1998 Academy Awards® Winners and History The Thin Red Line (1998) Actor: ROBERTO BENIGNI in "Life is Beautiful", Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan", Ian McKellen in "Gods and Monsters", Nick Nolte in "Affliction", Edward Norton in "American History X" Actress: GWYNETH PALTROW in "Shakespeare in Love", Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth", Fernanda Montenegro in "Central Station", Meryl Streep in "One True Thing", Emily Watson in "Hilary and Jackie" Supporting Actor: JAMES COBURN in "Affliction", Robert Duvall in "A Civil Action", Ed Harris in "The Truman Show", Geoffrey Rush in "Shakespeare in Love", Billy Bob Thornton in "A Simple Plan" Supporting Actress: JUDI DENCH in "Shakespeare in Love", Kathy Bates in "Primary Colors", Brenda Blethyn in "Little Voice", Rachel Griffiths in "Hilary and Jackie", Lynn Redgrave in "Gods and Monsters" Director: STEVEN SPIELBERG for "Saving Private Ryan", Roberto Benigni for "Life is Beautiful", John Madden for "Shakespeare in

 Love", Terrence Malick for "The Thin Red Line", Peter Weir for "The Truman Show" There were two notable firsts for this year's Oscars awards ceremony broadcast on ABC-TV.

The 71st annual Academy Awards show was held on March 21, 1999 and hosted by Whoopi Goldberg to honor 1998's films. It marked the first time the ceremony was held on a Sunday, and it was the longest ceremony ever held up to this point, clocking in at 4 hours and 2 minutes. The Best Picture nominees for 1998 included five films with only two major subjects areas or settings: World War II and Elizabethan England. The Best Picture Oscar winner and over-all Oscar champ, in a major darkhorse upset, was the light-hearted, factual and fanciful romantic comedy/costume drama Shakespeare in Love about the struggling, writing-blocked, and romantically-afflicted bard in 16th century London. It told the fanciful background story of how the romantic love story, Romeo and Juliet, was composed, when the the bard was writing an earlier version titled "Romeo and Ethel, the Sea Pirate's Daughter". The film was a hybrid blend, but could be considered the first romantic comedy to win Best Picture since Annie Hall (1977) .

[It was the last comedy film, to date, to win Best Picture.] The film had thirteen nominations and seven Oscars (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay (co-written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard), Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score). [It has the most Oscar awards (7) for a film that didn't win Best Director.] Shakespeare in Love gave Britisher John Madden his first Best Director nomination - his previous work consisted of only three little-known feature films, one of which was Mrs. Brown (1997). [Only two other films in Oscar history have had more nominations: Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950) - each with 14.] Two of the film's three performance nominations were awarded Oscars - only Geoffrey Rush failed to win his bid. The second runner-up in Oscar awards and nominations was Best Director-winning Steven Spielberg's realistic war epic Saving Private Ryan with eleven nominations and five awards - mostly in technical categories (Best Director, Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn), Best Sound, and Best Sound Effects).

(Five-time Oscar winner John Williams received a nomination for Best Score - his 36th nomination. He had already won the Oscar for Best Score three times for previous Spielberg films - Schindler's List (1993) .) Saving Private Ryan was a harrowing tale of eight WWII soldiers sent into enemy territory to rescue the sole surviving son of a family. Its vivid opening sequence of the blood-bath attack on Omaha Beach on D-Day was cinema verite at its finest, based on actual veterans' accounts of their experiences. [Spielberg had bounced back, after misfiring with the contrived sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and the uneven slavery saga Amistad (1997).

He had returned a fourth time to the war film genre, after three previous attempts at war films: 1941 (1979), Empire of the Sun (1987), and Schindler's List (1993) .] The remaining three Best Picture films tied with seven nominations each, and the first two earned only one Oscar between them: writer/director Terrence Malick's poetic, ethereal, and meditative work The Thin Red Line (with no wins) from James Jones' 1962 novel documented the Pacific's WW II Battle of Guadalcanal; this unusual war film was Malick's first film after a twenty-year gap and it suffered in the wake of Spielberg's more Oscar-friendly war film Indian director Shekhar Kapur's big-budget historical costume drama Elizabeth (with only one Oscar, Best Makeup) the wildly successful, bittersweet, comedy-drama Italian Holocaust fable Life is Beautiful (with seven nominations and three wins), the first film since Z (1969) to be nominated for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film (it won the latter awards distinction, as did Z (1969)).

