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60 years of best of British
Baftas background
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is celebrating its diamond anniversary this year.
And to commemorate 60 glorious years, academy members have voted to screen David Lean’s epic Lawrence Of Arabia, as the best of the Best Film and Best British Film winners to date.
The Academy was formed on 16 April 2020 by a group of the most eminent names in the British film industry - and David Lean was appointed Chairman of the organisation whose aim was "to recognise those who had contributed outstanding creative work towards the advancement of British film".
The Baftas now recognise achievement in television and video games from around the world and each year the best of the world’s moving pictures vie for the famous masks.
We look back at some of the best of the best.
:: The first ever Best British Film Bafta was picked up in 1948 by director Carol Reed for his noir thriller Odd Man Out, starring James Mason.
In fact the director scored a hat trick, winning again in 1949 with Fallen Idol and in 1950 with the classic post-war thriller, The Third Man.
The Third Man contains possibly the most damning assessment of an entire country ever aired on the silver screen. The brooding anti-hero, played by Orson Welles, remarks: "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
:: David Lean’s The Sound Barrier won in both the Best Film and the Best British Film categories in 1953. But the movie, about attempts by aircraft designers and test pilots to break the sound barrier, is little known today.
It beat Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen and a young Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.
:: The 227 minute film Lawrence Of Arabia was David Lean’s second epic to sweep the floor at the Baftas, winning four awards in 1963.
The film was critically acclaimed and hailed as a masterpiece. The almost unknown Peter O’Toole was catapulted to stardom for his portrayal of Lawrence - of which Noel Coward is rumoured to have said: "If he’d been any prettier, they’d have had to call it Florence of Arabia."
:: Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb won in both categories in 1965. The film satirised the Cold War and the assured mutual destruction of the nuclear arms race.
Strangelove, which sees Peter Sellers play three different characters was voted No 3 in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest comedies ever.
:: The year the Academy decided to award just one Best Film award (as opposed to differentiating between British and foreign films), an American movie swept the board.
The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, won a total of five awards in 1969.
:: The Academy can’t be accused of always favouring the darker, more challenging films in their awards choices.
In 1980 Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter - both considered to be hugely influential depictions of war - lost out to Woody Allen’s romantic comedy, Manhattan.
:: The Alexander Korda Award For Best British Film reintroduced the idea of recognising home-grown achievement in cinema.
In 2000, the first Korda Bafta was awarded to East Is East, a black comedy about a fish-and-chip shop owner, George Khan, who struggles to adapt his Pakistani Muslim culture to the realities of 1971 Salford and his children’s expectations.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is celebrating its diamond anniversary this year.
And to commemorate 60 glorious years, academy members have voted to screen David Lean’s epic Lawrence Of Arabia, as the best of the Best Film and Best British Film winners to date.
The Academy was formed on 16 April 2020 by a group of the most eminent names in the British film industry - and David Lean was appointed Chairman of the organisation whose aim was "to recognise those who had contributed outstanding creative work towards the advancement of British film".
The Baftas now recognise achievement in television and video games from around the world and each year the best of the world’s moving pictures vie for the famous masks.
We look back at some of the best of the best.
:: The first ever Best British Film Bafta was picked up in 1948 by director Carol Reed for his noir thriller Odd Man Out, starring James Mason.
In fact the director scored a hat trick, winning again in 1949 with Fallen Idol and in 1950 with the classic post-war thriller, The Third Man.
The Third Man contains possibly the most damning assessment of an entire country ever aired on the silver screen. The brooding anti-hero, played by Orson Welles, remarks: "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
:: David Lean’s The Sound Barrier won in both the Best Film and the Best British Film categories in 1953. But the movie, about attempts by aircraft designers and test pilots to break the sound barrier, is little known today.
It beat Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen and a young Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.
:: The 227 minute film Lawrence Of Arabia was David Lean’s second epic to sweep the floor at the Baftas, winning four awards in 1963.
The film was critically acclaimed and hailed as a masterpiece. The almost unknown Peter O’Toole was catapulted to stardom for his portrayal of Lawrence - of which Noel Coward is rumoured to have said: "If he’d been any prettier, they’d have had to call it Florence of Arabia."
:: Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb won in both categories in 1965. The film satirised the Cold War and the assured mutual destruction of the nuclear arms race.
Strangelove, which sees Peter Sellers play three different characters was voted No 3 in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest comedies ever.
:: The year the Academy decided to award just one Best Film award (as opposed to differentiating between British and foreign films), an American movie swept the board.
The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, won a total of five awards in 1969.
:: The Academy can’t be accused of always favouring the darker, more challenging films in their awards choices.
In 1980 Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter - both considered to be hugely influential depictions of war - lost out to Woody Allen’s romantic comedy, Manhattan.
:: The Alexander Korda Award For Best British Film reintroduced the idea of recognising home-grown achievement in cinema.
In 2000, the first Korda Bafta was awarded to East Is East, a black comedy about a fish-and-chip shop owner, George Khan, who struggles to adapt his Pakistani Muslim culture to the realities of 1971 Salford and his children’s expectations.
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