Often times it comes up in sports, what are the best individual seasons in history? For example, in 1961, Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for the season, while Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 points and 25 rebounds per game – who had a better season? What was the best Quarterback season ever: 2007 Tom Brady, 2013 Peyton Manning, 1984 Dan Marino or 2018 Patrick Mahomes II? I thought it might be interesting to ask these questions for movies. What is to follow are the 15 best individual years that are had by people who make movies.
The million-dollar question that I’ve been struggling with is are we just looking at the year by itself, and nothing else, or can we put the year in a greater context? Sometimes a good year is just a good year and that’s all of the context you need (like averaging 50 points and 25 rebounds per game). On the other hand, we don’t exist in a vacuum. Context matters and some achievements may be the same on paper, but have completely different levels of importance culturally. For example, in 1972 Marlon Brando won Best Actor for The Godfather, and in 1974, Art Carney won Best Actor for Harry and Tonto. One of these is probably the most legendary movie character/performance of all time, and the other is very, very far from being legendary. The answer I’ve arrived at is that the list will contain both.
I will say that the vast majority of this list is around acting and directing. These are the two disciplines that garner the most attention in the industry and to the average fan. Since we’re technically only talking about one year, actors and directors are probably going to be the most impactful. Most people don’t remember one specific year of Costume Design, etc, even though that’s clearly an important role.
I went with top 15 instead of 10 because my only reader has a long car ride and I am trying to kill additional time for them.
I don’t know if links will be as helpful, but I will include them where I see fit. I don’t think there will be SPOILERS in the traditional sense.
To the list!
Most Honored of Honorable Mentions: To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, in 1997, Nicolas Cage starred in Con Air and Face/Off! How is this not #1, you ask? Fair question, and I don’t know the answer. As easy as it is for everyone to rag on Nicolas Cage, both of these movies are enjoyable, and to people of a certain age range, they’re endlessly re-watchable classics. To star in both in the same year is an all-time great year, culturally. I’ll be honest, many of the choices on the list are influenced by Oscars and critical acclaim, which made it very difficult to include Con Air and Face/Off on the final list. They should be acknowledged though.
15). Walt Disney – 1953 – Oscars in 1954: Won 4 Oscars for 4 different works at a single ceremony (an Oscars record). Also had 2 other works nominated.
You’re probably thinking, if this is the record, 4 Oscars at one ceremony, and he got them for 4 different works, how is he only #15? Well, not to be a jerk, but 5 of the 6 nominations, and 3 of the 4 Oscars, were for short films that ranged from 6 minutes to 33 minutes in length. Disney was a pioneer for sure, but these Oscars weren’t the movies we all watched as kids. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve them, I’m just saying as wildly impressive as this feat is, I was less impressed when I read the fine print. Maybe I’m an a-hole. Also, Disney was a raging bigot! Look it up.
14). W.S. Van Dyke – 1934 – Oscars in 1935: Van Dyke set a record for directing the most films to receiver Oscar nominations (7 nominations from 4 different movies).
Van Dyke’s productivity this year was insane. I know they called him “One-take Woody“, but I can’t imagine someone directing 4 different feature length movies in the same year, and for each of these movies to be good enough to be nominated for Oscars. The Academy messes things up every year with nominations and awards, but to be nominated that many times at least speaks to a certain level of quality. Van Dyke himself wasn’t nominated for all of these movies, but since we like to give directors all of the credit, he directed 4 Oscar-nominated movies in 1 year.
13). Bette Davis – 1942 and Greer Garson – 1945: These two respective years marked an acting record for being nominated for an Oscar 5 years in a row.
This is an entry that is purely about context. In 1942 and 1945, respectively, both women made history with their 5th consecutive nomination. I’ll say it one million times in this post, the Oscars don’t always get it right. However, this 5 year streak is impressive nonetheless. Both from a standpoint of pure productivity and also success rate. I imagine it gets easy for the Academy to be biased for or against certain people, but 5 in a row stands alone, and highlights an incredibly fertile period for these two actresses, and points to their dominance of the landscape.
12). Steven Soderbergh (2000) [and Clarence Brown – 1929; Michael Curtiz – 1938]: These 3 directors were nominated for Best Director twice in the same year.
