citizen kane – The Pendragon Society

The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2021) 20-1

20. Come and See (1985) Dir. Elem Klimov, 140 mins.

Set in 1943, during the Nazi German occupation of the Byelorussian SSR, Klimov’s anti-war psychological horror follows a young peasant boy (Alexei Kravchenko), who, having defied his parents by joining the resistance movement, witnesses the atrocities committed on the populace. Although it went on to be a large box office hit in the Soviet Union, Klimov had had to wait 8 years before he was given approval by the authorities to produce it. Unrelenting in its brutal realism, Come and See combines disorienting camera work, extreme facial close-ups and a brilliant use of sound to enhance some of the most harrowing imagery ever seen on film. There was much speculation as to why Klimov had made no more films after this. In 2001 he provided an answer, “I lost interest in making films…Everything that was possible I felt I had already done.” For those who have seen Klimov’s lyrical and nightmarish masterpiece, this seems like no idle boast. Buy

19. The Mirror (1975) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 106 mins.

Propelled by autobiographical reflections on Tarkovsky’s own childhood trauma, The Mirror unfolds as an organic flow of memories recalled by a dying poet (based on Tarkovsky’s absent father Arseny, who in reality outlived his son by three years) of key moments in his life both with respect to his immediate family as well as that of the Russian people as a whole during the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Extremely experimental, the film uses an unconventional nonlinear structure featuring contemporary scenes combined with childhood memories and dreams that have a hallucinatory and rhythmic quality that speaks directly to the subconscious of the viewer. Although when released the film was considered an unfocused failure by some critics and the narrative incomprehensible by many cinema-goers, The Mirror has grown in reputation since to now be considered one of the most beautiful and poetic films ever made. More…

18. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 110 mins.

Dreyer’s last silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc was shot in France with massive technical and financial resources and in conditions of great creative freedom. Having spent over a year researching Joan of Arc (played here by stage actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti), Dreyer forgoes medieval pageantry or Joan’s military exploits, instead using the records of the Rouen trial to focus on the spiritual and political conflicts of her last day as a captive of England. Instantly acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece (although it was a commercial failure), the film is probably most notable for the symbolic progression of close-up faces that reaches an apotheosis in the long sustained sequence of Joan’s interrogation against a menacing architectural backdrop. Despite French nationalists’ scepticism about whether a Danish person could be in charge of a film that centred on one of France’s most revered historical icons, it’s Dreyer’s brilliant direction, particularly the unconventional emphasis on the actors’ facial features, that along with Falconetti’s unforgettable performance, gives the film its immense emotional power. More…

17. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) Dir. Werner Herzog, 93 mins.

One of the great haunting visions of world cinema and the first collaboration between Herzog and star Klaus Kinski, the story follows the mostly fictionalised travels of sixteenth century Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who, in open and irrational defiance of nature and God, leads a group of conquistadors down the Orinoco and Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. With its incongruous adherence to courtly grandeur in the midst of the jungle, the film is both a parody and criticism of colonialism. By means of extreme camera angles and long shots, Herzog visualises primordial nature as an antagonistic and terrifying force that dwarfs and eventually destroys the coloniser. The film is also notable for the infamous production incidents such as Herzog (who was unarmed at the time) threatening to shoot the unpredictable and difficult Kinski if he left the set. More…

16. Bicycle Thieves (1948) Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 93 mins.

One of the major achievements of neo-realism and the film that convinced Satyajit Ray to become a filmmaker, Bicycle Thieves sees De Sica using a non-professional cast to tell the story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family. It touches broadly on Italy’s institutions and cultures but at its centre is always the grinding poverty of the family, exemplified in the relationship between the well meaning father and the young plucky son who helps him look for the bicycle. It’s the balance between the careful direction with its intricate mise-en-scene, the use of the inexperienced actors, and the input of writing collaborator Cesare Zavattini, who championed the poetics of everyday life and the normal man, that makes Bicycle Thieves the most well known and successful work of De Sica’s long and varied career. More…

15. Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 113 mins.

Leading on from the critical acclaim of Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese continued further into the darker side of New York City with a film set soon after the Vietnam War. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man and former Marine living in Manhattan who becomes a night time taxi driver in order to cope with his chronic insomnia. Bickle becomes attracted to a young woman (Cybill Shepherd), shows concern for a child prostitute (a disturbingly precocious turn from Jodie Foster), and becomes progressively more troubled over what he sees as the city’s filth and human scum. His compressed anger finally erupts into a rage focused simultaneously on Foster’s pimp and Shepherd’s boss, a political candidate. Brilliant and controversially violent, the film features an alarming psychological atmosphere (enhanced by a jazzy and eerie music score by Bernard Hermann), a remarkable central performance from De Niro and established Scorsese as one of the great talents of the New Hollywood era. More…

14. Seven Samurai (1954) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 207 mins.

Deeply influenced by Hollywood and particularly the westerns of John Ford, Kurosawa’s epic samurai adventure takes place in Warring States Period Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (including the terrific Toshiro Mifune) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. One of the most influential films of all time, evidenced by the breakthrough films of directors such as Spielberg, Lucas and Sergio Leone, it was remade by Sturges as the western The Magnificent Seven six years later. With its memorable characters and stunning action sequences Seven Samurai is as much a thrilling and engrossing form of entertainment as it is art and is, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…

13. 8½ (1963) Dir. Federico Fellini, 138 mins.

Made when neo-realism was still the reigning orthodoxy, Fellini’s surrealist avant-garde masterpiece is a portrait of a famous Italian film director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), who is suffering from “director’s block”. Stalled on his new science fiction film that includes veiled autobiographical references, he loses interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. Fellini delivers a highly influential and inventive spectacle of imagery that’s helped along by a funny and thought provoking script, Mastroianni’s terrific performance and Nino Rota’s unique musical style. While the director’s own autobiographical tendencies became more accentuated with 8½, it’s his ability to draw from other people’s recollections and fantasies as well as his own, that made it his most representative film and one of the greatest ever. More…

12. The Conformist (1970) Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 107 mins.

Adapted from the novel by Alberto Moravia and set initially in 1930s Italy, Bertolucci’s poetic expressionist art film explores the bourgeois roots of fascism by following Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is so eager to fit in and find normality, that he agrees to a traditional marriage (despite having little regard for his fiance) and joins the Fascist secret police, finding himself ordered to assassinate his old friend and teacher, Professor Quadri, an outspoken anti-Fascist intellectual now living in exile in France. Propelled to greatness by Trintignant’s superb and compelling performance, a clever narrative structure (with memorable flashback sequences) and the remarkable use of Fascist era art and decor, The Conformist is a masterpiece of stunning cinematography (featuring the brilliant use of lighting and warm colours from Vittorio Storaro and art director Ferdinando Scarfiotti) and relaxed rhythm interrupted by explosions of violent intensity. The film was also a huge influence on New Hollywood film makers such as Francis Ford Coppola. More…

11. The Rules of the Game (1939) Dir. Jean Renoir, 110 mins.

Ending a decade of great artistic achievement for French cinema, Renoir’s masterpiece marked a striking departure in filming technique, (particularly from Hollywood norms) with its long takes, constantly moving camera and use of deep focus. Looking at French society just before the start of World War II, the film is principally set in the country estate of the Marquis de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) and shows the collapse of a frivolous, static and corrupt aristocratic society. This image of France, as well as the film’s elaborate structure and the ambiguity of the characters, confused critics, provoked hostility from the public and was banned as demoralising by the French government after the outbreak of war. Renoir never recovered from the negative reaction but despite this and the lack of commercial success, the director’s filming style, that brought out a complex mise-en-scene, the rich and varied array of characters and the 1959 restoration version helped to grow its reputation as one of the greatest films of all time. More…

10. Raging Bull (1980) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 129 mins.

One of a string of early 1980s box office disappointments for Martin Scorsese, the film is a hugely ambitious and superbly edited biography of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), an Italian American middleweight boxer whose sadomasochistic rage, sexual jealousy and animalistic appetite destroys his relationship with his wife and family. Scorsese gives De Niro the freedom to truly transform into the unsympathetic working class boxer and he’s got strong support from relative newcomers Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty (as LaMotta’s brother and wife). It received mixed reviews and criticism for its violent content on release, but De Niro’s explosive and absorbing performance, the brutal yet poetic fight scenes and the bleakly beautiful black and white cinematography make Raging Bull not only Scorsese’s finest film but also one of cinema’s best ever. More…

9. Blade Runner (1982) Dir. Ridley Scott, 117 mins.

Loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ the film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered beings called replicants are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on off-world colonies. When a fugitive group of replicants led by Roy Batty (Ruger Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down. On release it struggled at the box office and turned off critics with its unconventional pacing and plot, but still grew a reputation as cult sci-fi. After a director’s cut and The Final Cut (just two of seven versions) and helped by an outstanding cast, particularly Ford and an iconic turn from Hauer (who wrote the famous ‘Tears in the Rain’ speech himself), and the music of Vangelis, Blade Runner is now considered one of the most thematically complex and aesthetically stunning films ever made. More…

8. The Godfather Part II (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 200 mins.

While Coppola had no initial interest in making a follow up to The Godfather, Part II became one of the most commercially and critically successful sequels of all time. The film is actually both a sequel and prequel, with the tale of a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) and his ascent into criminality paralleling the continuing story of Vito’s youngest son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who is now in charge of the criminal family enterprise. While some were quick to declare it greater than the original and few could argue against the outstanding performances and stunning cinematography, there were notable critics who attacked the non-linear narrative and the pacing. However, the film was soon reevaluated with many previous detractors changing their minds and it is now seen as one of the great creative triumphs of American cinema. More…

7. Andrei Rublev (1966) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 205 mins.

Loosely based on the life of Andrei Rublev, the monk and great 15th century Russian icon painter, Tarkovsky’s historical epic concerns the relationship between man and God, man and nature, the artist and the people, the artist and the art form. It was banned by the authorities, largely because of its portrayal of the conflict between the artist and the political powered structure, and not released in the Soviet Union until 1971. Deeply moving and mysterious the film is rich in symbolism and full of remarkable imagery. More…

6. Apocalypse Now (1979) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 153 mins.

Drawing from war correspondent Michael Herr’s dispatches and Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, John Milius adapted the story of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, changing its setting from late nineteenth-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The plot revolves around two US Army special operations officers Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Willard is sent to assassinate the rogue and insane Kurtz in what becomes a nightmarish journey into the darkness of war and the monsters who inhabit it. The film is also notable as one of cinema’s most troubled productions (as documented in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) with sets destroyed by severe weather, Sheen having a near fatal heart attack and the release being postponed while Coppola edited thousands of feet of film. Apocalypse Now received mixed reviews on release and while Brando’s bravura turn (much of it improvised) threatened to unbalance the film, (and he arrived on set overweight and unprepared), the brilliant direction of Coppola, inspired writing by Milius and Vittorio Storaro’s acclaimed cinematography has seen it reevaluated to now be considered one of the greatest films ever made. More…

5. Vertigo (1958) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 129 mins.

Alfred Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers when he made Vertigo, a psychological thriller, based on the French novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, that follows a retired police detective, Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who has acrophobia, and is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behaviour. Focusing on the romantic obsession that Scottie develops for the enigmatic woman (Kim Novak), Vertigo received mixed reviews upon release, particularly in Hitchcock’s native England, with some fans disappointed at the director departing from his earlier lighter romantic thrillers and a number of critics dismissing it as nothing more than a slowly paced murder mystery. However, it’s re-evaluation began in the following decade, when writers at the influential French magazine Cahiers du cinéma began to view Hitchcock as a serious cinematic artist rather than just a slick crowd pleaser and soon film scholars were singling the movie out as a work of hypnotic visual beauty and a profound meditation on love, loss and identity. Over sixty years on, Vertigo continues to fascinate and is now heralded, by many, as Hitchock’s most important contribution to cinema. More…

4. Tokyo Story (1953) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 136 mins.

With his masterful ability for understanding the human condition, Yasujiro Ozu, by the time of his death in 1963 (aged just 60), had become, by common consent, Japan’s greatest director and his most famous and acclaimed film remains Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story), the poignant tale of a couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. The elderly grandparents find their offspring too preoccupied with their jobs and families to spend much time with them. In fact, the only affection and kindness comes from their daughter-in-law Noriko, widow of a son they lost to war. Ozu combines his seemingly simple but distinctive minimalist filming techniques, (placing the camera, which rarely moves, at a low height as well as intricate cutting), with brilliant narrative control to deliver an emotionally rich yet subtle family drama that’s as close to everyday life as any the cinema has given us. More…

3. Citizen Kane (1941) Dir. Orson Welles, 119 mins.

Considered by some as overly self-conscious, artificial and even baroque, Orson Welles’s sensational first studio film examines the life and legacy of the fictional Charles Foster Kane (Welles himself) who rises from obscurity to become a publishing tycoon. Coming off the back of Welles’s infamous 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast, RKO gave him full creative freedom and let him loose on the studio’s latest technology. While his role as the ‘auteur’ has been questioned (Pauline Kael argued Herman J. Mankiewicz was the sole scriptwriter) it was his revolutionary approach to the film medium that encouraged large scale experimentation on existing techniques, particularly the complex narrative structure, cinematographer Greg Toland’s rule breaking use of lighting and deep focus and the innovative use of the music of composer Bernard Herrmann (his first film score), that helped make Citizen Kane a technical and stylistic triumph. Despite a campaign by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst that delayed the release (Hearst thought the portrayal of Kane to be too close to his own megalomaniac personality), the film received rave reviews and has gone on to be acclaimed as a landmark achievement in cinema. More…

2. The Godfather (1972) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 175 mins.

Brilliantly combining the temperament of European art cinema with the Hollywood gangster genre of the past, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic mafia saga chronicles ten years (1945-55) in the lives of a fictional Italian American crime family. The film focuses most on the ageing patriarch Vito Corleone (a come back for Marlon Brando), and his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), whose transformation from war hero and reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss propels much of the narrative. Coppola had to fight to cast Brando (and also Pacino), who gives a performance of immense authority among a magnificent cast of what were then mainly unknown actors. With a success that marked the transition from Classic Hollywood to New American Cinema and revitalised Paramount, The Godfather is a masterpiece of stunning artistry and masterful story telling that is continually lauded as one of the greatest and most influential films in world cinema. More…

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 141 mins.

