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Dir: Peter Farrelly; Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Dimeter Marinov, Mike Hatton, Iqbal Theba. Cert 12A, 130 mins
If there were Oscars for eating hot dogs, Viggo Mortensen would win this year’s award hands down (and mouth stuffed). Mortensen gives a wonderful, method-style performance as Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, a wiseguy nightclub bouncer from the Bronx who becomes the driver for black virtuoso pianist Don Shriley (Mahershala Ali ) on a tour of the deep south in the early Sixties.
Green Book flatters the audience about its own good sense and tolerance. It deals with racism and homophobia but still has a fairytale, fantasy feel to it. Whatever humiliations Don endures on their road trip, we know no real harm will ever come to him as long as Tony is at his side. This is a film about friendship as much as it is about civil rights. We can also safely predict that the pair’s better qualities will rub off on each other: Tony will overcome his prejudices while Don will learn not to be quite such a cultural snob.
Mortensen plays Tony as a hedonistic, impulsive brawler. He is a likeable everyman in spite of his prejudices, but he is also an opportunist who will do anything for a buck. His temperament could not be more different to that of his new boss, the refined and aloof classically-trained musician. Don – nicknamed “the doctor” – is very fussy, very particular. “He plays like Liberace but better,” it is said of him at one stage.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Show all 90 1 /90Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Scroll through for every single Best Picture winner there has ever been
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Wings (1928) The realistic air-combat sequences – a benchmark for all future aviation scenes – set this film apart from the competition at the very first Academy Awards ceremony (the category was then named Best Picture Production).
Paramount/Rex
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Broadway Melody (1929) This was the first "talkie" to win the main prize. It follows a pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit who try to make it big on Broadway.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) One of the most harrowing accounts of WWI, All Quiet on the Western Front was the first Best Picture winner to win Best Director too (Lewis Milestone accepted the trophy).
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Cimarron (1931) Westerns don't usually win the main prize at the Oscars, but Cimarron proves a rare exception.
RKO Radio Pictures
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Grand Hotel (1932) Grand Hotel , starring Joan Crawford and John Barrymore, is the only Best Picture winner that received no nominations in any other category.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Cavalcade (1933) This film presents a view of English life during the first quarter of the 20th century from New Year's Eve 1899 to New Year's Day 1933, from the point of view of well-to-do London residents Jane and Robert Marryot (Diana Wynward and Clive Brook).
Fox Film Corporation
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards It Happened One Night (1934) The first of three films to win in all the five main categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) alongside One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs .
Columbia Pictures
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Another win for Cavalcade director Frank Lloyd that inspired the creation of the Best Supporting Actor category after three of its lead stars – Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone – were nominated for Best Actor. Interestingly, they were all beaten by Victor McLaglen for The Informer .
Warner Bros
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Great Ziegfeld (1936) This lavish and extremely lengthy MGM production remains a standard in musical filmmaking, even if critics have fallen out of love with it over the years.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Life of Emile Zola (1937) Paul Muni failed to win the Best Actor trophy for his portrayal of French playwright Émile Zola, but the film took home Best Picture beating out the likes of The Awful Truth and A Star Is Born .
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards You Can't Take It with You (1938) It Happened One Night filmmaker Frank Capra's third Best Director win came with his second victory in the Best Picture category.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Gone with the Wind (1939) One of the most successful films of all time, Gone with the Wind swept the board at the Oscars, winning 10 out of 13 nominations.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Rebecca (1940) Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's gothic drama, won Best Picture, but failed to win any awards in any of the acting, writing or director category – one of the only instances in Oscar history.
United Artists
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards How Green Was My Valley (1941) Otherwise known as: the film that beat Citizen Kane . It's also said to be future Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood's favourite film.
20th Century Fox
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Mrs Miniver (1942) This drama, depicting the life of an unassuming British housewife (Greer Garson) in rural England during World War II, won six Oscars in total.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Casablanca (1943) After almost missing out on a nomination due to a technicality, Casablanca went on to win three Oscars, including Best Director for Michael Curtiz.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Lost Weekend (1945) This drama, following Ray Milland's alcoholic writer, was the talk of the 1946 ceremony, winning four trophies in total.
Paramount Pictures
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) This war drama was the talk of Hollywood after winning nine Oscars, including two for veteran and non-professional actor Harold Russell, who remains the only person to have won two awards (Best Supporting Actor and an honorary trophy) for the same role.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947) Controversial in its time, Gentlemen's Agreement follows a journalist (Gregory Peck) who poses as a Jew to research an exposé on the widespread distrust and dislike of Jews in New York City. It won three of the five Oscars it was nominated for.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Hamlet (1948) Hamlet stands tall as one of the most successful Shakespearean adaptations at the Oscars, as well as the first British film to win Best Picture.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards All the King’s Men (1949) This adaptation of the Robert Penn Warren novel of the same name starred Broderick Crawford as the ambitious and occasionally ruthless politician, Willie Stark.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards An American in Paris (1951) Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron lead this musical version of George Gershwin's orchestral composition that won six Oscars in all.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Many consider this film to be one of the worst Best Picture winners in Oscar history, and was the last victor to win fewer than three trophies until Spotlight in 2016. Many believe it beat its competitors as it was a chance to honour Cecil B DeMille whose films had failed the main prize.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards From Here to Eternity (1953) Fred Zinneman's romantic drama took home an impressive eight out of 13 nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor win for Frank Sinatra.