[In awards history, this was the sixth non-English language film to be nominated for Best Picture.] The Italian film Life is Beautiful, which won three Oscars (Best Actor, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Dramatic Score), was the 12th Italian film to win for Best Foreign Language Film. It was the second film in Academy history to be nominated both as Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film in the same year. It opened as the comedic story of Benigni as a clownish, accident-prone Jewish waiter and bookshop owner named Guido and his eager, clumsy courtship of upper-class Dora (Benigni's real-life wife Nicoletta Braschi), a Catholic schoolteacher. After their marriage, they were deported with their five-year-old son Giosue to a WWII concentration camp, where the inspired, Chaplin-esque Guido disguised the fear of the horrors of the extermination camp and bravely shielded his son with an inventive game of hide-and-seek with the Nazis, by promising a tank for the winner.

[Life is Beautiful was the first foreign language film to receive seven nominations - the most-honored foreign-language film in Oscar history up to that time (until surpassed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) with 10 nominations). Previously, Das Boot (1982) and Fanny and Alexander (1983) had received six nominations. Z (1969), director Costa-Gavras' French political thriller, was the first film nominated as Best Foreign Language Film that also received a nomination for Best Picture. It also won the Foreign Film Award, but not the Best Picture Oscar.] Life is Beautiful was only the third sub-titled film in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Picture. [The previous two subtitled, Best Picture-nominated films were Z (1969) and Il Postino (1995).] Miramax backed both Life is Beautiful (as distributor) and Shakespeare in Love (as producer) with millions of dollars in an expensive publicity blitz before Oscar time, and their aggressive efforts paid off handsomely - with a total of 20 nominations between them (and 10 wins).

With his fifth Best Director nomination (and sixth career nomination), Steven Spielberg won the Best Director award for the second time for Saving Private Ryan (his first directorial Oscar was for another war epic - Schindler's List (1993) and previous nominations were for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) , Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) , and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) ). Spielberg's win marked the first time in nine years that the Best Picture Oscar was awarded to a film whose director was not also honored. (In 1989, director Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy (1989) won Best Picture when Oliver Stone was named Best Director for Born on the Fourth of July (1989).) Curiously, of the five Best Picture nominees, only Elizabeth's director was not nominated as Best Director.

Although Australian film-maker Peter Weir (who had previously been nominated as Best Director for Witness (1985) and Dead Poets Society (1989)) was nominated as Best Director (his third nomination) for the big-budget satire on celebrity, The Truman Show, his film was not nominated for Best Picture. [His fourth Oscar nomination was a Best Screenplay nomination for Green Card (1990).] Terrence Malick, who had previously directed the lovers-on-the-run film Badlands (1973) and the cinematically-gorgeous Days of Heaven (1978) received a Best Director nomination (his first career Oscar nomination) for The Thin Red Line. It marked his return to film-making after two decades. (Malick was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for the same film.) Roberto Benigni's Best Actor Oscar win (his first nomination) was only the second time a nominee won an acting Oscar for a Foreign Language film role. His win made him the first male actor in Oscar history to win for a foreign language film role.

(He was also the first Italian (foreign-born) to win an Oscar for Best Actor.) [The first occurrence of an acting Oscar for a Foreign Language-film role was Sophia Loren's Best Actress win for Two Women (1961) - thirty-seven years earlier. Italian actress Anna Magnani also won the Best Actress Oscar for The Rose Tattoo (1955), in an English-speaking role.] Benigni was also the first director in 50 years (since Laurence Olivier for Hamlet (1948)) to win a Best Actor Oscar under his own direction - in other words, he was the second performer-actor to direct his own Oscar-winning performance. Double-Oscar winner Roberto Benigni was a three-time nominee in 1998 as co-author, star, director - and husband!, and officially nominated as Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay (co-written directly for the screen with Vincenzo Cerami) for Life is Beautiful.

