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Watch 50 Years of Oscar-Winning Cinematography in 11 Minutes

Michele Debczak|
Vilmos Zsigmond won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 1978 for Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977).
Vilmos Zsigmond won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 1978 for Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977). | Sunset Boulevard/GettyImages

From black-and-white film to motion-capture blue people, the visual style of the Academy Awards’ annual nominees has come a long way. To see just how much the medium of cinema has changed in half a century, check out the video below.

This compilation from the YouTube channel @vgcuts features clips from every Best Cinematography Oscar winner from 1967 through 2021. Though the Best Cinematography category dates back to the first-ever Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, black-and-white and color films weren’t considered together until 1967 (barring one attempt to combine the categories for the 1957 awards, which was reversed the following year).

The video opens with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the film many scholars credit with ushering in the New Hollywood movement. Works from auteur directors of this era—including Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola—dominate the Best Cinematography category throughout the late ’60s and ’70s.

The supercut traces cinema history though the 2000s, when the Best Cinematography winners underwent their biggest change in decades. Many winners from this era rely on special effects and CGI as much as real-world photography, with modern examples including Avatar (2009), Life of Pi (2012), Gravity (2013), and Dune (2021).

When the 95th annual Academy Awards air on March 12, 2023, a new DP and feature will be added to this impressive list of Best Cinematography Oscar winners. Here are some memorable firsts from Oscars history to read before the big event.

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