RICKB:
"...I'm starting to think of Oscar as a 'Dickless Wonder'. "
That is priceless. It's also incredibly accurate. I think the Academy got it right about 25% of the time since 1927/8, and that is giving the benefit of the doubt in ignoring eligible foreign films. Also a great tid-bit re: Raymond Burr as David O'Selznik in Rear Window.
LOLA, no disrespect intended by this question, but have you seen the films which the Oscar Best Pictures have competed against in order to know whether you agree with them? After all, many people are citing Rebecca because someone cited it earlier, it reminds them of that movie they also love, but far more people in movie polls will pick Grapes of Wrath. In fact, the 1940 "official order" is Grapes of Wrath, Philadelphia Story (#51 at AFI, I think), Fantasia (also in the AFI 100), then probably Rebecca (again, ignoring foreign greats). Personally, I loved Rebecca too (I said it earlier), it was my strong #2 film of the year, more enjoyable than Grapes, but just because people are chiming in on how great it is (including me), it doesn't mean it deserved to win. On the other hand, if you are saying that you liked most of the Academy choices as films, then yeah, I agree too, most were very good films (they should be!), even if they weren't the "best". Citizen Kane lost to a beautiful, wonderful movie, How Green Was My Valley - and of course anybody has the right to enjoy Valley (or anything else) more than Kane. But in my opinion, there are certain objective standards in judging art, and few movies are in a class Kane - certainly not Valley. So, the Academy chose a great film, but not the "best" film, which is their self-proclaimed job after all, LOL. 1959 is another great example. Like you, I love Ben-Hur. I cried at the end the first time I saw it, and I always mist, but let's face it, it is somewhat lumbering, Charlton Heston is stiff, and while it is certainly epic, other than the slave-galley and chariot race scenes, it is kind of stilted - not a "moving" picture the way not-even-nominated Some Like It Hot and North By Northwest were the same year.
As for Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo (not to mention Notorious) not even being nominated, doesn't it prove the point that the Academy has always been somewhat out of touch. Forget about all being on the AFI Top 100 which you cited re: Casablanca. Vertigo for at least 20 years now has been considered by world cinema experts as one of the top 5 movies ever made, ranking with Citizen Kane, Rules of the Game and 2001 (also not even nominated), and even higher than seminal masterpieces like Grand Illusion, The Passion of Joan of Arc and Battleship Potemkin. Personally, I don't love Vertigo. I respect it as for Hitchcock's genius in creating a work of pure cinema, but to didn't do it for me the way many of his other films have. But it's not about my personal opinion re: what I like better, it's trying to judge films on their artistic merits, just like we do literature and music. Psycho is also considered to be in the top 35 in world cinema (and #18 at AFI), and Rear Window in the top 50 or 60 in the world. Not bad!
As for Casablanca, yeah, almost everybody loves it, I certainly like it a lot too, and its hard to deny it deserved the prize, but catch its competitors if you haven't already seen them. The Song of Bernadette is a wonderful film with a great Oscar winning performance by Jennifer Jones. It won the first ever Golden Globe, and was favored to win the Oscar (it got 5). Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis & Oscar winner Paul Lukas is from a superb Lillian Hellman play and won the New York Film Critics Award. The National Board of Review chose The Ox Bow Incident, perhaps the earliest anti-western, with Henry Fonda. Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt wasn't even nominated - a crime - Hitch said it was his personal favorite of all his movies. I think it is my personal favorite of 1943. Oh, and the other thing about Casablanca's victory - it won in the wrong year, it is always listed as a 1942 release, but the Academy blew it re: deadline confusion, the movie became popular, so they made it eligible for 1943.
P.S. I went off on this because it aggravated me no end that Academy members openly admitted their refusal to see Brokeback Mountain on account of homophobia ("John Wayne would turn over in his grave") so it lost. I think the Academy loses credibility for permitting anybody to vote who refuses to view all 5 nominees. Every other credible organization has that requirement. In 2000, I admit I enjoyed Gladiator, a fun, well-made film. But then I saw other nominees Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon & Traffic and strongly preferred those. How can anyone vote for the "best" until they have seen them all. That is the purpose of the nomination system - to narrow down the field to 5 to make it easy for the Academy members to view the films. We all know they don't always do so, but when they proclaims they refuse to, and for such ugly reasons - ugh.