Derek Malcolm’s Top 100 Films of the Century

Invited by the Guardian newspaper to compile his best films of the 20th century at the turn of the millennium, distinguished film writer and critic Derek Malcolm chose and wrote essays on the one hundred films, by one hundred different directors, he personally felt best represented 20th century world cinema. This work was then published in book form – ‘A Century of Films: Derek Malcolm’s Personal Best’ – in November 2000. A decade later Malcolm said he would add A Separation, The Death of Mr Lazarescu, Festen and Silent Souls at the expense of Swing High Swing Low, Trash, Behind the Green Door and The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Whilst Malcolm listed the films in a numerical order he has always stated that they are in no particular order. Buy – A Century of Films: Derek Malcom’s Personal Best (Paperback)

1. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
2. The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
3. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
4. The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
5. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1926)
6. The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
7. Earrings of Madame De. (Max Ophuls, 1953)
8. Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
9. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
10. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
11. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini, 1966)
12. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1953)
13. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
14. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
15. 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
16. Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
17. The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme infidèle) (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
18. Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
19. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
20. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)
21. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
22. LBJ (Santiago Alvarez, 1968)
23. Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)
24. The Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau,1946)
25. Shock Corridor (Sam Fuller, 1963)
26. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
27. Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst, 1929)
28. Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)
29. Pakeezah (Kamal Amrohi, 1971)
30. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
31. Sons of the Desert (William A Seiter, 1934)
32. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
33. La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, 1967)
34. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
35. Kind Hearts And Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
36. Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
37. Closely Observed Trains (Jiri Menzel, 1966)
38. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
39. Fantasia (Walt Disney, 1940)
40. The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)
41. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
42. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné,1945)
43. The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
44. The Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith, 1915)
45. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)
46. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
47. Cuba Si! (Chris Marker, 1961)
48. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
49. The King Of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, 1972)
50. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
    
    
    
    
51. Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982)
52. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)
53. A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)
54. Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968)
55. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
56. A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)
57. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
58. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
59. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
60. Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
61. Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
62. Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer, 1943)
63. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1921)
64. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger, 1943)
65. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
66. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
67. Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)
68. Blanche (Walerian Borowczyk, 1971)
69. Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen, 1937)
70. The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
71. The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
72. The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)
73. Kes (Ken Loach, 1970)
74. Behind The Green Door (The Mitchell brothers, 1972)
75. Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
76. Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
77. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)
78. Oh, Mr. Porter! (Marcel Varnel, 1937)
79. The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)
80. Fat City (John Huston, 1972)
81. Antonio Das Mortes (Gauber Rocher, 1969)
82. Love (Károly Makk, 1971)
83. Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
84. Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)
85. Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)
86. Boy (Nagisa Oshima, 1970)
87. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1924)
88. The Round Up (Miklós Jancsó, 1962)
89. Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1975)
90. Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
91. Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
92. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
93. Welfare (Frederick Wiseman, 1973)
94. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)
95. Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968)
96. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
97. Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1974)
98. Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1961)
99. Manila: In The Claws of Darkness (Lino Brocka, 1978)
100. The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1932)
     
     
     
     

Malcolm was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford. He worked for several decades as a film critic for The Guardian, having previously been an amateur jockey and the paper’s first horse racing correspondent. In 1977 he was a member of the jury at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. In the mid-1980s he was host of The Film Club on BBC2, which was dedicated to art house films, and was director of the London Film Festival for several years. After The Guardian, he became chief film critic for the Evening Standard, before being replaced in 2009 by novelist Andrew O’Hagan. He still contributes film reviews for the newspaper and is president of the British Federation of Film Societies and the International Film Critics’ Circle.