The 100 Best Films Ever
Here is a list compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, a website devoted to movies. They set out to make the ultimate “Best of” movie list by compiling together many different “Best of” lists from other prominent organizations and directors. By determining what movies were consistantly on these lists, they were able to come up with what they think is a pretty good representation of the 100 movies generally thought of as “the best.” Count how many you’ve seen below. I’ll tell you my count at the end of the list.
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Citizen Kane (Welles, Orson; 1941; US)
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The Rules of the Game / La Regle du jeu (Renoir, Jean; 1939; France)
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Vertigo (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1958; US)
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2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, Stanley; 1968; UK)
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8½ (Fellini, Federico; 1963; Italy)
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The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, Akira; 1954; Japan)
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The Godfather (Coppola, Francis; 1972; US)
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Tokyo Story / Tokyo monogatari (Ozu, Yasujiro; 1953; Japan)
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The Searchers (Ford, John; 1956; US)
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Singin’ in the Rain (Donen, Stanley/Gene Kelly; 1952; US)
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Sunrise (Murnau, F.W.; 1927; US)
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Battleship Potemkin / Potemkin (Eisenstein, Sergei; 1925; Russia)
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Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, David; 1962; UK)
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The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, Carl; 1928; France)
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Rashomon (Kurosawa, Akira; 1950; Japan)
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L’Atalante (Vigo, Jean; 1934; France)
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Bicycle Thieves / The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, Vittorio; 1948; Italy)
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The Godfather Part II (Coppola, Francis; 1974; US)
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Raging Bull (Scorsese, Martin; 1980; US)
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The Third Man (Reed, Carol; 1949; UK)
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City Lights (Chaplin, Charles; 1931; US)
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Touch of Evil (Welles, Orson; 1958; US)
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La Dolce Vita (Fellini, Federico; 1960; Italy)
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Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise (Carne, Marcel; 1945; France)
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Casablanca (Curtiz, Michael; 1942; US)
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La Grande Illusion / Grand Illusion (Renoir, Jean; 1937; France)
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The General [1926] (Keaton, Buster/Clyde Bruckman; 1926; US)
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Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, Billy; 1950; US)
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Psycho [1960] (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1960; US)
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Breathless / A Bout de Souffle (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1959; France)
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L’Avventura (Antonioni, Michelangelo; 1960; Italy/France)
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Some Like it Hot (Wilder, Billy; 1959; US)
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Jules et Jim (Truffaut, Francois; 1961; France)
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Persona (Bergman, Ingmar; 1966; Sweden)
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Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, Stanley; 1964; UK)
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The Seventh Seal (Bergman, Ingmar; 1957; Sweden)
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The Gold Rush (Chaplin, Charles; 1925; US)
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Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1966; Russia)
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Taxi Driver (Scorsese, Martin; 1976; US)
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Chinatown (Polanski, Roman; 1974; US)
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Ordet (Dreyer, Carl; 1955; Denmark)
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Pather Panchali (Ray, Satyajit; 1955; India)
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It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, Frank; 1946; US)
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Apocalypse Now (Coppola, Francis; 1979; US)
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Rear Window (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1954; US)
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Intolerance (Griffith, D.W.; 1916; US)
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Ugetsu Monogatari / Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, Kenji; 1953; Japan)
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The 400 Blows / Les Quatre Cents Coups (Truffaut, Francois; 1959; France)
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Contempt / Le Mepris (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1963; France/Italy)
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Au Hasard, Balthazar / Balthazar (Bresson, Robert; 1966; France)
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The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, Orson; 1942; US)
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The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, Charles; 1955; US)
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M (Lang, Fritz; 1931; Germany)
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Wild Strawberries / Smultronsället (Bergman, Ingmar; 1957; Sweden)
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The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, Sam; 1969; US)
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Modern Times (Chaplin, Charles; 1936; US)
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The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, Victor; 1939; US)
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The Conformist (Bertolucci, Bernardo; 1969; Italy/France/Germany)
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La Strada (Fellini, Federico; 1954; Italy)
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The Mirror / Zerkalo (Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1976; Russia)
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Nashville (Altman, Robert; 1975; US)
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Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, Ingmar; 1982; Sweden)
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North by Northwest (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1959; US)
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Greed (von Stroheim, Erich; 1924; US)
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Metropolis (Lang, Fritz; 1926; Germany)
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Blade Runner (Scott, Ridley; 1982; US)
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Rio Bravo (Hawks, Howard; 1959; US)
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Earrings of Madame de… / Madame de… (Ophuls, Max; 1953; France/Italy)
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Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, Buster; 1924; US)
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Pickpocket (Bresson, Robert; 1959; France)
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Playtime (Tati, Jacques; 1967; France)
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L’Age d’Or (Bunuel, Luis; 1930; France)
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Ikiru / To Live / Doomed / Living (Kurosawa, Akira; 1952; Japan)
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All About Eve (Mankiewicz, Joseph L.; 1950; US)
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Voyage in Italy / Viaggio in Italia / Journey to Italy (Rossellini, Roberto; 1953; Italy)
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The Apartment (Wilder, Billy; 1960; US)
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Viridiana (Bunuel, Luis; 1961; Spain)
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Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, Werner; 1972; Germany)
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Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, Stanley; 1975; UK)
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On the Waterfront (Kazan, Elia; 1954; US)
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Pierrot le fou (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1965; France/Italy)
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Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, Dziga; 1929; USSR)
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Blue Velvet (Lynch, David; 1986; US)
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Nosferatu (Murnau, F.W.; 1922; Germany)
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The Leopard (Visconti, Luchino; 1963; Italy)
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Notorious (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1946; US)
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Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, Sergio; 1968; Italy/US)
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Gone with the Wind (Fleming, Victor; 1939; US)
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Sansho the Bailiff / Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi, Kenji; 1954; Japan)
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His Girl Friday (Hawks, Howard; 1940; US)
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Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, Alain; 1961; France/Italy)
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My Darling Clementine (Ford, John; 1946; US)
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A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, Stanley; 1971; UK)
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Dekalog / Decalogue (Kieslowski, Krszystof; 1988; Poland)
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Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, Max; 1948; US)
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King Kong (Cooper, Merian C./Ernest B. Schoedsack; 1933; US)
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Amarcord (Fellini, Federico; 1973; Italy)
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Duck Soup (McCarey, Leo; 1933; US)
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Stagecoach (Ford, John; 1939; US)
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, John; 1962; US)
So how many did you get? Leave a comment with the number. I’ve seen 41 of them.
(Another common list is the AFI 100 Best American Movies. The reason I like the this list better than the AFI list is because the AFI does not include foreign films. You can see the AFI list of movies here.)