Remarkably once labelled as dull, unimaginative and lacking dramatic appeal, Kubrick’s grand science fiction spectacle took four years to prepare and used special effects, particularly in depicting space flight, that were without precedent in the industry. The film, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith, deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the existence of extraterrestrial life. With the hypnotic imagery, scientific realism and Kubrick’s elaborate use of music, 2001 is now acclaimed as visionary cinema. Even watching it fifty years after its original release, you are provided with a visual and technical quality that’s still without equal in the history of film. More…

The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2020) 20-1

20. Rashomon (1950) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 88 mins.

Decisively breaking away from the Japanese studios ‘Hollywood’ narrative model, Rashomon is set in feudal Japan and depicts the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her samurai husband, through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses. By presenting these conflicting views of the same event, the film explores the imperfections of humanity and was probably the first in Japanese cinema that featured such ambiguity, allowing the audience to make their own judgements rather than being provided with a single truth. The film is also notable for the emotive acting, Kurosawa’s mastery of mise-en-scene and the sentimental but compelling ending. Winner of the grand prize at Venice and best foreign film at the Academy awards, Rashomon helped propel Japanese film toward world recognition and is now widely regarded as one of the premiere works of art cinema. More…

19. There Will Blood (2007) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 mins.

Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil!’ There Will Be Blood tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a real work of art with Anderson managing to bring to life a lost era with a staggering aesthetic clarity. Day-Lewis’s relentlessly focused portrayal of the often unfathomable and greedy oil man saw him rightly awarded with a Best Actor Oscar. While the final scene and confrontation between Plainview and his nemesis Eli (Paul Dano) polarised critics, like it or loathe it, it provides one of most memorable moments of 21st century cinema. More…

18. Bicycle Thieves (1948) Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 93 mins.

17. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) Dir. Werner Herzog, 93 mins.

16. Pulp Fiction (1994) Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 154 mins.

Directed in a highly stylised manner and drawing on a mixture of cinematic sources (such as American B pictures and the French New Wave), Pulp Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals and a mysterious briefcase. The film reinvigorated the career of John Travolta and features a brilliant ensemble cast, particularly Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. Tarantino confidently deploys an ingenious structure, rapid fire rhetoric and graphic violence with a surprising playfullness and exceptional intelligence. More…

15. Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 113 mins.

14. Seven Samurai (1954) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 207 mins.

Deeply influenced by Hollywood and particularly the westerns of John Ford, Kurosawa’s epic samurai adventure takes place in Warring States Period Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (including the terrific Toshiro Mifune) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. One of the most influential films of all time, evidenced by the breakthrough films of directors such as Spielberg, Lucas and Sergio Leone, it was remade by Sturges as the western The Magnificent Seven six years later. With its memorable characters and stunning action sequences Seven Samurai is as much a thrilling and engrossing form of entertainment as it is art and, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…

13. Andrei Rublev (1966) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 205 mins.

12. The Conformist (1970) Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 107 mins.

11. 8½ (1963) Dir. Federico Fellini, 138 mins.

10. The Rules of the Game (1939) Dir. Jean Renoir, 110 mins.

9. Raging Bull (1980) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 129 mins.

8. Blade Runner (1982) Dir. Ridley Scott, 117 mins.

7. The Godfather Part II (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 200 mins.

6. Vertigo (1958) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 129 mins.

5. Apocalypse Now (1979) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 153 mins.

4. Tokyo Story (1953) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 136 mins.

3. Citizen Kane (1941) Dir. Orson Welles, 119 mins.

2. The Godfather (1972) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 175 mins.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 141 mins.

100 Greatest Film Acting Performances of All-Time

So what are the greatest acting performances of all time? Throughout August 2019 we polled members and contributors to find out what they considered to be the greatest performances in film ever. As with all these types of polls the final list is not going to please everyone. Perhaps unsurprisingly (and a little disappointingly) the best of the American mainstream dominates here, with a high placing for Heath Ledger’s turn in The Dark Knight and a large representation from the New Hollywood era (with 5 entries for the first 2 Godfather films!). What stands out more than anything is the lack of female performances that make the top 100 (only 12!). Is Casablanca really Bogart’s best performance? Wasn’t Brando better in On the Waterfront than anything he did in the 70s? Let us know what you think.

1 Marlon Brando – The Godfather (1972)

Brando’s great comeback sees him playing Vito Corleone, the patriarch of a fictional New York crime family. After months of debate between directer Francis Ford Coppola and Paramount over Brando’s casting, the studio president Stanley Jaffe required him to perform a screen test. Coppola did not want to offend Brando and stated that he needed to test equipment in order to set up the screen test at Brando’s California residence. For make-up, Brando stuck cotton balls in his cheeks, put shoe polish in his hair to darken it, and rolled his collar. Coppola placed Brando’s audition tape in the middle of the videos of the audition tapes as the Paramount executives watched them. The executives were impressed with Brando’s efforts and allowed Coppola to cast Brando for the role if Brando accepted a lower salary and put up a bond to ensure he would not cause any delays in production. Brando received a net participation deal which earned him $1.6 million. His mesmerising performance revitalised a career that had gone into decline during the 1960s and brought him a best actor Oscar.

2 Robert De Niro – Raging Bull (1980)

Bringing him his second Oscar, De Niro stars as Jake LaMotta, an Italian American middleweight boxer whose self-destructive and obsessive rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite destroyed his relationship with his wife and family. The film had initially come about because De Niro read the autobiography upon which the film is based, became fascinated by LaMotta and showed the book to Martin Scorsese. As well as making uncredited contributions to the screenplay, De Niro remarkably gained approximately 60 pounds (27 kg) to portray LaMotta in his later post-boxing years (an act that has caused lasting damage to his health). It’s truly one of cinema’s most trans-formative and intense performances, born out of his incredible commitment to method acting.

3 Daniel Day-Lewis – There Will Be Blood (2007)

“Once his (Day-Lewis) Plainview takes wing, the relentless focus of the performance makes the character unique.” Glenn Kenny, Premiere

Day-Lewis delivers an intense and towering performance as a silver miner-turned-oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The performance earned him best actor awards from the Oscars, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, NYFCC and IFTA.

4 Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List (1993)

Fiennes was cast as Nazi war criminal Amon Göth (an SS second lieutenant) after Spielberg viewed his performances in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Spielberg said of Fiennes’ audition that “I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold.” Fiennes put on 28 pounds (13 kg) to play the role. He watched historic newsreels and talked to Holocaust survivors who knew Göth. In portraying him, Fiennes said “I got close to his pain. Inside him is a fractured, miserable human being. I feel split about him, sorry for him. He’s like some dirty, battered doll I was given and that I came to feel peculiarly attached to.” Fiennes looked so much like Göth in costume that when Mila Pfefferberg (a survivor of the events) met him, she trembled with fear.

5 Robert De Niro – Taxi Driver (1976)

De Niro’s celebrated role sees him as a lonely Vietnam veteran, Travis Bickle, who while working as a taxi driver, descends into insanity as he plots to assassinate both a presidential candidate and the pimp of an underage prostitute. While preparing for his role as Bickle, De Niro was filming Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 in Italy. According to co-star Peter Boyle, he would “finish shooting on a Friday in Rome … get on a plane … [and] fly to New York”. De Niro obtained a taxi driver’s license, and when on break would pick up a taxi and drive around New York for a couple of weeks, before returning to Rome to resume filming 1900. De Niro apparently lost 35 pounds and listened repeatedly to a taped reading of the diaries of Arthur Bremer (who attempted to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace). When he had time off from shooting 1900, De Niro visited an army base in Northern Italy and tape-recorded soldiers from the Midwestern United States, whose accents he thought might be appropriate for Travis’s character. It’s a masterful portrayal of one of American cinema most complex characters.

6 Maria Falconetti – The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1927)

“That shaven head was and remains the abstraction of the whole epic of Joan of Arc.” Jean Renoir

Celebrated stage actress Falconetti was cast in the lead role by visionary Danish director T. H. Dreyer in what turned out to be her only major film role. He was initially unimpressed with seeing her perform in an amateur theatre but saw something in her he thought he could bring out. With a reputation as a tyrannical director, the filmmaker reportedly treated her harshly (although the rumours are disputed). The film’s narrative follows the records of the Rouen trial to focus on the spiritual and political conflicts of Joan’s last day as a captive of England. The film was instantly acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece although Falconetti, who always preferred the art of theater to cinema, said she never understood the positive reaction to the film’s acting. However, her iconic performance, often listed as one of the finest in cinema history, and her devotion to the role during filming, are considered legendary among film scholars.

7 Rutger Hauer – Blade Runner (1982)

“the perfect Batty – cold, Aryan, flawless.” Philip K. Dick

In Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic, loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Hauer stars as the violent but thoughtful leader of a group of replicants (synthetic life forms) who having worked on space colonies, escape back to earth and are hunted down by a Blade Runner. Scott cast Hauer without having met him, based solely on his performances in the Paul Verhoeven movies Scott had seen (Katie Tippel, Soldier of Orange, and Turkish Delight). Hauer rewrote his character’s “tears in rain” speech himself and presented the words to Scott on set prior to filming.

8 Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight (2008)

In the second of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Ledger starred as the anarchistic mastermind known as the Joker, who seeks to undermine Batman’s influence and throw the city of Gotham into anarchy. Some mocked Ledger’s casting when it first became public but Nolan had wanted to work with him on a number of previous projects (including unsuccessfully approaching him for the role of Batman in Batman Begins) and was agreeable to Ledger’s chaotic interpretation of the character. Ledger died on January 22, 2008, some months after he completed filming and six months before the film’s release from a toxic combination of prescription drugs, leading to intense attention from the press and movie-going public. Nolan dedicated the film in part to Ledger’s memory and the actor’s remarkable transformation was widely praised. It saw him posthumously awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and changed the perception of what might be possible for actors to achieve in a superhero film.

9 Samuel L. Jackson – Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jackson starred as Jules Winfield the partner in crime of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega, who both worked for crime boss Marsellus Wallace. Quentin Tarantino wrote the part of Jules with Jackson in mind, but his first audition was overshadowed by Paul Calderón as Jackson had assumed the audition was merely a reading. Producer Harvey Weinstein convinced him to audition a second time, and his performance of the final diner scene won over Tarantino. Jackson received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and his “Ezekiel” recitation was voted the fourth greatest movie speech of all time in a 2004 poll.

10 Klaus Kinski – Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Kinski, who was maverick German director Werner Herzog’s first choice for the role, starred as Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. Aguirre, which is now acclaimed as a landmark of world cinema, was the first of five collaborations between Herzog and Kinski who had met many years earlier when the then-struggling young actor rented a room in Herzog’s family apartment, and Kinski’s often terrifying and deranged antics during the three months he lived there left a lasting impression on the director. They had differing views as to how the lead role should be played as Kinski wanted to play a “wild, ranting madman”, but Herzog wanted something “quieter, more menacing”. In order to get the performance he desired, before each shot Herzog would deliberately infuriate Kinski. After waiting for the hot-tempered actor’s anger to “burn itself out”, Herzog would then roll the camera. They continued to clash throughout filming as Kinski’s infamous rages terrorized both the crew and the locals who were assisting the production. At one point, Kinski decided to leave the jungle location (over Herzog’s refusal to fire a sound assistant), only changing his mind after Herzog threatened to shoot first Kinski and then himself (according to the director this was purely a verbal threat to prevent the actor from leaving).

11 Peter Lorre – M (1931)

Peter Lorre’s career best performance, in Fritz Lang’s timeless classic, as the serial killer of children who is being hunted by both the police and the criminal underworld, caused an international sensation. M was Lorre’s first major starring role and before it he had mostly been known as a comedic actor. It boosted his career, even though he was typecast as a villain for years afterward in films such as Mad Love and Crime and Punishment. After fleeing from the Nazis he landed a major role in Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), picking up English along the way.

12 Orson Welles – Citizen Kane

Welles produced, co-scripted, directed and starred in the quasi-biographical film that examined the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane (Welles), a composite character based in part upon American media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, as well as aspects of the screenwriters’ own lives. Citizen Kane, after an initial lukewarm reaction, would go on to be particularly praised for Gregg Toland’s cinematography, Robert Wise’s editing, Bernard Herrmann’s music, and its narrative structure, but Welles’s charismatic and ultimately moving performance is also a huge part of what makes the film one of the greatest ever made.

13 Robert De Niro – The Godfather Part II

Having unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Sonny Corleone in the first Godfather film (Director Francis Ford Coppola thought his personality came across as too violent), De Niro was cast in the prequel part of the second film as as Sonny’s father, Vito Corleone (first played by Marlon Brando). The film follows Vito from his Sicilian childhood to the founding of his family enterprise in New York City. De Niro spent time practicing Brando’s mannerisms and his amazing performance earned him a best supporting oscar.

14 Jean-Louis Trintignant – The Conformist

Trintignant delivers a superb and compelling performance, in Bernardo Bertolucci’s expressionist art film, as Marcello Clerici, who is so eager to fit in and find normality, that he agrees to a traditional marriage (despite having little regard for his fiance) and joins the Fascist secret police, finding himself ordered to assassinate his old friend and teacher, Professor Quadri, an outspoken anti-Fascist intellectual now living in exile in France.

15 Peter O’Toole – Lawrence of Arabia

O’Toole stars as army officer and diplomat, T. E. Lawrence in David Lean’s epic of epics. Lean’s first choice for the role was the then unknown Albert Finney. He was cast and began principal photography but was fired after two days for reasons that are still unclear. Marlon Brando was also offered the part, while Anthony Perkins, Montgomery Clift and Alec Guiness were briefly considered before O’Toole was cast. Lean had seen O’Toole in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England and was bowled over by his screen test, proclaiming, “This is Lawrence!” Pictures of Lawrence suggest also that O’Toole bore some resemblance to him, in spite of their considerable height difference. O’Toole’s looks prompted a different reaction from Noël Coward, who quipped after seeing the première of the film, “If you had been any prettier, the film would have been called Florence of Arabia”. O’Toole’s performance is often considered one of the greatest in all of cinema, topping lists from both Entertainment Weekly and Premiere.

16 Al Pacino – The Godfather

Relative newcomer Pacino starred as Michael Corleone, who transforms from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss in the first of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic gangster saga. Paramount executives disagreed with Coppola about the casting, (as they did in regards to Marlon Brando’s casting as Vito Corleone), thinking Pacino was too short for the role and wanted a popular actor, either Warren Beatty or Robert Redford. Producer Robert Evans wanted Ryan O’Neal to receive the role in part due to his recent success in Love Story. Pacino was Coppola’s favorite for the role as he could picture him roaming the Sicilian countryside, and wanted an unknown actor who looked like an Italian-American. Dustin Hoffman, Martin Sheen, and James Caan also auditioned. Caan was well received by the Paramount executives and was given the part of Michael initially, but Coppola still pushed for Pacino to play Michael and Evans eventually conceded, allowing Pacino to have the role of Michael as long as Caan played Sonny. Despite agreeing to play the part, Pacino was contracted to star in MGM’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, but the two studios agreed on a settlement and Pacino was signed by Paramount three weeks before shooting began.

17 Malcolm McDowell – A Clockwork Orange

McDowell stars as Alex, a juvenile delinquent and gang leader, in Stanley Kubrick’s controversial dystopian crime film. Author of the source material, Anthony Burgess publicly praised the central performance and “Alex DeLarge” is listed 12th in the villains section of the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains.

18 Monica Vitti – L’Avventura

Vitti stars as the best friend of a young woman who disappears during a boat trip in the Mediterranean in Michelangelo Antonioni’s internationally praised film. She plays the detached and cool protagonist drifting into a relationship with the lover of the missing woman. Giving a screen presence which has been described as “stunning”, she is also credited with helping Antonioni raise money for the production and sticking with him through daunting location shooting. L’avventura made Vitti an international star and her image later appeared on an Italian postage stamp commemorating the film.

