The First Ten Films to Win the Academy Award for Best Picture

The first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture was Wings.  It's a silent film starring Hollywood legends Clara Bow, Charles Rogers, and Richard Arlen.  Wings is a romantic action movie set during World War I, and it largely revolves around the characters of Rogers and Arlen in their rivalrous pursuit of Clara Bow's character.  Wings garnered praise for its realism and superior technical achievements, especially for depicting aerial battles.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929.  The film's legacy has endured, and it is now widely considered a masterpiece.  This film, which many have called the greatest film of the silent era, was a romantic drama that starred George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston.  The film's plot is based on "The Excursion to Tilsit," a short story that Carl Mayer adapted and expanded.  In 1989, the United States Library of Congress chose 25 films to be preserved in the National Film Registry.  Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans was included due to its cultural significance.  This film was also one of the first to have a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack.

At the second Academy Awards ceremony, held April 3, 1930, Best Picture was awarded for the first time to a sound film.  That film was The Broadway Melody, also called The Broadway Melody of 1929.  Actress Bessie Love, a main character in the movie, earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.  The Broadway Melody was one of the first musicals to have a Technicolor sequence.

All Quiet on the Western Front remains a well-known movie in pop culture, even today.  It is based on a novel by Erich Remarque, who served in the German military in World War I.  The book and the movie have a strong anti-war message as they explore the harsh physical and mental traumas war brings.

Starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, Cimarron was a pre-Code Western film and an extremely expensive production.  It was the first of three Westerns to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.  Cimarron was an incredibly ambitious film with an expansive plot spanning forty years, covering the period from 1889 to 1929.

Directed by Edmund Goulding, Grand Hotel is based on a 1930 play by William A. Drake.  Drake's play was an adaptation of a 1929 novel called Menschen im Hotel, by Vicki Baum. Typically, films that win Best Picture are nominated for other categories, but this was a Best Picture winner without any other nominations.  It's one of the significant films selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.  The movie features stellar performances from Greta Garbo and John Barrymore.  Grand Hotel was a success that was extremely profitable for the studio.

Another movie based on a play by the same title, Cavalcade is considered an American epic and was directed by the talented Frank Lloyd.  It was honored with the Best Picture award as well as two additional Academy Awards.  Frank Lloyd was honored as Best Director.  The movie's plot focuses on an upper-class London couple and their family as they live through several historical events from 1899 to 1933.  This movie garnered praise for strong performances from stars Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook.

It Happened One Night is a romantic comedy directed by Frank Capra that focuses on the life of a spoiled socialite trying to rebel against family pressures – a socialite that falls in love with a charming, yet mischievous, reporter.  Claudette Colbert plays the ditzy socialite perfectly and is well-matched with her co-star Clark Gable as the reporter.  It Happened One Night is one of the very last films to be released before the MPPDA started strictly following the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code that put a lot of regulations on what movies could include.  It is one of only three films to win every major Academy Award:  It Happened One Night swept the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay categories.

You might recognize a few names in this entry.  Mutiny on the Bounty was directed by Frank Lloyd and starred Charles Laughton and Clark Gable.  It was an adaptation of the novel of the same name. The events of the book and movie were based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, who commanded the Bounty.  The story, as relayed in the film, does contain a number of historical inaccuracies.  Mutiny on the Bounty was extremely financially successful – it was the year's highest-grossing film.

Ending this list is The Great Ziegfeld, an American musical movie starring William Powell, Luise Rainer, and Myrna Loy.  The movie is noted for its detailed costumes, sets, and dance choreography.  Adapted from the Broadway play Ziegfeld Follies, it is a fictional memorization of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr that enchanted audiences.  One of the reasons The Great Ziegfeld was enthusiastically praised is that many of the performers from the original Broadway production were cast in the film.  The Great Ziegfeld was critically and commercially successful and was praised as the best musical biography ever made.  It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won three.  In addition to Best Picture, it won Best Actress and Best Dance Direction honors.  Producers were ecstatic the film was successful because it was wildly expensive – costume design and set production had pushed the budget for the film to worrying heights.