It’s worth remembering that one of the most esteemed films of all time stemmed from a pretty pulpy, if undeniably page-turning, source novel. Francis Ford Coppola actually didn’t really want to adapt Mario Puzo‘s The Godfather initially, agreeing to it mainly because American Zoetrope had fallen on hard times. Written by Coppola and Puzo along with Robert Towne as an uncredited script doctor, the film is widely considered superior to the book thanks to the removal of unnecessary subplots and a cleaner focus on characters and examining the corruption of power.
It seems like fate and alchemy played equal parts in this, but The Godfather became a masterpiece, with the Oscar-winning screenplay hailed by many as the finest ever written. There’s certainly a reason for this, but there are, in fact, three film scripts, and only three, that are even better. It’s certainly worth noting that, like The Godfather, all three screenplays discussed here won Oscars. proving that sometimes, though certainly not always, the Academy can get it right. Ranked from great to the very greatest, these are the only three screenplays that are even better than The Godfather.
3
‘Casablanca’ (1942)
Written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looking at each other in Casablanca (1942).Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
If we as a species have definitively decided that “Somehow, Palpatine returned” is undeniably the worst line of dialogue ever written (it is, and we have), there are several lines in Casablanca that could easily rank as the best. It’s been reported that early on, Ingrid Bergman was reluctant to star in her most iconic film out of concern that Casablanca would be a reductive, dime-a-dozen wartime propaganda film, the type none of which we’re still talking about in 2026. Casablanca endures as much as any classic film for many reasons, but above all is the script, a relentlessly witty, fast-paced drama focused on a love triangle between three characters who can’t have everything they want, and are ultimately willing to make considerable sacrifices for the greater good in humanity’s darkest hour.
The screenplay’s greatness comes certainly in part from its endless quotability, but also from the high stakes and the undeniably moving melodrama. The actors are invaluable here, with Humphrey Bogart‘s reluctant hero Rick Blaine often ranked among the best film heroes ever.Roger Ebert long maintained that he believed Citizen Kane was the best movie ever made, though he’s on record saying Casablanca might be the one he enjoyed the most. In adding Casablanca to his “Great Movies” collection of the finest movies ever made, the critic said:
If we identify strongly with the characters in some movies, then it is no mystery that “Casablanca” is one of the most popular films ever made. It is about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose. This is immensely appealing; the viewer is not only able to imagine winning the love of Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, but unselfishly renouncing it, as a contribution to the great cause of defeating the Nazis.
2
‘Chinatown’ (1974)
Written by Robert Towne
Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes with a broken nose looking ahead in Chinatown.Image via Paramount Pictures
“Most people never have to face the fact that in the right time and the right place, they are capable of everything.” Screenwriter Robert Towne has said “the futility of good intentions” was the inspiration for Chinatown, an original story that honored the expectations of classic film noir detective movies while subverting them in significant, sometimes shocking ways. This is the most essential, and many would say the best, neo-noir film ever made.
Towne wrote the protagonist specifically for Jack Nicholson, as the two had long been friends and even roommates. The actor plays jaded detective Jake Gittes, who’s tasked with investigating Los Angeles’ water commissioner before uncovering disturbing corruption that goes all the way to the top. Faye Dunaway co-stars as Evelyn Mulwray. She’s initially expected to be a more classical femme fatale, though she’s ultimately the tragic heroine of the piece.
Chinatown‘s greatness stems from artistic collaboration and confrontation. Towne and director Roman Polanski famously disagreed on the ending. Towne originally had penned something a little more measured, perhaps even conventional, with Evelyn in police custody after killing the monster Noah Cross (John Huston). Polanski insisted on pure melodramatic devastation, with Evelyn shot in the back of the head and the only innocent in the narrative firmly in the clutches of evil. It’s a good thing Polanski prevailed; many call it the best ending in movie history. It’s a horrifying release that’s the perfect balance to the densely plotted two hours that precede it.
1
‘All About Eve’ (1950)
Written by Joseph Mankiewicz
Critic Addison DeWitt talking with Margo Channing in a conversationImage via 20th Century Fox
“Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you.” Along with The Godfather, All About Eve is one of those undisputed classics that holds up as one of the great Best Picture winners ever. Based on a slim story in Cosmopolitan, “The Wisdom of Eve,” and inspired by a real-life incident, All About Eve is a timeless drama that holds a tied record for most Oscar nominations in history, along with La La Land and Titanic, all the more remarkable for how ambitious these films were across technical categories. All About Eve is a movie where people talk to each other in different rooms for 138 minutes. The script is the thing.
Bette Davis, who actually was hired a week before filming as a replacement for Claudette Colbert, delivers her most iconic performance as complicated, aging, bitchy and intensely sympathetic theater star Margo Channing, who becomes deeply insecure as she fears a young aspiring starlet (Anne Baxter) is circling her very existence. Davis was infamous for taking over productions and re-writing scripts, but here she knew the strength of the material she was working with; she famously didn’t touch what was on the page.
All About Eve has about ten major characters, and they drive the plot entirely with their hyper-literate, frequently hilarious dialogue. The characters are hyper-literate and impossibly clever, yet somehow not a word of the dialogue feels written. For all the complications of the interpersonal drama, a big part of why it’s so potent 76 years later is that we can recognize and relate with what motivates these people. They’re all seeking love, or in the case of emotional defectives like Eve Harrington or theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), the villains of the piece, a bastardization of love that suits them. The more sympathetic characters are simply seeking meaning, connection and approval. There’s a strong case to be made for this being the most perfectly constructed screenplay of all time.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
