The Oscars and World War I
Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 7:52AM 
Tomorrow we might witness Oscar history being made with the crowning of the very first non-English Best Picture winner. Of course, it is just as likely that we'll see history repeating itself. If Parasite falters and 1917 claims the top prize, that's another muscular war film joining the ranks of the Best Picture pantheon. More specifically, a World War I epic of great technical ingenuity and daring, a project not too unlike the original Best Picture winner, Wings. From 1927 to 2019, movies with similar historical settings have found great success with the Academy, though World War I stories were more regularly found on the big screen when that conflict was still an actual memory for the living.
For the Oscars' first decade, many war pictures won plaudits. For a time Hollywood let go of the heroic romantics of Wings and adopted a more melancholy view of recent History, with antiwar sentiment as well as complicated class studies that saw a broken society through the prism of war. All that would change with the arrival of World War II. The newer global nightmare readily took the place of the old war in the Academy's eyes, first as propaganda and then as more ponderous retrospective. To this day, people still joke that a sure way to win an Oscar is to do a World War II drama.
But back to the first World War. Here are the 12 Best Picture nominees that have told stories from that global conflict...
WINGS (1927)
- Best Picture (winner)
- Best Effects, Engineering Effects, Roy Pomeroy (winner)
This technical spectacle is a great picture to compare to 1917, both in terms of its similarly stellar technique and contrasting approaches to human drama.
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
- Best Picture (winner)
- Best Director, Lewis Milestone (winner)
- Best Writing, George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson & Del Andrews
- Best Cinematography, Arthur Edeson
A gut-wrenching nightmare that hasn't lost any of its power in the last 90 years. This classic is often found at the top of lists ranking the Best World War I movies ever made.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932)
- Best Picture
- Best Cinematography, Charles Lang (winner)
- Best Art Direction, Hans Dreier & Roland Anderson
- Best Sound Recording, Franklin Hansen (winner)
If Helen Hayes had to win a Best Actress Oscar, it might as well have been for this lush wartime romance instead of the fallen woman moralities of The Sin of Madelon Claudet.
CAVALCADE (1933)
- Best Picture (winner)
- Best Director, Frank Lloyd (winner)
- Best Actress, Diana Wynyard
- Best Art Direction, William S. Darling (winner)
This belabored epic has the unfortunate fame of being one of the worst and most boring Best Picture winners of all-time.
GRAND ILLUSION (1938)
- Best Picture
Jean Renoir's first undisputed masterpiece is a breathtaking look at class divides, dying ways of life and social hierarchies in a war-torn Europe. Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay and the inimitable Erich von Stroheim were never better.
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939)
- Best Picture
- Best Director, Sam Wood
- Best Actor, Robert Donat (winner)
- Best Writing, Screenplay, R.C. Sherriff, Claudine West & Eric Maschwitz
- Best Editing, Charles Frend
- Best Sound Recording, A.W. Watkins
Robert Donat won the Oscar against stiff competition from Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind) and Jimmy Stewart (Mr Smith Goes to Washington). The English actor's work in this decade-spanning epic is endearing and transformative, especially in the latter passages of the movie when grief and the weight of war take over.
SERGEANT YORK (1941)
- Best Picture
- Best Director, Howard Hawks
- Best Actor, Gary Cooper (winner)
- Best Supporting Actress, Margaret Wycherly
- Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan
- Best Original Screenplay, Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston & Howard Koch
- Best Editing, William Holmes (winner)
- Best Cinematography (Black & White), Sol Polito
- Best Art Direction (Black & White), John Hughes & Fred M. MacLean
- Best Music (Score of a Dramatic Picture), Max Steiner
- Best Sound Recording, Nathan Levinson
A movie more interesting because of its Historical context than any discernible qualities of its own. This may be a story of World War I, but the morals of the thing position it as a piece of American propaganda for the eve of World War II.
WILSON (1944)
- Best Picture
- Best Director, Henry King
- Best Actor, Alexander Knox
- Best Original Screenplay, Lamar Trotti (winner)
- Best Editing, Barbara McLean (winner)
- Best Cinematography (Color), Leon Shamroy (winner)
- Best Arti Direction (Color), Wiard Ihnen & Thomas Little (winner)
- Best Special Effects, Fred Sersen & Roger Heman Sr.
- Best Music, Alfred Newman
- Best Sound Recording, Edmund H. Hansen (winner)
A mostly-forgotten Oscar champion which details the life of Woodrow Wilson with all the pomp and circumstance Twentieth Century Fox could scrounge up.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
- Best Picture, Sam Spiegel (winner)
- Best Director, David Lean (winner)
- Best Actor, Peter O'Toole
- Best Supporting Actor, Omar Shariff
- Best Adapted Screenplay, Robert Boll & Michael Wilson
- Best Editing, Anne V. Coates (winner)
- Best Cinematography, Frederick A. Young (winner)
- Best Art Direction, John Box, John Stoll & Dario Simoni (winner)
- Best Original Score, Maurice Jarre (winner)
- Best Sound, John Cox (winner)
A portrait of war and madness, a man and the landscape which consumes and defines him. Peter O'Toole is mesmerizing in this most spectacular of the 1960s historical epics.
NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA (1971)
- Best Picture, Sam Spiegel
- Best Actress, Janet Suzman
- Best Cinematography, Freddie Young
- Best Art Direction, John Box, Ernest Archer, Jack Maxsted, Gil Parrondo & Vernon Dixon (winner)
- Best Costume Design, Yvonne Blake & Antonio Castillo (winner)
A bloodless retelling of Tsar Nicholas II's troubled life and disastrous reign, following him and his wife through the advent of World War I, the Russian Revolution and their family's tragic demise. It's lavish but dull.
WAR HORSE (2011)
- Best Picture, Steven Spielberg & Kathleen Kennedy
- Best Cinematography, Janusz Kaminski
- Best Art Direction, Rick Carter & Lee Sandales
- Best Original Score, John Williams
- Best Sound Mixing, Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson & Stuart Wilson
- Best Sound Editing, Richard Hymns & Gary Rydstrom
A movie so old-fashioned it seems like an experiment in bringing back the aesthetics and feel of late 1930s Technicolor epics. Despite its many nominations, this Steven Spielberg movie left the Oscars empty-handed.
1917 (2019)
- Best Picture, Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne-Ann Tenggren & Callum McDougall
- Best Director, Sam Mendes
- Best Original Screenplay, Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
- Best Cinematography, Roger Deakins
- Best Production Design, Dennis Gassner & Lee Sandales
- Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Naomi Donne, Tristan Versluis & Rebecca Cole
- Best Visual Effects, Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler & Dominic Tuohy
- Best Original Score, Thomas Newman
- Best Sound Mixing, Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson
- Best Sound Editing, Oliver Tarney & Rachael Tate
Finally, we have one of this year's Best Picture frontrunners, a movie that has been a touch polarizing despite (or even because of) its formal wondrousness. A dry epic, full of blood and guts, explosions and the pristine cinematography of Roger Deakins.
Do you believe 1917 will follow Wings, All Quiet on the Western Front, Cavalcade and Lawrence of Arabia into the pantheon of the Academy's Best Pictures?
Reader Comments (13)
War Horse is one of the most underrated films of the 21st century--surely Spielberg's best film since at least A.I.
Did not know that Grand Illusion was a Best Pic nominee — pleasantly surprised to learn that. In all my years of Oscar-watching I’d never heard of Wilson!
1917 seems to be a favorite of a sizeable few and a top 2-3 of many ballots thing. A good bet that most people I've heard would be disappointed because their favorites didn't win, but can't knock the quality of 1917 itself. I've missed any mention of it being truly polarising.
Helen Hayes win is a fine enough one, even if I am partial to Marie Dressler in any and everything.
Well, I never!!!
1917 is conventional but beautiful and very involving and will likely win cos everyone will like it and I am no war film fan.
War Horse isn't Spielberg's best film since A.I. but I do agree it's underrated. It's a truly beautiful film and he should have had an easy Best Director nomination. Gets super emotional at end and deserves it.
And Janusz Kaminski is..maybe the best ever.
Of the Best Pic nominees I've seen this year (which is a much higher number than it usually is), 1917 is my least favorite. I won't be mad if it wins, but I still hope Parasite or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood manages to overtake it in the preferential voting.
" 1917" is a very good film and deserves all it's nominations
I thought 1917 was engrossing and I have no problem with it's nominations. I'm not sure it's the best picture of the year, but like many people I would easily rank it in the top 3, so it has a real shot at winning.
Btw. There are 2 great Australian films that deal with World War I, they didn't get best picture nominations so don't qualify for this list. But "Gallipoli", and "Breaker Morant" are both terrific, and are better than some of the ones on this list.
In your Goodbye Mr. Chips section, you neglected to mention that Greer Garson was also nominated for Best Actress for that film.
All Quiet on the Western Front and Lawrence of Arabia are my two favorite Best Picture winners. The former still rips my heart out every time; it's crudeness and naivete actually make it that much more powerful.
Wilson has to be one of the most overstuffed flatulent bores to ever emanate from Hollywood.
Cavalcade isn't nearly as bad or boring as some claim. What I thought was particularly heartbreaking is at the end, the parents whose children died in the war sit and think and realize that another war is probably coming, 6 years before WWII officially started.
For posterity's sake please edit your article. I didn't ramble on in my Oscar speech to be erased from history today! Harrumph!