19 Anatoly Solonitsyn – Andrei Rublev

“with Solonitsyn I simply got lucky” Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece centres on the life of the Russian icon painter against the backdrop of a realistically portrayed 15th century medieval Russia. The film is composed of eight episodes sometimes following Rublev as a protagonist and sometimes just as witness to the events going on around him. Solonitsyn, who would go on to collaborate many times with Tarkovsky, was an unknown actor at a theater in Sverdlovsk when he first read the film script in the film magazine Iskusstvo Kino. He was very enthusiastic about the role, travelling to Moscow at his own expense to meet Tarkovsky and even declared that no one could play the role better than him. To Tarkovsky, Solonitsyn provided the right physical appearance and the talent of showing complex psychological processes. This powerful expressiveness manages to convey wisdom and contentment but also anxiety and an obsessive single mindedness.

20 Gloria Swanson – Sunset Boulevard

“one of the all time greatest performances.” Roger Ebert

Swanson stars as Norma Desmond, a former silent film star who draws a struggling screenwriter into her demented fantasy world, where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. According to producer and co-writer Charles Brackett, director and co-writer Billy Wilder and he never considered anyone except Gloria Swanson for the role of Norma Desmond. Wilder, however, had a different recollection. He recalled first wanting Mae West and Marlon Brando for the leads. West rejected the offer out-right as she portrayed herself as a sex symbol through her senior years, and was offended that she should be asked to play a Hollywood has been. Having approached Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, Norma Shearer and Mary Pickford and got nowhere, Wilder asked George Cukor for advice. He suggested Swanson, one of the most feted actresses of the silent-screen era, known for her beauty, talent, and extravagant lifestyle. In many ways, she resembled the Norma Desmond character, and like her, had been unable to make a smooth transition into talking pictures. However, Swanson had gone on to work on talking pictures, accepted the end of her film career and then worked on radio, television and the stage. Though Swanson was not seeking a movie comeback, she became intrigued when Wilder discussed the role with her and was glad for the opportunity to earn a greater salary than she had been making in other mediums. However, she didn’t want to do a screen test, saying she had “made 20 films for Paramount. Why do they want me to audition?” Her reaction was echoed in the screenplay when Norma Desmond declares, “Without me there wouldn’t be any Paramount.” In her memoir, Swanson recalled asking Cukor if it was unreasonable to refuse the screen test. He replied that since Norma Desmond was the role for which she would be remembered, “If they ask you to do ten screen tests, do ten screen tests, or I will personally shoot you.” His enthusiasm convinced Swanson to participate, In a 1975 interview, Wilder recalled Swanson’s reaction with the observation, “There was a lot of Norma in her, you know.”

21 Jack Nicholson – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

“Nicholson is everywhere; his energy propels the ward of loonies and makes of them an ensemble, a chorus of people caught in a bummer with nowhere else to go, but still fighting for some frail sense of themselves. … There are scenes in Cuckoo’s Nest that are as intimate—and in their language, twice as rough—as the best moments in The Godfather … [and] far above the general run of Hollywood performances.” Reviewer Marie Brenner

Nicholson plays Randle Patrick McMurphy in Milos Forman’s film (an adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel) about a man who end ups inside an asylum as a way of avoiding jail for statutory rape. McMurphy tries to take charge and goes about manipulating both the other patients and the staff. Hal Ashby, who had been an early consideration for director, suggested Nicholson for the role even though he had never played this type of role before. Production was delayed for about six months because of Nicholson’s schedule, but producer Michael Douglas later stated in an interview that “that turned out to be a great blessing: it gave us the chance to get the ensemble right”. The part is the one that allows the actor to show his full range, moving from quieter restrained moments to full on rages. Forman allowed Nicholson to improvise throughout the film, including most of the group therapy sequences. He was rewarding with an Oscar for best actor and the performance is seen as one of American cinema’s most legendary.

22 Robert De Niro – Once Upon A Time In America

De Niro gives an emotionally haunting performance as David “Noodles” Aaronson one of a group of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence as Jewish gangsters in New York City’s world of organized crime. For some this was the ultimate De Niro performance, a revelation even given what had come before.

23 Dennis Hopper – Blue Velvet

“You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank Booth!” Hopper to Lynch upon reading the script

The role of the gas-huffing, obscenity-screaming villain Frank Booth in David Lynch’s neo-noir mystery thriller brought about a career resurgence for Hopper. He was the biggest name in the film, having starred in and directed Easy Rider (1969). Hopper, said to be far from Lynch’s first choice (Michael Ironside has stated that Frank was written with him in mind), accepted the role after Harry Dean Stanton and Steven Berkoff both turned it down because of the violent content in the film. Few actors have thrown themselves into a part as Hopper does here, showing no inhibition with a performance that had left an imprint on popular culture, with countless tributes, cultural references and parodies.

24 Al Pacino – The Godfather Part II

“arguably cinema’s greatest portrayal of the hardening of a heart” Newsweek magazine

Pacino delivers another strong performance as Michael Corleone, who is now the new Don of the Corleone crime family, protecting the family business in the aftermath of an attempt on his life. Many believe Pacino’s performance to be his finest acting work, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was criticized for awarding the Academy Award for Best Actor that year to Art Carney for his role in Harry and Tonto. In 2006, Premiere issued its list of “The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time“, putting Pacino’s performance at #20. Later in 2009, Total Film issued “The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time“, ranking the performance in fourth place.

25 James Stewart – Vertigo

Stewart stars as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a former police detective who is forced into early retirement because an incident in the line of duty has caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo (a false sense of rotational movement). Scottie is hired by an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, as a private investigator to follow Gavin’s wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who is behaving strangely. Hitchcock blamed the film’s mixed contemporary reaction on the 49-year-old Stewart looking too old to play a convincing love interest for the 24-year-old Kim Novak, but it was arguably Stewart’s performance that was most complimented in early reviews. After the films more recent re-evaluation, (Vertigo is now seen as one of cinema’s great masterworks), critics have noted that the casting of James Stewart as a character who becomes disturbed and obsessive ultimately enhances the film’s unconventionality and effectiveness as suspense, since Stewart had previously been known as an actor of warmhearted roles.

26 Anthony Perkins – Psycho

Perkins’ gives a chilling and genre-defining performance as Norman Bates, the shy proprietor of a secluded old motel who has murder in mind, in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological horror/thriller masterpiece. The film boosted Perkins’ career and brought him international fame, but he soon began to suffer from typecasting. When he was asked whether he would have still taken the role knowing that he would be typecast afterwards, he said “yes”.

27 Charles Chaplin – The Gold Rush

In a film that Chaplin also directed and wrote, he stars as The Tramp who has gone prospecting for gold during the Klondike Gold Rush. The film contains many of Chaplin’s most celebrated comedy sequences, including the boiling and eating of his shoe, the dance of the rolls and the teetering cabin. Rightly acclaimed by many as Chaplin’s best performance as The Tramp.

28 Marlon Brando – Apocalypse Now

Brando stars as Colonel Kurtz, a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces officer with the 5th Special Forces Group who has gone rogue. Accused of murder and presumed insane, Kurtz runs his own military unit based in Cambodia and is feared as much by the U.S. military as by the North Vietnamese, Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge. By early 1976, Coppola had persuaded Marlon Brando to play Kurtz for a fee of $2 million for a month’s work on location in September 1976. He also received 10% of the gross theatrical rental and 10% of the TV sale rights, earning him around $9 million. Brando added to a host of issues on Francis Ford Coppola’s infamous production by showing up on set overweight and completely unprepared. Once arrived, Brando began working with Coppola to rewrite the film’s ending. At times, Dennis Hopper is said to have tormented Brando, leading Brando to refuse to be on the set at the same time as Hopper. The director downplayed Brando’s weight by dressing him in black, photographing only his face, and having another, taller actor double for him in an attempt to portray Kurtz as an almost mythical character. Ultimately, a brooding and magnetic Brando steals the film from under the noses of the some great actors and delivers a truly iconic performance.

29 Jean-Pierre Leaud – The 400 Blows

Leaud stars as 14 year old Antoine Doinel, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. The 400 Blows is the first in a series of five films in which the charismatic Léaud plays the semi-autobiographical character. Leaud gives arguably the best performance you’ll ever see from a child actor, providing an intelligent yet innocent portrayal of the troubled but often humorous youth during his initiation into a callous adult world. It’s the birth of a future French icon.

30 Christopher Walken – The Deer Hunter

Walken stars as Corporal Nikanor Chevotarevich (“Nick”) one of a trio of Russian-American steelworkers whose lives were changed forever after fighting in the Vietnam War. He probably never matched this heartbreaking performance, which garnered an Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor.

31 Gena Rowlands – A Woman Under the Influence

Rowlands stars a woman whose unusual behavior leads to conflict with her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) and her wider family. Rowlands’s husband, the film’s director, John Cassavetes, was inspired to write A Woman Under the Influence when she expressed a desire to appear in a play about the difficulties faced by contemporary women. His completed script was so intense and emotional she knew she would be unable to perform it eight times a week, so he decided to adapt it for the screen. Rowland makes a huge impression, improvising much of her characters descent into madness and earning herself an Oscar nomination.

32 Morgan Freeman – The Shawshank Redemption

Having read the script Freeman stated he was amazed that he was being considered for the part. Freeman stars as contraband smuggler Ellis “Red” Redding, who is befriended by the central character, fellow prisoner Andy Dufresne, while incarcerated in Shawshank State Penitentiary. Freeman has described Red’s story as one of salvation as he is not innocent of his crimes, unlike Andy who finds redemption.

Freeman was cast at the suggestion of producer Liz Glotzer, who ignored the novella’s character description of a white Irishman, nicknamed “Red”. Freeman’s character alludes to the choice when queried by Andy on why he is called Red, replying “Maybe it’s because I’m Irish.” Freeman opted not to research his role, saying “acting the part of someone who’s incarcerated doesn’t require any specific knowledge of incarceration … because men don’t change. Once you’re in that situation, you just toe whatever line you have to toe.” Darabont was already aware of Freeman from his minor role in another prison drama, Brubaker (1980), while Robbins had been excited to work alongside the actor, having grown up watching him in The Electric Company children’s television show. Freeman described filming as tense, saying, “Most of the time, the tension was between the cast and director. I remember having a bad moment with the director, had a few of those.” Freeman referred to Darabont’s requiring multiple takes of scenes, which he considered had no discernible differences. For example, the scene where Andy first approaches Red to procure a rock hammer took nine hours to film, and featured Freeman throwing and catching a baseball with another inmate throughout it. The number of takes that were shot resulted in Freeman turning up to filming the following day with his arm in a sling and sometimes he simply refused to do the additional takes. Freeman’s commanding and poignant performance was a major factor in the critical acclaim the film received on release.

33 Jack Nicholson – The Shining

34 Marcello Mastroianni – 8½

Mastroianni plays a film director, Guido Anselmi, in Federico Fellini’s surrealist tale of one man’s struggles to make a science fiction film and deal with the problems of his marriage.

35 Bibi Andersson – Persona
36 Marlon Brando – On The Waterfront
37 Jean-Pierre Leaud – The Mother and the Whore

38 Anthony Hopkins – The Silence Of The Lambs

Sir Anthony has by far his most memorable screen role as psychopathic cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Despite limited screen time, his chillingly sinister presence is hard to forget and steals the movie.

39 Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

Austrian actor Waltz seemed to appear from nowhere when he took the role of Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Despite being the major antagonist and a Nazi hunter of jews it’s hard not to enjoy his character even if at the same time we find ourselves despising his actions and what he stands for.

40 Brad Pitt – Fight Club
41 Kirk Douglas – Paths of Glory
42 Emily Watson – Breaking the Waves
43 Toshiro Mifune – Seven Samurai
44 Jack Nicholson – Chinatown
45 Casey Affleck – The assassination of the jesse james by the coward robert ford
46 Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
47 Marilyn Monroe – Some Like It Hot

48 Daniel Day-Lewis – Gangs Of New York

While the epic period piece Gangs of New York was not the best reviewed of Martin Scorsese’s films, Daniel Day-Lewis’s terrifying turn as Bill The Butcher is right up there among some of the great performances in the filmmaker’s work. It stretches beyond the film’s narrative flaws.

49 Joe Pesci – Goodfellas

“…but I’m funny how, I mean, funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?” — Pesci as Tommy DeVito

One of a number of great performances by Pesci in the films of Martin Scorsese. Here he plays a charismatic gangster, Tommy DeVito (based on the notorious real life gangster Tommy DeSimone), who is prone to explosions of extreme violence. Pesci’s mannerisms and unique delivery of lines provide the film with arguably its most memorable moments, which is even more impressive when you consider that the film features an ensemble of quality actors, some of whom were at the peak of their powers. Perhaps the most iconic scene showing the frightening volatility that Pesci brings, sees DeVito breaking the bulls of the lead character Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) after the younger man casually calls him ‘funny.’ The scene draws on a similar incident from Pesci’s actual youth, with the actor improvising most of his dialogue in rehearsal.

50 Diane Keaton – Annie Hall
51 Ray Liotta – Goodfellas
52 Robert Mitchum – The Night of the Hunter

53 Humphrey Bogart – Casablanca

Bogart plays businessman Rick Blaine, a man who initially appears to only look after number one. However, he begins to transform from the selfish character he claims to be when confronted with the arrival of his romantic past in the form of Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa Lund. Bogart delivers a performance of remarkable internal angst as his character is forced with the decision of sacrificing what he desires, for the greater good. It’s quite possible that an actor has never been able to look so wounded and yet so intelligently cool at the same time.

54 Liv Ullmann – Persona
55 Bruno Ganz – Downfall
56 Russell Crowe – Gladiator

57 Tony Leung – In the Mood for Love

Well known for his work with director Wong Kar-wai, Leung once again delivers a performance of subtle brilliance as a husband who discovers that his wife has been cheating on him, and who later develops a romantic but ultimately platonic bond with the spouse of his wife’s lover.

58 Robert Duvall – Apocalypse Now
59 Peter Sellers – Dr. Strangelove
60 Liam Neeson – Schindler’s List

61 Al Pacino – Scarface

Brian De Palma directs Pacino in one of his most famous post Godfather roles. The film depicts the rise and fall of immigrant drug lord Tony Montana and the performance is almost as transformative as Pacino’s legendary portrayal of Michael Corleone. The character moves from hope at arriving in a country of opportunity, the USA, onto a path of violence and self destruction as he maneuvers towards the top of the criminal ladder

62 Vivien Leigh – Gone with the Wind
63 Viggo Mortenson – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
64 Paul Scofield – A Man For All Seasons
65 Robert De Niro – The Deer Hunter
66 Bette Davis – All About Eve

67 James Stewart – Rear Window

While it’s Stewart’s performance in Vertigo that has probably had the most lasting impact, his role in Rear Window was arguably his most challenging. His character spends most of the film confined to one room and stuck in a wheelchair. Few actors could hold the audience’s attention in such a limited setting.

