Ranking the Best Picture Winners 1920s-1930s

It starts off with a bang but the rest of the film is one giant racist disappointment. It's a long uninteresting slog.

I'm guessing this is the ORIGINAL dour English drama. The director Frank Lloyd was born in Scotland - maybe this drag of a film was his intended revenge against those imperialist English. Then it somehow won Best Picture. If you want to see the definition of telegraphing your story watch the scene of a young, madly in love couple salivating over their future together on a giant luxury boat revealed as the Titanic. What do you think their survival chances are?

When one thinks of late 20s in cinematic terms images of large cadres of dancers doing their thing should pop into your head. The Broadway Melody is an embodiment of that malaise.

It starts off pretty well and Ziegfeld remains a mostly fascinating character throughout. The only problem is that the film gets really sidetracked with pointless dance revue scenes and, by the end, feels really empty.

This is a truly bizarre Best Picture winner. It is unlike anything that won before or since. I guess that makes it unique but I didn't really warm to the hillbilly hoe-down hell depicted here - even if it is the backdrop for a Rome & Julietesque love story. At least the dance scenes in the other Best Picture winners were somewhat choreographed.

It often plays like a Eurocentric imperialist wet dream but there's some solid adventuring going on here. I would have liked to see more of an examination of the flaws or lack thereof in the deposed Captain Bligh (at one point the film makes him seem like a genuinely awesome captain) but that's more tied to a desire to see Charles Laughton given more chances to actually act.

The only silent film winner. Much of the film is tepid romantic drama but the airborne dogfight sequences are pretty amazing even by today's standards. There's even a surprising amount of blood and rampant property destruction. Its almost like what you would get if Roland Emmerich directed a silent film.

This is pretty impressive high drama mixed in with some unexpectedly tense courtroom scenes. It really starts off slow but the second half of the film absolutely delivers on the promising story foundation of a military man wrongfully imprisoned. One of the most pleasant surprises of the 30s winners.

One of the earliest and still finest anti-war films. The camerawork here is absolutely brilliant and the film does a great job of placing you in the despair and chaos of the World War I trenches. I didn't really have much of an emotional attachment to the characters (their wide eyed naivete was really overstated) but this is close to a visual masterpiece.

When people say they don't make films like they used to they're probably talking about Grand Hotel. Featuring a cast studded with a who's who of early Hollywood stars, (I'm guessing they were all slaving under the contract system so they had to show up) including not one but TWO Barrymore's and a Garbo this is Hollywood melodrama at its finest. I'd liken its intersection filled story to Crash or Babel but without the haughty racial messages. Only messages about economic inequality here. It's filled with fine acting and a satisfying story.

It Happened One Night is funny, sweet and utterly timeless. The dialogue snaps, the characters are charming and likeable and the love conquers all story is nothing short of life affirming. If you give any movie on this list a chance it should be this one.