The 100 Greatest American Films of All Time

Rating: Not reviewed


1. Citizen Kane (Welles, Orson; 1941)

Though infamously denied the Best Picture Oscar for 1941, Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" has been hailed as the greatest film ever made at least since the influential Sight & Sound magazine crowned it such in 1962. Welles' thinly veiled roman à clef of the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst is an American tragedy of how spoiled youth Charles Foster Kane (Welles) built an empire and died alone in his fortress of Xanadu.

Despite being only 25 and making his debut film, Welles nonetheless exploded the possibilities of a cinematic language still in its infancy, employing a radical flashback structure with co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz; low-key and chiaroscuro lighting, unprecedented deep focus and low- and wide-angle long-takes with an elaborate mise-en-scène with cinematographer Gregg Toland; and over-lapping dialogue.

Welles didn't invent any of these techniques – he was profoundly indebted to Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg and John Ford, whose "Stagecoach" Welles supposedly watched 40 times as his only preparation for filmmaking – but he did use them in such a way that had rarely been done before. With "Citizen Kane," modern filmmaking was born.

"Citizen Kane" begins with the end: after a series of shots establishing the isolation of the massive, Gothic estate "Xanadu," Kane is seen dying as he whispers the word "Rosebud" and drops a snow globe. Kane's life story is then quickly told through a "March of Time" newsreel (the newsreel is the film in miniature, even beginning with the news of Kane's death before delving into his accomplishments). Dissatisfied by the shallow distillation of such a significant figure and demanding an answer to the Rosebud mystery, journalist Thompson (William Alland) is dispatched to delve more deeply into the enigma that is Kane.

Thompson reads the diary of Walter P. Thatcher (George Coulouris), Kane's guardian after his mother (Agnes Moorehead) turned him over to the bank upon striking it rich with a silver mine; and interviews Kane's manager Bernstein (Everett Sloane), former best friend Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), second ex-wife Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) and butler Raymond (Paul Stewart) to learn of his joyful days peddling yellow journalism, his painful failed run for governor and his bitter marriages.

Through seven overlapping perspectives (in many ways the film prefigures Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon"), "Citizen Kane" paints a Freudian and existential portrait of a man who, like Thompson, futilely searched for meaning and found none.


2. Vertigo (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1958)

Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" is a tale of obsession obsessively directed. Even more so than "Rear Window," "Vertigo" has come to be seen as a metaphor for Hitchcock's approach to filmmaking. Hitch spent hours meticulously planning the smallest detail, making sure the cinematography, Saul Bass' hallucinatory imagery, color schemes, costumes, flower arrangements and even passing cars matched his vertiginous vision. The director's perfectionism extended to his lead actress Kim Novak, who suffered at the hands of Hitchcock in much the same way her character does in the movie.

Jimmy Stewart, in a virtuoso performance, plays a private detective who falls in love with a woman (Kim Novak) who claims to be possessed by a spirit, and the detective's passionate devotion has tragic consequences for both lovers. "Vertigo" is the human story of an obsessed man and an exploited woman, each grappling with the emotions of fear, remorse, desire and loss, and the realization that idealized love can't exist within the confines of an imperfect world.


3. The Godfather Trilogy (Coppola, Francis Ford; 1972, 1974, 1990)

Francis Ford Coppola 's epic "The Godfather" trilogy turns the American Mafia into a thing of Greek myth – and Greek tragedy. With an unusual amount of compassion for a "gangster movie" up until that time, Coppola's trilogy traces the rise of the Corleone family under Vito (in Oscar-winning performances by Marlon Brando in "Part I" and Robert De Niro in the flashbacks of "Part II") and its fall under reluctant, and then brutal, new godfather Michael (Al Pacino in his greatest role).

The films are visceral in their iconic sequences of revenge-driven violence juxtaposed against family gatherings and religious rituals, but they're also extraordinarily mournful, with the Corleones symbolizing the collapse of the American family and the corruption of the country in general.


4. Days of Heaven (Malick, Terrence; 1978)

A lyrical allegory in which, in the words of the Book of Joel, "the field is ruined, [and] the land mourns," a laborer named Bill (Richard Gere), his lover Abby (Brooke Adams) and 12-year-old sister Linda (Linda Manz) travel from Chicago to the Texas panhandle of 1916 for work on the wheat field of a dying farmer (Sam Shepard). The farmer falls in love with Abby and, knowing the farmer is supposed to die within a year and hoping he may leave them something in his will, Bill encourages Abby to marry him. The quartet spend a few halcyon months together, but the farmer soon discovers Bill and Abby are continuing their relationship under his nose, and then a plague of locusts descends upon the farm and the fields are set aflame.

Director Terrence Malick's second masterpiece following 1973's "Badlands" is an aria of images and sound that strips the medium to its essence and reveals the poetry within. The ethereal 70 mm cinematography by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler is staggering, the fragmented avant-garde editing by Billy Weber astounding. Malick wouldn't make another film until 1998 when he returned with his third masterpiece, "The Thin Red Line."


5. Chimes at Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff) (Welles, Orson; 1965)

Orson Welles once said of "Chimes at Midnight," "If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I'd offer up." "Chimes" is indeed a formidable masterpiece that nearly surpasses "Citizen Kane" in its greatness. In a narrative tour de force, Welles combines William Shakespeare's "Henry IV Parts I and II," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Henry V" and "Richard II" to tell the tragedy of arguably fiction's greatest character, John Falstaff.

Welles brings enormous comedy and pathos to the role of the corpulent Falstaff, a man who is the great friend of Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) until Hal tosses him aside upon becoming King Henry V. Welles films Shakespeare in a manner even Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh failed at by making the Bard's world seem lived in instead of turgid. The film is justly renowned for its influential Battle of Shrewsbury, a sequence full of mayhem and carnage that obviously influenced Branagh's "Henry V," Michael Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans," Mel Gibson's "Braveheart," Ridley Scott's "Gladiator," Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" and even Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.


6. The Searchers (Ford, John; 1956)

Racism, genocide, self-hatred, obsession, revenge and social displacement are the heavy themes tackled by "The Searchers," cinema's greatest Western. John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate soldier who visits his brother's ranch for a brief rest and ends up on a life-consuming odyssey to hunt down the Comanches who abducted his niece (played as a teenager by Natalie Wood). Edwards initially seems bent on saving the girl, but eventually it becomes clear he intends to kill her because she will have been "ruined" by her Indian captors.

John Ford's film is lean, harsh and daring in its portrayal of such a hate-filled man who, whether or not he finds his missing niece, will be forever set adrift in a world that no longer has a place for him. The film's influence can be seen on Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," George Lucas' original "Star Wars," David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," among others.


7. Raging Bull (Scorsese, Martin; 1980)

The true story of Jake LaMotta's rise and fall is rendered a brutal, intimate epic of self-immolation by Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who gives one of American cinema's most bravura performances as LaMotta. "Raging Bull" charts LaMotta's fight to claim the middleweight boxing title, his volatile domestic life with wife Vicki (Cathy Moriarty) and brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his descent, becoming a bloated stand-up comic who has to pawn the jewels from his championship belt to pay his debts.

Scorsese's bold black-and-white camera work subjectively portrays LaMotta's fight scenes with the slow motion viciousness of Sam Peckinpah, turning the sentimentality of "Rocky" on its head. De Niro's infamous physical transformation (he gained 60 pounds for the film's later scenes) is the least impressive aspect of a performance that plumbs the dark recesses of a man's tortured soul, yet sympathetically depicts a man who is painfully human.


8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, Stanley; 1968)

Stanley Kubrick's psychedelic film of space exploration-as-quest-for-God, Nietzschean philosophy, an Homeric journey and warning of man-machine symbiosis still baffles and thrills 40 years after it first confounded audiences.

Doing away with conventional ideas of narrative, "2001: A Space Odyssey," co-written by sci-fi master Arthur C. Clarke, is really four philosophically dense, cinematically awe-inspiring sequences depicting prehistoric man's encounter with a monolith, scientists excavating an identical monolith on the moon, an ill-fated mission to Jupiter manipulated by the computer HAL 9000 and an astronaut's mystical imprisonment by an unknown force and his transformation into a Star Child. Kubrick won his only Oscar for his work on the groundbreaking visual effects. The greatest science fiction film of all time.


9. Nashville (Altman, Robert; 1975)

"Nashville" follows 24 characters converging on the titular city for concerts and political rallies over the course of five days. Coming on the heels of Watergate, Vietnam and the death of 1960s idealism, the film is largely a rumination on political disillusionment and personal existential decay. These themes are most especially evident in such characters as Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), a beloved country star in the midst of mental collapse; Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), a tone-deaf waitress who comes to the city to be a star, only to be tricked into performing as a stripper; conscienceless folk singer Tom Frank (Keith Carradine); loner Kenny Frasier (David Hayward); and stoic Grand Ole Opry star Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson).

