 1.Citizen Kane (1941) - Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and Ray Collins. Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. The result is that every well-meaning or tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event. Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and photographed by Gregg Toland, the film is the sum of Welles's awesome ambitions as an artist in Hollywood. He pushes the limits of then-available technology to create a true magic show, a visual and aural feast that almost seems to be rising up from a viewer's subconsciousness. As Kane, Welles even ushers in the influence of Bertolt Brecht on film acting. This is truly a one-of-a-kind work, and in many ways is still the most modern of modern films from the 20th century. |
 2. The Godfather (1972) - Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Richard S. Castellano. Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from beginning to end--almost as if everyone involved had been born to participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia dynasty, Coppola's Godfather extracted and enhanced the most universal themes of immigrant experience in America: the plotting-out of hopes and dreams for one's successors, the raising of children to carry on the good work, etc. In the midst of generational strife during the Vietnam years, the film somehow struck a chord with a nation fascinated by the metamorphosis of a rebellious son (Al Pacino) into the keeper of his father's dream. Marlon Brando played against Puzo's own conception of patriarch Vito Corleone, and time has certainly proven the actor correct. The rest of the cast, particularly James Caan, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall as the rest of Vito's male brood--all coping with how to take the mantle of responsibility from their father--is seamless and wonderful. |
 3. Casablanca (1942) - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains. A truly perfect movie, the 1942 Casablanca still wows viewers today, and for good reason. Its unique story of a love triangle set against terribly high stakes in the war against a monster is sophisticated instead of outlandish, intriguing instead of garish. Humphrey Bogart plays the allegedly apolitical club owner in unoccupied French territory that is nevertheless crawling with Nazis; Ingrid Bergman is the lover who mysteriously deserted him in Paris; and Paul Heinreid is her heroic, slightly bewildered husband. Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt are among what may be the best supporting cast in the history of Hollywood films. This is certainly among the most spirited and ennobling movies ever made. |
 4. Raging Bull (1980) - Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci. Martin Scorsese's brutal black-and-white biography of self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta was chosen as the best film of the 1980s in a major critics' poll at the end of the decade, and it's a knockout piece of filmmaking. Robert De Niro plays LaMotta (famously putting on 50 pounds for the later scenes), a man tormented by demons he doesn't understand and prone to uncontrollably violent temper tantrums and fits of irrational jealousy. He marries a striking young blond (Cathy Moriarty), his sexual ideal, and then terrorizes her with never-ending accusations of infidelity. Jake is as frightening as he is pathetic, unable to control or comprehend the baser instincts that periodically, and without warning, turn him into the rampaging beast of the title. But as Roman Catholic Scorsese sees it, he works off his sins in the boxing ring, where his greatest athletic talent is his ability to withstand punishment. The fight scenes are astounding; they're like barbaric ritual dance numbers. Images smash into one another--a flashbulb, a spray of sweat, a fist, a geyser of blood--until you feel dazed from the pummeling. Nominated for a handful of Academy Awards (including best picture and director), Raging Bull won only two, for De Niro and for editor Thelma Schoonmacher. |
 5. Singin' In The Rain (1952) - Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds. In 1927, the former stunt Don Lockwood becomes a successful actor with the company of his best friend Cosmo Brown forming a romantic pair with the actress Lina Lamont. In the period of transition from silent movies to talking pictures, Don accidentally meets the aspirant actress Kathy Selden while escaping from his fans and fall in love for her. Lina has troubles with the sharp tune of her voice, and Cosmo and Don decides to dub her, using Kathy's voice, to save their movie. When the jealous Lina finds the strategy of the studio, she does not want to share the credits with Kathy and tries to force the studio to use Kathy in the shadow to dub her in other productions. But when Lina decides to speech and sing to the audience, the truth arises. |
 6. Gone With The Wind (1939) - Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia De Havilland. David O. Selznick wanted Gone with the Wind to be somehow more than a movie, a film that would broaden the very idea of what a film could be and do and look like. In many respects he got what he worked so hard to achieve in this 1939 epic (and all-time box-office champ in terms of tickets sold), and in some respects he fell far short of the goal. While the first half of this Civil War drama is taut and suspenseful and nostalgic, the second is ramshackle and arbitrary. But there's no question that the film is an enormous achievement in terms of its every resource--art direction, color, sound, cinematography--being pushed to new limits for the greater glory of telling an American story as fully as possible. Vivien Leigh is still magnificently narcissistic, Olivia de Havilland angelic and lovely, Leslie Howard reckless and aristocratic. As for Clark Gable: we're talking one of the most vital, masculine performances ever committed to film. |
