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

5. Vertigo (1958)

Nominated For: Best Art Direction; Best Sound Recording. IMDB Ranking: #66 Rotten Tomatoes: 98% One year before the disappointment of winning nothing at the Oscars with North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock experienced the same fate with Vertigo. The story of acrophobic former police detective Scotty Ferguson (James Stewart), who is hired by an acquaintance to follow his wife, Vertigo is perhaps most notable for its popularisation of the dolly zoom effect, wherein the camera distorts the relationship between the foreground and background of a shot, altering perspective (used in the film to show Scotty's fear of heights). Only nominated for two Academy Awards in the Best Art Direction and Best Sound Recording categories (losing out to South Pacific and Gigi respectively), Vertigo was initially met with mixed reviews from critics, but has become a prime example of a movie that's reception has improved massively overtime, benefiting greatly from critical re-evaluation. Empire named it the 40th best film ever in 2008, Total Film placed the film second on its own all-time list in 2005, and in its 2012 update, Sight & Sound magazine named Vertigo as the greatest film ever made.