John Wayne goes to Ireland for what should have won Best Picture for 1952

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: With the Oscars airing on Sunday, we look back at Best Picture nominees that should have won.
The Quiet Man (1952)
Almost everyone agrees on one thing about the 1952 Oscars: That Cecil B. DeMille’s punishingly long blockbuster three-ring soap opera The Greatest Show On Earth did not deserve to win Best Picture. What they tend to disagree on is which movie deserved the top award.
Generally speaking, no one ever goes to bat for Ivanhoe, the start of a loose cycle of Robert Taylor/Richard Thorpe medieval romances produced by MGM in the early-to-mid 1950s. And though John Huston’s Moulin Rouge—best known for its energetic camerawork and for its intentionally reduced black-red-white color palette—has plenty of fans, very few of them will argue that it should have won Best Picture. As far as nominated titles are concerned, the debate comes down to two movies: Fred Zinnemann’s suspenseful Western High Noon and John Ford’s rolling Irish pastoral The Quiet Man.