68 Brad Pitt – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
69 Paul Newman – Cool Hand Luke
70 Orson Welles – Chimes at Midnight
71 Clint Eastwood – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
72 Bruce Lee – Enter the Dragon
73 Tim Robbins – The Shawshank Redemption
74 Al Pacino – Dog Day Afternoon
75 Kevin Spacey – American Beauty
76 Charlie Chaplin – The Great Dictator
77 John Wayne – The Searchers
78 Clark Gable – Gone with the Wind

79 Marlon Brando – Last Tango in Paris

Brando stars opposite Maria Schneider in Bernardo Bertolucci’s hugely controversial drama that follows the romantic and violent relationship between Paul (Brando), who is suffering after the suicide of his wife, and Jeanne (Schneider). Brando brings a striking ambiguity to his role and his early monologue is probably one of the most outstanding moments in his career.

80 James Dean – Rebel Without a Cause
81 Edward Norton – American History X
82 Harrison Ford – Raiders of the Lost Ark
83 George C. Scott – Patton
84 Tatsuya Nakadai – Ran
85 Alec Guinness – The Bridge On The River Kwai
86 Sigourney Weaver – Aliens

87 Charlie Chaplin – City Lights

Chaplin delivers another dose of brilliant physical comedy but his face is able to convey so much more, from naivety to a rare sort of kindness.

88 Kevin Spacey – The Usual Suspects
89 Ewan McGregor – Trainspotting
90 Forest Whitaker – The Last King of Scotland
91 Henry Fonda – Once Upon a Time In the West

92 Guy Pearce – Memento

Pierce plays Leonard, a traumatized husband whose short-term memory deficit complicates his mission of vengeance against the man he thinks murdered his wife. The film is known for it’s ambitious back to front narrative, and it’s Pearce’s empathetic performance that pulls the audience into the mystery.

93 Gabriel Byrne – Miller’s Crossing

94 Ben Kingsley – Sexy Beast

Sir Ben gives one of his most intense performances as gangster Don Logan who is busy recruiting criminals for an underworld boss. The revelatory performance garnered Kingsley an Oscar nomination.

95 Denzel Washington – Malcolm X

Having already garnered acclaim for playing South African activist Steve Bilko, Spike Lee’s memorable biopic sees Washington take on the challenging role of the controversial Malcolm X. It’s much more than a impersonation as Washington delivers an expressive and passionate performance.

96 Michael Fassbender – Shame
97 Sam Shepherd – The Right Stuff
98 Gene Hackman – The Conversation
99 Dustin Hoffman – Midnight Cowboy
100 James Caan – The Godfather

The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2019) 20-1

Introduction

20. Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 113 mins.

19. Bicycle Thieves (1948) Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 93 mins.

18. There Will Blood (2007) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 mins.

17. Rashomon (1950) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 88 mins.

16. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) Dir. Werner Herzog, 93 mins.

15. Pulp Fiction (1994) Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 154 mins.

14. Andrei Rublev (1966) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 205 mins.

13. Vertigo (1958) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 129 mins.

12. The Conformist (1970) Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 107 mins.

11. The Rules of the Game (1939) Dir. Jean Renoir, 110 mins.

10. Seven Samurai (1954) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 207 mins.

Deeply influenced by Hollywood and particularly the westerns of John Ford, Kurosawa’s epic samurai adventure takes place in Warring States Period Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (including the terrific Toshiro Mifune) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. One of the most influential films of all time, evidenced by the breakthrough films of directors such as Spielberg, Lucas and Sergio Leone, it was remade by Sturges as the western The Magnificent Seven six years later. With its memorable characters and stunning action sequences Seven Samurai is as much a thrilling and engrossing form of entertainment as it is art and, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…

9. Raging Bull (1980) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 129 mins.

8. Blade Runner (1982) Dir. Ridley Scott, 117 mins.

7. The Godfather Part II (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 200 mins.

6. 8½ (1963) Dir. Federico Fellini, 138 mins.

5. Apocalypse Now (1979) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 153 mins.

4. Tokyo Story (1953) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 136 mins.

3. Citizen Kane (1941) Dir. Orson Welles, 119 mins.

2. The Godfather (1972) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 175 mins.

Brilliantly combining the temperament of European art cinema with the Hollywood gangster genre of the past, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic mafia saga chronicles ten years (1945-55) in the lives of a fictional Italian American crime family. The film focuses most on the ageing patriarch Vito Corleone (a come back for Marlon Brando), and his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), whose transformation from war hero and reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss propels much of the narrative. Coppola had to fight to cast Brando (and also Pacino), who gives a performance of immense authority amongst a magnificent cast of what were then mainly unknown actors. With a success that marked the transition from Classic Hollywood to New American Cinema and revitalised Paramount, The Godfather is a masterpiece of stunning artistry and masterful story telling that is continually lauded as one of the greatest and most influential films in world cinema. More…

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 141 mins.

Remarkably once labelled as dull, unimaginative and lacking dramatic appeal, Kubrick’s grand science fiction spectacle took four years to prepare and used special effects, particularly in depicting space flight, that were without precedent in the industry. The film, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith, deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the existence of extraterrestrial life. With the hypnotic imagery, scientific realism and Kubrick’s elaborate use of music, 2001 is now acclaimed as visionary cinema. Even watching it fifty years after its original release, you are provided with a visual and technical quality that’s still without equal in the history of film. More…

ASC’s List of 100 20th Century Cinematography Milestones

The American Society of Cinematographers, in celebration of the organisation’s 100th anniversary, has revealed its list of 100 milestone films in the art and craft of cinematography from the 20th century. Of the 100 films the ASC named a top 10, with Freddie Young’s work on David Lean’s Oscar-winning 1962 epic “Lawrence of Arabia” placing 1st. Organised by Steven Fierberg and voted on by ASC members, the milestones list is the first of its kind to showcase the best of cinematography as selected by professional cinematographers.

The ASC’s top 10 best-shot films of all time

1. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), Freddie Young, BSC (Dir. David Lean)
2. “Blade Runner” (1982), Jordan Cronenweth, ASC (Dir. Ridley Scott)
3. “Apocalypse Now” (1979), Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
4. “Citizen Kane” (1941), Gregg Toland, ASC (Dir. Orson Wells)
5. “The Godfather” (1972), Gordon Willis, ASC (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
6. “Raging Bull” (1980), Michael Chapman, ASC (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
7. “The Conformist” (1970), Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC (Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
8. “Days of Heaven” (1978), Néstor Almendros, ASC (Dir. Terrence Malick)
9. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC; additional photography: John Alcott, BSC (Dir. Stanley Kubrick)
10. “The French Connection” (1971), Owen Roizman, ASC (Dir. William Friedkin)

The Society’s full list of 100 cinematography milestones from the 20th century:

“Metropolis” (1927)
“Napoleon” (1927)
“Sunrise” (1927)
“Gone with the Wind” (1939)
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
“The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)
“Citizen Kane” (1941)
“How Green Was my Valley” (1941)
“Casablanca” (1942)
“The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942)
“Black Narcissus” (1947)
“The Bicycle Thief” (1948)
“The Red Shoes” (1948)
“The Third Man” (1949)
“Rashomon” (1950)
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
“On the Waterfront” (1954)
“Seven Samurai” (1954)
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955)
“The Searchers” (1956)
“The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)
“Touch of Evil” (1958)
“Vertigo” (1958)
“Breathless” (1960)
“Last Year at Marienbad” (1961)
“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962)
“8 1/2” (1963)
“Hud” (1963)
“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964)
“I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)” (1964)
“Doctor Zhivago” (1965)
“The Battle of Algiers” (1966)
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966)
“Cool Hand Luke” (1967)
“The Graduate” (1967)
“In Cold Blood” (1967)
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968)
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969)
“The Wild Bunch” (1969)
“The Conformist” (1970)
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971)
“The French Connection” (1971)
“Klute” (1971)
“The Last Picture Show” (1971)
“McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971)
“Cabaret” (1972)
“The Godfather” (1972)
“Last Tango in Paris” (1972)
“The Exorcist” (1973)

“Chinatown” (1974)
“The Godfather Part II” (1974)
“Barry Lyndon” (1975)
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next” (1975)
“All the President’s Men” (1976)
“Bound for Glory” (1976)
“Taxi Driver” (1976)
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
“The Duellists” (1977)
“Days of Heaven” (1978)
“The Deer Hunter” (1978)
“Alien” (1979)
“All That Jazz” (1979)
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
“Being There” (1979)
“The Black Stallion” (1979)
“Manhattan” (1979)
“Raging Bull” (1980)
“The Shining” (1980)
“Chariots of Fire” (1981)
“Das Boot” (1981)
“Reds” (1981)
“Blade Runner” (1982)
“Fanny and Alexander” (1982)
“The Right Stuff” (1983)
“Amadeus” (1984)
“The Natural” (1984)
“Paris, Texas” (1984)
“Brazil” (1985)
“The Mission” (1986)
“Empire of the Sun” (1987)
“The Last Emperor” (1987)
“Wings of Desire” (1987)
“Mississippi Burning” (1988)
“JFK” (1991)
“Raise the Red Lantern” (1991)
“Unforgiven” (1992)
“Baraka” (1992)
“Schindler’s List” (1993)
“Searching for Bobby Fischer” (1993)
“Trois Couleurs: Bleu” (1993)
“The Shawshank Redemption” (1994)
“Se7en” (1995)
“The English Patient” (1996)
“L.A. Confidential” (1997)
“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
“The Thin Red Line” (1998)
“American Beauty” (1999)
“The Matrix” (1999)
“In the Mood for Love” (2000)

Classical Hollywood Cinema

During this period movie-making had become a business, and motion picture companies made money by operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary, actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, craftspersons, and technicians. They owned or leased Movie Ranches in rural Southern California for location shooting of westerns and other large-scale genre films. And they owned hundreds of theatres in cities and towns across the nation.

After the release of Broken Blossoms in 1919, D. W. Griffith’s career began a downward trajectory, both artistically and financially, which he never managed to reverse.

The man who, perhaps, took over Griffith’s crown as America’s most ambitious director was Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the son of a playwright and a former actress. Early on he had a prodigious energy that was matched by an enthusiasm for innovation.

One his most notable films was the avant-garde The Whispering Chorus. It had a sombre, obsessive story and shadowy lighting that anticipated elements of film noir.

His first biblical epic, the $1m The Ten Commandments, preached virtue, while giving audiences a good look at the wickedness of vice.

To consolidate his position, DeMille shrewdly merged his two most successful formulas to date, the religious epic and the sex comedy, in The Sign of the Cross (1932). It featured opulent debauchery on a lavish scale (with Claudette Colbert’s Poppaea in the blushes bath scene yet) and a devout message to tie it all up.

Cleopatra (1934) dispensed with religion, but made up for it with plenty of sex and some powerfully staged battle scenes.

Eventually the one time innovator had now become defiantly old fashioned.

The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960(Paperback)
The Dynamic Frame: Camera Movement in Classical Hollywood (Film and Culture Series) paperback
Classical Hollywood Cinema: Point of View and Communication (Hardcover)
The Classical Hollywood Reader (Paperback)

In 1922, US politician Will H. Hays (1879-1954) left politics and formed the movie studio boss organisation known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). He became the first chairman from 1922 until his retirement in 1945 when the organisation became the Motion Picture Association of America. Hays became the namesake of the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, informally (and inaccurately) referred to as the Hays Code, which spelled out a set of moral guidelines for the self-censorship of content in Hollywood cinema. It went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after the Catholic watchdog organisation The Legion of Decency, appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid advertising of the era later classified Pre-Code Hollywood, threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it didn’t go into effect. Those films that didn’t obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000 fine and could not profit in the theatres, as the MPPDA controlled every theatre in the country through the Big Five studios.

The industry produced the world’s first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronised recorded music score, but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences in 1927. The release of The Jazz Singer heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and ended the silent film era. Directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, the film, featuring six songs performed by Al Jolson, is based on a play of the same name by Samson Raphaelson, adapted from one of his short stories, “The Day of Atonement”.

The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.

Darryl F. Zanuck won an Honorary Academy Award for producing the film and Alfred A. Cohn was nominated for Best Writing (Adaptation) at the 1st Academy Awards. In 1998, the film was chosen in voting conducted by the American Film Institute as one of the best American films of all time, ranking at number ninety.

After The Jazz Singer sound became widely used in Hollywood in the late 1920s. Hollywood film companies responded to Warner Bros. and began to use Vitaphone sound, which Warner Bros. owned until 1928, in future films. By May 1928, Electrical Research Product Incorporated (ERPI), a subsidiary of the Western Electric company, gained a monopoly over film sound distribution.

A side effect of the “talkies” was that many actors who had made their careers in silent films suddenly found themselves out of work, as they often had bad voices or could not remember their lines.

In the early times of talkies, American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronisation technology was still too primitive for dubbing. One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films. Around 1930, American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont, France, where the same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews.

Also, foreign unemployed actors, playwrights, and winners of photogenia contests were chosen and brought to Hollywood, where they shot parallel versions of the English-language films. These parallel versions had a lower budget, were shot at night and were directed by second-line American directors who did not speak the foreign language. The Spanish-language crews included people like Luis Buñuel, Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Xavier Cugat, and Edgar Neville. The productions were not very successful in their intended markets, due to the clearly apparent lower budgets, theatre actors with no previous experience in cinema, original movies often being second-rate themselves since studios expected that the top productions would sell by themselves, the mix of foreign accents and markets lacking sound-equipped theatres.

In spite of this, some productions like the Spanish version of Dracula compare favourably with the original. By the mid-1930s, synchronisation had advanced enough for dubbing to become usual.

Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures.

Some MGM stars included “King of Hollywood” Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jeanette MacDonald and husband Gene Raymond, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly.

Gable (1901 – 1960) began his career as a bus boy and appeared as an extra in silent films between 1924 and 1926, and progressed to supporting roles with a few films for MGM in 1930. The next year, he landed his first leading Hollywood role and over the next three decades he became a leading man in more than 60 motion pictures.

Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his best-known role as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). Gable also found success commercially and critically with films such as Red Dust (1932), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), San Francisco (1936), Saratoga (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Boom Town (1940), The Hucksters (1947), Homecoming (1948).

Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time. Joan Crawford was his favourite actress to work with, and she was partnered with Gable in eight films. Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions. He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each.

Gable is considered one of the most consistent box-office performers in history, appearing on Quigley Publishing’s annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll 16 times. He was named the seventh-greatest male star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.

Another great achievement of US cinema during this era came through Walt Disney’s animation company. In 1937, Disney released one of independent cinema’s great prestige pictures of the period, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt began work on what was the first feature length animation in 1934 and employed hundreds of background artists and animators. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, the film tells the story of Snow White, a princess living with her stepmother, a vain and wicked witch known only as the Queen. While in production the Hollywood movie industry referred to the film derisively as “Disney’s Folly”, but the production was a huge critical and commercial success. It was praised by notable filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Orson Welles and is considered by many as among American cinema’s few genuine artistic achievements.

The film was originally released by RKO Radio Pictures and the story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film’s individual sequences.

Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938. With international earnings of $8 million during its initial release, it briefly assumed the record of highest-grossing sound film at the time. The popularity of the film has led to its being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, it is one of the top-ten performers at the North American box office.

At the 11th Academy Awards, producer Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar, and the film was nominated for Best Musical Score the year before. The American Film Institute ranked it among the 100 greatest American films, and also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008. Disney’s take on the fairy tale has had a significant cultural impact, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, and a Broadway musical.

