might have been great, but I simply can't get behind anything else the movie offered. Besides, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is my favorite Western film and I would be much happier had it received the Academy Award.

1990: Goodfellas lost to Dances With Wolves
To begin, Dances With Wolves is a really good movie. Kevin Costner directed a good story about a soldier out of his elements learning the ways of the Native Americans, eventually becoming sympathetic to their cause and assisting the tribe once the evil White people started encroaching on their land (sound familiar to another movie nominated for a lot of awards this year).
However, Goodfellas is Martin Scorsese's best film and should have been the movie that got him his first Oscar (not The Departed). Everything, including the storytelling, characters, music, dialogue and acting, is top-notch and deserving of awards. Goodfellas is one of the few mafia films that can stand up to The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II as best of its genre.

1998: Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love
This year is the entire reason for doing this list. I've always been irked by this loss because in my estimation Saving Private Ryan is so much a better movie than Shakespeare in Love that it is not even funny. The only apparent flaw people complain about in Saving Private Ryan is the scenes at the beginning and end of the picture with the old man and his family visiting the soldiers' graves. I think those parts are nice bookends to a brilliant movie and without them the impact of the group's actions to go save Private Ryan is sort of lost.

Notes:
While I like The Maltese Falcon more than How Green Was My Valley and would watch it more likely than the latter, I am okay with it losing the 1940 Best Picture award because it is a close race between those two films. However, Citizen Kane should have beaten both due to the significant impact it had on how movies would be made for decades to come.
The 1946 winner The Best Years of Our Lives is an astounding movie that captures the lives of three families following World War II. I adore this film and am glad it won the Best Picture Oscar, but it is hard to let go that It's a Wonderful Life didn't win. Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is a classic that I watch at least once a year (usually around Christmas). Both are great movies and could have won in my opinion.
Laurence Olivier's production of Hamlet in 1948 is certainly one of the best and I respect him as one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, but I really like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The story of three men in search for gold and how greed tears them apart, both inside and out, is an excellent cautionary tale. This is another case of two movies being really close in the running that both could have ended up with the statue.
In 1950, two movies that are in my opinion top-notch were released to the public and could easily be considered the best of its year. Those two films are All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. All About Eve ended up winning the Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director, but it certainly wouldn't have been a far reach for director Billy Wilder and producer Charles Brackett to have taken home the top prizes that year for Sunset Blvd.
It is sad to see To Kill A Mockingbird lose to Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, but the better film did win. If only the Gregory Peck-starring film had been released a year later, because surely it would have beaten the overrated Tom Jones.
I struggled on a decision between 1994's The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump. Both are glorious movies and excellent in their own ways. Shawshank probably has the edge and likely deserved the Best Picture honor, but I'm not too disappointed it went to Forrest Gump.