12 Hugely Iconic Movies That Shockingly Didn't Win A Single Academy Award

3. Psycho (1960)

Nominated For: Best Director; Best Supporting Actress (Leigh); Best Cinematography (Black-and-White); Best Art Direction/Set Direction (Black-and-White). IMDB Ranking: #31 Rotten Tomatoes: 96% After North by Northwest and Vertigo comes the third Hitchcock film in our list to have been criminally denied an Oscar: Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock's magnum opus is without question one of the most famous (or infamous) movies ever created. A box office smash (grossing $60 million from an $800,000 budget), this tale of a reclusive psychopath (who'd have guessed?), his encounter with a secretary on the run from her employer (played by Janet Leigh), and his troublesome relationship with his mother was unmistakably ground-breaking in its content, reaching previously uncharted ground in terms of sexuality and violence in cinema, both via undoubtedly the most famous shower scene in existence (sorry, Starship Troopers). Psycho was nominated for four awards, but didn't win any of them, the most noteworthy of which being Hitchcock's fifth unsuccessful Best Director nomination, this time losing out to Billy Wilder for The Apartment, which won five awards in total. It's also surprising that Anthony Perkins' chilling portrayal of Norman Bates, which most deem to be his best ever performance, wasn't recognised with a nomination, and even more shocking that the film's composer Bernard Herrmann was overlooked, as the screeching violins of the shower scene are now widely recognised as one of the most strikingly recognisable examples of sound in movie history.