Director Robert Altman's epic of America, country music and politics is practically a living, breathing organism. Joan Tewkesbury's free-form, heavily improvised script flows from one character and set piece to another, with Altman's unmoored camera practically providing a God's-eye view of the city and the lost souls within it. The manner in which Altman, Tewkesbury, cinematographer Paul Lohmann and film editors Dennis M. Hill and Sidney Levin organically composed this tapestry continues to inspire startling in its audacity.


10. Singin' in the Rain (Donen, Stanley/Gene Kelly; 1952)

"Singin' in the Rain" should've been a disaster. The movie only exists because producer Arthur Freed was about to lose the film rights to a number of outdated songs by Nacio Herb Brown and lyricist Arthur Freed from the 1920s and 1930s and so he commissioned screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green to construct a movie around them. The writers faced an even greater challenge in concocting a musical that would inevitably be compared to star and co-director Gene Kelly's previous film, the 1951 Best Picture-winning "An American in Paris."

Almost inexplicably, Comden, Green, Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen nonetheless managed to construct the greatest musical of all time. There is sheer joy in musical numbers like "Good Mornin'," the famous title sequence and the acrobatics of "Make 'Em Laugh." The film – in which Kelly, his comic sidekick Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds struggle to save a movie musical from disaster during the advent of sound technology in the late 1920s – has lost none of its exuberance.


11. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, F.W.; 1927)

F.W. Murnau brought German Expressionism to American films with his Hollywood debut "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." The film is a romantic fable in which The Man (George O'Brien) has an affair with The Woman From the City (Margaret Livingston) and contemplates drowning his Wife (Janet Gaynor) to be with her. Murnau conducts the Man and Wife's reunion with magical lyricism. The film was a commercial flop, but it won an Academy Award for "Unique and Artistic Production" in 1929 that some argue makes it the first Best Picture winner. The greatest silent film and greatest romance film of all time.


12. Casablanca (Curtiz, Michael; 1942)

A cynical gin joint owner (Humphrey Bogart) is forced to choose between his own selfish interests, love and virtue when the love of his life (Ingrid Bergman) enters his bar to ask him to help her husband (Paul Henreid) escape the Nazis. Directed by underappreciated auteur Michael Curtiz ("The Adventures of Robin Hood," "Mildred Pierce") with the stylistic flair of noir, the film, like "Singin' in the Rain," achieved greatness practically by accident through a haphazard production and near miscasting (Ronald Reagan and George Raft were almost given Bogart's role). The film introduced numerous phrases into the American lexicon, including the misquote "Play it again, Sam"; "Here's looking at you, kid"; "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"; "Round up the usual suspects"; and "We'll always have Paris.


13. City Lights
(Chaplin, Charles; 1931)

The sound age of cinema was ushered in by "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, but Charlie Chaplin insisted "movies need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics" and so continued to make silent films well into the 1930s. Chaplin's greatest film "City Lights" proves the auteur's point by being, as the film was subtitled, "A Comedy Romance in Pantomime." Chaplin's indelible Tramp character falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) who mistakes him for a millionaire. To raise money for a surgery that can correct her vision, the Tramp comically works as a street sweeper and enters into a boxing match. The bittersweet moment when the flower girl sees the Tramp for the first time is perhaps the greatest closing scene in all of cinema and has been imitated in films such as "Manhattan," "La Dolce Vita" and "Magnolia."


14. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, Francis; 1979)

Gripped by madness and a bold cinematic vision, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is a fever dream of a polemic that, like "Citizen Kane" and "Days of Heaven," finds astonishing new ways to tell stories through the visual power of cinema. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent into Cambodia during the Vietnam War to "terminate with extreme prejudice" renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). "Apocalypse Now" is consistently surreal and disorienting thanks to Vittorio Storaro's Oscar-winning cinematography and the editing of Walter Murch, never more so than in the climactic, semi-improvised meeting between Willard and Kurtz that ruins the film for some, but is the brilliant logical end point to such a surreal journey. The greatest war film of all time.


15. The General (Keaton, Buster/Clyde Bruckman; 1926)

Loosely inspired by the Civil War incident known as the Great Locomotive Chase (a.k.a. Andrews' Raid), Buster Keaton plays a Confederate train engineer who has to save his train, girl (Marion Mack) and the Army of Tennessee from the Union. With this being silent comic master Keaton, the rescue is filled with sight gags, slapstick and ingenious, reckless stunts that pit man against machine and nature, including a scene in which a train races across a collapsing bridge. Poorly received upon its release by critics, audiences and the studio (Keaton would never again have full creative control over his movies), it has since been almost universally accepted as a masterpiece.


16. Greed (von Stroheim, Erich; 1924)
Erich von Stroheim's original vision for his epic "Greed" is forever lost: the director initially constructed a nine-hour version, cut it down to four and then had it butchered to two by MGM, causing von Stroheim to call the studio version of his film "the skeleton of my dead child." A reconstructed version that uses still photos and title cards for the missing scenes and runs 243 minutes is more than enough evidence for the masterpiece von Stroheim conceived. The film tells the story of dentist John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) and how the transformation of his wife (Zasu Pitts) into a miser upon winning the lottery results in his own spiritual debasement. The reconstruction adds parallel plots about two other couples, one that's even more corrupt in its pursuit of gold and another that manages to maintain its innocence and love. The climactic scene in the Death Valley in which all is reduced to blood and dust is magnificent in any form.


17. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, Victor; 1939)

Thanks to a long-standing tradition of annual television showings, "The Wizard of Oz" is perhaps the most-seen film of all time and as such has served as an introduction to cinema and its power to transport the viewer to another place for millions of future film lovers. Victor Fleming's Technicolor marvel sends Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her little dog Toto to Oz where she encounters a menagerie of incredible characters including the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), the Tin Man (Jack Haley,) the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) and the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton). Arguably fake-looking when compared to what's being done in movies like "Lord of the Rings," "The Wizard of Oz's" less sophisticated sets, costumes and special effects still hold a magic and charm that CGI is rarely able to attain. The greatest fantasy of all time.


18. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (Griffith, D.W.; 1916)

Director D.W. Griffith made "Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages" as an apologia for his 1915 epic "The Birth of a Nation," a work that's tarnished by Griffith's racist depiction of freed slaves after the Civil War and the heroic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. No matter the motivation, "Intolerance" is an intrepid feat of filmmaking and storytelling, especially for 1916. The film tells four stories of prejudice at once, moving through time from the fall of Babylon (the film's most opulently designed setting), to the crucifixion of Jesus to the St. Bartholomew's Massacre of Huguenots in 1536 France to a 1914 America torn apart by conservatism and capitalism. Lillian Gish's "Eternal Mother" serves as a bridge between the stories. The finale's breathtaking crosscutting greatly influenced Sergei Eisenstein ("Battleship Potemkin").


19. The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, Charles; 1955)
The directorial debut of actor Charles Laughton (1935's "Mutiny on the Bounty") was so wildly reviled upon its initial release, he never made another film. "The Night of the Hunter" contains so many unnerving elements, it's easy to understand why Eisenhower America was so repulsed. Robert Mitchum plays an ex-con-turned-insane-preacher who marries a widow (Shelley Winters) because her children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) know the whereabouts of the bounty from a major cash robbery. The film turns into a supremely odd Southern Gothic horror fairytale that's as dreamlike (a magical nighttime boat trip) as it is nightmarish (Mitchum's performance is a thing of haunting evil).


20. The Third Man (Reed, Carol; 1949)

American writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna and discovers his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) is dead. Using the detective skills he believes he has developed from writing and reading pulp novels, Holly launches a naïve search for the truth of what happened to Harry in an odyssey through the malaise of post-World War II Europe that symbolically ends in the sewers. Carol Reed directs "The Third Man" in the macabre, chiaroscuro style of noir and German Expressionism from a tautly crafted script by Graham Greene that dashes idealism and plunges into cynical despair. Welles improvised the film's most famous line: "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." The greatest film noir of all time.


21. North by Northwest (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1959)

After "Vertigo," Alfred Hitchcock set out to intentionally make a frivolous piece of entertainment completely free of metaphors and symbolism. Hitchcock succeeded in making one of Hollywood's most purely entertaining thrillers, but "North by Northwest" is still thematically rich. In its plot of a confident Madison Avenue advertising executive (Cary Grant) being mistaken for a spy, the film deals with nothing less than the natures of identity and sanity (as its apparently accidental title from "Hamlet" would suggest), the instability of the man-imposed sense of order and questions of urban masculinity. "North by Northwest" contains some of Hitchcock's most thrilling scenes, including the infamous crop-duster sequence and a race across Mt. Rushmore (Hitchcock joked about having Grant's character stand up in Lincoln's nostril and sneeze).


22. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, Peter; 2001), The Two Towers (Jackson, Peter; 2002) and The Return of the King (Jackson, Peter; 2003)

Utterly extraordinary in its epic ambition and accomplishment, director Peter Jackson managed to achieve the impossible – he turned one of the most influential works of the 20th-century into a benchmark of 21st-century filmmaking. No film has ever put the technological resources of the medium to such ravishing and humane use. Though it's easy to get lost in the pure grandeur of all three "The Lord of the Rings" films, Jackson's trilogy succeeds because it retains the passion and intelligence of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork. The characters – including Elijah Wood's much-put-upon hobbit, his soulful companion played by Sean Astin and Ian McKellen's wise wizard – are a collection of individuals caught up in personal catastrophe who serve as reflections of every man whose normalcy is shattered by an unexpected, faceless evil happening.


23. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, Steven; 1982)

Although "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" is one of the most popular films of all time, it's one of the most misunderstood among critics. Steven Spielberg's depiction of 10-year-old Elliot (Henry Thomas) discovering an alien in his backyard is often decried for being too sentimental and childish. Such critiques seem to willfully ignore the authentic depiction of a middle-class, suburban, single-parent home, with all the sadness and ebullient moments of hope that come with it. The miraculous moment when E.T. makes a bicycle fly – one of the single greatest scenes in all of movies – would mean less if it weren't for that finely attuned sense of realism. "E.T." may be a scif-fi/fantasy blockbuster, but it's also an intimate tale of how a friend can help heal a broken heart.


24. The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, Ernst; 1940)

The famed "Lubitsch touch" is defined by Scott Eyman as director Ernst Lubitsch's ability to bring "benign grace" and "rueful wisdom" to comedies that in less refined hands could've easily been coarse. Nowhere is that touch more elegantly applied than in "The Shop Around the Corner." Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan play squabbling employees Alfred and Klara at a Budapest department store who, unbeknownst to them, have fallen in love through an anonymous pen pal club for lonely hearts. Although endlessly witty, the film is also tender and sad, such as when, after Alfred realizes who his pen pal really is and stops writing her, Klara despondently continues to reach inside her empty mailbox for love letters that aren't there. The remake "You've Got Mail" only further proves the masterfulness of the Lubitsch touch.


25. Letter From an Unknown Woman (Ophüls, Max; 1948)

"Letter From an Unknown Woman" has long been dismissed as a "woman's film" or a tearjerker, but thanks to Cahiers du Cinéma and Robin Wood, it has more recently received the acclaim it has long deserved. In 1900 Vienna, Lisa (Joan Fontaine) falls in love with narcissistic concert pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan). Stefan is seemingly unaware of the depth of Lisa's passion until, on the eve of a duel, Stefan receives a letter from her detailing her long-held feelings for him. The letter ends with the line, "If only you could have recognized what was always yours, you could have found what was never lost." Like most great romances, the love story is one of loss, sadness and missed opportunities. The brilliance of the film mostly lies in the rigorous mise-en-scène constructed by director Max Ophüls. His graceful tracking shots give the film a lyrical quality that elegantly pull the film toward its tragic end.


26. The Crowd (Vidor, King; 1928; US)

With the advent of the Great Depression and sound, King Vidor's silent work of social realism about a couple's struggles in the big city failed to connect with audiences in need of escapist fare like "Wings" and "Seventh Heaven." Without sentimentality, the film follows ordinary couple John and Mary Sims (James Murray and Vidor's wife Eleanor Boardman) as their attempts to stand out from the crowd are repeatedly dashed by the indifferent inhabitants of New York City. There are minor moments of joyful triumph amidst the despair, and the couple eventually comes to realize love could be enough to uplift them – even as the crowd once again engulfs them.


27. Chinatown (Polanski, Roman; 1974)

Private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired to investigate a supposed case of infidelity and ends up stumbling upon a murder, falling in love with the victim's wife (Faye Dunaway), getting his nose slit and uncovering incest and a real estate scheme involving the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. From the first clue to the last, Gittes gets everything wrong, and with tragic consequences. The only solace Gittes receives is advice to "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Roman Polanski's gritty direction and the labyrinthine mystery of Robert Towne's legendary screenplay have long been hailed, but at the certain of the maze is the bruised heart of a man whose machismo-driven arrogance has cost him dearly.


28. Touch of Evil (Welles, Orson; 1958)

Desperate to return to Hollywood filmmaking, Orson Welles took on this B-movie (perhaps at the insistence of star Charlton Heston, perhaps as part of a bet) about police corruption, drugs and kidnapping in a border town. The film is most famous for its opening, three-minute tracking shot (better appreciated in the 1998 restoration form) of a bomb being placed in a car, being driven through a Mexico/U.S. border crossing into the U.S. and exploding. Heston plays a Mexican official who investigates, resulting in the kidnapping of his wife (Janet Leigh) and the exposure of a crooked detective (Welles). Welles elevates the material with a perverse tone and cinematic pyrotechnics, but his film was once again taken away by the studio and re-cut, and he never directed for Hollywood again.


29. Duck Soup (McCarey, Leo; 1933)

Audiences weren't ready for political satire in 1933, but when "Duck Soup" was rediscovered in the 1960s, it was seen for the prescient work it really is. If anything, the film is more relevant today – compare Fox News' coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War with the glee that sweeps over the country of Freedonia when Grouch Marx's dictator Rufus T. Firefly announces he's going to war with Sylvania because an ambassador calls him an "upstart." "Duck Soup" is fired by an anarchic spirit, but commendation must be paid to director Leo McCarey (an Oscar winner for "The Awful Truth") for reining in the Marx Brothers enough to make their chaotic nonsense truly glorious.


30. Psycho (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1960)

"Psycho" redefined where movies could go when it took audiences on a perverse journey into the Bates Motel. Initially a taut heist movie, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) robs her boss and spends an ill-fated night in an establishment run by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). The infamous shower scene results in one of the most subversive moments in film history. It's also a skillful piece of filmmaking in and of itself, using carefully framed close-ups and rapid editing to subliminally create a visceral sensation of murder. To keep the ending a secret, Hitchcock bought every copy of the Robert Bloch book it was based upon and declined to screen it for critics.


31. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, Orson; 1942)

As his follow-up to "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles tackled Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Magnificent Ambersons" about the fall of a wealthy family in the midst of a town's social and industrial upheaval. The film is full of long tracking and crane shots and in some ways has greater emotional strength than "Citizen Kane" because of the character arc of spoiled George Minafer (Tim Holt) from aristocrat to laborer and the unrequited love between George's mother Isabel (Dolores Costello) and automobile innovator Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten). But, in what would become a common occurrence for Welles, the film was drastically re-cut by the studio: 40 minutes were removed, and extra scenes were shot by a different director. Considering how amazing the film still is, one can only imagine what it would've been like if it had been left alone.


32. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, Martin; 1976)

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro dive headlong into the nightmarescape of 1970s New York City with "Taxi Driver." De Niro's iconic Travis Bickle seeks refuge from his alienation first through an awkward romance with a campaigner (Cybil Shepherd) working for a senator and then by trying to save a teenage prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her pimp (Harvey Keitel). The film is seedy and gruesome, a howl from a storm drain. Screenwriter Paul Schrader was inspired by the published diary of Arthur Herman Bremer, who shot George Wallace during his U.S. presidential run. Bremer could easily be speaking for Bickle when he writes in his diary, "No one ever noticed me nor took interest in me as an individual with the need to receive or give love." "Taxi Driver" in turn inspired John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Foster.


33. Rio Bravo (Hawks, Howard; 1959)

Howard Hawks, whose dramas and Westerns are renowned for the professionalism of their heroes, made "Rio Bravo" in response to "High Noon's" depiction of a sheriff (Gary Cooper) desperately asking the people of his town for help. In "Rio Bravo," Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) takes on a powerful cattle baron's posse with only the help of a drunk (Dean Martin), an old man (Walter Brennan) and an impetuous gunslinger (Ricky Nelson). If the bold men seem larger than life, it's because they are – the sets were built to seven-eighths scale to make them appear that way. The film was initially seen as a right-wing and reactionary show of support to McCarthyism, but the deeply flawed yet morally just heroes' fight can just as easily be interpreted (as film theorist Robin Wood does) as one against capitalism, with the heroic individuals standing up to the corporation of the cattle baron.


34. Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, Buster; 1924)
Buster Keaton plays a film projectionist who's also studying to be a detective and, after falling asleep on the job, literally walks into the movie he's showing. The film is full of amazing gags, not the least of which is the technically advanced sequence in which the projectionist walks onto the screen and is subsequently tormented by a madly edited movie that perilously moves him from beaches to snowy cliffs in the blink of an eye. In another amazing shot, Keaton dives through a window and comes out the other side dressed as a woman.


35. Some Like It Hot (Wilder, Billy; 1959)

It's almost hard to believe now, but at one point it was actually original and even shocking to make a movie about men dressing like women. Although the concept may no longer be as fresh, no movie (sorry Tyler Perry fans) has ever used it so inventively as "Some Like It Hot." Billy Wilder's manic masterpiece about musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (a sublime Jack Lemmon) who dress in drag and join an all-female band (which includes Marilyn Monroe) during the Prohibition is a manically plotted investigation into issues of masculinity and sexual desire. The comedy is also incredibly naughty without being overly explicit. However lines like "It's not how long it takes, it's who takes you" and "I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop" and one of Monroe's incredibly revealing dresses kept the movie from meeting the Hays Code movie censorship guidelines and it was officially "Condemned" by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting.


