"I didn’t know I was this geeky until I discovered the online world through my office’s 2400 baud modem back in ’93." 102 must-see movies, 50 to go
Jim Emerson (for RogerEbert.com) runs down a list of 102 movies ‘everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies’. Being a movie buff s high on my list of never achieved/will never achieve ambitions. The list, with those I’ve seen bolded, follows after the break.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Apocalypse Now" (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"The Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles (Have this on DVD, but not seen it yet.)
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day’s Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It’s a Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It’s a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"The Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler’s List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin’ in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming
That’s 51 out of 102, if I counted right. There’s a couple in there that I’ve only seen part of, and some of them so long ago that I wouldn’t remember the first thing about them.
My favourites from this list
The Third Man, Taxi Driver, Singing in the Rain, Scarface, On the Waterfront, the Holy Grail, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather II, The Crying Game, Blue Velvet, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now.
Films I’d never heard of before
The 400 Blows, The Big Red One, Aguirre the Wrath of God, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Duck Soup, The General, Intolerance, It’s a Gift, The Lady Eve,
Out of the past, Persona, The Rules of the Game, Tokyo Story.
Comments (4)
Most of the ones you’ve never heard of are standard viewing in any (serious) American university film course, or at least was back in my university days (not Duck Soup, but the others). I wonder if the same films are as admired in Europe? You should see The 400 Blows; Rules of the Game; Persona; Disreet Charm of the Bougeousie. I’m not a big fan of the Preston Sturges films but I remember my professor loving them. I’m more in the Godard/Truffaut fan base.
You’ve never seen Road Warrior? a classic. Not typical university course fair but I can see why it is on their list as a leader in its genre (like “Halloween”).
This list of unseen movies should give you something to do on your next “at home” vacation.
Here’s another list. The films I am ashamed of not having seen:
Bambi, The Battleship Potemkin, Blowup, Breathless, Un Chien Andalou, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, M, Metropolis, The Night of the Hunter, Nosferatu, The Seven Samurai, A Star Is Born
M and Potemkin are available for download at the Internet Archive and Metropolis is available as a Public Domaintorrent.
You need to see all of those. Really, you must. Even Bambi.
I’m a huge Godard fan. Have you seen any of his films? Breathless is not my favorite, but it’s the one on all the lists….
Un Chien Andalou is very disturbing, but also a must see. Blowup, great Antonioni film. Oh I could go on and on. I wish we lived in the same town!
-S-