 7. Lawrence Of Arabia (1962) - Peter O'Toole, Omar Shariff, Alec Guinness, Jose Ferrer. There's no getting around a simple, basic truth: watching Lawrence of Arabia in any home-video format represents a compromise. There's no better way to appreciate this epic biographical adventure than to see it projected in 70 millimeter onto a huge theater screen. That caveat aside, David Lean's masterful "desert classic" is still enjoyable on the small screen, especially if viewed in widescreen format. (If your only option is to view a "pan & scan" version, it's best not to bother; this is a film for which the widescreen format is utterly mandatory.) Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. Perhaps the greatest triumph of this landmark film is that Lean has conveyed the romance, danger, and allure of the desert with such physical and emotional power. It's a film about a man who leads one life but is irresistibly drawn to another, where his greatness and mystery are allowed to flourish in equal measure. |
 8. Schindler's List (1993) - Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall. Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler's List that Spielberg called "the most satisfying experience of my career." Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps. By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp. Schindler's List gains much of its power not by trying to explain Schindler's motivations, but by dramatizing the delicate diplomacy and determination with which he carried out his generous deeds. As a drinker and womanizer who thought nothing of associating with Nazis, Schindler was hardly a model of decency; the film is largely about his transformation in response to the horror around him. Spielberg doesn't flinch from that horror, and the result is a film that combines remarkable humanity with abhorrent inhumanity--a film that functions as a powerful history lesson and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the context of a living nightmare. |
 9. Vertigo (1958) - James Stewart, Kim Novak, Isabel Analla, Raymond Bailey, Barbara Bel Geddes. Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. |
 10. The Wizard Of Oz (1939) - Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley. When it was released during Hollywood's golden year of 1939, The Wizard of Oz didn't start out as the perennial classic it has since become. The film did respectable business, but it wasn't until its debut on television that this family favorite saw its popularity soar. And while Oz's TV broadcasts are now controlled by media mogul Ted Turner (who owns the rights), the advent of home video has made this lively musical a mainstay in the staple diet of great American films. Young Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland), her dog, Toto, and her three companions on the yellow brick road to Oz--the Tin Man (Jack Haley), the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger)--have become pop-culture icons and central figures in the legacy of fantasy for children. As the Wicked Witch who covets Dorothy's enchanted ruby slippers, Margaret Hamilton has had the singular honor of scaring the wits out of children for more than six decades. The film's still as fresh, frightening, and funny as it was when first released. It may take some liberal detours from the original story by L. Frank Baum, but it's loyal to the Baum legacy while charting its own course as a spectacular film. Shot in glorious Technicolor, befitting its dynamic production design (Munchkinland alone is a psychedelic explosion of color and decor), The Wizard of Oz may not appeal to every taste as the years go by, but it's required viewing for kids of all ages. |
 11. City Lights (1931) - Jack Alexander (III), Henry Bergman, Betty Blair, Charles Chaplin. City Lights is a film to pick for the time capsule, a film that best represents the many aspects of director-writer-star Charlie Chaplin at the peak of his powers: Chaplin the actor, the sentimentalist, the knockabout clown, the ballet dancer, the athlete, the lover, the tragedian, the fool. It's all contained in Chaplin's simple story of a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Chaplin elevates the Victorian contrivances of the plot to something glorious with his inventive use of pantomime and his sure grasp of how the Tramp relates to the audience. In 1931, it was a gamble for Chaplin to stick with silence after talking pictures had killed off the art form that had made him famous, but audiences flocked to City Lights anyway. (Chaplin would not make his first full talking picture until 1940's The Great Dictator.) After all the superb comic sequences, the film culminates with one of the most moving scenes in the history of cinema, a luminous and heartbreaking fade-out that lifts the picture onto another plane. (Woody Allen paid homage to the scene at the end of Manhattan.) This is why the term "Chaplinesque" became a part of the language. |
 12. The Searchers (1956) - John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond. A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend (Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part Cherokee, Ethan hits the trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with revisionism in its stereotypical treatment of "savage" Native Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final shot is one of the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made. |