Generally speaking, directors get a lot of credit. That isn’t to say they don’t deserve it, but when movies are critically successful, many people look to the director. In 2012, it was considered a total shock when Ben Affleck, who directed that year’s eventual Best Picture winner (Argo), wasn’t nominated for directing it. Similarly, just last year, Bradley Cooper was nominated for producing, writing, and acting for A Star Is Born, but his exclusion in the director category seemed to forecast what would be a disappointing awards showing for ASIB.
I say all of that to say the directing nominations are big. That’s one of the highest awards of the night, and arguably the biggest individual award. So, what better way to say “I owned this year” than to be nominated twice for directing 2 different movies? It’s pretty boss. That level baller would land them higher on the list, but for a few technicalities:
a) Only Soderbergh won an Oscar that year. Curtiz and Brown were unable to bring home a statuette despite doubling their chances to win with an additional nomination. Sort of puts a damper on the year.
b) None of the movies that they were nominated for were all-time pantheon movies. The odds of both nominations being for all-time great movies is unlikely, but imagine the mystique of directing a classic (probably winning for that movie), and also directing another movie that was worth of a nomination. That would be the way to own the year.
Alas, one of the ultimate flexes didn’t quite pan out, but nonetheless, all 3 directors left a mark on their respective years.
11). Jennifer Lawrence – 2012 – Oscars in early ’13: Stars in the first Hunger Games and wins an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook
Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for Best Actress in early 2011 for Winter’s Bone, a limited release movie that few people saw. Later that year she played Mystique in the reboot of X-Men. So she had broken out to some degree, but then in 2012, she took over.
First, she starred in The Hunger Games, the first entry of a highly anticipated franchise based on a popular series of novels. It made close to $700 Million worldwide. Then she co-starred in awards fare, and walked home with a Best Actress Oscar, at age 22.
Any time someone can be involved with popcorn movies and an Oscar pick, they’ve had a great year. Add to that the fact that J-Law became a worldwide movie star, and it’s one of the best individual years anyone has ever had.
10). Victor Fleming – 1939: Directed Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, won Best Director for GWtW
In 2007, the American Film Institute (AFI) published their list of the top 100 movies of all-time. While I do not necessarily agree with the list, the fact is that two of their top 10 movies were released in the same year, and by happenstance, they were directed by the same man, Victor Fleming.
I haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz in a very long time, and I have only watched the first half of Gone With the Wind, but, either way, they’re both widely considered classics. Victor Fleming directed two of them in the same year.
It’s a remarkable accomplishment. It would go much higher on my list if I had more affinity for the two movies.
9). Jim Carrey – 1994: An all-time breakout year, Carrey went from a nobody to a $20 million moviestar with the release of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask.
It’s not only about Oscars, reader! Having 3 movies come out in 1 year is fairly rare on its own. Becoming an overnight sensation because all 3 movies are hits is basically unheard of. Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber are two of my favorite movies from childhood, and for people born in the 80’s, those are probably two of their ten favorite comedies ever. I wasn’t as high on The Mask, but it was a very popular movie that a lot of people really enjoyed.
So, how does this happen? Of course, it’s a combination of factors. Obviously, Jim Carrey is super-talented and funny. Without that, none of this works. The interesting thing that separates this from a lot of other breakouts is how all of these roles feel tailored to Carrey. It is really difficult to even picture someone else playing these characters. Part of that is luck that the right combination of script, director, and actor aligned, three times in one year, no less. Part of it is good casting on their part. An interesting part of it is also just that Jim Carrey is such a big presence, that movies need to account for that, either when written or while filming. Looking a lot of Carrey’s movies, it is hard to picture other people doing the roles because he has such an out-sized influence.
It’s hard for people of a certain age to remember it now, but Carrey was a huge A-lister for a while. The fact that it all happened in one year is something special. It’s the biggest breakout of all-time.
8). Joseph L. Mankiewicz – Oscars 1950 – Oscars 1951: Won back-to-back Oscars for Writing and Directing, with the second movie being All About Eve.
Again, Oscars don’t mean everything because it’s difficult to judge and rank art, and the Academy messes up accordingly. However, they exist, and depending on the size or popularity of the movies and people that win, an Oscar win in a big-time movie is a way to “own” a year.
