Best films to win Best Picture Oscar

It's that time of year again, when Hollywood gets its sequined dress on and celebrates itself with a staggering amount of self-importance. Over the years, the academy members have made some stunning Best Picture decisions - How Green Was My Valley winning out over Citizen Kane, Rocky over Taxi Driver, My Fair Lady beating Dr. Strangelove, Crash taking the award ahead of Brokeback Mountain - but the gathered thesps and assorted nobles of the American film industry have also made some great choices: Casablanca, The Godfather, The Lost Weekend. Here is our shortlist of some of the best films to win the ultimate prize: 

1. From Here to Eternity (1953)

If you can forget that this film helped to bring into being the terrible banality that is the Pearl Harbor remake, there is much to enjoy here. Fred Zinneman's film looks at the moral corruption of illicit relationships and the conflict between personal interest and group harmony. Sinatra, Lancaster and Kerr are superb and the Japanese attack sequence is genuinely affecting. www.amazon.co.uk

2. On the Waterfront (1954)

The dubious morality of Elia Kazan aside, this film about violence and corruption, featuring Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, a longshoreman beaten for informing against mobsters, is a thrilling piece of work, featuring the oft quoted "I coulda been a contender speech." www.amazon.co.uk


3. The French Connection (1971)

The kind of dark, dirty little back street thriller that Hollywood doesn't make anymore. William Friedkin established a new template for the crime thriller with this story of New York cops on the hunt for a consignment of heroin. This features one of the most audacious car chase sequences ever seen and won Friedkin the Best Director Oscar. www.amazon.co.uk

4. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

David Lean's story of T.E. Lawrence set a new level in epic filmmaking: the compelling action sequences; the vast cast of extras all stewarded to magnificent effect in the days before CGI; the excellent screenplay; the desert scenes; Omar Shariff in one of the finest entrances in any film. The range and sweep of this remains unsurpassed. And Peter O'Toole's extraordinary eyes capture the strange enigma of a singular man. www.amazon.co.uk

5. The Apartment (1960)

Ah, wither the likes of Billy Wilder. Black comedy, film noir, romance, drama: this man could do it all. Wilder crafted the sort of brilliantly witty scripts that the continued success of James Cameron dooms to further anonymity in Hollywood. The Apartment is Wilder's crowing achievement: satire of office politics, scabrous look at corporate manoeuvring and the most unconventional of love stories, featuring the delightful Jack Lemon as clerk C.C. Baxter and Shirley McClaine on great form as lift operator Fran Kubelik. www.amazon.co.uk

6. Unforgiven (1992)

Clint Eastwood has drifted into a late stage in which every turgid and predictable drama he puts out is acclaimed as one more instance of his genius. None of his recent work comes close to the majesty of this superb Western about a widower talked into returning to his gunslinger ways of old. With Gene Hackman outstanding as Little Bill Daggett and Morgan Freeman and Clint himself equally fine, this is a compelling and suitably sinister tale of moral corruption. www.amazon.co.uk

2 March 2010