In 2008 Le Figaro polled 76 participants: critics, screenwriters and directors to come up with a list of the one hundred most beautiful films in the world. Citizen Kane predictably came top while Charles Laughton’s only film, The Night of the Hunter was second along with the highest ranked French Film from Jean Renoir, The Rule of the game. Charlie Chaplin is the only one to have five films listed. The most recent titles are Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar (2002) and Mulholland Drive (2001).
1st : Citizen Kane, Orson Welles.
2nd tie : The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton; The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir.
3rd : Sunrise, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.
4th : L’Atalante, Jean Vigo.
5th : M, Fritz Lang.
6th : Singin’ the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.
7th : Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock.
8th tie : The Children of Paradise, Marcel Carné; The Searchers, John Ford; Greed, Eric von Stroheim.
9th tie : Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks; To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch.
10th : Tokyo Story, Yasujiro Ozu.
11th : Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard.
12th tie : Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi; City Lights, Charles Chaplin; The General Buster Keaton; Nosferatu, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau; The Music Room, Satyajit Ray.
13th tie : Freaks, Tod Browning; Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray; The Mother and the Whore, Jean Eustache.
14th tie : The Dictator, Charles Chaplin; The Leopard, Luchino Visconti; Hiroshima My Love, Alain Resnais; Pandora’s Box, GW Pabst; North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock; Pickpocket, Robert Bresson.
15th tie : Casque d’or, Jacques Becker; The Barefoot Contessa, Joseph Mankiewicz; Moonfleet, Fritz Lang; Madame de …, Max Ophuls; Le Plaisir, Max Ophuls; The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino.
16th tie : L’Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni; Battleship Potemkin, SM Eisenstein; Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock; Ivan the Terrible, SM Eisenstein; The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola; Touch of Evil, Orson Welles; The Wind, Victor Sjöström.
17th tie : 2001: The Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick; Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman.
18th tie : The Crowd, King Vidor; Eight and a half, Federico Fellini; La Jetee, Chris Marker; Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard; The Story of a Cheat, Sacha Guitry.
19th tie : Amarcord, Federico Fellini; Beauty and the Beast, Jean Cocteau; Some like it hot, Billy Wilder; Some Came Running, Vincente Minnelli; Gertrud, Carl Th. Dreyer; King Kong, Ernest Schoedsack and Merian J. Cooper; Laura, Otto Preminger; The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa.
20th tie : The 400 Blows, François Truffaut; La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini; The Dead, John Huston; Trouble in Paradise Ernst Lubitsch; It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra; Mr. Verdoux, Charles Chaplin; The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Th. Dreyer.
21st tie : Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard; Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola; Barry Lindon, Stanley Kubrick; The Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir; Intolerance, DW Griffith; A Day in the Country, Jean Renoir; Playtime, Jacques Tati; Rome open city, Roberto Rossellini; Senso, Luchino Visconti; Modern Times, Charles Chaplin; Van Gogh, Maurice Pialat.
22nd tie : An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey; Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky; The Scarlet Empress, Joseph von Sternberg; Sansho the Bailiff, Kenji Mizoguchi; Talk to Her, Pedro Almodovar; The Party, Blake Edwards; Tabu, FM Murna; The Band Wagon, Vincente Minnelli; A Star is Born, George Cukor; Les Vacances de M. Hulot, Jacques Tati.
23rd tie : America America, Elia Kazan; El, Luis Bunuel; Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich; Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone; Le jour se lève, Marcel Carné; Letter from an unknown Woman, Max Ophuls; Lola, Jacques Demy; Manhattan, Woody Allen; Mulholland Drive, David Lynch; My night at Maud’s, Eric Rohmer; Night and Fog, Alain Resnais; The Gold Rush, Charles Chaplin; Scarface, Howard Hawks; Bicycle thieves, Vittorio de Sica; Napoleon, Abel Gance.