The Best Picture Winner the Academy Doesn't Want You to Know About
Why they should be giving away two Best Picture Oscars
[ed. note: there are a few errors on this video, corrections for which are in this article.]
At the very first Academy Awards, before they were even called "The Oscars," the Academy gave away TWO best picture awards, to Wings and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
Why did they do it? A better question: Why did they stop?
As I mentioned the other day, I just re-watched Sunrise in a theater for the first time in years.1 It’s a moving film, and I highly recommend checking it out. I’ve still never seen Wings on the big screen, though.
Funnily enough, because we saw Sunrise with a live band playing an original score, I had forgotten “The Funeral March of a Marionette” was in the movie. I re-discovered this fact when I read this article from the Guardian: The day Alfred Hitchcock spoke one word to me (and the 40 years it took me to understand it).
If you want to play Pretentious Cinephile Bingo: Foreign Language Edition, I made it with My Free Bingo Cards.
List of Movies and Shows Referenced
Top Gun: Maverick
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Wings (1990 - 1997)2
Wings (1927)
The Great Dictator
The Jazz Singer
Get Out
Nosferatu
The Last Laugh
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Annie Hall
Shakespeare in Love
Saving Private Ryan
Gladiator
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Dark Knight
Green Book
Avengers: Infinity War
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
The Artist
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Moonlight
Mad Max: Fury Road
Spotlight
The first time was at the great Norris Theater on the USC campus, back in my film school days.
Holy cow, that show was on the air for a long time.