Back to back Oscars are a rare accomplishment, to the point that when it happens it almost starts to feel historic. This is the number of times each “major” award has been won by the same person in back to back years: Best Actor (2), Best Actress (1.5, there was a tie for one of them), Best Director (3), Screenplay (2), Supporting Actor (1), Supporting Actress (0). Joseph L. Mankiewicz represents 1 of the 3 instances ever for Director, and 1 out of the 2 instances ever for Screenplay – and he did this at the same time.
We’ll get into some instances later on this list where people are nominated for multiple awards on one movie, and that’s really a flex. To win as both a writer and director in the same year, really solidifies, even if superficially, who the genius was behind a particular movie. Mankiewicz did it twice, which is not only amazing, but in back to back years, a sign of alpha dog status.
Even more amazing is that the second movie was All About Eve, an unassailable classic that set a new record for the most Oscar nominations for a single movie (14), a record that has been equaled twice, but never bested since 1950. Being the unequivocal architect of an all-time great movie, and winning back to back Oscars in two different categories is about as accomplished of a year as anyone has ever had.
7). Harrison Ford – 1985: Receives an Oscar nomination to cap off the greatest run of popcorn movies of all-time.
This one is very much about context. The fact is that the run of movies that Ford was on might be the best of all-time, regardless of genre, and certainly is the best run of high quality popcorn movies. This was how Harrison Ford’s career played out from 1977 – 1984: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977); Apocalypse Now (1979); Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980); Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); Blade Runner (1982); Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi (1983); Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). How cow! He could’ve just retired and been in the Hall of Fame.
That’s all 3 movies of one of the greatest trilogies ever, the first 2 movies of another top 10 trilogy ever, one of the top 10 War movies ever, and then one of the greatest Sci-fi movies ever. Harrison Ford had to be the biggest movie star in the world by this point, with an unequaled string of hits. Many of those movies were also critically successful, 3 of them were nominated for Best Picture. However, Ford, although respected, never got much love in awards circles. That all changed in ’85.
Harrison Ford starred in Peter Weir’s Witness, the story of a Philadelphia cop going undercover in Amish country in order to protect a witness to a murder. The movie is a well-made genre blend that is part cop thriller, and part world-building drama. Ford played the lead role, and picked up a Best Actor nod. The one thing missing from his resume` was the ultimate, if superficial, critical acknowledgement for his performance. He owned the world after that.
6). Grace Kelly – 1954 – Oscars (early ’55): Starred in 2 Alfred Hitchcock movies, including Rear Window, and then finished it up with an Oscar for Best Acress.
This gets the slight edge over Harrison Ford because her entry was actually just about this year, and was not the punctuation on some epic run. Grace Kelly was in 5 movies in 1954! Two of them were Hitchcock movies.
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most prolific and celebrated directors of all-time. He has 72 directing credits, and like any productive artist’s catalog, scholars will break up the work into different tiers. The two movies that Kelly starred in, Rear Window and Dial M For Murder, are both regularly ranked in the auteur’s top 20 movies. Rear Window is a bonafide classic. It’s pretty much a lock on any list to be considered a top tier Hitchcock movie and one of the best Mystery/Thrillers of all-time. Any time someone can be a part of a historical classic movie, it has been a good year. But Grace Kelly isn’t done.
Dial M For Murder was her “safety school”. No it probably won’t ever be mentioned in Hitchcock’s top 10, but if that’s the second best movie someone starred in circa 1954, they had a good year. To compare Hitchcock to some other prolific Brits, Rear Window is “Yesterday “, while Dial M for Murder is “I Saw Her Standing There”. Sure, the latter probably won’t ever be named in the top 10, but how many artists feature songs better than “I Saw Her Standing There”?
Then on top of it all, in early ’55, Kelly gets an Oscar for Country Girl. Now, there is some controversy here as her victory was considered a huge surprise, and many look back and frown upon the decision. Nevertheless, from an achievement standpoint, that’s about as good of a year as an Actor/Actress can have.
5). Steven Spielberg (and John Williams) – 1993: Directed Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park.
Spielberg is amazing for a lot of reasons, but perhaps most notably, he was the filmmaker with the cache to create blockbusters that garnered awards attention. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. were all record-setters at the box office while also being nominated for multiple Oscars.
