Best Picture Winners Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Milos Forman's 1984 film frames the life of Mozart as the bitter deathbed confession of his envious rival, the court composer Antonio Salieri, and won eight Oscars.

Question 2

This 1950 film about an ageing Broadway star and a scheming young admirer holds the record for the most Oscar nominations, 14, a mark tied only twice since. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, it won six Oscars; its 14 nominations have been matched only by Titanic and La La Land.

Question 3

David Lean's 1962 desert epic about a British officer who unites Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire in World War I won seven Oscars, and features no speaking roles for women.

Question 4

John Ford's 1941 drama about a close-knit Welsh coal-mining family famously beat Orson Welles's Citizen Kane for Best Picture. It won five Oscars in all, including Best Director for John Ford, who was on active Navy duty and could not attend the ceremony.

Question 5

Sam Mendes directed this 1999 satire of life in the U.S. suburbs, narrated by a man who tells us in the opening minutes that he will be dead within a year. It won five Oscars.

Question 6

The very first Academy Award for Best Picture, presented in 1929, went to this silent World War I aviation drama. It was the only fully silent film to win the top prize until 2012.

Question 7

Robert Wise's 1965 film, in which a free-spirited governess joins and then helps a widowed captain's family flee Nazi-annexed Austria, became the top-grossing film of its era and won five Oscars.

Question 8

Tom Hooper's 2010 film follows the future British monarch George VI and the unorthodox Australian voice coach who helps him manage a stammer as he is thrust onto the throne and in front of the wartime radio microphone. It won four Oscars.

Question 9

Robert Redford's directorial debut, a 1980 drama about an affluent suburban family unravelling after the accidental death of the elder son, controversially beat Raging Bull for Best Picture.

Question 10

This 2004 ensemble drama about intersecting lives and racial friction over 36 hours in Los Angeles won Best Picture in an upset widely considered one of the Academy's worst calls, over Brokeback Mountain.

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About Best Picture Winners

The Academy Award for Best Picture has been handed out every year since 1929, and its winners trace the whole history of the movies. The silent era closed with Wings; the studio age produced It Happened One Night, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and Hamlet, the first British film to win. The 1950s and 1960s ran to spectacle: Ben-Hur, the first film to win 11 Oscars, plus Lawrence of Arabia, West Side Story and The Sound of Music. The 1970s brought the New Hollywood of The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, the first sequel to win, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The record book is full of firsts and near-misses. Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King share the mark of 11 Oscars, and Return of the King won every category it was nominated in. It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs swept the "big five." Rebecca is Alfred Hitchcock's only Best Picture winner. Wings and The Artist, 83 years apart, are the silent winners. Parasite in 2020 was the first film not in English to win; CODA in 2022 the first from a streaming service.

Some winners are remembered as much for controversy: The Greatest Show on Earth over High Noon, How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, Crash over Brokeback Mountain, and the 2017 night the wrong film, La La Land, was read out before Moonlight was corrected on stage.

Every answer in this quiz is a film that won Best Picture. The clue gives you the year, the director, the stars and a memorable fact, and 25 of the questions add a photo of a key figure. Read the clue, pick the winner, and get the full story after each answer.