Best Picture, 1928-29

Awards presented April 3, 1930
(Films released from August 1, 1928 through July 31, 1929 were eligible.)

For the 1928-29 awards, only the winners were announced, and the runners-up received no official notice from the Academy. The records show who was under consideration, however, and they have traditionally been treated as if they were "official" nominees. 

The nominees were ... 

• Alibi
• The Broadway Melody 
• Hollywood Revue 
• In Old Arizona
• The Patriot

... when they should have been ...

• The Broadway Melody
• The Cameraman
• In Old Arizona
• Our Dancing Daughters 
• The Wind

And the Oscar went to ... 
The Broadway Melody. In hindsight, the Academy might have called a moratorium on awards this year, which was marked by the phenomenal technical and commercial achievement of converting the film industry from silence to sound. Certainly this awkwardly scripted, poorly acted, stodgily filmed, and clunkily choreographed movie can never be regarded as one of the signal achievements of the motion picture. That it laid the ground for the greatness of Busby Berkeley, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and MGM's Freed unit is about the best that can be said of it.

... when it should have gone to ...

The Cameraman

The Cameraman is one of the last of Buster Keaton's great silent comedies. Clearly, the Academy was not inclined to take a step backward into the silent-film medium it was working feverishly to eliminate, but of all the films eligible for the award this year, Keaton's has been the most enduring -- although for a time it was thought to have been lost. After prints were discovered in 1968 and 1991, however, it was carefully restored and was added to the National Film Registry in 2005 (an honor that has not yet been accorded to Broadway Melody, incidentally). The Cameraman was Keaton's first film for MGM, which assumed control over Keaton's later features, seriously damaging his career.