During the 29th Academy Awards, the regular competitive category of Best Foreign Language Film was introduced, instead of only being recognized as a Special Achievement Award or as a Best Picture nominee (as in 1938). The first winner in this new category was Federico Fellini's La strada with Anthony Quinn and a second nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Its win would help spur an interest in foreign-language films. Another Fellini film, Nig...
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During the 29th Academy Awards, the regular competitive category of Best Foreign Language Film was introduced, instead of only being recognized as a Special Achievement Award or as a Best Picture nominee (as in 1938). The first winner in this new category was Federico Fellini's La strada with Anthony Quinn and a second nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Its win would help spur an interest in foreign-language films. Another Fellini film, Nights of Cabiria would win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the following year.
This was also the first year that all of the five Best Picture nominees were in color.
All of the major awards winners were large-scale epics - Mike Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days, The King and I, Anastasia, Giant, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (the highest grossing film of the year), King Vidor's War and Peace, and William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion. And the trend toward blockbusters and colorful spectaculars was established for years to...
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