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Oscar for Best Art Direction
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru,...
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The Dove, The Tempest
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The King of Jazz
King of Jazz (1930) is a motion picture starring Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The film's title was taken from Whiteman's controversial, self-conferred appellation. (This might seem controversial these days, but in the 1920s, it was Whiteman who...
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Cimarron
Cimarron (1931) is a film directed by Wesley Ruggles and based on the Edna Ferber novel Cimarron.
Despite America being in the depths of the Depression, RKO immediately prepared for a big-budget picture, investing more than 1.5 million dollars into...
Transatlantic
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Cavalcade
Cavalcade is a 1933 American drama film directed by Frank Lloyd. The screenplay by Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien is based on the 1931 play of the same title by Noël Coward.
Offering a view of English life from New Year's Eve 1899 through New...
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is a 1934 film adaptation of the operetta of the same name by Franz Lehár. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. A French-language version was produced at the same time and released...
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The Dark Angel
The Dark Angel (1935) is a film which tells the story of three childhood friends, two male, one female. When the woman chooses one of the men to marry, the other, jealous, sends his rival off into a dangerous situation during wartime. The film stars...
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Dodsworth
Dodsworth is a 1936 American drama film directed by William Wyler. Sidney Howard based the screenplay on his 1934 stage adaptation of the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Through the title character, it examines the differences between US and European...
Lost Horizon
Lost Horizon is a 1937 American drama/fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay by Robert Riskin is based on the 1933 novel of the same title by James Hilton.
The film exceeded its original budget by more than $776,000, and it took five...
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The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains.
When Richard the...
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Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American drama romance film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name and directed by Victor Fleming (Fleming replaced George Cukor). The epic film, set in the American South in and around the time of...
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a 1940 film adaptation of Jane Austen's novel of the same name. Robert Z. Leonard directed, and Aldous Huxley served as one of the screenwriters of the film. It is adapted specifically from the stage adaptation by Helen Jerome...
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The Thief of Bagdad
The Thief of Bagdad is a 1940 British fantasy film produced by Alexander Korda, and directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan, with uncredited contributions by Alexander Korda, his brother Zoltan and William Cameron Menzies. It...
Blossoms in the Dust
Blossoms in the Dust is a 1941 film which tells the story of Edna Gladney who takes it upon herself to help orphaned children to find homes, despite the opposition of the "good" citizens who think that illegitimate children are beneath their...
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How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 American drama film directed by John Ford. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, written by Philip Dunne, and based on the Richard Llewellyn novel of the same name. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara...
My Gal Sal
My Gal Sal (1942) is a 20th Century Fox musical starring Rita Hayworth and Victor Mature. The film is a biopic of 1890s composer and songwriter Paul Dresser and singer, Sally Elliot. The story it was based on was written by Paul Dresser's brother,...
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This Above All
This Above All is a 1942 romance film set in World War II adapted from the Eric Knight novel of the same name and directed by Anatole Litvak. It stars Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine as a couple from different social classes who fall in love in...
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The Song of Bernadette
The Song of Bernadette is a 1943 drama film which tells the story of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, who, from February to July 1858 in Lourdes, France, reported 18 visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was directed by Henry King.
The film was adapted...
Wilson
Wilson is a 1944 biographical film in Technicolor about President Woodrow Wilson. It stars Charles Coburn, Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Thomas Mitchell, Ruth Nelson, and Cedric Hardwicke.
The movie was written by Lamar Trotti and directed...
Gaslight
Gaslight is a 1944 mystery-thriller film adapted from Patrick Hamilton's play Angel Street. It was the second version to be filmed; the first, released in Great Britain, had been made a mere four years earlier. This 1944 version of the story was...
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Frenchman's Creek
Frenchman's Creek is a 1942 historical novel by Daphne du Maurier. Set in Cornwall during the reign of Charles II, it tells the story of a love affair between an impulsive English lady and a French pirate.
Dona, Lady St. Columb, makes a sudden visit...
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Blood on the Sun
Blood on the Sun (1945) is a film starring James Cagney and Sylvia Sidney. The film is based on the history behind the Tanaka Memorial document.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for a Black & White (Wiard Ihnen, A. Roland Fields...
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The Yearling
The Yearling is a 1946 family film drama made by MGM. It was directed by Clarence Brown and produced by Sidney Franklin. The screenplay was by Paul Osborn and John Lee Mahin (uncredited), adapted from the novel of the same name by Marjorie Kinnan...
Anna and the King of Siam
Anna and the King of Siam is a 1946 drama film directed by John Cromwell. An adaptation of the 1944 book by Margaret Landon, it was based on the diaries of Anna Leonowens, a British governess in the Royal Court of Siam (now modern Thailand) during...
