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The Academy Awards have never been a straightforward measure of cinematic greatness. They reflect the industry’s tastes, its politics, its blind spots, and occasionally, its courage. Every year, millions of people worldwide watch with genuine suspense, knowing the result could confound every prediction and precursor award leading up to it.
Some upsets have aged well. Others feel worse with every passing decade. Looking back across nearly a century of ceremonies, a handful of moments stand above the rest – nights when the envelope was opened and the room went quiet for all the wrong reasons.
Citizen Kane Loses to How Green Was My Valley (1942)
Citizen Kane wasn’t always regarded as a cinematic classic. The revolutionary 1941 film used William Randolph Hearst’s life story as the basis for an epic about a powerful man who is ultimately unknowable, and it was subjected to a campaign of near-total suppression by Hearst from the moment of its release. Despite Orson Welles’s efforts to use the David and Goliath story in his bid for public sympathy, his peers booed him and his film at the 14th Academy Awards.
Kane lost every single prize except one, for its screenplay. John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, a wistful tale of life in a Welsh mining town, won Best Picture. To this day, Citizen Kane missing out is near-universally regarded as one of the worst cases of the Oscars getting…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-06-18 07:44:00
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