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards On the Waterfront (1954) Marlon Brando won his first Oscar in this Best Picture winner from Elia Kazan.
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Marty (1955) Marty – starring Best Actor victor Ernest Borgnine – was also the fourth American release to win the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
United Artists
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Around the World in 80 Days (1956) The adaptation of Jules Verne's classic novel won five Oscars, beat out a particularly tough category that included epics The Ten Commandments , Giant and The King and I .
United Artists
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Columbia Pictures/AP
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Gigi (1958) Leslie Caron fronted classic MGM musical Gigi , which won nine Oscars – a record for just one year.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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TCM
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards The Apartment (1960) One of the last black-and-white Oscar winners as Hollywood moved towards colour in films a matter of years after The Apartment 's release. The most recent black-and-white films to win Best Picture are Schindler's List and The Artist .
United Artists
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United Artists
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Getty
Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Tom Jones (1963) None of the producers of adventure-comedy film Tom Jones showed up to accept the trophy, which is now in possession of Albert Finney.
United Artists
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Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
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Oscars: Every single film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards Oliver! (1968) No U-certificate film has won Best Picture since Oliver! – the last musical to do so since Chicago in 2002.
Getty
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Getty
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20th Century Fox
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20th Century Fox
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Paramount Pictures.
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Reuters
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Universal Studios
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Universal Pictures
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A24
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Twentieth Century Fox
Mortensen is the Sancho Panza figure to the very refined Don Quixote type played beautifully by Ali. And they make quite a double act, providing an emotional charge to a film that might otherwise have seemed trite and manipulative.
The film is crude and delicate by turns. Farrelly is known for the often very broad comedies like There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber he directs with his brother, Bobby. Some of the gags and visual observations here could come from such works. For example, early on, in order to show the audience that Tony is an unreconstructed racist, there is a long drawn-out scene in which he picks up water glasses that black repairmen have drunk out of as if they are contaminated and drops them in the garbage.
Tony and Ali head off from New York on an epic road trip with the rest of Ali’s band following in the car behind. In the course of the journey, Tony marvels at “nature” and pines for his wife. Don dictates the fulsome, heartfelt letters he writes to her. The pianist also gives his driver tips on diction, etiquette and provides Sunday school-style lectures on why stealing is wrong.
The film’s title comes from a handbook for African-American drivers, telling them just what to do to stay out of trouble in the Jim Crow south. Don gives Tony a copy – and so the white, Italian-American gets a taste of the black motorist’s experience.
The film is full of reversals and ironies like this. Again and again during the journey, each man’s preconceptions are challenged. The further south they head, the more prejudice they encounter. Don’s musical virtuosity is generally applauded by the white spectators but that doesn’t mean he is allowed to use the same bathrooms or stay in the same motels.
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Try for free Don is an elegant, cerebral figure, steeped in classical music but unaware of the Aretha Franklin and James Brown, music that his driver cherishes. He drinks a specific brand of whisky, and won’t play on anything other than a Steinway. While he sits in the back, Tony is at the wheel, grease from his fried food running down his chin, chattering away. “You people love fried chicken,” he tells his boss in one of the casually racist remarks he makes throughout the first part of the film – but he is the one who eats such food. Indeed, there is barely a scene in the film in which he isn’t devouring chicken wings or sausages or whatever other convenience food is available.
There are some strange digressions and inconsistencies in characterisation, however. For all his meticulousness, Don acts in very erratic fashion. He gets drunk, and his sexual escapades land him in jail. He may be perceptive enough about relationships to know just what Tony should write to his wife but he is a loner who doesn’t have a partner of his own. There is a masochistic fatalism to him that the film touches on but doesn’t want to explore too deeply.
Don embarks on the tour out of defiance: he wants to confront southern racism head on. He shows courage and heroic restraint in the way he deals with his white hosts. But at the same time, he is painfully naïve, and when it comes to street smarts, Tony is the virtuoso. He knows how to face down thugs in a bar.
Green Book is based on a true story but has clearly taken considerable liberties with its source material. It eventually turns into a full-blown Christmas movie, with all the usual trimmings. The doc’s one-man campaign for racial equality is forgotten as the two men make their epic journey back north, and the film begins to turn as mushy as the winter weather they encounter en route. The underlying message here is similar to that in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life in which we learn “no man is a failure who has friends”. There is room at the Christmas table for everyone.
The sugarcoating is very thick. It doesn’t matter, though. Ali and Mortensen make a tremendously engaging odd couple. Both give such nuanced and well-observed performances that most audiences will swallow the sentimental moralising as easily as Tony digests his hot dogs.
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