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

36. In The Heat Of The Night (1967)

In The Heat Of The Night
The Mirisch Corporation

The Sidney Poitier-starring classic crime drama will forever be a contentious Best Picture winner for incredulously beating out Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate for the award, but it does stand tall as a probing and mostly well-aged examination of racial tensions in the American South in the 1960s.

Poitier is typically excellent though he's actually outdone by a magnificent Rod Steiger here, who as a stern, questionable police chief, runs away with the movie, even winning a Best Actor Oscar for his efforts.

The best thing that can really be said about the film is that it's still as unsettling and intense as it must've been five decades ago: its commentary remains enormously relevant in a world still struggling to reconcile the same issues.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.