36. Schindler's List (Spielberg, Steven; 1993)

With great moral complexity, "Schindler's List" depicts the journey of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) from selfish cynic to a man – in a symbol of America and Europe – wracked with guilt for waiting too long to do something to stop the extermination of the Jewish people at the hands of Nazis like Amon Goeth (an exceptional Ralph Fiennes). Steven Spielberg's direction and Janusz Kaminski's wondrous cinematography at once renders the camps with artistry and understatement, making the horrors – and the uplift – that much more profound. Spielberg initially didn't think he was up to the challenge of directing the Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" and offered the film to Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack and Roman Polanski (a Holocaust survivor whose mother died in Auschwitz, Polanski later tackled the subject and won an Oscar with 2002's "The Pianist").


37. The New World (Malick, Terence; 2005)

Terence Malick's take on the legendary romance between Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell) in "The New World" is a visual tone poem in which, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee." The simple elegance and unassuming profoundness of Malick's film begins with its title. "The New World" at once refers to what settlers christened the land that would come to be called "America," how the "Naturals" of that land viewed the encroaching newcomers, the discovery of one's first love and so much more. Malick's consideration of that new world is practically transcendental as his camera goes, as Emerson says in "The Poet," "Wherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love."


38. Blade Runner (Scott, Ridley; 1982)

Ridley Scott's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" adds concerns about capitalism and environmental collapse to Dick's metaphysical musings about the essence of existence and identity. Harrison Ford plays a detective in noir mode forced to hunt down escaped existential "Replicant" androids in a dystopian vision of Los Angeles in 2019. "Blade Runner's" production design, influenced by Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and the work of French comic book artist Moebius, is a frightening, authentic-seeming look at corporate-controlled urbania. Scott released a "Final Cut" in 2007 that's the only true reflection of his vision for the film, and, though only slightly different from the unauthorized "Director's Cut," it should be considered the official version of the film.


39. All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, Douglas; 1955)

Like "Letter to an Unknown Woman," "All That Heaven Allows" was relegated to the "women's film" ghetto until a revived interest in the works of Douglas Sirk rescued it from oblivion. All of Sirk's films work on a sociopolitical level that separates them from most melodramas while accessing the genre's passion and emotion on a more genuine level. In "All That Heaven Allows," a wealthy widow (Jane Wyman) falls for a younger landscaper (Rock Hudson) and must choose between a love that will bring her scandal or adhering to social norms and living a passionless life. The film deeply influenced Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pedro Almodóvar and Todd Haynes, who paid it homage with "Far From Heaven."


40. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, Stanley; 1975)

After his financing for his "Napoleon" project fell apart, Stanley Kubrick decided to put the substantial research he did on the 18th century to use in an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Luck of Barry Lyndon." Ryan O'Neal plays the title character, an Irishman who remakes himself after the 1756-1763 Seven Years' War to become a member of the aristocracy, first by working as a cardsharp, then by marrying the wealthy widow Countess of Lyndon (Marisa Berenson). The film is savagely satirical and ravishing to look at: Kubrick used lenses designed by NASA for the Apollo moon landings so he could use only candles for his lighting.


41. Heaven's Gate (Cimino, Michael; 1980)

Perhaps the most wildly misunderstood American film ever made, "Heaven's Gate" is more widely known for the financial calamity it brought to studio United Artists (the film cost $44 million to make and only grossed $3.84 million, which would be a $115.24 million loss in 2008 dollars) than its cinematic worth. It's largely because of the work of esteemed critic Robin Wood the film is still seriously considered at all. Director Michael Cimino ("The Deer Hunter") drew inspiration from the 1892 Johnson County War for his 219-minute epic about, ironically, a catastrophic fight against capitalism. Kris Kristofferson stars as a Harvard-educated Wyoming sheriff slow to protect immigrants from murderous cattle barons who never escapes the tragedy he was complicit in. Despite the length and vociferous criticism from the likes of Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby, the film is rigorously structured (the movie is filled with rhymes between the life of the bourgeoisie and the immigrants) and gloriously photographed.


42. Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1943; US)

In the film that Alfred Hitchcock claimed to be his personal favorite, Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright play an uncle and niece both named Charlie who come to odds when Young Charlie suspects Uncle Charlie of being a serial killer. In the end, Young Charlie has to repress what she learns in order to maintain a semblance of the social order. The film's explosive vision of the darkness residing in small town America (the authenticity of the details of the idyllic setting can be attributed to the script by "Our Town" writer Thornton Wilder) is an obvious forebear to David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks."


43. The Lady Eve (Sturges, Preston; 1941)

Father and daughter con artists "Colonel" and Jean Harrington (Charles Coburn and Barbara Stanwyck) target ale tycoon and snake expert Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) during a cruise. The plan falls apart when Jean falls for Charles, and then she returns with an elaborate ruse for revenge when he dumps her after discovering her aborted scheme – and then makes another plan to win him back. Along the way the film fabulously plays with the Creation myth: Charles is responsible for a snake on the voyage, Jean precipitates the fall of man by dropping an apple on Charles' head and resulting in a pratfall in their meet-cute. The insane circumstances and frantic pacing are the epitome of Preston Sturges' screwball style.


44. Out of the Past (Tourneur, Jacques; 1947)

Director Jacques Tourneur is better known for his atmospheric, low-budget horror films "Cat People," "I Walked with a Zombie" and "The Leopard Man," but his masterpiece is the film noir "Out of the Past." Robert Mitchum plays Jeff, a gas station owner who's forced to remember his old life as a private detective when his past finally catches up to him. Jeff recalls his last job working for a gangster (Kirk Douglas) and the femme fatale who betrayed him (Jane Greer) and moves fatalistically toward his inevitable end. Tourneur's talent for chiaroscuro and tense staging is brought to bear more emotionally here than in his horror work.


45. There Will Be Blood (Anderson, Paul Thomas; 2007)

In adapting Upton Sinclair's 1927 muckraker "Oil!," Paul Thomas Anderson fashions a character study posing as an epic that's a cinematic cousin to "The Searchers" and "Raging Bull." Daniel Day-Lewis inhabits the very shell of self-made oilman Daniel Plainview and Anderson concocts astounding cinematic sequences that never call attention themselves, thereby allowing the astonishing long takes and stately mise-en-scène to overwhelm all the more. "There Will Be Blood" tackles the larger theme of the competing interests that form the backbone of America – not the country's romanticized and barely realized democracy, but religion and capitalism – and no matter the winner, the loser is sure to be the oil-rich town of Little Boston. And so goes the nation.


46. His Girl Friday (Hawks, Howard; 1940)

"His Girl Friday" adapts the newspaper stage play and 1931 film comedy "The Front Page" into a war-of-the-sexes screwball comedy. Cary Grant plays newspaper editor Walter Burns, who's trying to keep from losing his best reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell, whose role in the play is a man) from wedded bliss. Burns convinces Hildy to take the story of a convicted killer (John Qualen) about to be executed, and madcap mania ensues. As in most Hawks films, Hildy is given equal footing with Burns, and it's up to both of them to earn each other in the end. The breathtaking pace of the joke-a-second dialogue remains unmatched.


47. Rear Window (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1954)

Confined to a wheelchair in his apartment and eager to escape the talk of marriage from his girlfriend (Grace Kelly), L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) takes to staring through his window into the apartments across the street. One of Alfred Hitchcock's most daring conceits, the film is astoundingly thrilling considering it's almost entirely set within a living room. Although "Rear Window" is generally seen as an allegory for the movies, the voyeurism of L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) on the couples across the street and his discovery of an act of domestic violence is more accurately a metaphor for anxieties related to marriage and the figurative castration fears that come with it – the binoculars and cameras Jeffries uses telling get larger each time he looks through the window.


48. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, Stanley; 1964)

In his only comedy, Stanley Kubrick uses "Dr. Strangelove" to take aim at Cold War sensibilities – especially the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction that ostensibly kept the U.S. and Russia from bombing each other into oblivion from the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – and the missile race that accompanied them that served as an extreme form of men attempting to make up for their shortcomings. Peter Sellers brilliantly portrays an RAF soldier attempting to prevent the MAD chain of events set off by an impotent general (Sterling Hayden), the embattled U.S. president and the titular crazed scientist who struggles to hide his Nazi past. Sellers was also supposed to portray Major "King" Kong (to assure box office success, the studio wanted Sellers to play at least four characters), but he conveniently sprained an ankle to get out of it, ceding the role to Slim Pickens, who was more than up to the challenge.


