Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Ever Ranked From Worst To Best

61. Gone With The Wind (1939)

At once a jaw-droppingly well-aged film from a technical perspective and a rancid, undeniably appalling effort from a thematic and general narrative one, Gone with the Wind is the definitive Hollywood melodrama by any metric, and the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation (registering an Avatar-beating $3.44 billion in 2014 dollars).

It does, however, require an enormous amount of tolerance and stomach for melodramatic fancies, icky politics of the time, a generally unpleasant approach to women and people of colour, and that near-four-hour runtime.

It would be naive to try and diminish the film's legacy or achievements, but it's easy to see why many modern audiences are either intimidated by or totally apathetic towards watching Victor Fleming's historical romance.