Walt Disney (1901 – 1966) introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honours.

Disney moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy. With Ub Iwerks, Walt developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success and also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio grew, Disney became more adventurous, introducing synchronised sound, full-colour three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons and technical developments in cameras.

As Well as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney produced other successful features such as Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942), that furthered the development of animated film.

The crown of most successful film only remained with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs briefly as the distinction was promptly topped in 1939 when Selznick International created what is still when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time, Gone with the Wind.

Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics’ polls as the greatest film of all time.

To Have and Have Not (1944) is famous not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), but also for being written by two future winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation.

At motion pictures’ height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week.

The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made

In 2004 The New York Times published a book that listed the 1000 films that they consider the finest ever made. The book features a collection of original reviews by the critics of the paper, and the list encompasses movies of every conceivable genre, including musicals, dramas, comedies, foreign films and animated features. The films are listed in alphabetical order. Buy – The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made: An Indispensable Collection of Original Reviews of Box-Office Hits and Misses (Film Critics of the New York Times)

A Nous La Liberte 1931 René Clair
About Schmidt 2002 Alexander Payne
Absence Of Malice 1981 Sydney Pollack
Adam’s Rib 1949 George Cukor
Adaptation. 2002 Spike Jonze
The Adjuster 1991 Atom Egoyan
The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
Affliction 1997 Paul Schrader
The African Queen 1951 John Huston
L’Age D’Or 1930 Luis Buñuel
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes 1972 Werner Herzog
A.I. Artificial Intelligence 2001 Steven Spielberg
Airplane! 1980 Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, David Zucker
Aladdin 1992 Ron Clements, John Musker
Alexander Nevsky 1938 Dmitriy Vasilev, Sergei M. Eisenstein
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore 1974 Martin Scorsese
Alice’s Restaurant 1969 Arthur Penn
Aliens 1986 James Cameron
All About Eve 1950 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
All About My Mother 1999 Pedro Almodóvar
All Quiet on the Western Front 1930 Lewis Milestone
All That Heaven Allows 1955 Douglas Sirk
All The King’s Men 1949 Robert Rossen
All The President’s Men 1976 Alan J. Pakula
Amadeus 1984 Milos Forman
Amarcord 1973 Federico Fellini
Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet
America America 1963 Elia Kazan
Der amerikanische Freund 1977 Wim Wenders
American Graffiti 1973 George Lucas
An American in Paris 1951 Vincente Minnelli
The Americanization of Emily 1964 Arthur Hiller
American Movie 1999 Chris Smith
Amores perros 2000 Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Anastasia 1956 Anatole Litvak
Anatomy of a Murder 1959 Otto Preminger
The Angry Silence 1960 Guy Green
Anna and the King of Siam 1946 John Cromwell
Anna Christie 1930 Clarence Brown
Annie Hall 1977 Woody Allen
The Apartment 1960 Billy Wilder
Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola
Apollo 13 1995 Ron Howard
The Apostle 1997 Robert Duvall
L’argent 1983 Robert Bresson
Popiól i diament 1958 Andrzej Wajda
The Asphalt Jungle 1950 John Huston
L’Atalante 1934 Jean Vigo
Atlantic City, USA 1980 Louis Malle
Au revoir les enfants 1987 Louis Malle
L’avventura 1960 Michelangelo Antonioni
The Awful Truth 1937 Leo McCarey

Babettes gæstebud 1987 Gabriel Axel
Baby Doll 1956 Elia Kazan
Back to the Future 1985 Robert Zemeckis
The Bad and the Beautiful 1952 Vincente Minnelli
Bad Day at Black Rock 1955 John Sturges
Badlands 1973 Terrence Malick
La femme du boulanger 1938 Marcel Pagnol
Ball of Fire 1941 Howard Hawks
The Ballad of Cable Hogue 1970 Sam Peckinpah
Bambi 1942 Samuel Armstrong, Paul Satterfield, Graham Heid, James Algar, David Hand, Norman Wright, Bill Roberts
The Band Wagon 1953 Vincente Minnelli
Bang the Drum Slowly 1973 John D. Hancock
The Bank Dick 1940 Edward F. Cline
Barfly 1987 Barbet Schroeder
Barry Lyndon 1975 Stanley Kubrick
Barton Fink 1991 Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
La battaglia di Algeri 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo
Le beau mariage 1982 Éric Rohmer
Beautiful People 1999 Jasmin Dizdar
La belle et la bête 1946 Jean Cocteau, René Clément
Beauty and the Beast 1991 Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Domicile conjugal 1970 François Truffaut
Beetlejuice 1988 Tim Burton
Before Night Falls 2000 Julian Schnabel
Before the Rain 1994 Milcho Manchevski
Being John Malkovich 1999 Spike Jonze
Being There 1979 Hal Ashby
Belle de jour 1967 Luis Buñuel
Ben-Hur 1959 William Wyler
Berlin Alexanderplatz 1980
The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 William Wyler
Beverly Hills Cop 1984 Martin Brest
Ladri di biciclette 1948 Vittorio De Sica
The Big Chill 1983 Lawrence Kasdan
The Big Clock 1948 John Farrow
I soliti ignoti 1958 Mario Monicelli
The Big Heat 1953 Fritz Lang
Big Night 1996 Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci
The Big Red One 1980 Samuel Fuller
The Big Sky 1952 Howard Hawks
The Big Sleep 1946 Howard Hawks
Billy Liar 1963 John Schlesinger
Biloxi Blues 1988 Mike Nichols
The Birds 1963 Alfred Hitchcock
Birdy 1984 Alan Parker
Black Narcissus 1947 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Orfeu Negro 1959 Marcel Camus
Black Robe 1991 Bruce Beresford
Blazing Saddles 1974 Mel Brooks
Bloody Sunday 2002 Paul Greengrass
Blowup 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni
Blue Collar 1978 Paul Schrader
Blue Velvet 1986 David Lynch
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice 1969 Paul Mazursky
Bob le flambeur 1956 Jean-Pierre Melville
Body Heat 1981 Lawrence Kasdan
Bonnie and Clyde 1967 Arthur Penn
Boogie Nights 1997 Paul Thomas Anderson
Born on the Fourth of July 1989 Oliver Stone
Born Yesterday 1950 George Cukor
Le boucher 1970 Claude Chabrol
Bound for Glory 1976 Hal Ashby
Boys Don’t Cry 1999 Kimberly Peirce
Boyz n the Hood 1991 John Singleton
Brazil 1985 Terry Gilliam
Pane, amore e fantasia 1953 Luigi Comencini
‘Breaker’ Morant 1980 Bruce Beresford
The Breakfast Club 1985 John Hughes
Breaking Away 1979 Peter Yates
Breaking the Waves 1996 Lars von Trier
À bout de souffle 1960 Jean-Luc Godard
La mariée était en noir 1968 François Truffaut
The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 David Lean
Brief Encounter 1945 David Lean
A Brief History of Time 1991 Errol Morris
Bringing Up Baby 1938 Howard Hawks
Broadcast News 1987 James L. Brooks
Brother’s Keeper 1992 Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
The Buddy Holly Story 1978 Steve Rash
Bull Durham 1988 Ron Shelton
Bullitt 1968 Peter Yates
Bus Stop 1956 Joshua Logan
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 George Roy Hill
The Butcher Boy 1997 Neil Jordan
Bye Bye Brasil 1980 Carlos Diegues
Madame de… 1953 Max Ophüls

Cabaret 1972 Bob Fosse
The Caine Mutiny 1954 Edward Dmytryk
California Suite 1978 Herbert Ross
Calle 54 2000 Fernando Trueba
Camelot 1967 Joshua Logan
Camille 1936 George Cukor
Captains Courageous 1937 Victor Fleming
Carmen Jones 1954 Otto Preminger
Carnal Knowledge 1971 Mike Nichols
Casablanca 1942 Michael Curtiz
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 Richard Brooks
Catch-22 1970 Mike Nichols
Cavalcade 1933 Frank Lloyd
Festen 1998 Thomas Vinterberg
La cérémonie 1995 Claude Chabrol
Chan Is Missing 1982 Wayne Wang
Chariots of Fire 1981 Hugh Hudson
Charley Varrick 1973 Don Siegel
Chicago 2002 Rob Marshall
Chicken Run 2000 Peter Lord, Nick Park
La chienne 1931 Jean Renoir
Chinatown 1974 Roman Polanski
L’amour l’après-midi 1972 Éric Rohmer
Chocolat 2000 Lasse Hallström
The Cider House Rules 1999 Lasse Hallström
The Citadel 1938 King Vidor
Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles
Le genou de Claire 1970 Éric Rohmer
L’horloger de Saint-Paul 1974 Bertrand Tavernier
A Clockwork Orange 1971 Stanley Kubrick
Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 Steven Spielberg
Nema-ye Nazdik 1990 Abbas Kiarostami
Clueless 1995 Amy Heckerling
Coal Miner’s Daughter 1980 Michael Apted
The Color of Money 1986 Martin Scorsese
Come Back, Little Sheba 1952 Daniel Mann
Coming Home 1978 Hal Ashby
Il conformista 1970 Bernardo Bertolucci
The Conquest of Everest 1953 George Lowe
Le mépris 1963 Jean-Luc Godard
The Conversation 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
Cool Hand Luke 1967 Stuart Rosenberg
The Count of Monte Cristo 1934 Rowland V. Lee
The Country Girl 1954 George Seaton
Les cousins 1959 Claude Chabrol
Letyat zhuravli 1957 Mikhail Kalatozov
Viskningar och rop 1972 Ingmar Bergman
Crossfire 1947 Edward Dmytryk
Crumb 1994 Terry Zwigoff
Cry, the Beloved Country 1951 Zoltan Korda
The Crying Game 1992 Neil Jordan

Damn Yankees 1958 George Abbott, Stanley Donen
La caduta degli dei (Götterdämmerung) 1969 Luchino Visconti
Dance with a Stranger 1985 Mike Newell
Dangerous Liaisons 1988 Stephen Frears
Daniel 1983 Sidney Lumet
Danton 1983 Andrzej Wajda
Oci ciornie 1987 Nikita Mikhalkov
Dark Victory 1939 Edmund Goulding
Darling 1965 John Schlesinger
The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger 1935 George Cukor
David Holzman’s Diary 1967 Jim McBride
Dawn of the Dead 1978 George A. Romero
La nuit américaine 1973 François Truffaut
The Day of the Jackal 1973 Fred Zinnemann
The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951 Robert Wise
Days of Heaven 1978 Terrence Malick
Days of Wine and Roses 1962 Blake Edwards
The Dead 1987 John Huston
Dead Calm 1989 Phillip Noyce
Dead End 1937 William Wyler
Dead Man Walking 1995 Tim Robbins
Dead of Night 1945 Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, Alberto Cavalcanti
Dead Ringers 1988 David Cronenberg
Morte a Venezia 1971 Luchino Visconti
Death of a Salesman 1951 Laslo Benedek
Dekalog 1989
Deep End 1970 Jerzy Skolimowski
The Deer Hunter 1978 Michael Cimino
The Defiant Ones 1958 Stanley Kramer
Deliverance 1972 John Boorman
Desperately Seeking Susan 1985 Susan Seidelman
Destry Rides Again 1939 George Marshall
Les diaboliques 1955 Henri-Georges Clouzot
Dial M for Murder 1954 Alfred Hitchcock
Le journal d’une femme de chambre 1964 Luis Buñuel
Journal d’un curé de campagne 1951 Robert Bresson
Die Hard 1988 John McTiernan
Diner 1982 Barry Levinson
Dinner at Eight 1933 George Cukor
The Dirty Dozen 1967 Robert Aldrich
Dirty Harry 1971 Don Siegel
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 1988 Frank Oz
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie 1972 Luis Buñuel
Disraeli 1929 Alfred E. Green
Ashani Sanket 1973 Satyajit Ray
Diva 1981 Jean-Jacques Beineix
Divorzio all’italiana 1961 Pietro Germi
Do the Right Thing 1989 Spike Lee
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1931 Rouben Mamoulian
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 Stanley Kubrick
Doctor Zhivago 1965 David Lean
Dodsworth 1936 William Wyler
La dolce vita 1960 Federico Fellini
Donnie Brasco 1997 Mike Newell
Dont Look Back 1967 D.A. Pennebaker
Double Indemnity 1944 Billy Wilder
Down by Law 1986 Jim Jarmusch
Dracula 1931 Tod Browning
La vie rêvée des anges 1998 Erick Zonca
Dressed to Kill 1980 Brian De Palma
The Dresser 1983 Peter Yates
Driving Miss Daisy 1989 Bruce Beresford
Drowning by Numbers 1988 Peter Greenaway
Drugstore Cowboy 1989 Gus Van Sant
Duck Soup 1933 Leo McCarey
The Duellists 1977 Ridley Scott
Dumbo 1941 Jack Kinney, Ben Sharpsteen, Samuel Armstrong, Wilfred Jackson, John Elliotte, Bill Roberts, Norman Ferguson

East of Eden 1955 Elia Kazan
Easy Living 1937 Mitchell Leisen
Yin shi nan nu 1994 Ang Lee
Fontane Effi Briest 1974 Rainer Werner Fassbinder
8½ 1963 Federico Fellini
Eight Men Out 1988 John Sayles
The Elephant Man 1980 David Lynch
Elmer Gantry 1960 Richard Brooks
Empire of the Sun 1987 Steven Spielberg
Enemies: A Love Story 1989 Paul Mazursky
Les enfants du paradis 1945 Marcel Carné
The English Patient 1996 Anthony Minghella
The Entertainer 1960 Tony Richardson
Coup de foudre 1983 Diane Kurys
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982 Steven Spielberg
Europa Europa 1990 Agnieszka Holland
Sauve qui peut (la vie) 1980 Jean-Luc Godard
The Exorcist 1973 William Friedkin
El ángel exterminador 1962 Luis Buñuel

A Face in the Crowd 1957 Elia Kazan
Ansikte mot ansikte 1976 Ingmar Bergman
Faces 1968 John Cassavetes
Kazoku gêmu 1983 Yoshimitsu Morita
Fanny och Alexander 1982 Ingmar Bergman
Fantasia 1940 Ben Sharpsteen, Samuel Armstrong, Hamilton Luske, Paul Satterfield, James Algar, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe Jr., David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, T. Hee, Bill Roberts, Norman Ferguson
Ba wang bie ji 1993 Kaige Chen
Far from Heaven 2002 Todd Haynes
Fargo 1996 Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control 1997 Errol Morris
Atanarjuat 2001 Zacharias Kunuk
Fat City 1972 John Huston
Fatal Attraction 1987 Adrian Lyne
Father of the Bride 1950 Vincente Minnelli
Fellini – Satyricon 1969 Federico Fellini
La Femme Infidèle 1969 Claude Chabrol
Nikita 1990 Luc Besson
The Fisher King 1991 Terry Gilliam
I pugni in tasca 1965 Marco Bellocchio
Fitzcarraldo 1982 Werner Herzog
Five Easy Pieces 1970 Bob Rafelson
The Flamingo Kid 1984 Garry Marshall
The Fly 1958 Kurt Neumann
Force of Evil 1948 Abraham Polonsky
For Whom the Bell Tolls 1943 Sam Wood
Jeux interdits 1952 René Clément
A Foreign Affair 1948 Billy Wilder
The Fortune Cookie 1966 Billy Wilder
Les quatre cents coups 1959 François Truffaut
Frankenstein 1931 James Whale
The French Connection 1971 William Friedkin
Frenzy 1972 Alfred Hitchcock
Friendly Persuasion 1956 William Wyler
From Here to Eternity 1953 Fred Zinnemann
The Fugitive 1947 John Ford, Emilio Fernández
Full Metal Jacket 1987 Stanley Kubrick
The Full Monty 1997 Peter Cattaneo
Funny Face 1957 Stanley Donen
Funny Girl 1968 William Wyler
Fury 1936 Fritz Lang