Black Narcissus
Black Narcissus (1947) is a film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden. It is a psychological drama about the emotional tensions within a convent of nuns in...
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a 1946 British film directed by David Lean and based on the novel by Charles Dickens. It stars John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, and Alec Guinness. Jean Simmons, who played the role of the young Estella...
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1947. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel...
The Red Shoes
The Red Shoes (1948) is a British feature film about ballet, written, directed and produced by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, known collectively as The Archers. The movie employs the story within a story device, being about a...
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Hamlet
Hamlet is a 1948 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Hamlet was Olivier's second film as director, and also the second of his three Shakespeare films. It is the only one of...
The Heiress
The Heiress is a 1949 drama film by Ruth and Augustus Goetz adapted from their 1947 play of the same title that was based on the 1880 novel Washington Square by Henry James. The film was directed by William Wyler with Olivia de Havilland as...
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Little Women
Little Women (1949) directed by Mervyn LeRoy is based on Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Sally Benson, Victor Heerman, Sarah Y. Mason, and Andrew Solt. The original music score was composed by Adolph Deutsch...
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Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir drama film directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. It was named after the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California.
It stars William Holden as down-on-his-luck screenwriter...
Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah (1949) is a film made by Paramount Pictures, produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr as the title characters. Angela Lansbury, George Sanders and Henry Wilcoxon are also featured.
The...
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An American in Paris
An American in Paris is a 1951 MGM musical film inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition by George Gershwin. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant, the film is set in Paris, and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by...
The Bad and the Beautiful
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a MGM melodramatic film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, which tells the story of a film producer who alienates all around him. It stars Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, and...
Picnic
Picnic is a 1953 play by William Inge. The play premiered at the Music Box Theatre, Broadway on 19 February 1953 in a production by the Theatre Guild, directed by Joshua Logan and ran for 477 performances.
The original cast featured Ralph Meeker,...
The Robe
The Robe is a 1953 Biblical epic film that tells the story of a Roman military tribune who commands the unit that crucifies Jesus. The film was made by 20th Century Fox and is notable for being the first film released in CinemaScope. Although it was...
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On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about mob violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden and Lee J....
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 film starring Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason as Captain Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Pierre Aronnax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil. It is the first science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Pictures, as...
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The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo is a Tennessee Williams play. It opened on Broadway in February 1951, and a film adaptation was released in 1955. It tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Louisiana who has allowed herself to withdraw from the world after...
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Somebody Up There Likes Me
Somebody Up There Likes Me is a 1956 drama film based on the life of middleweight boxing legend Rocky Graziano. Joseph Ruttenberg was awarded a 1956 Oscar in the category of Best Cinematography (Black and White). The film also won the Oscar for Best...
The King and I
The King and I is a 1956 musical film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Walter Lang and produced by Charles Brackett and Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is based on the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical The King...
Sayonara
Sayonara is 1957 color (Technicolor) American film. It tells the story of an American Air Force flier who was a fighter "Ace" during the Korean War. The film's screenplay was adapted by Paul Osborn from the novel by James Michener, and the film was...
Gigi
Gigi is a 1958 American musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli. The screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner is based on the 1944 novella of the same name by Colette. The film features songs with lyrics by Lerner; music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and...
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank is a 1959 motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, which was based on the diary of Anne Frank. It was directed by George Stevens, with a screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. It...
Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur (or Benhur) is a 1959 epic film directed by William Wyler, the third film version of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It premiered at Loew's State Theatre in New York City on November 18, 1959. The film went on to win...
The Apartment
The Apartment is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. It was Wilder's follow up to the enormously popular Some Like It Hot and was an equal...
Spartacus
Spartacus is a (1960) historical drama movie directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast about the historical life of Spartacus and the Third Servile War. The film stars Kirk Douglas as rebellious slave...
West Side Story
West Side Story is a 1961 American film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. It is an adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, which itself was adapted from Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard...
The Hustler
The Hustler is a 1961 American drama film. It tells the story of small-time pool hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson and his desire to prove himself the best player in the country by beating legendary pool player "Minnesota Fats." After initially losing to...
Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British epic film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Austrian Sam Spiegel (through his British company, Horizon Pictures), from a script by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. ...
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill A Mockingbird is a 1962 American drama film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel of the same name. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and stars Mary Badham in the role of Scout and Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch.
In 1995, the film was...
Cleopatra
Cleopatra is a 1963 film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Mario Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton,...
America America
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Zorba the Greek
Zorba the Greek (originally titled Alexis Zorbas) is a 1964 film based on the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. The film was directed by Michael Cacoyannis and the title character was played by Anthony Quinn. The supporting cast includes...
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, My Fair Lady, based on the film adaptation of the stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ending and the ballroom scene are from the 1938 film Pygmalion...
