In 2008 French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma compiled a list of the 100 greatest films of all time. 76 people in the French industry were each asked to name their 100 best films. The list is notable for the absence of British made films such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man.
- Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
- The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
- The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
- Sunrise – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
- M – Fritz Lang
- Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
- Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
- Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
- The Searchers – John Ford
- Greed – Erich von Stroheim
- Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
- To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
- Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
- Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
- Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
- City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
- The General – Buster Keaton
- Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
- Freaks – Tod Browning
- Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
- The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
- The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
- The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
- Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
- The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
- Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
- Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
- The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
- Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
- Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
- Pleasure – Max Ophüls
- The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
- The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
- Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
- Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
- Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
- The Wind – Victor Sjöström
- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
- Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
- The Crowd – King Vidor
- 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
- La Jetée – Chris Marker
- Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
- Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
- Amarcord – Federico Fellini
51. Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
52. Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
53. Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
54. Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
55. King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
56. Laura – Otto Preminger
57. The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
58. The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
59. La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
60. The Dead – John Huston
61. Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
62. It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
63. Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
64. The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
65. À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
66. Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
67. Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
68. La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
69. Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
70. A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
71. Playtime – Jacques Tati
72. Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
73. Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
74. Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
75. Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
76. An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
77. Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
78. The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
79. Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
80. Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
81. The Party – Blake Edwards
82. Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
83. The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
84. A Star Is Born – George Cukor
85. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
86. America, America – Elia Kazan
87. El – Luis Buñuel
88. Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
89. Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
90. Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
91. Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
92. Lola – Jacques Demy
93. Manhattan – Woody Allen
94. Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
95. My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
96. Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
97. The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
98. Scarface – Howard Hawks
99. Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
100. Napoléon – Abel Gance
The Administrators of the now defunct website ‘Film 100’ came up with a list of the most influential people in cinema history originally available on the site and then expanded for a book published 1998.
In 2003 Channel 4 carried out a national survey to find the top 100 film stars in history, voted on by the British public. I suppose the issue with the list is the disparity between being a great movie star and being a great actor. For example some of the greatest actors of the 20th century such as Olivier, Guiness and Gielgud don’t make the list. Big stars of yesteryear such Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas are also absent.
A list Compiled by Bill Mousoulis in 2003. Mousoulis is an award-winning Greek-Australian film director, with approximately 100 films to his name. He is also the founder of the online film journal Senses of Cinema in 1999, and the founder of the film co-operative Melbourne Super 8 Film Group in 1985.
Total Film, is a film magazine in the United Kingdom. It offers film and DVD news, reviews, and features. In 2007 the magazine came up with their list for the 100 Greatest Directors ever. Some will dislike Spielberg being placed as high as 3 and I wasn’t expecting to see Howard Hawks above the likes of Welles, Coppola, Bergman and Kurosawa. Kubrick is surprisingly only placed 8th!
Total Film Magazine (kindle subscription)
Empire Magazine (May, 2019) Avengers Endgame
Entertainment Weekly Magazine (February 24/March 3 2017) Emma Watson Cover
A list compiled in April 2008 by the UK newspaper ‘The Times.’
“The British cinema is made of dullness and reflects a submissive lifestyle, where enthusiasm, warmth, and zest are nipped in the bud. A film is a born loser just because it is English.“ Francois Truffaut, 1957
Sight & Sound ~ May 2018 ~ BFI Film Magazine 120 BPM Lean on Pete Woodfall Films
The Official Story (1985) became the biggest international success in Argentina’s film history when it won an Academy Award for best foreign language film. Directed by Luis Puenzo the film is set in 1983, in the waning days of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 and waged a dirty war of torture and murder against its opposition. It centres on a middle-class high-school teacher of history who gradually discovers that the infant she had adopted was born in prison to a mother who been seized by the military and never seen again.