In 1993, he released two movies that changed movies forever. Jurassic Park was revolutionary in terms of what was possible with CGI and the global box office. What he was able to do with dinosaurs and the world-building was unlike anything that had come before it, and the world responded. How many people could’ve made that movie in 1993? Probably just him. And then to think that Jurassic Park was only the second best movie he made that year.
Schindler’s List is certainly the most high profile Holocaust movie ever made. On that AFI top 100 list referenced before, Schindler’s List ranks #8. It is an epic masterpiece. Is it a perfect historical representation of what times were like? Perhaps not, but it is certainly the most affecting mainstream depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Spielberg was already in the Hall of Fame. He basically invented summer blockbusters with Jaws, and was undeniably the king of popcorn flicks at that time. One area where he had struggled a bit was in making more “important” movies. The Color Purple was nominated for a lot of Oscars, but there were some who weren’t happy with how it was made. There were some doubts after that movie as to whether or not Spielberg could really handle important cultural topics. Schindler’s List was important not just for the history of movies, but also for Spielberg’s legacy. If there were any doubts about how he could handle culturally serious topics, he shattered those doubts as only he could, by making one of the most critically adored movies of all time.
Not that it matters, but yes, he won Oscars for producing and directing Schindler’s List. So again, he’s the architect behind an instant classic, one of the best movies ever made, and shows the world that he can ably handle more serious fare. While also at the same time, re-establishing his alpha status over blockbusters with Jurassic Park. James Cameron had crept up a bit with the first two Terminators, Aliens, and Total Recall; Spielberg stepped on the gas and lapped the field.
I’d also like to give a quick shout out to John Williams. He was the composer on both of these movies, and created two enduring and terrific original scores. Jurassic Park’s score is more famous, and has been used elsewhere. The Schindler score it isn’t really reused on account of the fact that it is very sad, but if I ever hear it, the sound is unmistakable. Spielberg obviously wins the year, but Williams also had a historically great year working on the same 2 movies. Also, Williams may own the best imdb resume` of all-time. Few people in the history of the world are better at their job than John Williams.
4). Robert De Niro – 1981 Oscars: Capped off an epic run of movies with a game-changing, transcendent, Oscar-winning performance.
This entry is similar to the Harrison Ford post, but more spectacular. In a run that rivals that of Harrison Ford, from 1973 – 1978, De Niro starred in: Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), Mean Streets (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Deer Hunter (1978). It’s a more serious, Oscar-y version of Harrison Ford’s resume`. Then in 1980, he caps that run off with Raging Bull.
Raging Bull is #4 on the AFI’s list of the top 100 movies of all time. It is a terrific biopic chronicling the rise and fall of 1940’s boxer, Jake LaMotta. The movie itself is considered a masterpiece, and De Niro’s performance is held in the highest of regards, considered one of the best screen performance ever. Although I can’t find it, Bill Simmons once wrote an article trying to weight the Oscars based on the idea that some movies, performances, etc, that win are markedly better and more important than others. I don’t remember Simmons’ exact weighting scheme, but to reference my example from the beginning of this post (remember that), Brando in The Godfather would be worth 5 Oscars, whereas Art Carney in Harry and Tonto would get 0.5 Oscars. I reference all of that to say De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull is on par with Brando’s in The Godfather, and would warrant the maximum amount of awards. All of this is just about the performance, and doesn’t speak to how it changed acting.
In addition just being one of the best performances ever, De Niro’s LaMotta is probably best-known for being the first-documented case of a real physical transformation for a role. At first, De Niro was a boxer in his prime, so his physique was ripped. Later on in the movie, when LaMotta lets himself go, De Niro gained 60 pounds in order to portray the obese version of the character. That set a new standard for actors. The physicality of the character is now very important, and the actor must do whatever is necessary to transform into the character. It becomes part of the narrative during awards season and often helps people win awards. Without Raging Bull, we don’t get DiCaprio eating raw liver and getting hypothermia for The Revenant.
3). Orson Welles (1941) [and Warren Beatty (1978, 1981), Alfonso Cuaron (2018)]: Receiving four Oscar nominations for one movie, and in Welles’ case, that movie was Citizen Kane.
We love to believe in singular auteurs, and nothing quite paints someone as a visionary quite like performing 4 jobs on one movie and getting nominated for all of them. Nothing epitomized this better than Orson Welles in 1941. At age 25, he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane, widely considered the best, or one of the best, movies ever. For reference, Kane was #1 on the AFI top 100.