Gallipoli 1981 Peter Weir
Gandhi 1982 Richard Attenborough
Gangs of New York 2002 Martin Scorsese
Il giardino dei Finzi Contini 1970 Vittorio De Sica
Gas, Food Lodging 1992 Allison Anders
Gaslight 1944 George Cukor
Jigokumon 1953 Teinosuke Kinugasa
Gion bayashi 1953 Kenji Mizoguchi
The General 1998 John Boorman
Il generale Della Rovere 1959 Roberto Rossellini
Genevieve 1953 Henry Cornelius
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1953 Howard Hawks
Georgy Girl 1966 Silvio Narizzano
Get Carter 1971 Mike Hodges
Préparez vos mouchoirs 1978 Bertrand Blier
Ghost World 2001 Terry Zwigoff
Giant 1956 George Stevens
Gigi 1958 Vincente Minnelli
Gimme Shelter 1970 David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, Albert Maysles
The Girl Can’t Help It 1956 Frank Tashlin
La ragazza con la valigia 1961 Valerio Zurlini
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse 2000 Agnès Varda
Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter 1972 Wim Wenders
The Go-Between 1971 Joseph Losey
The Godfather 1972 Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather: Part II 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
Going My Way 1944 Leo McCarey
Goldfinger 1964 Guy Hamilton
Gone with the Wind 1939 Sam Wood, George Cukor, Victor Fleming
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo 1966 Sergio Leone
The Good Earth 1937 Sam Wood, Gustav Machatý, Sidney Franklin, Victor Fleming
Goodbye, Mr. Chips 1939 Sam Wood, Sidney Franklin
Goodfellas 1990 Martin Scorsese
Gosford Park 2001 Robert Altman
The Graduate 1967 Mike Nichols
Grand Hotel 1932 Edmund Goulding
La grande illusion 1937 Jean Renoir
The Grapes of Wrath 1940 John Ford
The Great Dictator 1940 Charles Chaplin
Great Expectations 1946 David Lean
The Great Man 1956 José Ferrer
The Great McGinty 1940 Preston Sturges
The Greatest Show on Earth 1952 Cecil B. DeMille
Green for Danger 1946 Sidney Gilliat
Gregory’s Girl 1980 Bill Forsyth
The Grifters 1990 Stephen Frears
Groundhog Day 1993 Harold Ramis
The Gunfighter 1950 Henry King
Gunga Din 1939 George Stevens

Hail the Conquering Hero 1944 Preston Sturges
Hair 1979 Milos Forman
Hamlet 1948 Laurence Olivier
Hamlet 2000 Michael Almereyda
Handle with Care 1977 Jonathan Demme
Hannah and Her Sisters 1986 Woody Allen
Happiness 1998 Todd Solondz
A Hard Day’s Night 1964 Richard Lester
Harlan County U.S.A. 1976 Barbara Kopple
Harry and Tonto 1974 Paul Mazursky
A Hatful of Rain 1957 Fred Zinnemann
The Heartbreak Kid 1972 Elaine May
Heartland 1979 Richard Pearce
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse 1991 George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr
Heat and Dust 1983 James Ivory
Heathers 1988 Michael Lehmann
Heavy Traffic 1973 Ralph Bakshi
Heimat – Eine deutsche Chronik 1984
The Heiress 1949 William Wyler
Henry V 1989 Kenneth Branagh
The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France 1944 Laurence Olivier
Henry Fool 1997 Hal Hartley
Here Comes Mr. Jordan 1941 Alexander Hall
Tengoku to jigoku 1963 Akira Kurosawa
The High and the Mighty 1954 William A. Wellman
High Art 1998 Lisa Cholodenko
High Hopes 1988 Mike Leigh
High Noon 1952 Fred Zinnemann
High Sierra 1941 Raoul Walsh
The Hill 1965 Sidney Lumet
Hiroshima mon amour 1959 Alain Resnais
His Girl Friday 1940 Howard Hawks
The Homecoming 1973 Peter Hall
Hoop Dreams 1994 Steve James
Hope and Glory 1987 John Boorman
Hôtel Terminus 1988 Marcel Ophüls
The Hours 2002 Stephen Daldry
Household Saints 1993 Nancy Savoca
House of Games 1987 David Mamet
How Green Was My Valley 1941 John Ford
How to Marry a Millionaire 1953 Jean Negulesco
Howards End 1992 James Ivory
Hud 1963 Martin Ritt
Huey Long 1985 Ken Burns
Husbands and Wives 1992 Woody Allen
The Hustler 1961 Robert Rossen

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’ 1945 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
I Remember Mama 1948 George Stevens
I Want to Live! 1958 Robert Wise
If…. 1968 Lindsay Anderson
Ikiru 1952 Akira Kurosawa
I’m All Right Jack 1959 John Boulting
Imitation of Life 1959 Douglas Sirk
In Cold Blood 1967 Richard Brooks
In the Bedroom 2001 Todd Field
In the Heat of the Night 1967 Norman Jewison
The Informer 1935 John Ford
Inherit the Wind 1960 Stanley Kramer
The Insider 1999 Michael Mann
Internal Affairs 1990 Mike Figgis
The Ipcress File 1965 Sidney J. Furie
It Happened One Night 1934 Frank Capra
It’s a Gift 1934 Norman Z. McLeod
It’s a Wonderful Life 1946 Frank Capra
Jailhouse Rock 1957 Richard Thorpe
Jaws 1975 Steven Spielberg
The Jazz Singer 1927 Alan Crosland
Jean de Florette 1986 Claude Berri
Jerry Maguire 1996 Cameron Crowe
Johnny Guitar 1954 Nicholas Ray
Le juge et l’assassin 1976 Bertrand Tavernier
Judgment at Nuremberg 1961 Stanley Kramer
Ju Dou 1990 Fengliang Yang, Yimou Zhang
Jules et Jim 1962 François Truffaut
Giulietta degli spiriti 1965 Federico Fellini
Junior Bonner 1972 Sam Peckinpah
Kagemusha 1980 Akira Kurosawa
The Killers 1946 Robert Siodmak
The Killing Fields 1984 Roland Joffé
Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949 Robert Hamer
The King and I 1956 Walter Lang
King Kong 1933 Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper
King Lear 1971 Peter Brook
The King of Comedy 1982 Martin Scorsese
The King of Marvin Gardens 1972 Bob Rafelson
Kiss of the Spider Woman 1985 Hector Babenco
Klute 1971 Alan J. Pakula
Nóz w wodzie 1962 Roman Polanski
Kramer vs. Kramer 1979 Robert Benton

L.A. Confidential 1997 Curtis Hanson
Lacombe Lucien 1974 Louis Malle
The Lady Eve 1941 Preston Sturges
The Lady Vanishes 1938 Alfred Hitchcock
Ladybird Ladybird 1994 Ken Loach
Lamerica 1994 Gianni Amelio
The Last American Hero 1973 Lamont Johnson
The Last Emperor 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci
Le dernier métro 1980 François Truffaut
The Last Picture Show 1971 Peter Bogdanovich
The Last Seduction 1994 John Dahl
Ultimo tango a Parigi 1972 Bernardo Bertolucci
The Last Temptation of Christ 1988 Martin Scorsese
The Last Waltz 1978 Martin Scorsese
Laura 1944 Otto Preminger
The Lavender Hill Mob 1951 Charles Crichton
Lawrence of Arabia 1962 David Lean
A League of Their Own 1992 Penny Marshall
Leaving Las Vegas 1995 Mike Figgis
Il gattopardo 1963 Luchino Visconti
The Letter 1940 William Wyler
A Letter to Three Wives 1949 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Les liaisons dangereuses 1959 Roger Vadim
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1943 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Life Is Sweet 1990 Mike Leigh
The Life of Emile Zola 1937 William Dieterle
Life with Father 1947 Michael Curtiz
Como agua para chocolate 1992 Alfonso Arau
Lili 1953 Charles Walters
Little Big Man 1970 Arthur Penn
Little Caesar 1931 Mervyn LeRoy
The Little Foxes 1941 William Wyler
Little Fugitive 1953 Morris Engel, Ray Ashley, Ruth Orkin
The Kidnappers 1953 Philip Leacock
Malenkaya Vera 1988 Vasili Pichul
Little Women 1933 George Cukor
Little Women 1994 Gillian Armstrong
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer 1935 Henry Hathaway
Living in Oblivion 1995 Tom DiCillo
Local Hero 1983 Bill Forsyth
Lola 1981 Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Lola Montès 1955 Max Ophüls
Lolita 1962 Stanley Kubrick
Lone Star 1996 John Sayles
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner 1962 Tony Richardson
Long Day’s Journey Into Night 1962 Sidney Lumet
The Long Goodbye 1973 Robert Altman
The Long Good Friday 1980 John Mackenzie
The Long Voyage Home 1940 John Ford
The Longest Day 1962 Andrew Marton, Ken Annakin, Darryl F. Zanuck, Bernhard Wicki, Gerd Oswald
Look Back in Anger 1959 Tony Richardson
Lost Horizon 1937 Frank Capra
Lost in America 1985 Albert Brooks
The Lost Weekend 1945 Billy Wilder
Szerelem 1971 Károly Makk
Love Affair 1939 Leo McCarey
Love and Death 1975 Woody Allen
Eine Liebe in Deutschland 1983 Andrzej Wajda
Love in the Afternoon 1957 Billy Wilder
Lovely & Amazing 2001 Nicole Holofcener
L’amour en fuite 1979 François Truffaut
Lover Come Back 1961 Delbert Mann
Les amants 1958 Louis Malle
Lásky jedné plavovlásky 1965 Milos Forman
Loving 1970 Irvin Kershner
Lust for Life 1956 Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor

M 1931 Fritz Lang
Mad Max 1979 George Miller
The Madness of King George 1994 Nicholas Hytner
Trollflöjten 1975 Ingmar Bergman
The Major and the Minor 1942 Billy Wilder
Major Barbara 1941 Gabriel Pascal, Harold French, David Lean
Make Way for Tomorrow 1937 Leo McCarey
Malcolm X 1992 Spike Lee
The Maltese Falcon 1941 John Huston
A Man for All Seasons 1966 Fred Zinnemann
Man Hunt 1941 Fritz Lang
The Man Who Came to Dinner 1942 William Keighley
L’homme qui aimait les femmes 1977 François Truffaut
The Man Who Wasn’t There 2001 Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
The Man with the Golden Arm 1955 Otto Preminger
The Manchurian Candidate 1962 John Frankenheimer
Manhattan 1979 Woody Allen
Manon des sources 1986 Claude Berri
Matrimonio all’italiana 1964 Vittorio De Sica
Married to the Mob 1988 Jonathan Demme
The Marrying Kind 1952 George Cukor
Marty 1955 Delbert Mann
Mary Poppins 1964 Robert Stevenson
MASH 1970 Robert Altman
Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö 1990 Aki Kaurismäki
Mayerling 1936 Anatole Litvak
McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971 Robert Altman
Mean Streets 1973 Martin Scorsese
Meet Me in St. Louis 1944 Vincente Minnelli
Melvin and Howard 1980 Jonathan Demme
Memorias del subdesarrollo 1968 Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
The Memory of Justice 1976 Marcel Ophüls
The Men 1950 Fred Zinnemann
Tenue de soirée 1986 Bertrand Blier
Metropolitan 1990 Whit Stillman
Midnight 1939 Mitchell Leisen
Midnight Cowboy 1969 John Schlesinger
Minnie and Moskowitz 1971 John Cassavetes
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 1943 Preston Sturges
Miracle on 34th Street 1947 George Seaton
The Miracle Worker 1962 Arthur Penn
Les Misérables 1935 Richard Boleslawski
The Misfits 1961 John Huston
Missing 1982 Costa-Gavras
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge 1990 James Ivory
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 1936 Frank Capra
Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot 1953 Jacques Tati
Mister Roberts 1955 John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, Joshua Logan
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939 Frank Capra
Mrs. Miniver 1942 William Wyler
Mon oncle d’Amérique 1980 Alain Resnais
Mona Lisa 1986 Neil Jordan
Monsieur Verdoux 1947 Charles Chaplin
Monsters, Inc. 2001 David Silverman, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich
Moonlighting 1982 Jerzy Skolimowski
Moonstruck 1987 Norman Jewison
The More the Merrier 1943 George Stevens
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment 1966 Karel Reisz
The Mortal Storm 1940 Frank Borzage
Mother 1996 Albert Brooks
Moulin Rouge 1952 John Huston
The Mouthpiece 1932 James Flood, Elliott Nugent
Much Ado About Nothing 1993 Kenneth Branagh
Mulholland Dr. 2001 David Lynch
Le souffle au coeur 1971 Louis Malle
Mutiny on the Bounty 1935 Frank Lloyd
My Beautiful Laundrette 1985 Stephen Frears
My Darling Clementine 1946 John Ford
My Dinner with Andre 1981 Louis Malle
My Fair Lady 1964 George Cukor
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown 1989 Jim Sheridan
Mitt liv som hund 1985 Lasse Hallström
My Man Godfrey 1936 Gregory La Cava
Ma nuit chez Maud 1969 Éric Rohmer
My Own Private Idaho 1991 Gus Van Sant
Az én XX. századom 1989 Ildikó Enyedi
Mon oncle 1958 Jacques Tati