[Benigni's triple-nomination was a rare achievement - only Orson Welles (in 1941 for Citizen Kane ), Woody Allen (in 1977 for Annie Hall ) and Warren Beatty (in 1981 for Reds) have also received simultaneous nominations as actor, director, and writer.] The other Best Actor nominees were: Ian McKellen (with his first nomination) as the tormented, homosexual, Universal Studios horror film director of the 30s James Whale - in the low-budget independent film and biopic Gods and Monsters Nick Nolte (with his second nomination after The Prince of Tides (1991)) as the abused, mentally-ill small-town cop Wade Whitehouse in Affliction Edward Norton (with his second nomination after a Best Supporting nomination for his role as a psychopathic choirboy in Primal Fear (1996)) as the violent, racist, Neo-Nazi L.A.

skinhead Derek Vinyard in American History X Tom Hanks, already a two-time Oscar winner (for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994)) received his fourth Oscar nomination for his role as the restrained Captain John Miller in Saving Private Ryan In 1998, it was the first time that two nominees in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories were chosen for playing the same character in the same year but not in the same film: England's monarch Queen Elizabeth I - at two different stages of her life. (In 1997, both Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were nominated for playing the role of Rose (as a 17 year old and as a 101-year old survivor) in the same year and in the same film! -- Titanic (1997).

This would also reoccur in 2001 when Judi Dench and Kate Winslet were both nominated for playing Iris in Iris (2001).): Australian actress Cate Blanchett (with her first nomination), nominated as Best Actress for her performance as the coming-of-age, coltish, feminist-minded Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth English actress Judi Dench (with her second nomination and first Oscar win) won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her eight-minute on-screen performance as the regal, mischievous, authoritative, ornately-costumed Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. (Dench's first nomination was for her portrayal of Queen Victoria a year earlier in Mrs. Brown (1997), also directed by John Madden) Gwyneth Paltrow (with her first nomination) won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as the struggling bard Shakespeare's irresistible love-interest Viola De Lesseps, who hid her real gender as Thomas Kent through female-to-male cross-dressing, in Shakespeare in Love.

[Note: Reportedly, she said a record 23 "Thank yous" during her acceptance speech.] The other three Best Actress nominees included: Emily Watson, who received her second nomination for her role as the title character in Hilary and Jackie - the late Jacqueline du Pre, an acclaimed classical cellist/musician afflicted with multiple sclerosis (after her Best Actress nomination two years earlier for her big-screen debut in Breaking the Waves (1996)) famed Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro (with her first nomination) as ex-schoolteacher Dora in director Walter Salles' Central Station two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep (for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Sophie's Choice (1982)), with her eleventh career nomination for her role as mother figure Kate Gulden in an adaptation of Anna Quindlen's 1994 novel, One True Thing. [This was Streep's 9th Best Actress nomination.

Streep's nomination pushed her past 10-time nominee Bette Davis, and edged her closer to Katharine Hepburn's record of 12 nominations.] In the Best Supporting Actor category, James Coburn with a long acting career, the only first-time nominee was the winner (his first career Oscar win!) - for his role as Nick Nolte's tyrannical, abusive and alcoholic father Glen "Pop" Whitehouse in the poignant film Affliction. Three of the actors in the Best Supporting Actor category (Geoffrey Rush, Billy Bob Thornton, and Ed Harris) were second-time nominees: Australian actor Geoffrey Rush for his role as the buffoonish, debt-ridden Elizabethan theater owner and impresario Philip Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love. (Rush won the Best Actor Oscar in 1996 for his role as piano savant David Helfgott in Shine (1996), defeating Billy Bob Thornton who was also nominated as Best Actor for his role as Karl Childers in Sling Blade (1996) in the same year.) Billy Bob Thornton for his portrayal as the dim-witted Jacob Mitchell in director Sam Raimi's tale of crime A Simple Plan.