49. Blue Velvet (Lynch, David; 1986)
College student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) comes home from school to take care of his ailing father and involves himself in a mystery when he finds a severed ear. Like the most perverse Hardy Boys-Nancy Drew Mystery that never was, Jeffrey teams up with Sandy (Laura Dern), the daughter of the detective on the case, to discover a vicious and sordid underworld in their quiet town that threatens abused lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini). David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" is as visually lush as the title suggests and extremely unnerving in its depictions of sexual violence and the manner in which they burrow their way into the subconscious.


50. My Darling Clementine (Ford, John; 1946)

John Ford's version of the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral between the Earp Brothers and the Clanton Gang is still the best. More than just the typical bullet-filled oater, "My Darling Clementine" is one of the earliest Westerns to deal with larger themes, in this case the forcing of social norms onto the Wild West. Ford's climactic battle also prefigures Sam Peckinpah in the emotional weight given to the fight: as in "The Wild Bunch," there is real loss here, even in victory. Ford knew the real Wyatt Earp in his youth and based his version of events on what Earp told him.


51. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, Sam; 1969)

"The Wild Bunch" is, as director Sam Peckinpah said, "what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is that you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." To achieve a suitable level of brutality for his elegy, Peckinpah conceived of the idea of slow-motion violence in order to show the real damage done by the bullets that seemed to have no effect in the Western and action films up until that point. His conceit has been misunderstood and misused ever since (with Michael Bay perhaps the biggest offender). It's no wonder really: the gun battles in Peckinpah's tragic Western are bullet ballets.


52. Munich (Spielberg, Steven; 2005)

In its addressing of the post-9/11 moral crisis, "Munich" is a work of vital disturbance, one that tears off the paper that often covers the ideological cracks in Steven Spielberg's works. "Munich" examines the thrill of committing – and watching – a violent act of retribution, and the emotional fallout that comes from such blood-spilling. Spielberg stages each action set piece of Israeli assassins out to avenge an act of terrorism that took place during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich with the verve and originality of classic Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin.


53. Short Cuts (Altman, Robert; 1993)

Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" is a more rigorously structured version of "Nashville" that pays homage to Los Angeles rather than Music City. The film intertwines nine stories and a poem by Raymond Carver so that 22 characters cross paths as they grapple with themes of mortality, infidelity and isolation. As in "Magnolia," which this film profoundly influenced, all of the characters are united by a phenomenon with seismic repercussions. The amalgamation of the stories (the screenplay was co-adapted with Altman by Frank Barhydt) allows Altman to move between multiple plotlines and genres with the same fluidity he brought to "Nashville," but the narrative engine is even more combustible here.


54. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, Howard; 1938)

Reserved paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant, modeling his performance on silent film star Harold Lloyd) is on the verge of marrying brittle Alice Swallow (Virgina Walker) when heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) enters his life, bringing both catastrophe and passion with her against his vigorous protestations – "In moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you," he admits, "but – well, there haven't been any quiet moments." To merely describe "Bringing Up Baby" as a screwball comedy barely does justice to the mayhem on display – this is a film in which a dinosaur bone, a bone-loving dog and a pet leopard named Baby are major sources of prolonged and chaotic hilarity. The insanity is so profound the film is practically a fantasy. Notably, while dressed in women's lingerie, Cary Grant uses the word "gay" for the first time in movies to mean "homosexual."


55. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (Linklater, Richard; 1995, 2004)

"Before Sunrise's" depiction of American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and French Celine (Julie Delpy) meeting by chance in Vienna and falling in love was this generation's greatest romance – until Jesse and Celine's bittersweet reunion in "Before Sunset" did the impossible and topped it. Taken together, "Before Sunrise" (which perfectly captures that awkward stage when two people are falling love) and "Before Sunset" (in which the characters are faced with regret and the damage of time) make for a formidable romance filled with wit, philosophical musings and actual love that probes the hearts and minds of two hopeless romantics.


56. The Naked Spur (Mann, Anthony; 1953)

Jimmy Stewart is best know for his collaborations with Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock, but he made nine films with Anthony Mann, many of which afforded him with opportunities to traverse the dark regions of humanity he otherwise only visited in Hitchcock's "Vertigo." The psychological Western "The Naked Spur" plays upon preconceived notions of Stewart: because it's him, one assumes his bounty hunter Howard Kemp is out to bring in murderer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) purely for just reasons. But Kemp is just as selfishly motivated as the miner (Millard Mitchell) and union soldier (Ralph Meeker) who try to hoard in on the bounty Kemp needs to buy back his farm. Often exhilarating in its fully conceived characters adrift in a moral wilderness, the story also thrills in its tensely conceived shootouts.


57. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, Robert; 1971)

A self-conscious subversion of the tropes of the Western genre, Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is a melancholy "anti-Western" that deconstructs the frontier myth through the uneasy partnership between gambler and supposed gunslinger "Pudgy" McCabe (Warren Beatty in his greatest performance) and opium-addicted madam Constance Miller (Julie Christie). McCabe is forced to ward off capitalist interests when murderous miners attempt to take over his land. The climactic shootout breathtakingly takes place during a snowstorm (the real blizzard nearly shut down production).


58. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, Sergio; 1968) and Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, Sergio; 1984)

With his "Once Upon a Time..." films, director Sergio Leone presents summations of the Western and the gangster genres. "Once Upon a Time in the West" stars Charles Bronson as an enigmatic gunslinger attempting to protect a prostitute-turned-homesteader (Claudia Cardinale of "8 1/2") from a villain played by Henry Fonda. The film is even more luxuriously cinematic and grandly mythic than "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in its expression of the collision of the Wild West with capitalist-driven "society." Leone turned down an opportunity to direct "The Godfather" because he wanted to instead adapt Harry Grey's "The Hoods" about Jewish gangsters (Robert De Niro and James Woods among them) who rise to power in Lower East Side New York during Prohibition. Leone turned the novel into "Once Upon a Time in America," a melancholy epic poem about the immigrant experience as a pipe dream. (The two films form a loose trilogy with "Duck, You Sucker," which was originally to be titled "Once Upon a Time...The Revolution," but because it's technically an Italian-Spanish production, it's not included here.")


59. Pinocchio (Sharpsteen, Ben & Hamilton Luske; 1940)

Pinocchio's passage from being a wooden puppet without strings into a real boy is actually a coming-of-age story about becoming an adult – only after learning the value of placing self-sacrifice over selfishness and experiencing loss does Pinocchio become a person. Walt Disney's animation is lush and magical, from the appearance of the Blue Fairy to the terror of Monstro the Whale. Even compared to the work of Pixar, Hayao Miyazaki and later Disney pictures such as "Beauty & the Beast" and "The Lion King," "Pinocchio" remains the greatest animated film ever made.


60. The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, George; 1940)

Some have interpreted "The Philadelphia Story" as a cruel vehicle for cutting Katharine Hepburn (who at that point was considered box office poison) down to size with jokes made at the expense of Hepburn's real-life persona. That hardly seems fair considering Hepburn's character Tracy Lord is presented with three romantic possibilities, and the man she ends up with is the one who best appreciates her for who she is. Hepburn's Tracy is about to remarry, but her wedding plans are upended by her ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) arriving with tabloid reporter Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart). Mike falls in love with Tracy despite his contempt of the rich – "The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges," he says – complicating Haven's plans to win Tracy back. A sophisticated farce, it's one of Hollywood's most enduring romantic comedies.


61. The Living Dead Tetralogy: Night of the Living Dead (Romero, George A.; 1968), Dawn of the Dead (Romero, George A.; 1978), Day of the Dead (Romero, George A.; 1985) and Land of the Dead (Romero, George A.; 2005)

Though they contain no shared characters, "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," "Day of the Dead" and "Land of the Dead" all seem to exist in the same universe, with each film escalating the zombie threat of the one that came before. The greatness of the "Dead" tetralogy rests as much with its queasy gore as with its sociopolitical subtext. Like John Updike with his "Rabbit Angstrom" tetralogy, George A. Romero and his four zombie films dissect the flaws of American society almost once per decade: in the 1960s of "Night," it was the defective values of the American family; in the 1970s of "Dawn," consumerism; the misunderstood "Day" reacted against Reaganite America; and the underrated "Land" exposed the continued disparity between the haves and the have-nots so presciently it's retroactively a parable of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.


62. Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, Howard; 1939)

Howard Hawks did for films what William Shakespeare did for plays – he brought philosophy and humanity to cinematic storytelling. "Only Angels Have Wings" could've easily been a sentimental melodrama about airplane pilots flying a dangerous route in the Peruvian Andes, but Hawks turns the story into a rich psychological examination of how those pilots are able to retain their professionalism in the face unending tragedy. Cary Grant plays the manager of the air mail service and Jean Arthur plays the woman who loves him but can't bear to live in constant fear of his death. The Academy Awards created the Best Special Effects category to honor the film's flying scenes.


