Top 100 Films of All Time

[soixante]

Here is my list of the Top 100.  These are not my favorite films -- these are the films I would select if I were teaching a Film 101 class and wanted the students to get a representative sample of film history.  I looked at different lists -- Ebert's, Time's, Halliwell, the AFI top 100, the IMDB top 100, Sight and Sound, and so forth.  There are probably good films that are missing, but I tried to be fair -- for example, have at least one Italian neo-realist film, one musical, one Fellini, some silent films, some Bergman, some French New Wave, some Westerns, some gangster films, some screwball comedies etc.  I also confined myself to films that are at least 10 years old.  There are probably some Chinese, Polish, German and Russian films that I have overlooked.  Bresson and Ophuls are missing from the list, as are other noteworthy directors.  I tried to limit the amount of Hitchcock films, hence Notorious, Rebecca, and Rear Window are missing.

I hope this will provoke some interesting discussion, and I'm curious to see what other people think should be added or deleted from the list.  The films are listed in no particular order:

1.  Citizen Kane
2.  Seven Samurai
3.  Lawrence of Arabia
4.  The Godfather
5.  Casablanca
6.  Battleship Potempkin
7.  Intolerance
8.  Seventh Seal
9.  8 1/2
10.  Raging Bull
11.  Birth of a Nation
12.  Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
13.  Metropolis
14.  Greed
15.  Sunrise
16.  Last Laugh
17.  Gold Rush
18.  Wizard of Oz
19.  Rules of the Game
20.  Grand Illusion
21.  Modern Times
22.  Passion of Joan of Arc
23.  King Kong
24.  39 Steps
25.  Lady Vanishes
26.  City Lights
27.  The General
28.  L'Atalante
29.  Bringing Up Baby
30.  His Girl Friday
31.  Stagecoach
32.  A Nous La Liberte
33.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
34.  Love Affair
35.  All Quiet on Western Front
36.  Dodsworth
37.  Maltese Falcon
38.  Bicycle Thief
39.  Children of Paradise
40.  Brief Encounter
41.  Open City
42.  Great Dictator
43.  Red Shoes
44.  White Heat
45.  It's a Wonderful Life
46.  Third Man
47.  Philadelphia Story
48.  Grapes of Wrath
49.  Red River
50.  Hamlet
51.  Lost Weekend
52.  Sullivan's Travels
53.  Double Indemnity
54.  Big Sleep
55.  Streetcar Named Desire
56.  On The Waterfront
57.  Rashomon
58.  Ikiru
59.  Tokyo Story
60.  Wild Strawberries
61.  The Searchers
62.  Some Like It Hot
63.  Sunset Boulevard
64.  Umberto D
65.  All About Eve
66.  Bridge Over River Kwai
67.  La Strada
68.  Singing in the Rain
69.  Shane
70.  Vertigo
71.  Touch of Evil
72.  African Queen
73.  Night of the Hunter
74.  Apu Trilogy
75.  High Noon
76.  Giant
77.  Rebel Without A Cause
78.  North by Northwest
79.  Psycho
80.  The Apartment
81.  La Dolce Vita
82.  Breathless
83.  400 Blows
84.  Hiroshima, Mon Amour
85.  Persona
86.  2001
87.  L'Aventura
88.  Belle de Jour
89.  Bonnie and Clyde
90.  Godfather II
91.  Chinatown
92.  Taxi Driver
93.  Star Wars
94.  Annie Hall
95.  Invasion of Body Snatchers (original)
96.  Safety Last
97.  Dr. Strangelove
98.  Pulp Fiction
99.  Treasure of the Sierra Madre
100.  Apocalypse Now

[Redlum]

I really like your list. As for changes: I wouldnt make Gold Rush the highest ranking Chaplin and Im not sure about the placement of The Maltese Falcon. Also, I would prefer to have the Hitchcocks you excluded in instead but apart from that,  .  

Shane is a really cool choice, too!

[soixante]

Kane tops the list, as everyone seems to agree it should be Number One, but the rest are not in order of quality or preference.   I was too lazy to put them in chronological order.  Sadly, Tati, Spielberg, Lynch and a bunch of other worthy directors were excluded.

Unlike the critics who put together the Time Top 100, I tried to put aside my own personal preferences.

[w/o horse]

Lists made for cinematic importance are less interesting to me than lists made for favorities, and I for one would be interested to see a list of your one hundred favorite movies, especially to compare against this list of one hundred you already made.

The Lost Weekend being on the list I don't agree with, and Jaws not being on the list I also don't agree with.

[soixante]

Jaws should probably make the cut, but I felt like obscure French movies like L'Atalante and A Nous La Liberte had to be on there, even without Tati and Ophuls and Bresson and Cocteau.  I have a fondness for French cinema.  I also neglected Wages of Fear, Great Expectations, Alexander Nevsky, Day for Night, Schindler's List, Blade Runner, Eraserhead. Fanny and Alexander.

[w/o horse]

Yeah but if it's for a hypothetical film history class how could you skip entirely over Spielberg?

[Kal]

Nice list... but definetly not THE list for me

[life_boy]

Lists made for cinematic importance are less interesting to me than lists made for favorities, and I for one would be interested to see a list of your one hundred favorite movies, especially to compare against this list of one hundred you already made.

I'm interested to see the Soixante: 100 Favorite Films list also.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

It's cool you made this list, after looking it over, it seems pretty sound.

Of course there are changes to be made, but when you make a definite top 100 list, it's going to be hard.

[Gamblour.]

Hmm it's AFI meets Ebert with a hint of IMDb.

