All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

Starring Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy, Ben Alexander, Scott Kolk, Owen Davis Jr., Walter Rogers, William Bakewell, Russell Gleason, Richard Alexander, Harold Goodwin, Slim Summerville, G. Pat Collins, Beryl Mercer, and Edmund Breese

The first classic Best Picture winner, All Quiet on the Western Front is a wonderful anti-war statement. It's surprisingly graphic in its handling of the horrors of war. When one thinks of black and white war films, most are patriotic movies made during World War II, which depicted war as something heroic and full of glory. This goes not glorify war in any way. One of the best sequences does not occur on the battlefield, but rather in a classroom. Lew Ayres's Paul had been inspired to enlist in the war by a fiercely patriotic teacher. When he returns to his school on leave after being in the war for a while, he ends up confronting the teacher, and trying to convince the new crop of young students to avoid the military. For his trouble, he is called a coward by all of the people who were not actually seeing combat. This is a stirring portrait that does not pull any punches, and the first great film of the 1930s.

Other nominees: The Big House (George W. Hill), Disraeli (Alfred E. Green), The Divorcee (Robert Z. Leonard), and The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)