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The "OSCARs" (Academy Awards for Cinema) almost certainly have been using suboptimal voting systems. The purpose of this page is to collect suspicious historical OSCAR examples.
Warning: I am not a film expert, and have not done enough research about OSCARs. Therefore, it is quite possible that some of the examples on this page contain stupid errors or misunderstandings by me. I am presenting them only as fuel for future research by people who understand more than I do about films, and not as the "final word." Also, the actual OSCAR vote totals have generally (always?) been kept secret, which makes analysis more difficult. Caveat Emptor.
The OSCAR voting system is basically:
However, it is not that simple; e.g. in some award-categories other systems are used. Unfortunately: Plurality voting suffers from well-known pathologies such as "vote splitting," "cloning," and "reversal failure"; STV-PR sometimes can fail to nominate clear "beats-all" winners while RRV would usually avoid those failures.
A plausibly better system: would be RRV to select the nominees and then range voting to choose the winner.
Later note: The academy just changed (August-Sept. 2009) its voting system for "best picture" to now have 10 (not 5) nominees, and the final vote among the 10 will now be conducted using instant runoff voting. However, as far as I understand, all the other award categories will stay with the old voting system(s). IRV suffers numerous pathologies. I personally am optimistic that this rule change will yield a substantial performance improvement, but doubt the new rules are optimal. It's plausible that embarrassing pathologies like "thwarted majority paradox" will occur (just as they did in the Burlington VT mayor election of 2009) and it is a pity to sacrifice RRV's and range voting's boons of granting voters variable strengths of preference and the ability to withhold judgment on movies that voter feels too ignorant about.
Here are some books, academic papers, and newspaper pieces about the OSCAR voting system and its foibles.
| Movie | Yahoo users | IMDB raters (0-10) | RottenTomatoes.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bound for Glory | B (based on 55 raters) | 7.3 (from 1218 raters) | 7.3 (from 17 reviews) |
| Rocky | B+ (from 40187 raters) | 8.0 (from 64828 raters) | 8.1 (from 41 reviews) |
| All President's Men | B (from 14366 raters) | 8.0 (from 25842 raters) | 8.9 (from 39 reviews) |
| Network | B+ (from 1276 raters) | 8.1 (from 22899 raters) | 8.0 (from 42 reviews) |
| Taxi Driver | B+ (from 20830 raters) | 8.6 (from 116049 raters) | 8.8 (from 47 reviews) |
The most famous, or infamous, incident [was] in 1950. That year, both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter received Best Actress nominations for All About Eve. When Judy Holliday became the surprise winner in Born Yesterday, it was widely believed that Davis and Baxter had split the vote.Brams & Hager also question the Academy's choice of Kramer vs. Kramer as best picture of 1979. Again their view is supported by the internet ratings, and again a vote-split seems the plausible cause:
| Movie | Yahoo users | IMDB raters (0-10) | RottenTomatoes.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norma Rae | B (from 336 raters) | 7.2 (from 2860 raters) | 7.6 (from 19 reviews) |
| All that Jazz | B+ (from 346 raters) | 7.5 (from 7555 raters) | 7.4 (from 31 reviews) |
| Kramer v. Kramer | B (based on 1831 raters) | 7.7 (from 17625 raters) | 7.9 (from 32 reviews) |
| Breaking Away | B (from 7840 raters) | 7.6 (from 7523 raters) | 8.3 (from 33 reviews) |
| Apocalypse Now | B+ (from 4308 raters) | 8.6 (from 136199 raters) | 7.7 (from 77 reviews) |
The biggest Bruce Springsteen controversy of the season... Springsteen fans are shocked that his stunning song "The Wrestler" (from the film of the same name) didn't get an Oscar nod – despite the fact that he won a Golden Globe for the tune. Instead of selecting five nominees (as in most other categories), the Acedym chose only three: Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth" from WALL-E, and two from Slumdog Millionaire.
The Wrestler may have been a victim of the Oscars' complex nominating rules. The Academy music branch watched all 49 eligible songs in a clip reel provided for them. Then they rated the tunes on a scale of 6.25 to 10 – and only the movies with averages of 8.25 or better made the cut. That system seems to give an edge to certain films. "A song that has a performance aspect is going to do better than one that doesn't," says Oscar nominee Danny Elfman's agent, Richard Kraft. "It's hard to compete with the music video at the end of Slumdog, while in 'The Wrestler', you've got the names of key grips scrolling by."
1941: Citizen Kane, which has often been cited as best film ever, got little Academy recognition. It won "best screenplay" but nothing else in spite of being nominated for many other academy awards including best picture. That year the Best Picture was How green was my valley while the other nominees were Blossoms in the Dust, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, One Foot in Heaven, Sergeant York, and Suspicion.
[I personally found Valley to be sickeningly saccharine and utterly unrealistic, but I admit I quit watching it after about 20 minutes.]
How green was my valley holds a 7.9 rating from IMDB (5568 raters as of 2008) while Kane has 8.6 (113062 raters), Maltese Falcon 8.4 (40259 raters), and Sgt. York 8.0 (4822 raters).
With this many nominees including two strong films in Kane and Maltese, plurality voting was highly likely to malfunction. I find it very hard to believe Kane would have lost a head-to-head race versus Valley.
1944: The too-sweet musical Going My Way (8.2) won best picture (also best actor, Bing Crosby, and best supporting actor Barry Fitzgerald, best story for Leo McCarey, and best screenplay for Frank Butler and Frank Cavett). Meanwhile Billy Wilder's film noir masterpiece Double Indemnity got nothing. (It was nominated for best actress, music, director, picture, cinematography.) But over time, the raters on IMDB thought differently. As of June 2009, they gave Going My Way a rating of 7.5 whereas Double Indemnity got 8.6. Similarly on rottentomatoes.com, Double Indemnity got 8.7 while Going my way got 7.1.
1950: All about Eve won best picture. But it got an 8.4 rating on IMDB. Meanwhile Sunset Boulevard got 8.7. I admit, these IMDB ratings are close enough that you cannot call this a robbery.
1957: 12 angry men was rated 8.8 by 78K IMDBers. Although nominated, it lost to Bridge on the River Kwai which 45K IMDBers rated only 8.4. The other nominees were Witness for the Prosecution (8.3), Peyton Place (7.2), and Sayonara (7.2). This decision, since it is only an 0.4 rating-gap on IMDB, might be defensible. However, one cannot help suspecting that the real reason for Bridge's victory was a vote split between Men and Witness, which were both good legal dramas and thus perhaps (in vote-theory terminology) "clones." Bridge, as the only war movie, presumably did not suffer any vote-split.
Alfred Hitchkock's famous Psycho (1960) – also often said to be best of its kind of all time and a classic – failed to win any OSCAR and failed even to get nominated as best picture.
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) won numerous votes as best comedy of all time – no OSCAR, not even a nomination.
The Searchers (1956) was named Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. No OSCARs, not even a nomination.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), often also said to be best western ever, and ranked as 4th best film ever and as best western ever by IMDB raters (as of January 2009) – no OSCAR, not even a nomination.
In 1959, Ben-Hur (8.2) won best picture, defeating Anatomy of a murder (8.1), Nun's story (7.5), Room at the top (7.9), and Diary of Anne Frank (7.6). [Year 2009 IMDB ratings shown in parentheses.] But three excellent rivals failed even to be nominated: Some Like It Hot (8.4), North by Northwest (8.6), and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (8.3), all of which would have defeated all of the nominees in terms of year-2009 IMDB ratings! Indeed in 2000, the American Film Institute listed Some Like It Hot as the greatest American comedy film of all time.