63. In a Lonely Place (Ray, Nicholas; 1950)

"In a Lonely Place" stars Humphrey Bogart as a screenwriter with a history of abusing women who's accused of murdering a hatcheck girl. The screenwriter's lack of empathy regarding her death, and his mean violent streak, make it seem entirely possible he's capable of murder, but then a neighbor (Gloria Grahame) reveals the poet inside him. An existential thriller with hardboiled, romantic dialogue – "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me." – the film is among the best films noir, although it's sadly largely forgotten.


64. Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey, Leo; 1937)

Leo McCarey made "Duck Soup," "The Awful Truth," "Love Affair" and "An Affair to Remember," but his favorite of all his films was "Make Way for Tomorrow." So convinced was he of the film's superiority to his other works that when he accepted the Academy Award for "The Awful Truth" he said, "Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture." "Make Way for Tomorrow" is an extraordinarily moving and simple film about an elderly couple, Bark and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi), who lose their home to the bank and are forced to live apart because none of their three selfish children will agree to house them together. Bark and Lucy are eventually placed in rest homes on opposite sides of the country, but they're given one day together to tour a city they no longer recognize and dance together at the hotel where they had their honeymoon. As Orson Welles said of the film, "It would make a stone cry."


65. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, John; 1941)

"The Maltese Falcon" isn't the first film noir (that debated label usually goes to Fritz Lang's "Fury" from 1936 or the otherwise forgotten 1940 film "Stranger on the Third Floor"), but it was the most influential in establishing such hallmarks for the subgenre as the amoral private detective, the femme fatale, hardboiled dialogue and stylized direction (from John Huston, making his directorial debut) as ruthless as the unscrupulous characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade, a sadistic detective who plays all sides against the middle in the search for a priceless statue and for whoever killed a partner he didn't even like: "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him."



66. The Star Wars Saga: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (Lucas, George; 1999), Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (Lucas, George; 2002), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (Lucas, George; 2005), Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (Lucas, George; 1977), Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, Irvin; 1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Marquand, Richard; 1983)

George Lucas somewhat diminished the splendor of his "Star Wars" series when he added to the saga with a second trilogy of prequels, but Lucas has still accomplished something glorious in his pop mythology of the Force, lightsabers, Jedi knights, princesses and robots. "Star Wars" (renamed "Episode IV – A New Hope) splendidly set the saga in motion with its reworking of Joseph Campbell-approved mythic tropes, a plot borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" and the most astonishing special effects ever to hit the silver screen. "Empire Strikes Back," with its script co-written by "Rio Bravo" screenwriter Leigh Brackett, is the best of the series because of its sense of grandeur and depth of feeling. "Return of the Jedi" closes out the original trilogy with an epic battle and a surprisingly tragic end for Darth Vader. The prequels are included here simply out of goodwill, but their impressive special effects and exploration of the ease with which man can slide into evil hold cinematic worth.


67. Rushmore (Anderson, Wes; 1998)

"Rushmore" is by far the most influential film of the past 10 years, spawning imitators of varying degrees of quality (in descending order: "Garden State," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Juno") that have irregardless gone on to the awards and commercial success that were denied Wes Anderson's masterpiece upon its arrival in 1998. Co-written with Owen Wilson, "Rushmore" is a film of deadpan absurdism and inexplicable melancholy about the heartache that comes when passionate pursuits aren't fulfilled. Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is a student at the Rushmore Academy who stages over-the-top plays and is the president of every club, but who's an academic failure. Max befriends despondent millionaire Herman Blume (Bill Murray, in the role that rejuvenated his career) and falls in love with teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). The film is as generous in its gorgeous, carefully arranged compositions – influenced by "Harold and Maude," "The Graduate" and Jacques Tati's "Playtime" – as it is in the grace with which it considers its characters.


68. Children of Men (Cuarón, Alfonso; 2006)

Director Alfonso Cuarón transforms P.D. James' parable of a world in which children are no longer being born into a humanist work of folk art that illuminates the world's current political crisis through one man's moral evolution. Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (aided by CGI) convey this moral and social chaos through the use of Herculean single takes that last three to 10 minutes. Cuarón reveals a tentative faith in humanity in the form of Theo (Clive Owen) as he comes to convey man's best attributes: compassion, self-sacrifice and hope. "Children of Men" may say the apocalypse is now, but the film more boldly states the future can still be fought and won.


69. To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch, Ernst; 1942)

"To Be or Not to Be" was condemned when it was released shortly after America's entrance into World War II because, like Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator," its Nazi-related humor was considered insensitive and, amazingly, anti-Polish. The film is now considered one of the greatest comedies of all time. Maria and Josef Tura (Carole Lombard and Jack Benny) are the stars of an acting troupe in Warsaw that, after its anti-Hitler play "Gestapo" is shut down, uses its talents to help the resistance fight Col. "Concentration Camp" Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman) and the Nazis. Director Ernst Lubitsch, whose profile was caricatured in a Nazi poster demonstrating how to spot a Jew, wasn't being tactless – he was using comedy to vent his blistering anger.


70. Notorious (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1946)

After her father is convicted for being a Nazi spy, playgirl Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is forced by the American government to spy on the suspicious German sect of Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains) in post-World War II Brazil. Alicia falls in love with her American handler R. Devlin (Cary Grant), but he seemingly treats her as coldly as Alex. Eventually both men place her in enormous danger for their selfish ends. "Notorious" is one of Hitchcock's sexiest and most romantic films, and it infamously skirted around the Hays Code rule in which characters could only kiss on screen for three seconds by having Devlin and Alicia talk in between each touching of the lips to stretch the kiss out to three minutes.


71. Manhattan (Allen, Woody; 1979)

"Annie Hall" may be funnier and have the Best Picture Oscar, but Woody Allen's valentine to New York City is his true masterwork. Ravishingly filmed by cinematographer Gordon Willis ("The Godfather" films) and scored to George Gershwin's music, "Manhattan" is a summation of Allen's neuroses and passions that manages, for the only time, to raise Allen's cinematic aesthetics to the same level as his great dialogue. Allen plays Isaac Davis, a man struggling with his writing (he works for a bad sitcom but wants to be taken seriously) and his loves, 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) and his best friend's neurotic mistress Mary (Diane Keaton). The final shot recalls "City Lights," but the only loves Isaac are left with are his movies and his city.


72. The Reckless Moment (Ophüls, Max; 1949)

"The Reckless Moment" is the rare noir film that features a female heroine, and director Max Ophüls takes advantage of the fluke to use the genre to explore the theme of female oppression. Lucia (Joan Bennett) believes her daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) has killed her lover when she finds his dead body on the beach. Lucia tries to cover up the murder and is blackmailed by Martin Donnelly (James Mason) on behalf of an associate and ends up falling in love with her. As Lucia tries to keep her daughter from jail and struggles with her adulterous feelings, the prison of the family – "You don't know how a family can surround you at times" – and patriarchy slowly reveals itself.


73. The Big Sleep (Hawks, Howard; 1946)

This knotty adaptation of Raymond Chandler's mystery is gleefully perverse for its time, with pornographers and nymphomaniacs among the rogue's gallery private eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) has to fend off in order to save a socialite (Martha Vickers) from herself and solve seven murders in the process. "The Big Sleep's" plot is so convoluted screenwriters William Faulkner (yes, that Faulkner) and Leigh Brackett asked Chandler for an explanation, and even he wasn't sure what happened. That doesn't stop the film from being enormously entertaining in its depraved energy and splendid innuendos. The first pairing of Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the film is famous for a scene in which the duo uses horseracing as a thinly veiled double entendre: "A lot depends on who's in the saddle."


74. Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, Billy; 1950)
Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd." is a seedy examination of the almost literal skeletons in Hollywood's closet that's tellingly narrated by a corpse. To escape creditors, struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) agrees to help faded Hollywood star Norma Desmond (faded Hollywood star Gloria Swanson) re-launch her career by penning her adaptation of "Salome." Norma only finds her way back in front of the cameras through an act of murder. The script by Wilder and frequent writing partner Charles Brackett is a malignant thing that cleverly attacks the shallow and fickle nature of Hollywood.


75. The Shining (Kubrick, Stanley; 1980)

Stanley Kubrick loosely adapted Stephen King's novel "The Shining" to create a more terrifying and tenser work that, at its core, tackles masculine concerns of success and supporting a family, and how failing in both of those regards can lead to domestic violence. Unable to make ends meet as a writer, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes work as an off-season caretaker of Colorado resort the Overlook Hotel. Jack is hoping to use the seemingly easy job to support his attempt to finally write the Great American Novel, but Jack, his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) soon discover something is seriously amiss. Kubrick's innovative use of the new Steadicam technology turns the mundanity of riding a tricycle down a hallway into something terrifying. The final 40-minute sequence is a tour de force of terror. King was so upset with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation that, in 1997, he (unwisely) commissioned ABC to produce a six-hour miniseries that hewed closer to his novel.


76. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, Michel; 2004)

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman goes from merely bending minds to breaking hearts in what may be the most complex screwball romantic comedy ever made. Joel (Jim Carrey) retreats into the recesses of his own mind when he decides to have his relationship with Clementine (Kate Winslet) erased by low-fi, questionable scientists (Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood), only to discover that he desperately needs to retain the memory of her. Michel Gondry's direction and Ellen Kuras' cinematography are a feast of technical pyrotechnics and whimsy. But it's the fundamental theme that all memories – especially the painful ones – contain a beauty that makes them worth remembering that finally makes "Eternal Sunshine" a heartbreaking romance.


77. Portrait of Jennie (Dieterle, William; 1948)

Eben Adams (Joseph Cotten) is an uninspired artist until his chance encounter in Central Park with Jennie (Jennifer Jones), who may be a ghost. "Portrait of Jennie" becomes a compelling investigation of the artistic process and a metaphor for addiction-fueled art as Eben becomes increasingly dependent on visits from Jennie in order to paint. Eben's slow understanding of the truth of what Jennie is turns the film into a moving romantic work when Eben, on the verge of completing his masterwork, realizes finishing the painting will mean losing Jennie forever. The transcendence of Jennie and Eben is symbolized by the film's transition from black-and-white to Technicolor.


78. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Keaton, Buster/Charles F. Reisner; 1928)

William Canfield Jr. (Buster Keaton) is the college graduate son of a riverboat captain, Steamboat Bill (Ernest Torrence), who's embarrassed by his son's newfound sense of fashion and lack of steamboat acumen. William works hard to impress his father while fighting against steamboat rival John James King (Tom McGuire) and romancing King's daughter Marion (Marion Byron). "Steamboat Bill, Jr." contains two oft-imitated scenes – William tries on hats and changes his personality in accordance; the façade of a house falls on William, but he's saved by the third story window being opened – and a spectacular sequence involving a cyclone.


79. GoodFellas (Scorsese, Martin; 1990)

"As far back as I can remember," narrates Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), "I always wanted to be a gangster." "Goodfellas" grippingly shows that gangster life, turning acts of sadism into slapstick comedy (the opening murder of the man in the trunk) and sadists into tragic figures. "Goodfellas" is a work of superior cinematic craftsmanship that doubles as sociological spectacle: there is as much to be thrilled by in how Scorsese directs a famous sequence of Henry entering the Copacabana as there is in the authentic portrayal of irredeemable thugs (also including Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in his Oscar-winning role) rising to the top through sadistic and immoral means. Scorsese revels in the exhilaration of the mob lifestyle, but he also shows the reality of the paranoia and likely death that come with it.


80. The Thin Red Line (Malick, Terrence; 1998)

Terrence Malick had the misfortune of returning to filmmaking after a 20-year absence with a World War II movie in the same year Steven Spielberg unleashed his own war spectacle on the American film-going public. When given a choice between "Saving Private Ryan's" kinetic D-Day action sequences and Malick's more lyrical staging of the Battle of Guadalcanal in "The Thin Red Line," audiences chose the former and Oscar voters chose..."Shakespeare in Love." "The Thin Red Line" is the better war film though: it's a challenging work that presents the indifference of nature to man's petty squabbles through powerful, poetic cinematography and exhilarating, more intimately felt battle scenes.


81. Brazil (Gilliam, Terry; 1985)

Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" does nothing more than amalgamate the plots and dystopian visions of "Nineteen Eight-Four," "Fahrenheit 451," "Brave New World," "The Trial," "Metropolis" and "Alphaville," but it does so with such élan and narrative and visual daring, it makes the age-old fears of humanity being overrun by bureaucracy and technology seem vital again. Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, a cog in the machine who becomes a revolutionary when he literally meets the girl of his dreams (Kim Greist) and inadvertently joins forces with the freedom-fighter handyman Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). Gilliam famously battled with Universal to release the film in the U.S., with the studio at one point proposing a "Love Conquers All" version that cut 40 minutes from the film and ended happily.


82. Modern Times (Chaplin, Charles; 1936)

Charlie Chaplin rages against the machine in "Modern Times," in which Chaplin's Tramp is literally chewed up by the gears of a factory (the sequence is a comedy classic) and nearly loses his humanity to industrialization. With this being a Chaplin film, the Tramp's humanity is restored with the help of a spirited "Gamin" (Paulette Goddard). Although it deals with Great Depression anxieties, the film remains a formidable statement about how technology dehumanizes and isolates when it's communion the soul requires – all told through slapstick, of course. Even though sound films had been the norm for nearly a decade, "Modern Times" only features sound effects and music, and no spoken dialogue from the characters. "Modern Times" is Chaplin's last silent film and the last appearance of the much-beloved Tramp.


83. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, David; 1937)

It all begins with the simple invocation of "Once upon a time there lived a lovely little princess named Snow White." Snow White escapes the clutches of a Queen who wants her heart in a box (pretty macabre for a children's movie) and is taken in by seven dwarfs who whistle while they mine for diamonds. Walt Disney's decision to make the American full-length animated feature was ridiculed by the press and Hollywood insiders as "Disney's Folly." Even his wife told him, "No one's ever gonna pay a dime to see a dwarf picture." To say Disney proved the naysayers wrong is an understatement. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" transports the audience into a magical fairytale realm with its vivid animation, wonderful songs and dark sense of danger.


84. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, Tobe; 1974)

Five teenagers stumble upon a house of horrors in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and though it's by far the most terrifying film ever made, Tobe Hooper deploys that terror as a means toward exploring profound sociological issues. After all, it's the 1970s gas crisis that forces Sally (Marilyn Burns), her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) and her friends off the road; Franklin appears to be another neglected Vietnam veteran; the masked Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and his family have turned to murdering people because they've been replaced by machines at the slaughterhouse at which they used to work; and the ease with which human flesh is replaced with animals is, to say the least, pro-vegetarian. Hooper's masterpiece is far less violent than its title would make it seem; taking a cue from Alfred Hitchcock, most of the bodily harm is implied rather than explicitly shown – which in some ways makes it worse.


85. Red River (Hawks, Howard; 1948)

Biblical, Homeric, Oedipal, Shakespearean, literary, operatic and above all things quintessentially Western, Howard Hawks' "Red River" is the epic account of the opening of the Chisholm Trail in 1867 that allowed cattle to be driven from Kansas to Texas. John Wayne plays Thomas Dunson, a relentless cattle driver whose tyranny is challenged by his adopted son Matt (Montgomery Clift in his first film role). When Matt takes over the drive from his father, Dunson promises, "Every time you turn around, expect to see me, 'cause one time you'll turn around and I'll be there. I'm gonna kill ya, Matt." The psychological conflict turns the film into "Mutiny on the Bounty" on the rolling plains.


86. Annie Hall (Allen, Woody; 1977)

Woody Allen went from being a maker of wacky, frivolous satires to being a serious artist with "Annie Hall." Allen plays a neurotic stand-up comedian (Woody Allen) who recounts his relationship with the ebullient Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) after being devastated by their breakup. Believed by many to be based on Allen's real-life relationship with Keaton, whose real last name is Hall and whose nickname is Annie, the film maturely examines the remains of a relationship with unrivaled intellectual wit and a keen ability to blend surreal flights of fancy into the real world, making it arguably the only successful English-language film of magic-realism. "Annie Hall" was originally titled "Anhedonia" (a psychological inability to experience pleasure) and was filmed as a murder mystery.


87. The Conversation (Coppola, Francis; 1974)

In the same year he made "The Godfather Part II," Francis Ford Coppola reworked Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup" into a film about paranoia and surveillance in the age of Watergate. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a socially anxious surveillance expert who takes a job monitoring a couple (Harrison Ford and Cindy Williams) in San Francisco's Union Square. As Caul puts a reel together of the conversation, he worries what the phrase "He'd kill us if he got the chance" means and what impact his tape will have. Walter Murch's extraordinary sound design and editing turn "The Conversation's" depiction of mania and remorse into a work of existential angst.


88. A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, Stanley; 1971)

Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and his "droogs" enjoy a life of sadism and debauchery in near-future England – he listens to Mozart, has threesomes, drinks drug-spiked milk and engages in "ultra-violent" acts like beating and raping victims while performing "Singin' in the Rain" – until he's arrested and submitted to the Ludovico technique to end his violent ways. Stanley Kubrick's surreal (many scenes were filmed with a fisheye lens) and sex-and-violence-filled adaptation of Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" was initially rated "X" in the U.S., received a "Condemned" rating by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting and was withdrawn from England by Kubrick himself until 1999 because of the death threats he received.


89. The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, William; 1946)

Although "The Best Years of Our Lives" is still revered as a classic in most circles, the critical tide has slowly turned against the film and director William Wyler since the 1960s for being too schematic and too sentimental. Outside of cynicism, it's hard to understand why. Wyler's 172-minute, extraordinarily moving human epic focuses on the lives of three veterans – Al Stephenson (Oscar-winner Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) and Homer Parrish (Oscar-winner and real veteran Harold Russell) – as they attempt to readapt to life in the U.S. after the end of World War II. Although glad to be home, the men find the Army has left them ill-equipped for civilian life: Al is an alcoholic forced to turn down veterans for loans at the bank at which he works, Fred is forced to go back to working as a soda jerk and has been cuckolded by his wife, and Homer has lost his hands, preventing him from ever touching his fiancée again. Considering the plight of Iraq veterans, the film is at least as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.