 13. Star Wars (1977) - Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing. The Star Wars Trilogy had the rare distinction of becoming a cultural phenomenon, a defining event for its generation. On its surface, George Lucas's story is a rollicking and humorous space fantasy that owes debts to more influences than one can count on two hands, but filmgoers became entranced by its basic struggle of good vs. evil "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," its dazzling special effects, and a mythology of Jedi knights, the Force, and droids. Over the course of three films--A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983)--Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and the roguish Han Solo (Harrison Ford) join the Rebel alliance in a galactic war against the Empire, the menacing Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), and eventually the all-powerful Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). Empire is generally considered the best of the films and Jedi the most uneven, but all three are vastly superior to the more technologically impressive prequels that followed, Episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999) and Episode II, Attack of the Clones (2002). |
| 14. Psycho (1960) |
| 15. 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| 16. Sunset Blvd. (1950) |
| 17. The Graduate (1967) |
| 18. The General (1927) |
| 19. On The Waterfront (1954) |
| 20. It's A Wonderful Life (1946) |
| 21. Chinatown (1974) |
| 22. Some Like It Hot (1959) |
| 23. The Grapes Of Wrath (1940) |
| 24. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) |
| 25. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) |
| 26. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) |
| 27. High Noon (1952) |
| 28. All About Eve (1950) |
| 29. Double Indemnity (1944) |
| 30. Apocalypse Now (1979) |
| 31. The Maltese Falcon (1941) |
 32. The Godfather, Part 2 (1974) - Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, and Robert De Niro. Francis Ford Coppola took some of the deep background from the life of Mafia chief Vito Corleone--the patriarch of Mario Puzo's bestselling novel The Godfather--and built around it a stunning sequel to his Oscar-winning, 1972 hit film. Robert De Niro plays Vito as a young Sicilian immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York City's Little Italy. Coppola weaves in and out of the story of Vito's transformation into a powerful crime figure, contrasting that evolution against efforts by son Michael Corleone to spread the family's business into pre-Castro Cuba. As memorable as the first film is, The Godfather II is an amazingly intricate, symmetrical tragedy that touches upon several chapters of 20th-century history and makes a strong case that our destinies are written long before we're born. This was De Niro's first introduction to a lot of filmgoers, and he makes an enormous impression. But even with him and a number of truly brilliant actors (including maestro Lee Strasberg), this is ultimately Pacino's film and a masterful performance. |
| 33. One Flew Over The Cockoo's Nest (1975) |
| 34. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) |
| 35. Annie Hall (1977) |
| 36. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) |
| 37. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946) |
| 38. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) |
| 39. Dr. Strangelove (1964) |
| 40. The Sound Of Music (1965) |
| 41. King Kong (1933) |
| 42. Bonnie And Clyde (1967) |
| 43. Midnight Cowboy (1969) |
| 44. The Philadelphia Story (1940) |
| 45. Shane (1953) |
| 46. It Happened One Night (1934) |
| 47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) |
| 48. Rear Window (1954) |
| 49. Intolerance (1916) |
| 50. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) |
| 51. West Side Story (1961) |
| 52. Taxi Driver (1976) |
| 53. The Deer Hunter (1978) |
| 54. M.A.S.H. (1970) |
| 55. North By Northwest (1959) |
| 56. Jaws (1975) |
| 57. Rocky (1976) |
| 58. The Gold Rush (1925) |
| 59. Nashville (1975) |
| 60. Duck Soup (1933) |
| 61. Sullivan's Travels (1941) |
| 62. American Graffiti (1973) |
| 63. Cabaret (1972) |
| 64. Network (1976) |
| 65. The African Queen (1951) |
| 66. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) |
| 67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) |
| 68. Unforgiven (1992) |
| 69. Tootsie (1982) |
| 70. A Clockwork Orange (1971) |
| 71. Saving Private Ryan (1998) |
| 72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) |
| 73. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) |
| 74. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) |
| 75. In The Heat Of The Night (1967) |
| 76. Forrest Gump (1994) |
| 77. All The President's Men (1976) |
| 78. Modern Times (1936) |
| 79. The Wild Bunch (1969) |
| 80. The Apartment (1960) |
| 81. Spartacus (1960) |
| 82. Sunrise (1927) |
| 83. Titanic (1997) |
| 84. Easy Rider (1969) |
| 85. A Night At The Opera (1935) |
| 86. Platoon (1986) |
| 87. 12 Andry Men (1957) |
| 88. Bringing Uo Baby (1938) |
| 89. The Sixth Sense (1999) |
| 90. Swing Time (1936) |
| 91. Sophie's Choice (1982) |
| 92. Goodfellas (1990) |
| 93. THe French Connection (1971) |
| 94. Pulp Fiction (1994) |
| 95. The Last Picture Show (1971) |
| 96. Do The Right Thing (1989) |
| 97. Blade Runner (1982) |
| 98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) |
| 99. Toy Story (1995) |
| 100. Ben-Hur (1959) |