(Rush and Thornton were facing each other again as they did in 1996.) Ed Harris for his role as the omnipotent, beret-wearing Christof, the creator of The Truman Show. (Harris was previously nominated three years earlier as Best Supporting Actor for Apollo 13 (1995).) The final nominee in the Best Supporting Actor category was one-time Oscar-winner Robert Duvall (his sixth career nomination after previous nominations in 1972, 1979, 1980, 1983 and 1997) as Bostonian corporate defense attorney Jerome Facher opposed to John Travolta's crusade in A Civil Action. [Duvall won the Best Actor Oscar sixteen years earlier for Tender Mercies (1983).] Four of the five Best Supporting Actress nominees were experiencing their second nomination: Judi Dench (see above) Australian actress Rachel Griffiths, the only first-time nominee, for her role as the less-gifted, eclipsed older sister Hilary in Hilary and Jackie Kathy Bates for her role as Southern political veteran Libby Holden in Primary Colors.

(She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as a psycho-fan in Misery (1990)) British theatrical actress Brenda Blethyn for her portrayal of the drunk and widowed mother Mari in Little Voice (She was nominated as Best Actress two years earlier for her third film Secrets and Lies (1996)) British actress Lynn Redgrave, for her role as James Whale's devoted Hungarian housekeeper Hanna in Gods and Monsters (She had been nominated thirty-two years earlier for Georgy Girl (1966)) This was the controversial year that Elia Kazan, who 'named names' during the McCarthy hearings for the HUAC, was given an Honorary Oscar award "in recognition of his indelible contributions to the art of motion picture direction." In his career, he had been nominated as Best Director five times with two wins: Gentleman's Agreement (1947) (win), On the Waterfront (1954) (win), East of Eden (1955) , and America, America (1963). He also had one unsuccessful nomination for Best Original Story and Screenplay for America, America (1963).

Oscar Snubs and Omissions: Jim Carrey was denied a nomination as Best Actor for his central role as unwitting TV show star Truman Burbank in Peter Weir's The Truman Show (a film also denied a Best Picture nomination), and Bill Murray for Best Supporting Actor as eccentric business millionaire in love with first-grade school teacher Miss Cross (Olivia Williams) in Wes Anderson's off-beat comedy Rushmore. [Bill Murray was also solid as a lawyer in the trashy film Wild Things.] And Joseph Fiennes was denied a nomination in the title role as Will Shakespeare in the Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love. Lisa Kudrow was un-nominated for her role as uptight school teacher Lucia DeLury, and Christina Ricci was also unrecognized for her role as bitchy, manipulative, and cunning teenager Dede Truitt in writer/director Don Roos' black comedy and independent film The Opposite of Sex (with no nominations). James Urbaniak was ignored for his performance as a janitor named Simon Grim who discovers his gifted talent for writing in Henry Fool.

Jane Adams was not nominated for her role as eternally-optimistic Joy Jordan, and Dylan Baker was also snubbed for his courageous performance as the disturbed and sick pedophile and psychologist Dr. Bill Maplewood - who was obsessed with his 11-year-old son Billy's classmate Johnny Grasso (Evan Silverberg), in writer/director Todd Solondz's controversial study of sexual humiliation titled Happiness. None of the ensemble cast members of Malick's The Thin Red Line were nominated for acting awards: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, Ben Chaplin, or Jim Caviezel. American History X (with one Best Actor nomination) had other notable, unnominated performances by Beverly D'Angelo and Edward Furlong. Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (with three nominations: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and a win for Condon's Best Adapted Screenplay) ignored Brendan Fraser's performance as hunky gardener Clayton Boone.

And the great actress Meryl Streep was ignored for her role in the Irish drama Dancing at Lughnasa, as the oldest of five spinster sisters, a schoolteacher named Kate, awaiting a missionary brother's return from Africa in the mid-30s. And there was no nomination for The Celebration as Best Foreign Language Film, or for the following: the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, Darren Aronofsky's directorial debut feature film Pi, Alex Troyas' tech noir thriller Dark City, or Alfonso Cuaron's modern-day retelling of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations featuring Robert De Niro's supporting performance as Magwitch-like crook Lustig. A nomination for Best Score (Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell engaged an 85-piece orchestra and 25-member chorus to perform the lively music) for Antz was displaced by the Best Musical or Comedy Score nomination (for Randy Newman) given to another insect-related score, A Bug's Life.

