11 Directors Who Won Oscars For Completely The Wrong Movie

7. Carol Reed

Won For... Oliver!

Should Have Won For... The Third Man

The Academy has a thing for musicals, and it is pretty fair to say that any movie with grand musical numbers that require complex choreography is an impressive feat, but the ability to create good set-pieces around songs is not the same as directing a good movie as a whole.

And while Oliver! is still counted as a classic of the genre, it's in no way, shape or form the equal of The Third Man, which is not only a great movie but a great work in the art of directing. In it, Carol Reed perfectly channeled Graham Greene, putting his words to images that felt lifted from the page so astonishingly well that it's no surprise that Greene himself calls it a director's movie.

Reed changed Greene's ending, added layers of details that would take years to find and basically crafted a noir masterpiece. Oliver! is good, but it's not that.