One of the reasons Kane is considered the best movie ever is the fact that it completely changed movies. There were new camera movements that had never been done before, new innovations with sound, it had a unique story structure, the list goes on.
Scholars would probably argue it should be #1 on my list, given that it might be the single greatest achievement in movie history. Objectively, they may be right, but for the top 2 slots, I decided to focus on more recent years.
2). Tom Hanks – 1995: Wins his second consecutive Oscar early in the year, and then goes on to be a lead voice in the first Pixar movie, and stars in another Oscar movie.
I talked about winning back-to-back Oscars earlier with Joseph L. Mankiewicz. I had noted that there were only two instances of someone winning back-to-back Best Actor Oscars. In early 1995, Hanks became only the second actor ever to accomplish this feat when he won his second trophy for Forrest Gump. Back-to-back Oscars basically communicates that Hanks is the most decorated actor of his generation, and certainly among the best alongside Denzel and Daniel Day-Lewis. That was the early part of the year.
In the summer, Hanks headlined one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, a space adventure biopic about a problematic mission called Apollo 13. The movie both cleaned up at the box office and was nominated for many Oscars including Best Picture. And then…
Hanks was one of the lead voice actors in the first-ever Pixar movie, Toy Story. Although they now seem ubiquitous, these computer-animated movies were still an upstart in the mid-90’s. Animation still meant cartoon. Toy Story was a game-changer, a terrifically popular kids movie that everyone could enjoy because it had a great story and was also just unlike anything we had seen before. And whose voice is arguably most-associated with this juggernaut? Tom Hanks. Just perhaps the most complete owning of a single year from an actor’s standpoint.
1). Francis Ford Coppola – 1974-1975 Oscars: Wrote/directed/produced The Godfather: Part II, one of the greatest movies ever, and won Oscars for all 3 of those jobs; wrote/directed/produced The Conversation, a second Best Picture nominee, Coppola was nominated for producing and writing.
I think what Coppola did in 1974-’75 Oscars is just unreal. Leading up to this point in time, Coppola won a screenwriting Oscar for Patton (1970), wrote and directed The Godfather (1972) and was nominated for both jobs, and then nominated as a producer for American Graffiti (1973). Unsurprisingly, the real key to this is The Godfather saga.
Coppola made The Godfather as a young director (33 years old). He wasn’t a big name. The studio intervened a lot, they didn’t like the actors, it was kind of a nightmare production. Coppola endured all of that to make, in my opinion, the best movie of all time. Somehow, he didn’t win Best Director for his work (he won for screenplay). Then he is tasked with going back to making, what had to have been the most anticipated sequel to date – how was he going to do that?
There was leftover source material to make another Godfather movie, but which story was he going to tell? There’s the early days of Vito Corleone, and then there’s the chronological choice of following Michael Corleone as he expands his empire. How about both? Coppola’s follow up movie was part sequel, part prequel. Somehow he made it all work, as Part II is also among the greatest movies of all time.
So, he follows up the GOAT with a top 5 all-time movie, in an innovative way (sequel and prequel). He is justly rewarded with a hat trick of Oscars for each of producing/directing/writing. That right there is enough to own the year. But Part II wasn’t the only movie he made that year…
Coppola also produced/directed/wrote The Conversation, a mystery/thriller that was also nominated for Best Picture and other awards. Similar to the point I made in the Grace Kelly section, The Conversation was his “safety school”, except his “safety school” was considered to be one of the five best movies of the year.
Similar to what was said in the Soderbergh/Brown/Curtiz entry (forever ago), being nominated as the architect of 2 movies is a major flex, and in 1974-75, Coppola flexed harder than anyone before or since. This is, in my opinion, the single greatest individual year that one person has ever had, both critically and culturally.
Honorable Mentions: Leo McCarey (1944); Billy Wilder (1960);
James L. Brooks (1983); Peter Jackson (2003); Joel and Ethan Coen (2007); Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (2014); Thomas Little (1944); Quentin Tarantino (1994); Amy Adams (2013); Emmanuel Lubezki (2015); James Cameron (1997); Mike Nichols (1967); William Goldman (1976)
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