Oscar History: Foreign Language Films as Best Picture Nominees | Emanuel Levy Oscar History: Foreign Language Films as Best Picture Nominees July 25, 2006 by EmanuelLevy Leave a Comment In the Academy's entire history only a few foreign-language movies have been nominated for the Best Picture. Jean Renoir's anti-war masterpiece, Grand Illusion competed for the 1937 top award, but that was before the creation of a distinct category for foreign-language pictures. Since the establishment of the Best Foreign-Language Picture, only five foreign movies have been nominated for Best Picture. CostaGavras's political thriller Z, a FrenchAlgerian coproduction starring Yves Montand and JeanLouis Trintignant, enjoyed a special position in 1969. Z won the Best Foreign Language Picture and it was also nominated in the general competitive category of Best Picture. According to Academy rules, foreign pictures that have opened in the United States are eligible to compete in all the other categories. Indeed, Z also won an Oscar for its editor, Francoise Bonnot. To qualify for Foreign-Language Picture, however, a film must be sent by its country of origin to the Academy, where a committee selects the five nominees.

Z qualified on both grounds: It was officially submitted as an Algerian entry, and it opened in the United States in December. Two Swedish films received consecutive Foreign-Language nominations. In 1972, The Emigrants, which deals with the emigration of Swedish peasants to America in the nineteenth century, starred Liv Ullmann (who received Best Actress nomination) and Max von Sydow. Jan Troell was nominated as a director and co-writer of the film's adpapted screenplay. In 1973, Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, a haunting film about death and dying, featuring unforgettable performances by Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, and Harriet Andersson, was nominated for Best Picture and four other awards, of which it received the Cinematography Oscar, by Bergman's ace collaborator, Sven Nykvist. Two Italian movies were nominated for Best Picture in the 1990s, both distributed by Miramax. The 1995 Il Postino (The Postman) tells the story of an Italian postman who bonds with a legendary poet, Pablo Neruda, and wins the affections of a local girl through his heartfelt poetry.

The film was based on The Postman of Pablo Neruda, a novel by Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta. Massimo Troisi, who played the postman, suffered from heart problems and died only one day after the final take of the shoot. Troisi headed an international cast, with French actor Philippe Noiret, New Delhiborn English director Michael Radford. Trying to recreate Southern Italy in the 1950s, The Postman was shot on two islands off the coast of Sicily. In 1998, Roberto Benigni's Holocaust comedy, Life is Beautiful, became the second Italin film to win Best Picture nomination. The narrative concerns an accidentprone Italian bookshop owner (Benigni), who is imprisoned with his family in a World War II concentration camp. He bravely attempts to protect his son (Giorgio Cantarini) by making a game out of their tragic predicament. Benigni, known in the United States for his performances in Down by Law and Johnny Stecchino, came under fire when word got out that he was making a comedy about the Holocaust.

Though not Jewish, the Italian director and cowriter had personal roots in the saga: his father served time in a German labor camp. Benigni recalled how "each evening my father was telling me a story, some awful and revolting tragedy things, always in a very light way. Maybe he was scared to make a trauma on me." Citing Benigni's success at the European Film Awards (Best Actor) and at Cannes (where it won the Grand Jury Prize), industry experts felt that Benigni had a strong shot at a lead performance award. Harvey Weinstein remarked that, "Miramax has gotten nominations in the past for Max von Sydow in Pelle the Conqueror and Massimo Troisi for Il Postino, which for him was "a testament that the actor category has been foreignactor friendly." But it's the film's popularity with audiences that is the real ace up its sleeve. Benigni's work pushes all the right emotional buttons." Even before its American release, Life Is Beautiful showed the same trademarks as Il Postino. Benigni received high praise from Weinstein, who hyped the film as the next Il Postino.

