Best Picture, 1965

Awards presented April 18, 1966

The nominees were ... 

• Darling 
• Doctor Zhivago 
• Ship of Fools 
• The Sound of Music
• A Thousand Clowns 

... when they should have been ...

• Darling 
• Repulsion
• The Sound of Music
• A Thousand Clowns 
• Woman in the Dunes 

And the Oscar went to ...
The Sound of Music. "The Sound of Muzak." "The Sound of Mucus." "The Sound of Money." The jokes were inevitable for a film that became at once the most loved and the most derided picture of the year. Legend has it that panning the film even cost Pauline Kael her job as film critic at the women's magazine McCall's.

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

Repulsion

Roman Polanski's first English-language film established Catherine Deneuve as more than just a beautiful face, and it still lingers as one of the most unsettling psychological suspense films of all time. The Academy studiously ignored it, not only depriving Polanski and Deneuve of nominations but also ignoring Gilbert Taylor's atmospheric cinematography and Seamus Flannery's remarkable production design.