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! 1988 David Zucker
Nashville 1975 Robert Altman
Animal House 1978 John Landis
National Velvet 1944 Clarence Brown
Network 1976 Sidney Lumet
Pote tin Kyriaki 1960 Jules Dassin
Night Moves 1975 Arthur Penn
The Night of the Hunter 1955 Charles Laughton
Night of the Living Dead 1968 George A. Romero
A Night to Remember 1958 Roy Ward Baker
A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 Wes Craven
Novecento 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci
Ninotchka 1939 Ernst Lubitsch
Nobody’s Fool 1994 Robert Benton
Norma Rae 1979 Martin Ritt
North by Northwest 1959 Alfred Hitchcock
Nothing But the Best 1964 Clive Donner
Notorious 1946 Alfred Hitchcock
Now, Voyager 1942 Irving Rapper
La nuit de Varennes 1982 Ettore Scola
The Nun’s Story 1959 Fred Zinnemann
Odd Man Out 1947 Carol Reed
Of Mice and Men 1939 Lewis Milestone
Oklahoma! 1955 Fred Zinnemann
Oliver Twist 1948 David Lean
Los olvidados 1950 Luis Buñuel
On the Beach 1959 Stanley Kramer
On the Town 1949 Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
On the Waterfront 1954 Elia Kazan
One False Move 1992 Carl Franklin
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1975 Milos Forman
One Foot in Heaven 1941 Irving Rapper
One Hour with You 1932 Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor
One Night of Love 1934 Victor Schertzinger
One Potato, Two Potato 1964 Larry Peerce
One, Two, Three 1961 Billy Wilder
Only Angels Have Wings 1939 Howard Hawks
Roma città aperta 1945 Roberto Rossellini
Operation Crossbow 1965 Michael Anderson
The Opposite of Sex 1998 Don Roos
Ordinary People 1980 Robert Redford
Ossessione 1943 Luchino Visconti
The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice 1951 Orson Welles
Our Town 1940 Sam Wood
Out of the Past 1947 Jacques Tourneur
The Outlaw Josey Wales 1976 Clint Eastwood
The Overlanders 1946 Harry Watt
The Ox-Bow Incident 1943 William A. Wellman

Paint Your Wagon 1969 Joshua Logan
Paisà 1946 Roberto Rossellini
The Palm Beach Story 1942 Preston Sturges
The Parallax View 1974 Alan J. Pakula
A Passage to India 1984 David Lean
En passion 1969 Ingmar Bergman
Pather Panchali 1955 Satyajit Ray
Paths of Glory 1957 Stanley Kubrick
Patton 1970 Franklin J. Schaffner
The Pawnbroker 1964 Sidney Lumet
Payday 1973 Daryl Duke
Pelle erobreren 1987 Bille August
The People vs. Larry Flynt 1996 Milos Forman
Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman
Screen Two: Persuasion 1995 Roger Michell
Le petit théâtre de Jean Renoir 1970 Jean Renoir
Petulia 1968 Richard Lester
The Philadelphia Story 1940 George Cukor
The Pianist 2002 Roman Polanski
The Piano 1993 Jane Campion
Pickup on South Street 1953 Samuel Fuller
The Pillow Book 1996 Peter Greenaway
Pillow Talk 1959 Michael Gordon
The Pink Panther 1963 Blake Edwards
Pinocchio 1940 Jack Kinney, Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, T. Hee, Bill Roberts, Norman Ferguson
Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco 1981 Hector Babenco
A Place in the Sun 1951 George Stevens
Places in the Heart 1984 Robert Benton
Platoon 1986 Oliver Stone
Play Misty for Me 1971 Clint Eastwood
The Player 1992 Robert Altman
Playtime 1967 Jacques Tati
Point Blank 1967 John Boorman
Poltergeist 1982 Tobe Hooper
Ponette 1996 Jacques Doillon
Il postino 1994 Massimo Troisi, Michael Radford
The Postman Always Rings Twice 1946 Tay Garnett
Pretty Baby 1978 Louis Malle
Pride and Prejudice 1940 Robert Z. Leonard
The Pride of the Yankees 1942 Sam Wood
Prince of the City 1981 Sidney Lumet
The Prisoner 1955 Peter Glenville
The Private Life of Henry VIII. 1933 Alexander Korda
Prizzi’s Honor 1985 John Huston
The Producers 1967 Mel Brooks
Psycho 1960 Alfred Hitchcock
The Public Enemy 1931 William A. Wellman
Pulp Fiction 1994 Quentin Tarantino
The Purple Rose of Cairo 1985 Woody Allen
Pygmalion 1938 Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard
Quadrophenia 1979 Franc Roddam
The Quiet Man 1952 John Ford

Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese
Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 Steven Spielberg
Rain Man 1988 Barry Levinson
Da hong deng long gao gao gua 1991 Yimou Zhang
Raising Arizona 1987 Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Ran 1985 Akira Kurosawa
The Rapture 1991 Michael Tolkin
Rashômon 1950 Akira Kurosawa
Re-Animator 1985 Stuart Gordon
Rear Window 1954 Alfred Hitchcock
Rebecca 1940 Alfred Hitchcock
Rebel Without a Cause 1955 Nicholas Ray
Trois couleurs: Rouge 1994 Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Red Badge of Courage 1951 John Huston
Red River 1948 Arthur Rosson, Howard Hawks
The Red Shoes 1948 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Reds 1981 Warren Beatty
The Remains of the Day 1993 James Ivory
Repo Man 1984 Alex Cox
Repulsion 1965 Roman Polanski
Reservoir Dogs 1992 Quentin Tarantino
Le retour de Martin Guerre 1982 Daniel Vigne
Reuben, Reuben 1983 Robert Ellis Miller
Reversal of Fortune 1990 Barbet Schroeder
Richard III 1955 Laurence Olivier
Ride the High Country 1962 Sam Peckinpah
Du rififi chez les hommes 1955 Jules Dassin
The Right Stuff 1983 Philip Kaufman
Risky Business 1983 Paul Brickman
River’s Edge 1986 Tim Hunter
Mad Max 2 1981 George Miller
RoboCop 1987 Paul Verhoeven
Rocco e i suoi fratelli 1960 Luchino Visconti
Roger & Me 1989 Michael Moore
Roman Holiday 1953 William Wyler
Romeo and Juliet 1936 George Cukor
Romeo and Juliet 1968 Franco Zeffirelli
Room at the Top 1959 Jack Clayton
A Room with a View 1985 James Ivory
The Rose Tattoo 1955 Daniel Mann
Rosemary’s Baby 1968 Roman Polanski
‘Round Midnight 1986 Bertrand Tavernier
Ruggles of Red Gap 1935 Leo McCarey
La règle du jeu 1939 Jean Renoir
The Ruling Class 1972 Peter Medak
Rushmore 1998 Wes Anderson
Ruthless People 1986 Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, David Zucker

Sahara 1943 Zoltan Korda
Salaam Bombay! 1988 Mira Nair
Salesman 1969 David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, Albert Maysles
Tsubaki Sanjûrô 1962 Akira Kurosawa
Sanshô dayû 1954 Kenji Mizoguchi
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 1960 Karel Reisz
Saturday Night Fever 1977 John Badham
Saving Private Ryan 1998 Steven Spielberg
Say Anything… 1989 Cameron Crowe
Sayonara 1957 Joshua Logan
Scener ur ett äktenskap 1973
Schindler’s List 1993 Steven Spielberg
The Scoundrel 1935 Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
The Search 1948 Fred Zinnemann
The Searchers 1956 John Ford
Secret Honor 1984 Robert Altman
Secrets & Lies 1996 Mike Leigh
Sense and Sensibility 1995 Ang Lee
Sergeant York 1941 Howard Hawks
Serpico 1973 Sidney Lumet
The Servant 1963 Joseph Losey
The Set-Up 1949 Robert Wise
Pasqualino Settebellezze 1975 Lina Wertmüller
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers 1954 Stanley Donen
Seven Days to Noon 1950 John Boulting, Roy Boulting
Shichinin no samurai 1954 Akira Kurosawa
Seven Up! 1964 Paul Almond
The Seven Year Itch 1955 Billy Wilder
Det sjunde inseglet 1957 Ingmar Bergman
Sex, Lies, and Videotape 1989 Steven Soderbergh
Sexy Beast 2000 Jonathan Glazer
Shadow of a Doubt 1943 Alfred Hitchcock
Shaft 1971 Gordon Parks
Shakespeare in Love 1998 John Madden
Shane 1953 George Stevens
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949 John Ford
Sherman’s March 1985 Ross McElwee
She’s Gotta Have It 1986 Spike Lee
The Shining 1980 Stanley Kubrick
Ship of Fools 1965 Stanley Kramer
Shoah 1985 Claude Lanzmann
Shock Corridor 1963 Samuel Fuller
Sciuscià 1946 Vittorio De Sica
Tirez sur le pianiste 1960 François Truffaut
The Shooting Party 1985 Alan Bridges
The Shootist 1976 Don Siegel
The Shop Around the Corner 1940 Ernst Lubitsch
Obchod na korze 1965 Elmar Klos, Ján Kadár
A Shot in the Dark 1964 Blake Edwards
Shrek 2001 Vicky Jenson, Andrew Adamson
Sid and Nancy 1986 Alex Cox
Tystnaden 1963 Ingmar Bergman
The Silence of the Lambs 1991 Jonathan Demme
Le monde du silence 1956 Louis Malle, Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Silk Stockings 1957 Rouben Mamoulian
Silkwood 1983 Mike Nichols
Singin’ in the Rain 1952 Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
Sitting Pretty 1948 Walter Lang
Sleeper 1973 Woody Allen
A Slight Case of Murder 1938 Lloyd Bacon
Smash Palace 1981 Roger Donaldson
Smile 1975 Michael Ritchie
Sommarnattens leende 1955 Ingmar Bergman
The Snake Pit 1948 Anatole Litvak
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 William Cottrell, David Hand, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey
Some Like It Hot 1959 Billy Wilder
Le chagrin et la pitié 1969 Marcel Ophüls
The Sound of Music 1965 Robert Wise
South Pacific 1958 Joshua Logan
Spartacus 1960 Stanley Kubrick
Spellbound 1945 Alfred Hitchcock
The Spiral Staircase 1946 Robert Siodmak
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi 2001 Hayao Miyazaki, Kirk Wise
Splendor in the Grass 1961 Elia Kazan
Stage Door 1937 Gregory La Cava
Stagecoach 1939 John Ford
A Matter of Life and Death 1946 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Stalag 17 1953 Billy Wilder
A Star Is Born 1937 Jack Conway, William A. Wellman
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan 1982 Nicholas Meyer
Star Wars 1977 George Lucas
Starman 1984 John Carpenter
The Stars Look Down 1940 Carol Reed
State Fair 1933 Henry King
Stevie 1978 Robert Enders
Baisers volés 1968 François Truffaut
Stop Making Sense 1984 Jonathan Demme
Stormy Monday 1988 Mike Figgis
L’histoire d’Adèle H. 1975 François Truffaut
Story of G.I. Joe 1945 William A. Wellman
Qiu Ju da guan si 1992 Yimou Zhang
Une affaire de femmes 1988 Claude Chabrol
Storytelling 2001 Todd Solondz
La strada 1954 Federico Fellini
The Straight Story 1999 David Lynch
Straight Time 1978 Dustin Hoffman, Ulu Grosbard
Stranger Than Paradise 1984 Jim Jarmusch
Strangers on a Train 1951 Alfred Hitchcock
Straw Dogs 1971 Sam Peckinpah
A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 Elia Kazan
Stroszek 1977 Werner Herzog
Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The Sugarland Express 1974 Steven Spielberg
Sullivan’s Travels 1941 Preston Sturges
Le rayon vert 1986 Éric Rohmer
Summertime 1955 David Lean
Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 John Schlesinger
Les dimanches de Ville d’Avray 1962 Serge Bourguignon
Sunset Blvd. 1950 Billy Wilder
Suspicion 1941 Alfred Hitchcock
The Sweet Hereafter 1997 Atom Egoyan
Sweet Smell of Success 1957 Alexander Mackendrick
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song 1971 Melvin Van Peebles
Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto 1974 Lina Wertmüller
Swing Time 1936 George Stevens

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three 1974 Joseph Sargent
Hable con ella 2002 Pedro Almodóvar
Tampopo 1985 Jûzô Itami
Ta’m e guilass 1997 Abbas Kiarostami
A Taste of Honey 1961 Tony Richardson
Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese
Marusa no onna 1987 Jûzô Itami
Marusa no onna 2 1988 Jûzô Itami
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here 1969 Abraham Polonsky
10 1979 Blake Edwards
The Ten Commandments 1956 Cecil B. DeMille
Tender Mercies 1983 Bruce Beresford
The Tender Trap 1955 Charles Walters
Terms of Endearment 1983 James L. Brooks
La terra trema 1948 Luchino Visconti
Tess 1979 Roman Polanski
Cet obscur objet du désir 1977 Luis Buñuel
That’s Life! 1986 Blake Edwards
Thelma & Louise 1991 Ridley Scott
These Three 1936 William Wyler
They Live by Night 1948 Nicholas Ray
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 1969 Sydney Pollack
They Were Expendable 1945 John Ford, Robert Montgomery
They Won’t Forget 1937 Mervyn LeRoy
The Thief of Bagdad 1940 Alexander Korda, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan, Zoltan Korda, Michael Powell, William Cameron Menzies
The Thin Blue Line 1988 Errol Morris
The Thin Man 1934 W.S. Van Dyke
The Thin Red Line 1998 Terrence Malick
Die dritte Generation 1979 Rainer Werner Fassbinder
The Third Man 1949 Carol Reed
The 39 Steps 1935 Alfred Hitchcock
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould 1993 François Girard
This Is Spinal Tap 1984 Rob Reiner
Que la bête meure 1969 Claude Chabrol
This Sporting Life 1963 Lindsay Anderson
Three Comrades 1938 Frank Borzage
Three Days of the Condor 1975 Sydney Pollack
Kumonosu-jô 1957 Akira Kurosawa
Whisky Galore! 1949 Alexander Mackendrick
Die Blechtrommel 1979 Volker Schlöndorff
To Be or Not to Be 1942 Ernst Lubitsch
To Catch a Thief 1955 Alfred Hitchcock
To Have and Have Not 1944 Howard Hawks
To Kill a Mockingbird 1962 Robert Mulligan
Huo zhe 1994 Yimou Zhang
Tôkyô monogatari 1953 Yasujirô Ozu
Tom Jones 1963 Tony Richardson
Tootsie 1982 Sydney Pollack
Top Hat 1935 Mark Sandrich
Topaz 1969 Alfred Hitchcock
Topkapi 1964 Jules Dassin
Total Recall 1990 Paul Verhoeven
Touch of Evil 1958 Orson Welles
Toy Story 1995 John Lasseter
Traffic 2000 Steven Soderbergh
The Train 1964 John Frankenheimer, Arthur Penn
Trainspotting 1996 Danny Boyle
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 John Huston
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 1945 Elia Kazan
L’albero degli zoccoli 1978 Ermanno Olmi
The Trip to Bountiful 1985 Peter Masterson
Tristana 1970 Luis Buñuel
Trouble in Paradise 1932 Ernst Lubitsch
The Trouble with Harry 1955 Alfred Hitchcock
True Grit 1969 Henry Hathaway
True Love 1989 Nancy Savoca
Trust 1990 Hal Hartley
Tunes of Glory 1960 Ronald Neame
12 Angry Men 1957 Sidney Lumet
Twelve O’Clock High 1949 Henry King
Twentieth Century 1934 Howard Hawks
Les deux Anglaises et le continent 1971 François Truffaut
2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick
La ciociara 1960 Vittorio De Sica