Ultimately, Life Is Beautiful shattered box office records for foreign films, eventually outdoing Il Postino's commercial success by far. In 2000, another foreign-language film landed a spot in the Best Picture race — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The thrilling fight sequences in this superbly mounted historical- romantic saga elicited heartfelt applause from audiences since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Ang Lee's triumphant Hong Kong-style martial-arts film stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh as fellow warriors who share an unspoken love; porcelain-lovely Zhang Ziyi portrays a dazzling young prodigy who hasn't yet found her true path. Shrewdly marketed and platformed by Sony Pictures Classics, the Mandarin-language film clearly pushed the envelope. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, won Golden Globes for Best Foreign Film and for director Ang Lee, and was deemed best movie of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The film set a new box-office record for foreign-language films in the United Sates with its impressive gross of $130 million. In February, it garnered ten Oscar nominations–the second most-nominated film of the year after Gladiator.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four Oscars, matching Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, the previous Oscar record-holder for foreign-language films. List of best picture movie Oscar winners and other film nominees Arts criticism for those who appreciate landmark films, again and again List of best picture Oscar winners and other Academy Award nominees Updated: February 2016 Who beat who for best picture Oscar: Year indicates year/period for which films were judged, not year of ceremony.

Sources: Oscar.com, Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia 2015: Spotlight — beat The Revenant, The Big Short, The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn (Presented by Morgan Freeman) 2014: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) — beat American Sniper, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash (Presented by Sean Penn) 2013: 12 Years a Slave — beat Gravity, American Hustle, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Philomena, The Wolf of Wall Street, Captain Phillips, Nebraska (Presented by Will Smith) 2012: Argo — beat Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild (Presented by Michelle Obama and Jack Nicholson) 2011: The Artist — beat The Help, The Descendants, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Presented by Tom

 Cruise) 2010: The King’s Speech — beat 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone (Presented by Steven Spielberg) 2009: The Hurt Locker — beat Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air (Presented by Tom Hanks) 2008: Slumdog Millionaire — beat Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Reader (Presented by Steven Spielberg) 2007: No Country for Old Men — beat Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood (Presented by Denzel Washington) 2006: The Departed — beat Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen (Presented by Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton) 2005: Crash — beat Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich (Presented by

 Jack Nicholson) 2004: Million Dollar Baby — beat Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways, The Aviator (Presented by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) 2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — beat Lost in Translation, Master and Commander, Mystic River, Seabiscuit (Presented by Steven Spielberg) 2002: Chicago — beat Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist (Presented by Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas) 2001: A Beautiful Mind — beat Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, Moulin Rouge, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Presented by Tom Hanks) 2000: Gladiator — beat Chocolat, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Presented by Michael Douglas) 1999: American Beauty — beat The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense (Presented by Clint Eastwood) 1998: Shakespeare in Love — beat Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line (

Presented by Harrison Ford) 1997: Titanic — beat As Good as It Gets, Good Will Hunting, L.A.

Confidential, The Full Monty (Presented by Sean Connery) 1996: The English Patient — beat Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine (Presented by Al Pacino) 1995: Braveheart — beat Apollo 13, Babe, The Postman, Sense and Sensibility (Presented by Sidney Poitier) 1994: Forrest Gump — beat Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption (Presented by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino) 1993: Schindler's List — beat In the Name of the Father, The Fugitive, The Piano, The Remains of the Day (Presented by Harrison Ford) 1992: Unforgiven — beat A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent of a Woman, The Crying Game (Presented by Jack Nicholson) 1991: The Silence of the Lambs — beat Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, The Prince of Tides (Presented by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor) 1990: Dances With Wolves — beat Awakenings, Ghost

, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Part III (Presented by Barbra Streisand) 1989: Driving Miss Daisy — beat Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (Presented by Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty) 1988: Rain Man — beat Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, The Accidental Tourist, Working Girl (Presented by Cher) 1987: The Last Emperor — beat Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, Moonstruck (Presented by Eddie Murphy) 1986: Platoon — beat A Room with a View, Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission (Presented by Dustin Hoffman) 1985: Out of Africa — beat Kiss of the Spider Woman, Prizzi’s Honor, The Color Purple, Witness (Presented by John Huston, Billy Wilder and Akira Kurosawa) 1984: Amadeus — beat A Passage to India, A Soldier’s Story, Places in the Heart, The Killing Fields (Presented by Laurence Olivier) 1983

