The Village Voice newspaper asked over 50 distinguished film critics to select their ten best films of the 20th Century and the results were published in the January 4, 2000 edition of the paper. No surprises that Citizen Kane leads the list although 2001 and The Godfather were left out of the top 10.
1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
2. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
3. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
4. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
5. The Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
6. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
7. L’Atalante
8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
9. Au Hasard Balthazar
10. Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)
11. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
12. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
Pather Panchali
14. The Birth of a Nation
The Wizard of Oz
16. It’s A Wonderful Life
Ordet
18. Intolerance
19. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Psycho
21. Chinatown
22. M
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
24. Earrings of Madame De.
The Magnificent Ambersons
A Man Escaped
27. Broken Blossoms
Greed (1924, Erich von Stroheim)
Ugetsu
30. The Third Man
31. The Godfather Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
32. The General
33. The Seventh Seal
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
35. The Night of the Hunter
36. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
37. The Bicycle Thief (1948, Vittorio DeSica)
City Lights
King Kong
Metropolis
Vivre sa Vie
Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
43. Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)
Duck Soup
Sunset Boulevard
46. Barry Lyndon
The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)
Steamboat Bill Jr.
49. Contempt (Le Mépris)
The Gold Rush
North By Northwest
52. Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966, George Kuchar)
The Rise of Louis XIV
54. The Apu Trilogy
Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
A Woman Under the Influence
57. The Lady Eve
58. The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Palm Beach Story
60. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Pickpocket
62. An Actor’s Revenge
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Close-Up
Gospel According to St. Matthew
La Jetee
Modern Times
October
The Young And The Damned
Paisan
Performance
Shoah
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
Umberto D (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade)
77. All About Eve (1950, Joseph H. Lewis)
All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk)
Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)
82. Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper)
A Trip to the Moon (1902, Georges Melies)
Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
86. Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)
The Golden Coach (1952, Jean Renoir)
Salo (1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
90. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
Masculine-Feminine (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Nosferatu (1922, F.W. Murnau)
Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
94. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)
Jules and Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)
Landscape in the Mist (1988, Theo Angelopoulos)
Mean Streets (1973, Martin Scorsese)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)
Suspiria (1977, Dario Argento)
101 Grand Illusion
102 China Gate
Persona
Top Hat
105 The Wild Bunch
106 Blue Velvet
Breaking the Waves
Mauvais sang
The Mother and the Whore
Nashville
Poor Little Rich Girl
112 Andrei Rublev
The Art of Vision
An Autumn Afternoon
The Big Sleep
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Bonnie and Clyde
Bringing Up Baby
The Cameraman
Casablanca
Chelsea Girls
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise
Chimes at Midnight
A Clockwork Orange
The Crowd
D’est
Day of Wrath
Decalogue
The Deer Hunter
Diary of a Country Priest
Dr. Strangelove
La Dolce Vita
The Dybbuk
Early Autumn
8 1/2
Family Feud [with Richard Dawson]
Fear Eats the Soul
Fists in the Pocket
Gertrud
The Girl and Her Trust
Gunnar Hede’s Saga
Histoires du Cinema
How Green Was My Valley
I Was Born But…
The Idiot
Iliad
Imitation of Life
The Iron Crown
L’Argent
L’avventura
The Last Laugh
Late Spring
Le Tunnel sous le Manche
The Leopard
Lessons of Darkness
The Life of Oharu
Man on the Flying Trapeze
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Meshes of the Afternoon
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Monsieur Verdoux
Mouchette
Napoleon
The New Babylon
A Night at the Opera
Nights of Cabiria
Once Upon A Time in America
Othello
Out of the Past
Parade
The Passenger
Peeping Tom
Porky in Wackyland
Potomok Chingis-Khan
The Puppetmaster
Ran
Rebel Without a Cause
Roman Holiday
Rose Hobart
Safe
Safety Last
Satantango
Scenario For A Film Called “Passion”
Scenes From Under Childhood
Seven Chances (1925)
Shadows
The Shop Around the Corner
Solaris
Song Cycle
A Star is Born
Star Spangled to Death
Street Angel
Strike
Terra em transe
Text of Light
The 39 Steps
Tih Minh
A Time to Live and a Time to Die
Triumph of the Will
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Vampyr
Videodrome
Voyage in Italy
Way Down East
Wings of Desire
Within Our Gates
Xala
Young Mr. Lincoln
Zapruder film
Zorn’s Lemma
212 The Ascent
Fallen Angels
Ikiru
The Philadelphia Story
The Pornographers
Red Desert
Red River
Trash
220 Akira
Breathless
High and Low
His Girl Friday
Last Year at Marienbad
Letter From An Unknown Woman
A Matter of Life and Death
The Navigator
Scorpio Rising
229 Dog Star Man
El Paso Wrecking Company
Primary
Wild Strawberries
233 Aliens
The Terminator
235 Johnny Guitar
Picnic
Raging Bull
Vivre sa Vie
The Wrong Man
240 The Evil Dead 2
House of Games
It’s A Gift
Natural Born Killers
The Ten Commandments
Trog
246 Battleground
JFK
Kuhle Wampe
Last Tango in Paris
The Portrait of a Lady
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