griggs's - Oscar-winning films: Best Picture List

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Laurence Oliver delivers one of his greatest Shakespearean performances as Hamlet. Seldom has the tragic story of the Danish prince tortured by his duty to his murdered father and by the guilt and fear he feels at the prospect of revenge, been so brilliantly portrayed.

It is the tragedy of a man who thinks but fails to act. For as long as Shakespeare is performed this film will stand as a definitive production.

Gregory Peck stars as a journalist assigned to write a series of articles on anti-Semitism. Searching for an angle, he finally decides to pose as a Jew - and soon discovers what it is like to be a victim of religious intolerance.

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It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) is returning to a loveless marriage; Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is a stranger to a family that's grown up without him; and young sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past?

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The Best Picture of 1945 has lost none of its bite or power in this uncompromising look at the devastating effects of alcoholism.

Ironically, this brilliant Billy Wilder film was almost never released because of poor reaction by preview audiences unaccustomed to such stark realism from Hollywood, but the film has since gone on to be regarded as one of the all-time great dramas in movie history. Ray Milland's haunting portrayal of would-be writer's dissatisfaction with his life leads him on a self-destructive three-day binge.

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When young Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby) arrives to join the congregation at an old established church, things get complicated. St. Dominic's, crusty old Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) doesn't think much of O'Malley or his ideas. These two priests simply can't agree.

But when O'Malley's fresh methods succeed in reaching out to the neighbourhood's toughest kids the community start to change. The neighbourhood becomes closer as the church's meaning grows dearer to their souls.

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Casablanca: easy to enter, but much harder to leave, especially if your name is on the Nazis' most-wanted list. A top that list is Czech Resistance leader VIctor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), whose only hope is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical American who sticks his neck out for no one...

especially Victor's wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the ex-lover who broke his heart. So when Ilsa offers herself in exchange for Laszlo's safe transport out of the country, the bitter Rick must decide what's more important - his own happiness or the countless lives that hang in the balance.

Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) doesn't fly a Spitfire in dogfights over London or ply the North Sea in a battleship, but she's doing her all for wartime England. And she does it so well that Winston Churchill would say Mrs. Miniver was more vital to the nation than a fleet of destroyers.

Sixty-year-old Huw Morgan looks back on his life as a boy (Roddy McDowall) in a small Welsh mining town. His reminiscences reveal the disintegration of the closely knit Morgans, and his devoted parents (Donald Crisp, Sara Allgood), while capturing the sentiments and issues of their time.

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Whilst on holiday, young timid ladies companion (Joan Fontaine) meets handsome and wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) whose wife Rebecca has recently died in a boating accident. The two fall in love and marry.

However, her joy is short lived when she returns to the de Winter estate and soon discovers that Rebecca still has a strange, unearthly hold over everyone there.

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Epic romantic drama based on Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning novel set during the American Civil War. Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) often uses men to get what she wants, but is unable to get the one man she truly desires, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard).

She soon meets her match in the roguish Captain Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and in the war itself which destroys the genteel way of life she has always known. With determination she rebuilds her life from the shattered remains the Union Army leaves behind.

Jean Arthur stars as Alice Sycamore, the stable family member of an offbeat clan of free spirits who fall for Tony Kirby (James Stewart), the down-to-earth son of a snooty, wealthy family. Amidst a backdrop of confusion, the two very different families rediscover the simple joys of life.

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Set in the mid through late 19th century, it depicts Zola's friendship with Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, and his rise to fame through his prolific writing, with particular focus on his involvement late in life in the Dreyfus affair.

Struggling writer Émile Zola (Paul Muni) shares a drafty Paris attic with his friend, painter Paul Cézanne (Vladimir Sokoloff). A chance encounter with a street prostitute (Erin O'Brien-Moore) hiding from a police raid inspires his first bestseller, Nana, an exposé of the steamy underside of Parisian life. Other successful books follow. Zola becomes rich and famous; he marries Alexandrine (Gloria Holden) and settles down to a comfortable life in his mansion. One day, his old friend Cézanne, still poor and unknown, visits him before leaving the city, and tells Zola that with his success he has become complacent, a far cry from the zealous reformer of his youth. Meanwhile, a French secret agent steals a letter addressed to a military officer in the German embassy. The letter confirms there is a spy within the top French army staff. With little thought, the army commanders decide that Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut) is the traitor, is courtmartialed and imprisoned on Devil's Island in then French Guyana...

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Flo Zeigfeld's midway attraction isn't drawing flies. "How's business, Ziggy?" a rival taunts. This winner of 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture provides the career-chronicling answer. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.

's business was good (with Broadway's legendary Follies and more), bad (including times the showman could scarcely rub two nickels together) and rarely lacking optimistic excess.

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HMS Bounty sails for Tahiti by way of Cape Horn...and into movie lore as an American Film Institute Top-100 American Films selection. Grandly filmed, 'Mutiny on the Bounty' captured the 1935 Best Picture Academy Award and eight nominations total.

Charles Laughton portrays Captain Bligh, a seafaring monster ruling with the law of fear. Solidifying his status as Hollywood's No. 1 male star, Clark Gable is first officer Fletcher Christian, whose will to obey erodes under Bligh's tyranny. And Franchot Tone plays idealistic midshipman Byam, torn by his allegiance to both. That all three portrayals are vividly memorable is accented by the fact that for the only time in Oscar history, three stars from the same actor were Best Actor nominees.

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When her father threatens to annul her marriage to a fortune-hunting playboy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) hops on a cross-country bus to New York, where she plans to live happily ever after with her handsome new hubby.

Romantic complications however, when she's befriended by fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a brash and breezy reporter who offers his help in exchange for her exclusive story.