90. Kill Bill – The Whole Bloody Affair (Tarantino, Quentin; 2003 and 2004)

Quentin Tarantino is often lambasted for his pastiche approach to filmmaking while his spiritual cinematic fathers like Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg have long been lionized for their nods to film history in their films. In "Kill Bill," his references and appropriations are legion, but they're used as thrillingly as the allusions in "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Taxi Driver," "The Conversation" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The profound spirituality and redemption quests of his films are also often ignored. As film theorist Michael K. Crowley has splendidly pointed out, the bloody, sword-wielding killing spree of the Bride (Uma Thurman) is a visceral Buddhist allegory about overcoming the "Five Poisons" that obstruct the path to enlightenment, with the Bride fighting corporeal embodiments of Pride (Lucy Liu as O-ren Ishii), Hatred (Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green), Delusion (Michael Madsen as Budd), Envy (Darryl Hannah as Elle Driver) and Desire (David Carradine as Bill). Of course, it's still a kinetic orgy of bloody mayhem with a strong emotional core as the Bride comes to discover that revenge means killing someone that you loved – or love.


91. Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter, John; 1976)

Howard Hawks loosely remade his "Rio Bravo" concept twice with diminishing returns, but John Carpenter applied the same premise to "Assault on Precinct 13," updating Hawks' themes of professionalism and morality to turn 1970s Los Angeles into the setting for a racially and sexually charged urban Western that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Hawks' original. During its last day of service, police station Precinct 9, Division 13 (the title is a misnomer made by the distributor that rejected the original, pulpier name "The Anderson Alamo") comes under attack by the multiracial Street Thunder gang. Functioning on a skeleton crew, it's left up to a black lieutenant (Austin Stokes), a secretary (Laurie Zimmer) and a white prisoner (Darwin Joston) to defend the precinct in sequences of blistering intensity and sociopolitical subtext that belie the $100,000 budget.


92. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, John; 1962)

After years of defining the Western with films like "Stagecoach," "My Darling Clementine" and "The Searchers," director John Ford finally deconstructed the genre with "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." The arrival of U.S. Sen. Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) for a pauper's funeral prompts a newspaper's interest in the life of the recently deceased Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), forcing Ransom to finally tell the truth about what happened the day the nefarious Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) was shot. In doing so, Ransom exposes not only the lie that formed the foundation of his political career, but the lie of frontier myths and masculine codes often propagated by Westerns. A newspaper editor is so shocked he tells his reporter the famous words, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."


93. Badlands (Malick, Terrence; 1973)

Terrence Malick based his impressive directorial debut "Badlands" on the real-life killing spree of the James Dean-obsessed Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, who killed 11 people in Nebraska and Colorado in 1958. Malick uses contrapuntal narration to show how Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is able to romance innocent Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) despite his murderous ways: Holly idealizes Kit's killings, while the images of Malick and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto show the grim, bloody reality. The first of Malick's four masterpieces, "Badlands" set the template for all his films to follow with a mise-en-scène that's at once photorealistic and rapturous.


94. The Dead (Huston, John; 1987)

For his final directorial effort, 80-year-old John Huston adapted James Joyce's short story "The Dead" and took a line spoken in that work to heart: "Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age." Ravaged by emphysema and directing from a wheelchair, Huston nonetheless made a work of exquisite zest. The film is surprisingly faithful to Joyce's seemingly unfilmable short story as it documents a dinner party thrown by the Morkan sisters (Helena Carroll and Cathleen Delany) and their niece (Ingrid Craigie) for the Feast of the Epiphany in 1904 Dublin. The feast is a lively celebration, but it brings back a flood of sad memories for Gretta Conroy (Angelica Huston), leading to a confession to her husband Gabriel (Donal McCann) that causes his identity to fade "out into a grey impalpable world." The interactions between the characters are so natural, so full of life, to paraphrase Joyce, it causes the soul to swoon slowly.


95. Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, Alexander; 1957)

Director Alexander Mackendrick and screenwriter Clifford Odets turn acrimony into acerbic artistry in "Sweet Smell of Success." Tony Curtis' many teenage fans were disappointed by their idol abandoning his usual pretty-boy roles to play desperate press agent Sidney Falco, resulting in the film's box office failure. But Curtis was never better than he is here. In order to get his clients mentioned in the powerful column written by J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), Falco is forced to destroy the career and reputation of a musician (Martin Millner) whose only real crime is that he's dating Hunsecker's sister (Susan Harrison). Mackendrick's realistic yet nightmarishly noirish vision of New York City influenced Martin Scorsese, while Odets' caustic, idiomatic dialogue – "I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic" – is some of the best ever spoken in American movies.


96. King Kong (Cooper, Merian C./Ernest B. Schoedsack; 1933)

"King Kong" is widely seen as a modern re-enactment of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale, with the giant ape Kong falling in love with blond ingénue Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). But, as film theorist Harvey Roy Greenberg has pointed out, there are intriguing psychosexual rumblings beneath the surface that make the film a symbolic Freudian struggle for a boy to pass through adolescent sexual desires that alternate between idealized and violent reactions toward women to become a sexually mature man, with Kong serving as the unleashed id of woman-hater-turned-romantic Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot). Or it could just be a piece of pure entertainment that still delights because of Willis O'Brien's superb visual effects – Kong's fight with dinosaurs and his scaling of the Empire State Building are iconic for good reason. Filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) sails with actress Ann and First Mate Jack to Skull Island to make a movie of the mythical Kong, captures the beast and brings him to New York to display him as an oddity. Despite Denham's protestations "It was Beauty killed the Beast," it's Denham's avarice that leads to Kong's downfall.


97. Sullivan's Travels (Sturges, Preston; 1941)

Tired of making comedies like "Ants in Your Plants of 1939," Hollywood director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) vows to make a movie adaptation of the stark Depression-era novel "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that's a "commentary on modern conditions" with "stark realism" and "a little sex in it" – a "true canvas of the suffering of humanity." To research the film, Sullivan poses as a hobo with a struggling actress (Veronica Lake) and ends up being incarcerated in a work camp. There Sullivan learns the uplift comedies can give to the very people he wanted to make a film about. Preston Sturges' witty "Sullivan's Travels" mocks social realism (even John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair get jabs), not just to prove the worth of his own comedies, but to point out, as Sullivan says, "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh."


98. Johnny Guitar (Ray, Nicholas; 1954)

"Johnny Guitar" is one of the most radical Westerns ever made. Eschewing realism and consciously subverting every convention of the genre, Nicholas Ray's bold film – both in terms of its plot and exaggerated color scheme – is superficially about gun-toting saloon owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) and her former lover Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) joining forces to fight a mob (led by Mercedes McCambridge's Emma) bent on throwing her out of town or lynching her. The feminist film pits Vienna and Emma against each other, while the unarmed Johnny is often seen swooning for Vienna. "Johnny Guitar" is an even better use of the Western as an allegory for McCarthyism than "High Noon": the witch hunts are thrillingly staged, real McCarthyite Ward Bond plays a villain and the script was penned by blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow.


99. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Sturges, Preston; 1944)

It's almost impossible to believe "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" actually got past the Hays Code censors of 1944. Even at the time of its release, journalist James Agee, baffled by the movie being approved, wrote, "The Production Code Office has been raped in its sleep." Preston Sturges' hilarious film is about a girl, Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), who goes to a party with soldiers on their way to war and ends up married and pregnant, but with only a vague recollection of her husband's name – she thinks it may be Ignatz Ratzkywatzky. Her harried, longtime crush Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) volunteers to claim to be the father and save her virtue. There's one bravura four-minute sequence in which Norval, increasingly flabbergasted, learns the full extent of what he has gotten himself into. Laugh-for-laugh, it ranks with "Duck Soup" as the funniest American movie of all time.


100. The Leopard Man (Tourneur, Jacques; 1943)

"The Leopard Man" is the real father of the slasher film, even if its violence largely takes place off screen and is even more subliminal than that in the genre's wrongly credited progenitor "Psycho." Terror grips a New Mexico border town when a supposedly tame leopard escapes and is blamed for the death of three women – except the killings continue after the beast is found. Director Jacques Tourneur conducts his death scenes so the emphasis is on the suspense leading up to the death, not the carnage itself. The New Mexico setting and female victims allow the "The Leopard Man" to comment on themes of sexual repression, racial oppression and the oppressiveness of tradition. The film's greatest sequence involves a girl who's chased through town and reaches the safety of her home, only to be mauled, her blood flowing beneath her locked front door.

Posted Monday, June 16, 2008

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/greatest.american.films