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Ranking 1948 Best Picture Nominees

1948 was one of the best movie years and the Academy’s Best Picture slate reflected on that by featuring five absolute classics, some more renowned and others more underrated, but still great. Two dramas with difficult subject matter, one masterful western drama, one Shakespeare adaptation and one artistic film about ballet comprise this eclectic list. This is a phenomenal slate that ranks among the best of all time, so ranking these films will be very difficult, but here we go.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

5. The Snake Pit

This is such a tough list to rank as this slate is incredible and one of the best of all time. Ultimately, I had to go with The Snake Pit in the last spot. It’s a film that offers a mostly realistic, sophisticated and groundbreaking look at the subject of mental health. It’s a necessary look at 40s mental asylums with strong direction, script, pacing and a phenomenal score and cinematography. Olivia de Havilland owns this film with her immensely difficult role. But I am ranking it last because it didn’t quite age as well as most of these other movies as it also felt a bit simplified in its depiction of mental illness.

4. Johnny Belinda

Similarly to The Snake Pit, Johnny Belinda was a groundbreaking movie for its period as it tackled the difficult subject, this time of rape. But unlike that movie, it aged better as it an unusually honest, dark and emotionally driven story that features strong characterization and tremendous performances from its phenomenal ensemble cast – Lew Ayres was wonderful as one of the kindest doctors in cinema history and Jane Wyman undeniably deserved her Oscar for what is pretty much a silent performance, one that relied heavily on her facial expressions to sell her emotions and the story at large. It’s the most underrated movie on this list for sure.

3. Hamlet

What Laurence Olivier did with his version of Hamlet is make a distinctly 1940s take on it – the noirish atmosphere and German expressionist touches made for such an artistic, cinematic adaptation. The cinematography, art direction and costumes are particularly mesmerizing here. The movie has a wrong message for sure, but overall its plot is retained and its shorter length made for a freshly streamlined version that is admirably accessible for most viewers. It’s such a gorgeous, wonderful movie that did not deserve to win Best Picture this year, but this slate is so damn impressive that I honestly would have been fine with any one of these movies winning.

2. The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes is one of the greatest Powell and Pressburger movies, a film that is sheer artistry on display. It has an unforgettable prolonged ballet sequence and that twist ending that was quite shocking and unexpected. A movie about art versus life, it’s a timeless tragedy with a fairy tale quality to it. The technical aspects are mesmerizing – the art direction is splendid, the costumes are gorgeous, the score is beautiful and the cinematography is striking. It’s one of the best-looking Technicolor films you can find. But it ends up second on this list due to its very slow and uneventful first half.

1. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

And the obvious number one this year has to be John Huston’s masterful The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It is an uncharacteristically dark, honest look at what greed does to people while featuring one of cinema’s greatest antagonists. Humphrey Bogart here delivered his career-best performance in the role of the iconic Fred C. Dobbs. He was so daringly unglamorous in the role and so thoroughly believable as a madman. Walter Huston was terrific himself in such a wonderful supporting turn. This is a technically superb, narratively potent film, one that is still impressive in everything that it did oh so right. It’s not just the best movie of this year, but one of the best films of all time. It’s a shame that the Academy did not bestow it with the top award, but at least Huston won for directing it.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

Letter from an Unknown Woman – A wonderful film that is ultimately quite underappreciated, this is one of the most moving and elegant films of this year. It features such a classic, old-fashioned tone and approach to storytelling that worked because the performances are great and the story is so emotionally engaging.

Bicycle Thieves – This Italian masterpiece should have been included on this list, but unfortunately the Academy back then tended not to recognize foreign output. It’s one of the best and most essential Italian Neorealist films, one that is still technically gorgeous and emotionally engaging to watch.

Rope – Rope is one of Hitchcock’s best and most interesting films. It’s a one-take film that made it quite experimental, but daringly different and unique for the time. It also benefits from a couple of very memorable antiheroes, superb dialogue and fantastic acting performances all-around. It’s a film that was probably a bit too strange for the Academy, but it remains a classic.