101 Greatest Films

Not my “greatest films,” but an attempt to synthesize a list of “greatest” by aggregating 60+ lists—Sight & Sound polls, AFI lists, various lists by directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, reasonably well-informed lists on specific cinemas like Hong Kong and Africa, and so on. The scoring system is weighted heavily in favor the Sight & Sound polls (all of them), and so this list is largely a sort of aggregate/consensus list of their results over the decades they’ve been doing that poll. So, for instance Jeanne Dielman drops from first to 33rd place in this long view of all the S&S polls.

1. Citizen Kane (1941)

2. Vertigo (1958)

3. The Rules of the Game (La Régle du Jeu) (1939)

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

5. Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari) (1953)

6. 8 1/2 (Eight and a Half / Otto e mezzo) (1963)

7. The Godfather (1972)

8. Persona (1966)

9. The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)

10. Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette) (1948)

11. Apocalypse Now (1979)

12. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

13. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) (1928)

14. Mirror (Zerkalo) (1975)

15. Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) (1960)

16. Taxi Driver (1976)

17. L’Atalante (1934)

18. Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek S Kinoapparatom) (1929)

19. Rashômon (1950)

20. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

21. In the Mood for Love (Dut Yeung Nin Wa) (2000)

22. The Searchers (1956)

23. Stalker (1979)

24. Ordet (The Word) (1955)

25. City Lights (1931)

26. Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) (1955)

27. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Rublyov) (1966)

28. Barry Lyndon (1975)

29. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

30. The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups) (1959)

31. Mulholland Drive (2001)

32. The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) (1966)

33. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

34. Playtime (1967)

35. Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin) (1925)

36. Psycho (1960)

37. Contempt (Le Mépris) (1963)

38. Beau Travail (1999)

39. The Godfather, Part II (1974)

40. L’Avventura (1960)

41. La Dolce Vita (1960)

42. Raging Bull (1980)

43. Some Like It Hot (1959)

44. Shoah (1985)

45. Goodfellas (1990)

46. Close-Up (Nema-ye Nazdik) (1990)

47. Late Spring (Banshun) (1949)

48. Do the Right Thing (1989)

49. La Strada (The Road) (1954)

50. Modern Times (1936)

51. Night of the Hunter (1955)

52. Cleo From 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7) (1962)

53. Come and See (Idi i Smotri) (1985)

54. A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s’est Échappé ou le Vent Souffle où il Veut) (1956)

55. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

56. Blade Runner (1982)

57. Fear Eats the Soul (Angst Essen Seele Auf) (1974)

58. Meshes Of The Afternoon (1943)

59. Rear Window (1954)

60. Viridiana (1961)

61. The Apartment (1960)

62. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

63. La Jetée (The Pier) (1962)

64. The Piano (1993)

65. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

66. M (1931)

67. Blue Velvet (1986)

68. The General (1926)

69. Fanny And Alexander (1982)

70. Ugetsu (or Ugetsu Monogatari) (1953)

71. Sans Soleil (Sunless) (1982)

72. Sátántangó (1994)

73. Touch of Evil (1958)

74. News from Home (1976)

75. Journey to Italy (aka Voyage to Italy) (1954)

76. Amarcord (1973)

77. Daisies (Sedmikrasky) (1966)

78. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo) (1964)

79. Jaws (1975)

80. The Red Shoes (1948)

81. Don’t Look Now (1973)

82. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

83. Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion) (1937)

84. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

85. Pickpocket (1959)

86. Touki Bouki (1973)

87. Killer Of Sheep (1978)

88. Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era una Volta il West) (1968)

89. The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) (1957)

90. Wanda (1971)

91. North By Northwest (1959)

92. Vagabond (Sans Toit ni Loi) (1985)

93. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

94. Kes (1969)

95. The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973)

96. The Gold Rush (1925)

97. Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968)

98. Metropolis (1927)

99. Salò, or 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le Centoventi Giornate di Sodoma) (1975)

100. The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970)

101. A Brighter Summer Day (Guling Jie Shaonian Sha Ren Shijian) (1991)

And finally, a personal disclosure: I have not seen 14 of these. One of the ones I haven’t seen is Goodfellas. I’ll leave it to you to guess what the others are.

Sources

To give you a sense of where this is coming from, here’s a partial list of the sources I used in compiling my overall list (much larger than just the 101 “greatest” listed here). In some cases, as with the National Film Registry, I haven’t necessarily kept up with changes or additions since my initial grab.

• Sight & Sound polls and other BFI lists
• AFI lists in various topic areas
• Roger Ebert’s Great Movies
• Mark Kermode: 50 films every film fan should watch
• The 100 best films of the 21st century – Guardian
• National Film Registry
• 100 Best Films of the 20th Century by the Village Voice Critics’ Poll
• Classics of modern South Korean cinema – Peter Bradshaw
• Japanese Movies All Time Best 200 (KineJun Readers)
• Martin Scorsese’s Favorite Movies: 60 Films the Director Wants You to See
• The 100 best movies of all time as chosen by actors – TimeOut
• Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies
• 20 Essential African Films You Need To Watch – Taste of Cinema
• African cinema: ten of the best – Guardian
• The 100 best Hong Kong movies – TimeOut
• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

If you know of reasonably authoritative/well-informed lists, particularly of African, Bollywood or Middle Eastern films, I’m always interested in new lists to integrate into my overall list. And until I have more for non American/Western European cinemas, my big list is always going to be skewed and incomplete.