Best Picture nominees at the 1999 Oscars: all five films
All five Best Picture nominees at the 1999 Oscars, from Shakespeare in Love to Saving Private Ryan, and why that race is still argued about today.
Few Oscar races have aged into a debate quite like this one. At the 71st Academy Awards, held on March 21, 1999, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan was widely seen as the favorite, and Spielberg did win Best Director. Then Shakespeare in Love took the top prize. The line-up also had two war films with very different moods, a costume drama about a queen, and an Italian film that reached the main category, something that very rarely happens. If you only know one or two of these titles, this is a great weekend of viewing.
The five Best Picture nominees of 1999
Shakespeare in Love · Winner
A young Shakespeare, stuck on a new play, falls for a noblewoman who dreams of acting on the stage.
Worth it if: you want a romantic comedy with wit and period costumes.
Elizabeth
The young Elizabeth I takes the English throne surrounded by plots, in the role that made Cate Blanchett a star.
Worth it if: you like political intrigue and court dramas.
Life Is Beautiful
Roberto Benigni plays a father who turns a concentration camp into a game to protect his son.
Worth it if: you are ready to laugh and cry in the same film.
Saving Private Ryan
After D-Day, a squad crosses France to find a single soldier. The opening landing is still overwhelming.
Worth it if: you like intense war films with raw realism.
The Thin Red Line
Terrence Malick's view of the battle of Guadalcanal, closer to a poem than to a traditional war film.
Worth it if: you prefer reflective cinema over constant action.
Which film won Best Picture at the 1999 Oscars?
Shakespeare in Love, directed by John Madden, won Best Picture at the 1999 ceremony. Saving Private Ryan lost the top prize, although Steven Spielberg won Best Director for it.
How Oscar nominations work
Each branch of the Academy picks the nominees in its own field, so actors choose actors, directors choose directors and editors choose editors. The whole membership can nominate for Best Picture, and the whole membership then votes on the winners. That two-step process is why a film can dominate the nominations and still leave the ceremony with very little.
A quick note on dates: this post uses the year of the ceremony, not the year the film came out. A film released in one year usually competes at the ceremony held early in the next, which is why the same title can appear under two different years depending on the source.
Want to turn this into a watchlist? On Rankiew you can mark what you have seen, rate each title from 1 to 10, write a short review and build a public list to share with friends. It is a simple way to see how much of Oscar history you have actually watched.
