You'd be forgiven for thinking that any film nominated for a hallowed (sense the sarcasm) Best Picture Academy Award would be instantly memorable; this is Hollywood's top prize, after all. And while it remains that most Best Picture nominees are memorable for one reason or another, it is also true that some have simply slipped from collective cinematic memory. That's not to say that they're necessarily bad films (and indeed the ten on show here range from good to great), but rather that once the Oscar dust had settled, they kind of faded into the background. Nobody forgot them, per se, but remembering them as among the year's cream of the crop is invariably difficult. As the category has now been expanded to allow up to ten nominees, these kind of films are becoming more frequent, and you only have to look back over the last few years to see that the likes of The Help and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close have recently been given the nod. Back when it was only five nominees, however, it was rarer to see a lineup that included a now all but forgotten film (to pick a year at random, 1975 saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws and Nashville all nominated, a set of films unlikely to be forgotten by any cinephile worth his salt), so here are ten examples of that kind-of-rarity in action since 1970.
