Was ‘Wings’ Really the First Best Picture?

Most film buffs will probably tell you that director William Wellman’s “Wings” won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ very first best picture Oscar back in 1927-28.

But they may be wrong--or half wrong--according to noted film historian Richard Koszarski.

Koszarski--in his “An Evening’s Entertainment,” a comprehensive new history of the silent-feature era--claims there were essentially two winners that year: Paramount’s “Wings” and Fox’s “Sunrise.”

In fact, rather than a best picture award, there were two production awards. “Wings” won what was described on the ballot as “a Distinction Award for the most outstanding motion picture production, considering all elements that contribute to a motion picture’s greatness.”

“Sunrise” got a second Distinction Award “for the most unique, artistic, worthy and original production, without reference to cost or magnitude.”

The next year, however, the academy combined the Distinction Awards into a best picture Oscar--retroactively giving it to “Wings” alone.

Ironically, “Sunrise,” directed by the German emigre F.W. Murnau, retains a reputation among film scholars that eclipses all but a handful of subsequent best picture honorees.

Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien starred in the poetic fable about a symbolic battle between the country’s purity and the city’s evil allure. Murnau’s first American film was shot with such innovative, beautiful art direction and cinematography that it revolutionized filmmaking in its era.

In the mid-’50s, the staff of the influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema named “Sunrise” the greatest film of all time.

Today, it’s not even available on video.

Koszarski and many other cinema buffs feel “Sunrise” has been cheated of its proper recognition.

“I am in complete agreement,” says academy historian Patrick Stockstill.

Will the academy ever rectify the oversight?

“Probably not,” Stockstill replies. “Because that would be admitting the original decision was a mistake.”