The Big Picture

• The Oscars are often focused on American cinema, but there have been international films that have won in regular categories, like Marie-Louise in 1945.
• Marie-Louise's win predates the creation of the Best International Feature Film category, showing that international recognition was a rarity at that time.
• While there have been international wins at the Oscars over the years, the Academy still has a long way to go in recognizing the diversity and wonders of worldwide cinema.

Though they often present themselves as a celebration of the best in world cinema, there's no denying that the Oscars are extremely American-centric. As Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho once put it, they are "very local". Still, that doesn't mean that, every now and then, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science doesn't make an effort to become a little more global. Back in 2019, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, for instance, made history by becoming the first non-American, non-English-speaking narrative film to take home the coveted Best Picture award. It is one heck of a milestone, but one that came walking in the footsteps of many other international wins at the Oscars. You see, even though Parasite's is without a doubt an important moment in the Academy Awards' history, this movie is not the first non-American production to win an Oscar of any kind – that accolade belongs to 1944 film, Marie-Louise.

We're not talking, here, about Best International Feature Film winners, a category in which Parasite also emerged victorious. With its own set of rules, the Best International Feature Film Oscar is almost a separate ceremony in and of itself, a race to which each country nominates its strongest competitor. No, what we're looking at here are the regular Oscar categories that are meant to honor films released commercially in the US no matter where they come from. Though this is not often what happens, with American movies dominating the lists of both nominees and winners, there have been cases of international films winning the famous filmmaking trophy in competition against US-produced films.

What Was the First International Movie To Win an Oscar?

In the immediate aftermath of the horrors of World War II, Leopold Lindtberg, Hermann Haller, and Franz Schnyder's Marie-Louise is a drama about a young girl who's evacuated to Switzerland after the German invasion of France, in 1942. Traumatized by the things she witnesses in her home country, she becomes overly attached to her rich adoptive family and has trouble dealing with the fact that she must return home once the war is over. Spoken in German and French, the film was widely acclaimed in the US, where it was released in 1944, and when the time for the Oscars came, there was a spot waiting for it in the Best Original Screenplay category. With a script by Richard Schweizer, Marie-Louise ran against Dillinger (Philip Yordan), Music for Millions (Myles Connolly), Salty O'Rourke (Milton Holmes), and What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (Harry Kurnitz). It was an extremely US-centric list of nominees, complete with gangster films and an American, comic look on war. Marie-Louise stood tall as the sole exception. And, against all odds, Schweizer's screenplay was the one that took home the gold, making Marie-Louise the very first non-American film to win an Oscar.

'Marie Louise's Oscar Win Predates the Best International Feature Film Award

Marie-Louise's victory even predates the creation of the Best International Feature Film - or, at the time, Best Foreign Film - category. Federico Fellini's La Strada would only win the prize in 1956, more than ten years after Marie-Louise's victory. Still, the Swiss war film was not the first non-American project to be nominated for an Oscar. However, it also wasn't just another entry in a long list of international nominees. Marie-Louise was actually the third movie ever not to hail from the United States and not to be spoken in English to be nominated for an Academy Award. It was preceded by Jean Renoir's World War I drama Grand Illusion and by René Clair's À Nous la Liberté. Both hailing from France, the latter was nominated for Best Art Direction (or Best Production Design, as the award is now called) in 1932, but ended up losing to William K. Howard's Transatlantic, while the former ran for Best Picture in 1938, the year in which Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You was crowned with the Academy's greatest honor.

There was also a "foreign" documentary that won an Oscar before Marie-Louise. In 1942, the Soviet movie Moscow Strikes Back, chronicling the battle for Moscow during World War II took home the award for Best Documentary Feature, in the very first year of the category in the Academy Awards. Still, Moscow's case is a little odd, since the movie only won the award for its English-dubbed version, and not for the original thing conceived by directors Ilya Kopalin and Leonid Varlamov.

The Academy Still Has a Long Way To Go When It Comes to Representation

After Marie-Louise made the first move, however, there have been many international films graced with Academy Awards in regular categories - meaning not just in the very specific one devoted to them. Even actors and actresses have won awards for performances in languages other than English, starting with Sophia Loren's 1961 win for Best Actress for Vittorio DeSica's Two Women. But, in the first decades of the 21st century, with the Academy nearing its 100th anniversary, international cinema still keeps getting firsts. Besides Parasite's historical win in 2019, there was Alfonso Cuarón's victory for Best Directing in 2018. Cuarón was the first person ever to win a directing award for a movie not spoken in English. Is it American, though? Yes, to some extent: despite being spoken in Spanish and Mixtec and taking place entirely in Mexico, Roma is a co-production between the United States and Mexico.

This goes to show that, despite honoring international movies from time to time, the Academy still has a long way to go to truly recognize the wonders of worldwide cinema. Sure, there are international films that have won the Oscars, and Parasite is far from being the first one. However, while Marie-Louise was not a one-of-a-kind occurrence, it was also not the beginning of a long and proud tradition. International wins still remain too sporadic for viewers to truly consider the Academy Awards to be anything but a local ceremony, to once again paraphrase Bong Joon-ho.