[soixante]

As for my own favorites -- keep in mind I have a separate list for foreign language films.  Also, I admit that I am not a fan of science fiction and horror films.  You will notice a preponderance of 70's films.

Top Twenty -- in order of preference:

1.  Mean Streets
2.  Taxi Driver
3.  American Graffiti
4.  McCabe and Mrs. Miller
5.  Midnight Cowboy
6.  MASH
7.  Barry Lyndon
8.  Shampoo
9.  Deer Hunter
10.  Easy Rider
11.  Boogie Nights
12.  Deliverance
13.  Dazed and Confused
14.  Star 80
15.  Melvin and Howard
16.  Dog Day Afternoon
17.  A Clockwork Orange
18.  Five Easy Pieces
19.  Pulp Fiction
20.  The Godfather

After that, in no particular order:

21.  Wizard of Oz
22.  Citizen Kane
23.  It's a Wonderful Life
24.  Sunset Boulevard
25.  A Streetcar Named Desire
26.  The Searchers
27.  Singing in the Rain
28.  An American in Paris
29.  Touch of Evil
30.  North by Northwest
31.  Psycho
32.  Blow Up
33.  Point Blank
34.  Bonnie and Clyde
35.  2001
36.  Rosemary's Baby
37.  The Graduate
38.  Shadows
39.  Wild Bunch
40.  Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid
41.  Straw Dogs
42.  Carnal Knowledge
43.  Dirty Harry
44.  The Sting
45.  Parallax View
46.  Lenny
47.  The Gambler
48.  Nashville
49.  One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
50.  Carrie
51.  Rocky
52.  All The President's Men
53.  Annie Hall
54.  Days of Heaven
55.  All That Jazz
56.  Manhattan
57.  Black Stallion
58.  California Split
59.  Long Goodbye
60.  Scarecrow
61.  Citizen's Band
62.  Star Wars
63.  Raging Bull
64.  Big Red One
65.  Tootsie
66.  Spinal Tap
67.  Something Wild
68.  Blue Velvet
69.  Hannah and Her Sisters
70.  Rain Man
71.  Airplane
72.  Animal House
73.  Street Smart
74.  Raiders of the Lost Ark
75.  sex, lies and videotape
76.  GoodFellas
77.  The Player
78.  Unforgiven
79.  Reservoir Dogs
80.  True Romance
81.  Short Cuts
82.  Casino
83.  People vs. Larry Flynt
84.  Titanic
85.  Thin Red Line
86.  Saving Private Ryan
87.  Affliction
88.  Go
89.  Magnolia
90.  Blue Collar
91.  Traffic
92.  Black and White
93.  Mystic River
94.  Falcon and Snowman
95.  Who'll Stop the Rain
96.  Last Tango in Paris
97.  Badlands
98.  Monty Python and the Holy Grail
99.  Harold and Maude
100.  Last Detail

[Pubrick]

Here is my list of the Top 100.  These are not my favorite films -- these are the films I would select if I were teaching a Film 101 class and wanted the students to get a representative sample of film history.

1.  Citizen Kane
2.  Seven Samurai
3.  Lawrence of Arabia
4.  The Godfather
5.  Casablanca
6.  Battleship Potempkin
7.  Intolerance
8.  Seventh Seal
9.  8 1/2
10.  Raging Bull
11.  Birth of a Nation
12.  Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
13.  Metropolis
14.  Greed
15.  Sunrise
16.  Last Laugh
17.  Gold Rush
18.  Wizard of Oz
19.  Rules of the Game
20.  Grand Illusion
21.  Modern Times
22.  Passion of Joan of Arc
23.  King Kong
24.  39 Steps
25.  Lady Vanishes
26.  City Lights
27.  The General
28.  L'Atalante
29.  Bringing Up Baby
30.  His Girl Friday
31.  Stagecoach
32.  A Nous La Liberte
33.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
34.  Love Affair
35.  All Quiet on Western Front
36.  Dodsworth
37.  Maltese Falcon
38.  Bicycle Thief
39.  Children of Paradise
40.  Brief Encounter
41.  Open City
42.  Great Dictator
43.  Red Shoes
44.  White Heat
45.  It's a Wonderful Life
46.  Third Man
47.  Philadelphia Story
48.  Grapes of Wrath
49.  Red River
50.  Hamlet
51.  Lost Weekend
52.  Sullivan's Travels
53.  Double Indemnity
54.  Big Sleep
55.  Streetcar Named Desire
56.  On The Waterfront
57.  Rashomon
58.  Ikiru
59.  Tokyo Story
60.  Wild Strawberries
61.  The Searchers
62.  Some Like It Hot
63.  Sunset Boulevard
64.  Umberto D
65.  All About Eve
66.  Bridge Over River Kwai
67.  La Strada
68.  Singing in the Rain
69.  Shane
70.  Vertigo
71.  Touch of Evil
72.  African Queen
73.  Night of the Hunter
74.  Apu Trilogy
75.  High Noon
76.  Giant
77.  Rebel Without A Cause
78.  North by Northwest
79.  Psycho
80.  The Apartment
81.  La Dolce Vita
82.  Breathless
83.  400 Blows
84.  Hiroshima, Mon Amour
85.  Persona

no kubrick in the top 85. this list sucks donkey balls and ur students would come out retarded.

[Myxo]

no kubrick in the top 85. this list sucks donkey balls and ur students would come out retarded.

After that, in no particular order:

[Pubrick]

well in that case: only one kubrick in the whole 100.. same comment applies.

[Rudie Obias]

no robert altman?  NASHVILLE should be somewhere on that list.