Ugetsu monogatari 1953 Kenji Mizoguchi
Ulzana’s Raid 1972 Robert Aldrich
Umberto D. 1952 Vittorio De Sica
The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1988 Philip Kaufman
Unforgiven 1992 Clint Eastwood
The Usual Suspects 1995 Bryan Singer
Vanya on 42nd Street 1994 Louis Malle
The Verdict 1982 Sidney Lumet
Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock
Videodrome 1983 David Cronenberg
Violette Nozière 1978 Claude Chabrol
Viridiana 1961 Luis Buñuel
Viva Zapata! 1952 Elia Kazan
The Voice of the Turtle 1947 Irving Rapper
Le salaire de la peur 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot
Waking Life 2001 Richard Linklater
Walkabout 1971 Nicolas Roeg
A Walk in the Sun 1945 Lewis Milestone
The War Game 1965 Peter Watkins
The War of the Roses 1989 Danny DeVito
The Warriors 1979 Walter Hill
Watch on the Rhine 1943 Herman Shumlin, Hal Mohr
The Waterdance 1992 Neal Jimenez, Michael Steinberg
The Way We Were 1973 Sydney Pollack
Week End 1967 Jean-Luc Godard
Welcome to the Dollhouse 1995 Todd Solondz
La fille du puisatier 1940 Marcel Pagnol
West Side Story 1961 Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
The Whales of August 1987 Lindsay Anderson
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 Robert Aldrich
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape 1993 Lasse Hallström
What’s Up, Doc? 1972 Peter Bogdanovich
When Harry Met Sally… 1989 Rob Reiner
White Heat 1949 Raoul Walsh
Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988 Robert Zemeckis
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966 Mike Nichols
The Wild Bunch 1969 Sam Peckinpah
L’enfant sauvage 1970 François Truffaut
Les roseaux sauvages 1994 André Téchiné
Smultronstället 1957 Ingmar Bergman
Wilson 1944 Henry King
Der Himmel über Berlin 1987 Wim Wenders
Wise Blood 1979 John Huston
The Wizard of Oz 1939 Mervyn LeRoy, George Cukor, Norman Taurog, King Vidor, Victor Fleming
Suna no onna 1964 Hiroshi Teshigahara
Woman of the Year 1942 George Stevens
The Women 1939 George Cukor
Women in Love 1969 Ken Russell
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de “nervios” 1988 Pedro Almodóvar
Woodstock 1970 Michael Wadleigh
Working Girl 1988 Mike Nichols
Apur Sansar 1959 Satyajit Ray
The World of Henry Orient 1964 George Roy Hill
Written on the Wind 1956 Douglas Sirk
Wuthering Heights 1939 William Wyler
Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 Michael Curtiz
The Year of Living Dangerously 1982 Peter Weir
The Yearling 1946 Clarence Brown
Yellow Submarine 1968 George Dunning
Yi yi 2000 Edward Yang
Yôjinbô 1961 Akira Kurosawa
You Can Count on Me 2000 Kenneth Lonergan
You Only Live Once 1937 Fritz Lang
Young Frankenstein 1974 Mel Brooks
Young Mr. Lincoln 1939 John Ford
Y tu mamá también 2001 Alfonso Cuarón
Z 1969 Costa-Gavras
Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège 1933 Jean Vigo

The greatest American movies

In response to the American Film Institute announcing its list of 400 films to be voted upon for their selection of the 100 years…100 American movies, the Los Angeles Daily News conducted its own poll in late 1997 asking their readers to choose their own top feature films of the century from the same list of 400 candidates. The results were published in the December 3, 1997 issue of the paper.

1. Casablanca (1942)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
3. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
4. Gone With The Wind (1939)
5. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
6. The Godfather (1972)
7. The African Queen (1951)
8. The Sound of Music (1965)
9. Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
10. Star Wars (1977)
11. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
12. Schindler’s List (1993)
13. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
14. It Happened One Night (1934)
15. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
16. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
17. Patton (1970)
18. Dances with Wolves (1990)
19. King Kong (1933)
20. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
21. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
22. All About Eve (1950)
23. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
24. All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
25. Stagecoach (1939)
26. Fantasia (1940)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. Ben-Hur (1959)
29. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
30. Psycho (1960)
31. (tie) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
31. (tie) Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
31. (tie) Oklahoma! (1955)
31. (tie) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
35. (tie) Forrest Gump (1994)
35. (tie) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
35. (tie) My Fair Lady (1964)
38. (tie) E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
38. (tie) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
38. (tie) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
38. (tie) Some Like It Hot (1959)
38. (tie) To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
38. (tie) West Side Story (1961)
44. (tie) An American In Paris (1951)
44. (tie) Doctor Zhivago (1965)
44. (tie) From Here to Eternity (1953)
44. (tie) Laura (1944)
44. (tie) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
44. (tie) On The Waterfront (1954)
44. (tie) The Quiet Man (1952)
51. (tie) Frankenstein (1931)
51. (tie) The Graduate (1967)
51. (tie) North By Northwest (1959)
51. (tie) Rocky (1976)
51. (tie) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
51. (tie) The Ten Commandments (1956)

57. (tie) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
57. (tie) Braveheart (1995)
57. (tie) Double Indemnity (1944)
57. (tie) Lost Horizon (1937)
57. (tie) Mary Poppins (1964)
57. (tie) M*A*S*H (1970)
57. (tie) One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
64. (tie) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
64. (tie) Giant (1956)
64. (tie) The Jazz Singer (1927)
64. (tie) Midnight Cowboy (1969)
64. (tie) Mrs. Miniver (1942)
64. (tie) Raging Bull (1980)
64. (tie) Rebecca (1940)
64. (tie) Wings (1927)
72. (tie) American Graffiti (1973)
72. (tie) Annie Hall (1977)
72. (tie) The Color Purple (1985)
72. (tie) The French Connection (1971)
72. (tie) The Gold Rush (1925)
72. (tie) The Longest Day (1962)
72. (tie) Rain Man (1988)
72. (tie) The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
72. (tie) The Sting (1973)
72. (tie) Tootsie (1982)
72. (tie) 12 Angry Men (1957)
72. (tie) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
84. (tie) Apocalypse Now (1979)
84. (tie) Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
84. (tie) Chinatown (1974)
84. (tie) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
84. (tie) Funny Girl (1968)
84. (tie) Gunga Din (1939)
84. (tie) Shane (1953)
84. (tie) The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
84. (tie) The Third Man (1949)
93. (tie) Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
93. (tie) Blade Runner (1982)
93. (tie) Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
93. (tie) The Caine Mutiny (1954)
93. (tie) Chariots of Fire (1981)
93. (tie) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
93. (tie) East of Eden (1955)
93. (tie) Field of Dreams (1989)
93. (tie) 42nd Street (1933)
93. (tie) The Godfather, Part II (1974)
93. (tie) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
93. (tie) The Lion King (1994)
93. (tie) The Lost Weekend (1945)
93. (tie) Marty (1955)
93. (tie) Mister Roberts (1955)
93. (tie) On Golden Pond (1981)
93. (tie) The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
93. (tie) The Philadelphia Story (1940)
93. (tie) Rear Window (1954)
93. (tie) Stalag 17 (1953)
93. (tie) Taxi Driver (1976)
93. (tie) Vertigo (1958)
93. (tie) The Way We Were (1973)

100 Maverick Movies in the Last 100 Years

In 1999 American publication, Rolling Stone Magazine, in their end of the year Millennium issue, and film critic Peter Travers published a list of the 100 best maverick movies of the 20th century. Films made by those who “busted rules to follow their obsessions…in the defiant spirit of rock & roll.”

1. The Godfather Trilogy
The Godfather, Part I (1972), The Godfather, Part II (1974), and The Godfather, Part III (1990), Francis Ford Coppola
2. Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock
3. The Searchers (1956), John Ford
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Stanley Kubrick
5. Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles
6. Raging Bull (1980), Martin Scorsese
7. Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski
8. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), John Huston
9. Blue Velvet (1986), David Lynch
10. Pulp Fiction (1994), Quentin Tarantino
11. King Kong (1933), Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
12. The Manchurian Candidate (1962), John Frankenheimer
13. Fargo (1996), Joel Coen
14. All About Eve (1950), Joseph L. Mankiewicz
15. Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee
16. The Night of the Hunter (1955), Charles Laughton
17. Sherlock, Jr. (1924), Buster Keaton
18. Some Like It Hot (1959), Billy Wilder
19. Nashville (1975), Robert Altman
20. The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming
21. Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Alexander Mackendrick
22. Brazil (1985), Terry Gilliam
23. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Don Siegel
24. Badlands (1973), Terrence Malick
25. Don’t Look Now (1973), Nicolas Roeg
26. Gone With The Wind (1939), produced by David O. Selznick
27. Casablanca (1942), Michael Curtiz
28. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Frank Capra
29. Singin’ In The Rain (1952), Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
30. On The Waterfront (1954), Elia Kazan
31. Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg
32. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Milos Forman
33. Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean
34. The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Jonathan Demme
35. The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Irvin Kershner
36. Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton
37. Faces (1968), John Cassavetes
38. Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen
39. Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Arthur Penn
40. Straw Dogs (1971), Sam Peckinpah
41. The Third Man (1949), Carol Reed
42. All The President’s Men (1976), Alan J. Pakula
43. Bride of Frankenstein (1935), James Whale
44. Rebel Without A Cause (1955), Nicholas Ray
45. Written on the Wind (1956), Douglas Sirk
46. Swing Time (1936), George Stevens
47. The Red Shoes (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
48. Network (1976), Sidney Lumet
49. Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Preston Sturges
50. The Graduate (1967), Mike Nichols

51. M (1931), Fritz Lang
52. Zero For Conduct (1933), Jean Vigo
53. Rules of the Game (1939), Jean Renoir
54. Children of Paradise (1945), Marcel Carné
55. The Bicycle Thief (1948), Vittorio De Sica
56. The Earrings of Madame De… (1953), Max Ophuls
57. Tokyo Story (1953), Yasujiro Ozu
58. The Seven Samurai (1954), Akira Kurosawa
59. Pather Panchali (1955), Satyajit Ray
60. Breathless (1959), Jean-Luc Godard
61. The 400 Blows (1959), Francois Truffaut
62. La Dolce Vita (1960), Federico Fellini
63. Viridiana (1961), Luis Bunuel
64. Persona (1966), Ingmar Bergman
65. The Conformist (1971), Bernardo Bertolucci
66. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Werner Herzog
67. Seven Beauties (1976), Lina Wertmuller
68. Wings of Desire (1988), Wim Wenders
69. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Pedro Almodovar
70. The Killer (1989), John Woo
71. City Lights (1931), Charles Chaplin
72. Cabaret (1972), Bob Fosse
73. Quiz Show (1994), Robert Redford
74. A Night at the Opera (1935), Sam Wood
75. The Producers (1967), Mel Brooks
76. Lost in America (1985), Albert Brooks
77. The Terminator (1984), James Cameron
78. White Heat (1949), Raoul Walsh
79. His Girl Friday (1940), Howard Hawks
80. Out of the Past (1947), Jacques Tourneur
81. The Piano (1993), Jane Campion
82. Blow-Up (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni
83. Blow Out (1981), Brian De Palma
84. The Philadelphia Story (1940), George Cukor
85. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), John Sturges
86. Ninotchka (1939), Ernst Lubitsch
87. Diner (1982), Barry Levinson
88. To Sleep With Anger (1990), Charles Burnett
89. Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood
90. Midnight Cowboy (1969), John Schlesinger
91. Lone Star (1996), John Sayles
92. The Naked Kiss (1964), Samuel Fuller
93. The Crying Game (1992), Neil Jordan
94. Broadcast News (1987), James L. Brooks
95. Dead Ringers (1988), David Cronenberg
96. My Little Chickadee (1940), Edward Cline
97. The Night of the Living Dead (1968), George Romero
98. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Terry Jones
99. Intolerance (1916), D. W. Griffith
100. Freaks (1932), Tod Browning

Peter Travers is an American film critic and journalist, who has written for People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn for ABC News.

1,000 Best Movies on DVD (book)
The story behind The Exorcist (book)
The Rolling Stone Film Reader: The Best Film Writing from Rolling Stone Magazine (book)
ROLLING STONE Daniel Craig Peter Travers Chuch Berry George McGovern 11/22 2012 (magazine)
ROLLING STONE Philip Seymour Hoffman Drake Pete Seeger Peter Travers + 2/27 2014 (magazine)
Charlie Rose with Peter Travers & John Lasseter; Vince Vaughn (June 2, 2006) (book)

100 Essential Films by The National Society of Film Critics

In 2002 The National Society of Film Critics brought out the book “The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films”, edited by Jay Carr. It features 100 essays on the 100 Films. The essays look at the origins of the films, why the critics love them and their significance within the context of film history. The list is in alphabetical order. Buy – The A List: The National Society Of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films (book/kindle)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
42nd Street (1933)
The 400 Blows (1959, Fr.) (aka Les Quatre Cents Coups)
All About Eve (1950)
Annie Hall (1977)
Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Poland)
L’Atalante (1934, Fr.)
The Bank Dick (1940)
The Battleship Potemkin (1925, Soviet Union)
The Birth Of A Nation (1915)
Blow-Up (1966, UK)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
Breathless (1960, Fr.) (aka À Bout de Souffle)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Casablanca (1942)
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978, Australia)
Children of Paradise (1945, Fr.) (aka Les Enfants du Paradis)
Chinatown (1974)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Closely Watched Trains (1966, Czech) (aka Ostre Sledované Vlaky)
Close-up (1990, Iran) (aka Nema-ye Nazdik)
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
The Decalogue (1989, Polish)
Diary of a Country Priest (1951, Fr.)
Diner (1982)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
La Dolce Vita (1959, It.)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Duck Soup (1933)
Easy Rider (1969)
Enter the Dragon (1973)
The Entertainer (1960, UK)
The Exorcist (1973)
Faces (1968)
Fargo (1996)
Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The General (1927)
The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974)
Gone With The Wind (1939)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964, It./Fr.)
The Graduate (1967)
Greed (1924)
Happy Together (1997, HK/Jp./S.Kor.)
High Noon (1952)
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
Ju Dou (1990, China/Jp.), Raise the Red Lantern (1991, China/HK), Red Sorghum (1987, China)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Landscape in the Mist (1988, Greece)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
M (1931, Germ.)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Soviet Union)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, W.Germ.)
Metropolis (1927)
Modern Times (1936)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Nashville (1975)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Nosferatu (1922, Germ.)
Los Olvidados (1950, Mex.)
On The Waterfront (1954)
Rome: Open City (1945, It.) (aka Roma Città Aperta)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Pandora’s Box (1929, Germ.)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Fr.) (aka La passion de Jeanne d’Arc)
Pather Panchali (1955, India), Aparajito (1956, India), The World of Apu (1959, India)
The Piano (1993, NZ)
Psycho (1960)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Raging Bull (1980)
Rashomon (1950, Jp.)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Fr.) (aka La Règle du Jeu)
Schindler’s List (1993)
The Searchers (1956)
The Seven Samurai (1954, Jp.)
The Seventh Seal (1957, Swe.)
Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
Star Wars (1977)
La Strada (1954, It.) and The Nights of Cabiria (1957, It.)
Sunrise (1927)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Tokyo Story (1953, Jp.)
Top Hat (1935)
Touch Of Evil (1958)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Ugetsu Monogatari (1953, Jp.)
Unforgiven (1992)
Les Vampires (1915, Fr.)
Vertigo (1958)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Winchester ’73 (1950)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Written on the Wind (1956)

Tag: citizen kane

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