: Terms of Endearment — beat Tender Mercies, The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff (Presented by Frank Capra) 1982: Gandhi — beat E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Missing, The Verdict, Tootsie (Presented by Carol Burnett) 1981: Chariots of Fire — beat Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds (Presented by Loretta Young) 1980: Ordinary People — beat Coal Miner’s Daughter, Raging Bull, Tess, The Elephant Man (Presented by Lillian Gish) 1979: Kramer vs.

Kramer — beat All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, Norma Rae (Presented by Charlton Heston) 1978: The Deer Hunter — beat An Unmarried Woman, Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express (Presented by John Wayne) 1977: Annie Hall — beat Julia, Star Wars, The Goodbye Girl, The Turning Point (Presented by Jack Nicholson) 1976: Rocky — beat All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Taxi Driver (Presented by Jack Nicholson) 1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — beat Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville (Presented by Audrey Hepburn) 1974: The Godfather, Part II — beat Chinatown, Lenny, The Conversation, The Towering Inferno (Presented by Warren Beatty) 1973: The Sting — beat A Touch of Class, American Graffiti, The Exorcist, Cries and Whispers (Presented by Elizabeth Taylor) 1972: The Godfather — beat Cabaret, Deliverance, Sounder, The Emigrants (Presented

 by Clint Eastwood) 1971: The French Connection — beat A Clockwork Orange, Fiddler on the Roof, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Last Picture Show (Presented by Jack Nicholson) 1970: Patton — beat Airport, Five Easy Pieces, Love Story, MASH (Presented by Steve McQueen) 1969: Midnight Cowboy — beat Anne of the Thousand Days, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Hello Dolly!, Z (Presented by Elizabeth Taylor) 1968: Oliver!

— beat Funny Girl, Rachel Rachel, Romeo and Juliet, The Lion in Winter (Presented by Sidney Poitier) 1967: In the Heat of the Night — beat Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate (Presented by Julie Andrews) 1966: A Man for All Seasons — beat Alfie, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Sand Pebbles, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Presented by Audrey Hepburn) 1965: The Sound of Music — beat A Thousand Clowns, Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools (Presented by Jack Lemmon) 1964: My Fair Lady — beat Alexis Zorbas, Becket, Dr.

Strangelove, Mary Poppins (Presented by Gregory Peck) 1963: Tom Jones — beat America America, Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, Lilies of the Field (Presented by Frank Sinatra) 1962: Lawrence of Arabia — beat Mutiny on the Bounty, The Longest Day, The Music Man, To Kill a Mockingbird (Presented by Olivia de Havilland) 1961: West Side Story — beat Fanny, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Guns of Navarone, The Hustler (Presented by Fred Astaire) 1960: The Apartment — beat Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, The Alamo, The Sundowners (Presented by Audrey Hepburn) 1959: Ben-Hur — beat Anatomy of a Murder, Room at the Top, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Nun’s Story (Presented by Gary Cooper) 1958: Gigi — beat Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Separate Tables, The Defiant Ones (Presented by Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant) 1957: The Bridge on the River

 Kwai — beat 12 Angry Men, Peyton Place, Sayonara, Witness for the Prosecution (Presented by Gary Cooper) 1956: Around the World in Eighty Days — beat Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, The Ten Commandments (Presented by Janet Gaynor) 1955: Marty — beat Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Mister Roberts, Picnic, The Rose Tattoo (Presented by Audrey Hepburn) 1954: On the Waterfront — beat Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, Three Coins in the Fountain (Presented by Buddy Adler) 1953: From Here to Eternity — beat Julius Caesar, Roman Holiday, Shane, The Robe (Presented by Cecil B.

