This best films of all time listing started when I was 14, and I discovered the AFI 100 Years, 100 Films List. I spent most of my summer watching movies and at the end, my best friend and I tried to create a top ten, but my viewing and experience was so narrow that I couldn’t stand by and believe in my criteria (however, I still feel like I haven’t seen as many important films as I could, so feel free to recommend any egregious oversights in the comments below).
Last week, at Armando’s, he showed us his list, which he’d created with his best friend, and a dozen years later, I was prompted to re-attempt a definitive list of the best films of all time. These are in order and largely based on first and foremost, respect for auteurs who directed, produced and wrote their films. I also accounted for the excellence of the auteur’s complete oeuvre.
In my opinion, Kubrick, Kurosawa and Hitchcock are the greatest directors of all time, though Fellini, Coppola and Godard also figure prominently on this list. I also surveyed a movie’s influence, so The Lion King got cut largely because of The Lion King 1 1/2. Furthermore, I considered how pure the vision of one person a film was, so the fact that so many people were brought in to work on The Lion King didn’t help its case either. That said, here it is, my list of the 50 best films of all time:
1. The Seven Samurai (1954)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. The Seventh Seal (1957)
4. Godfather I (1972)
5. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
6. La Dolce Vita (1960)
7. Citizen Kane (1940)
8. Taxi Driver (1976)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. Breathless (1960)
11. The Searchers (1956)
12. Andrei Rublev (1966)
13. City Lights (1931)
14. Scarface (1984)
15. Ordet (1955)
16. Annie Hall (1977)
17. Apocalypse Now (1979)
18. Rashomon (1950)
19. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
20. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
21. Persona (1966)
22. Pulp Fiction (1994)
23. Psycho (1960)
24. Blue Velvet (1986)
25. The 400 Blows (1959)
26. The Rules of the Game (1939)
27. Godfather II (1974)
28. La Strada (1954)
29. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
30. Spartacus (1960)
31. Chimes at Midnight (1965)
32. 12 Angry Men (1957)
33. The Graduate (1967)
34. Jeanne Dielmann (1975)
35. Contempt (1963)
36. Au Hasard Balthasar (1966)
37. Paths of Glory (1957)
38. On the Waterfront (1954)
39. Metropolis (1927)
40. North by Northwest (1959)
41. Ran (1985)
42. Titanic (1997)
43. The Wages of Fear (1953)
44. The Good, the Bad the Ugly (1966)
45. Tokyo Story (1953)
46. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
47. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
48. Chinatown (1974)
49. L’Avventura (1960)
50. Journey to Italy (1954)
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