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I created this list for a group I use to meet with to discu
ss movies. Since I went to all the trouble to create it, I thought I would share it.
First, some explanations and qualifications.
It is a personal record. It’s not an objective list of the movies that are generally considered to be the greatest, but the films that I feel are the greatest.
I have, at times, cheated (yes, it’s true) and combined some movies together, such as Godfather I and II.
I begin with listing my favorite film followed by my next two favorites (I did this because it was part of the requirements of the group).
After the top three films, I listed my next seven in alphabetical order.
And then the final 90, listed also in alphabetical order.
At the very end, I decided to include a number of titles that were released theatrically, or have been shown theatrically, but were really made for television, and therefore didn’t exactly qualify for this list.
TOP THREE FILMS
2001: A Space Odyssey
Vertigo
Maltese Falcon, The
THE NEXT SEVEN
Magnificent Ambersons, The
Rules of the Game, The
Seven Samurai, The
Seventh Seal, The
Shadow of a Doubt
Singing in the Rain
Strangers on a Train
THE FINAL NINETY
400 Blows, The |
Airplane |
All About Eve |
Amarcord |
Annie Hall |
Ashes and Diamonds |
Awful Truth, The |
Big Sleep, The |
Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant, The |
Breathless |
Bringing Up Baby |
Cabaret |
Cache |
Casablanca |
Cat People |
Children of Paradise |
Chinatown |
Citizen Kane |
Close Encounters of the Third Kind |
Code Unknown |
Contempt |
Crowd, The |
Day for Night |
Diary of a Country Priest, The |
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The |
Double Life of Veronique, The |
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb |
Duck Soup |
Fargo |
Fox and His Friends |
General, The |
Godfather, Parts I and II, The |
Gold Rush, The |
GoodFellas |
Gospel According to St. Matthew, The |
Great Dictator, The |
Hail, The Conquering Hero |
Hara Kiri |
Hard Day’s Night, A |
High and Low |
High Noon |
Human Condition, Parts I, II and III, The |
I Walked With a Zombie |
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 and 1978) |
It Happened One Night |
John Ford’s Calvary Trilogy (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, Rio Grande) |
L’avventura |
La ceremonie |
La dolce vita |
La jetee |
La ronde |
Lady Eve, The |
Last Year at Marienbad |
Leopard, The |
Les diaboleques |
Lolita |
Lord of the Rings, The |
Love and Death |
M |
Metropolis |
Murmur of the Heart |
Once Upon a Time in the West |
Palm Beach Story, The |
Passion of Joan of Arc, The |
Persona |
Pickpocket |
Potemkin |
Psycho |
Pulp Fiction |
Raging Bull |
Rashomon |
Rebel Without a Cause |
Rome: Open City |
Smiles of a Summer Night |
Solaris |
Stagecoach |
Talk to Her |
The Lady Vanishes, The |
Third Man, The |
Three Colors: Blue, White, Red |
To Be or Not to Be |
To Have and to Have Not |
Tokyo Story |
Top Hat |
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The |
Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The |
Wages of Fear, The |
Wild Bunch, The |
Wizard of Oz, The |
The following is a list of made for TV series and movies made by major filmmakers
Fanny and Alexander
World on a Wire
Scenes from a Marriage
The Decalogue
Berlin Alexanderplatz
The Best of Youth
Screenwriters always go deep with titles. I’m saying, I don’t know most of those movies but there, there’s Lord of the rings and God father. I love scarface too. Nice blog by the way
Thanks for reading. I like the original Scareface and I like the first half of the remake. For me, the second half sort of gets out of control and goes off the deep end, but I have a lot of friends who really love it.
Hmmm. No Pontecorvo (Burn, Battle of Algiers), no Costa-Gravas (Z, Missing, Amen), no Year of Living Dangerously. Instead of Sunset Blvd we have Singing in the Rain: Ahh those rose colored glasses; let’s forget the ugly under-belly of post-war America by watching Gene Kelly’s mesmerizing smile atop flashing feet. No thanks, I prefer depressing reality to false positivity. And there’s more reality and humor in seeing machismo lampooned than celebrated; thus I’d prefer The Russians Are Coming to Raging Bull. For romance I’d have to add Trust by Hal Hartley and Bliss by Ray Lawrence, Australia 1985 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088821/], The Princess Bride; more delightful pound for pound than It Happened One Night, but if you want something from the period (thirties) I’d pick My Man Godfrey over that one. No Brazil, no Time Bandits… The Wild Bunch—really? Peckinpah is on my list—of most pointlessly brutal filmmakers, though he has a lot of company these days. Must we menfolk celebrate idiocy into eternity?
Hi from Charles Fredricks. Hope to make it back to the group one of these days. A documentary takes precedence.
Thanks for reading. Well, I can’t have every movie on my list, I had to make some choices since I only could chose 100. You do have some worthy choices up there. I think I have quite a few films that are depressing when it comes to dealing with reality from Hari Kari to The Human Condition to M to Goodfellows. I may not have enough from post war America, but I hardly think that qualifies me as having rose colored glasses.
Howard, your credibility just took a nose-dive with me, I’m afraid – while you have some great choices on your list, I find it unforgivable that you left out Gone With The Wind – you rate Godfather 3 before GWTW? You serious? Personally, I think it’s the greatest movie ever made, considering it was made in 1939 and few templates preceding it, it was mostly “new” cinema at the time re how to tell a story and technique – Solaris in the top 100? Okay, each to their own and I know, it’s your list, haha.
There are many things I like about GWTW, mainly the acting of Leigh and Gable and some magnificent scenes like the train station with the wounded and dying. And the theme, which was popular at the beginning of the depression, that people like Scarlett are not good people, but are necessary for our survival, I’ve always found interesting. But I’m sorry. I just don’t get it. Who would ever want Leslie Howard when they could have Clark Gable. It just never made any sense to me.