With the DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases of Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version of West Side Story, this is a good time to take a look at Spielberg’s Oscar history, his many nominated and award-winning films having long been available on home video.

Spielberg is the most successful of living producer-directors. He has more than fifty directorial credits and almost two-hundred producing credits. He has nineteen Oscar nominations and three wins, fifteen BAFTA nominations and four wins, as well as numerous other nominations, wins, and honorary awards. Despite all that, he is generally rated below his less awarded contemporary, Martin Scorsese, in critics’ polls of the greatest living directors.

Although Spielberg made his big screen debut with 1974’s The Sugarland Express, it was, however, his second film, 1975’s Jaws, the first summer blockbuster, that established him and changed the way films have been distributed ever since. Nominated for 4 Oscars, Spielberg was the only director of the year’s five Best Picture nominees not to be nominated for Best Director. He was passed over in favor of Federico Fellini for Italy’s Amarcord. Jaws won 3 of the Oscars it was nominated for, but it was Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that won Best Picture and Best Director.

Spielberg’s next film, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the year’s second most popular science-fiction film behind Star Wars. Nominated for 8 Oscars, it won for Best Cinematography along with a special award for Sound Effects Editing. Although Spielberg was nominated for Best Director, the film missed out on a Best Picture nomination. In an unusual circumstance, the directors of all five Best Picture nominees filled the other four slots. That’s because Herbert Ross had two films in contention, The Goodbye Girl and The Turning Point, earning his directorial nomination for the latter. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won Best Picture and Director.

Next came 1979’s 1941, a ludicrous farce that nevertheless received 3 Oscar nominations. It did, however, change the trajectory of Spielberg’s career in that all his future war films would be deadly serious, earning a multitude of awards that they richly deserved.

Spielberg’s next film was the 1981 summer blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark, which received 8 Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Director and won 4 plus yet another special award for Sound Effects Editing. It has spawned three sequels and a TV series to date. Chariots of Fire won the Oscar for Best Picture while Warren Beatty won Best Director for Reds.

Spielberg’s 1982 summer blockbuster, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, became his best reviewed film to date. It was nominated for 9 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, and won 4 including Best Sound Effects Editing, which was now a regular Oscar category. It lost Best Picture and Director to Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.

Next up was 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which was nominated for 2 Oscars and won 1 for Best Visual effects. Then came 1985’s The Color Purple, which was nominated for 11 Oscars including Best Picture but not Best Director, a major shock. Once again, Spielberg was passed over in favor of the director of a foreign language film, this time Japan’s Akira Kurosawa for Ran. An even bigger shock came when the film failed to receive any Oscars. Best Picture and Director went to Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa.

Spielberg’s next six films all received Oscar nominations but no Best Picture or Best Director citations. They were 1987’s Empire of the Sun (6 nominations), 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (3 nominations, 1 win), 1989’s Always (3 nominations), 1991’s Hook (5 nominations), and 1993’s Jurassic Park (3 nominations, 3 wins). Then came his undisputed masterpiece, 1993’s Schindler’s List, which was nominated for 12 Oscars and won 7 including Best Picture and Best Director, both of which went to Spielberg.

1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park received 1 Oscar nomination while the same year’s Amistad received 4. 1998’s Saving Private Ryan once again put Spielberg in the winner’s circle. Nominated for 11 Oscars, it won 5 including Best Director. It lost Best Picture in a major upset to Shakespeare in Love.

Spielberg’s next three films received Oscar nominations but no wins. 2001’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence received 2 nominations, 2002’s Minority Report received 1, and the same year’s Catch Me If You Can received 2. 2004’s The Terminal became the first Spielberg film since The Sugarland Express not to receive any Oscar attention.

2005’s War of the Worlds was nominated for 3 Oscars and the same year’s Munich was nominated for 5 including Best Picture and Best Director. Both came away empty-handed. Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain while Crash won Best Picture in a major upset.

The following year, Spielberg received a Best Picture nomination for Letters from Iwo Jima, which he produced but did not direct. The Clint Eastwood film is the only film he has received an Oscar nomination for that he did not direct. It lost to The Departed for which Martin Scorsese won Best Director, his only Oscar to date.

Oscar ignored Spielberg’s 2008 contender, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and gave only 1 nomination to 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin. That same year’s War Horse received 6 nominations including one for Best Picture but not Best Director.

2012’s Lincoln, nominated for 12 Oscars, put Spielberg once again in serious contention for Best Picture and Best Director but the film won only two Oscars. It lost Best Picture to Argo while Spielberg lost Best Director once again to Ang Lee, this time for Life of Pi.

2015’s Bridge of Spies was nominated for 6 Oscars including Best Picture but not Best Director. It won 1. Oscar ignored 2016’s The BFG and gave 2017’s The Post a mere 2 nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress (Meryl Streep). 2018’s Ready Player One was nominated for 1 Oscar.

West Side Story has been nominated for 7 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. Spielberg’s toughest competition comes from Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog in both categories. The last time they were both nominated was 1993 when Campion won for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Piano but lost Best Director to Spielberg for Schindler’s List as did the film.

This week’s new releases include Oscar nominee West Side Story and Red Rocket.