Oscars: 10 Best Pictures That Actually Were The Best

6. The Godfather - 1973

Back in the 1970s everything Francis Ford Coppola touched turned to gold, with all four of the films he directed in that decade becoming enduring classics and picking up Best Picture nominations (not to mention winning one of the golden baldies for penning the screenplay for Patton in 1971). The first of Coppola's film adaptations of Mario Puzo's Mafia family saga was the highest earning movie ever up to that point and is often cited amongst the greatest of them all. Other nominees: Weimar showgirls and the rise of Nazism musical Cabaret won rave reviews for its evocative decadent style. In any other year it would probably have won the main award. As it was, Cabaret had to be happy with director-choreographer Bob Fosse beating Coppola to the directing award and winning 8 Oscars in total to The Godfather's 3. Having been nominated for Foreign Language Film in 1972, Swedish drama The Emigrants stepped up to a nod for the main Best Picture a year later, but was probably just pleased to be nominated. Other deserving contenders: The Godfather may have been 1972's biggest earner, but the most profitable film and arguably the one with the highest cultural impact was porn hit Deep Throat, hardly a contender for Best Picture, though. The Emigrants may have been an unusual non-English language Best Picture nominee, but there were possible alternatives in major European directors Luis Bunuel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and Werner Herzog with Aguirre, the Wrath of God.