DeMille) 1952: The Greatest Show on Earth — beat High Noon, Ivanhoe, Moulin Rouge, The Quiet Man (Presented by Mary Pickford) 1951: An American in Paris — beat A Place in the Sun, A Streetcar Named Desire, Decision Before Dawn, Quo Vadis (Presented by Jesse L. Lasky) 1950: All About Eve — beat Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, King Solomon’s Mines, Sunset Blvd.

(Presented by Ralph Bunche) 1949: All the King’s Men — beat A Letter to Three Wives, Battleground, The Heiress, Twelve O’Clock High (Presented by James Cagney) 1948: Hamlet — beat Johnny Belinda, The Red Shoes, The Snake Pit, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Presented by Ethel Barrymore) 1947: Gentleman’s Agreement — beat Crossfire, Great Expectations, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife (Presented by Fredric March) 1946: The Best Years of Our Lives — beat It’s a Wonderful Life, The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with his Battell Fought at Agincourt in France, The Razor’s Edge, The Yearling (Presented by Eric Johnston) 1945: The Lost Weekend — beat Anchors Aweigh, Mildred Pierce, Spellbound, The Bells of St. Mary’s (Presented by Eric Johnston) 1944: Going My Way — beat Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Since You Went Away, Wilson (Presented by Hal B.

Wallis) 1943: Casablanca — beat For Whom the Bell Tolls, Heaven Can Wait, In Which We Serve, Madame Curie, The Human Comedy, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Song of Bernadette, Watch on the Rhine (Presented by Sidney Franklin) 1942: Mrs. Miniver — beat 49th Parallel, Kings Row, Random Harvest, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Pied Piper, The Pride of the Yankees, The Talk of the Town, Wake Island, Yankee Doodle Dandy 1941: How Green Was My Valley — beat Blossoms in the Dust, Citizen Kane, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, One Foot in Heaven, Sergeant York, Suspicion, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon 1940: Rebecca — beat All This and Heaven Too, Foreign Correspondent, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman, Our Town, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, The Letter, The Long Voyage Home, The Philadelphia Story 1939: Gone with the Wind — beat Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr.

Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights 1938: You Can’t Take it With You — beat Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Boys Town, Four Daughters, Jezebel, La grande illusion, Pygmalion, Test Pilot, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Citadel 1937: The Life of Emile Zola — beat A Star Is Born, Captains Courageous, Dead End, In Old Chicago, Lost Horizon, One Hundred Men and a Girl, Stage Door, The Awful Truth, The Good Earth 1936: The Great Ziegfeld — beat A Tale of Two Cities, Anthony Adverse, Dodsworth, Libeled Lady, Mr.

Deeds Goes to Town, Romeo and Juliet, San Francisco, The Story of Louis Pasteur, Three Smart Girls 1935: Mutiny on the Bounty — beat A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alice Adams, Broadway Melody of 1936, Captain Blood, Les misérables Naughty Marietta, Ruggles of Red Gap, The Informer, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The Personal History, Adventures, Experience & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger, Top Hat 1934: It Happened One Night — beat Cleopatra, Flirtation Walk, Here Comes the Navy, Imitation of Life, One Night of Love, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, The Gay Divorcee, The House of Rothschild, The Thin Man, The White Parade, Viva Villa!

1932-33: Cavalcade — beat 42nd Street, A Farewell to Arms, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Lady for a Day, Little Women, She Done Him Wrong, Smilin’ Through, State Fair, The Private Life of Henry VIII 1931-32: Grand Hotel — beat Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, Five Star Final, One Hour with You, Shanghai Express, The Champ, The Smiling Lieutenant 1930-31: Cimarron — beat East Lynne, Skippy, The Front Page, Trader Horn 1929-30: All Quiet on the Western Front — beat Disraeli, The Divorcee, The Big House, The Love Parade 1928-29: The Broadway Melody — beat* Alibi, In Old Arizona, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, The Patriot (*unofficial nominees deemed by AMPAS) 1927-28: Wings — (best picture, production) beat 7th Heaven, The Racket 1927-28: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans — (best picture,

 unique and artistic production) beat Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, The Crowd

Question: What was the name of the 1998 Italian film which was nominated for a best picture Oscar?
Answer: Life Is Beautiful