50 BEST “FILMS” OF ALL TIME
with the first 25 titles in order of preference, beginning with the greatest movie ever made, and the second 25 in chronological order by year, but alphabetical order for any year where there is more than one title, here is my list—and one that tolerates no such trash (as does the latest Sight & Sound poll) as Singin’ in the Rain, 2001 and The Godfather:
L’eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
A Sixth of the World (Dziga Vertov, 1926)
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1954)
Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
Early Summer (Yasujiro Ozu, 1951)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
D’Est (Chantal Äkerman, 1993)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
¡Qué viva México! (Sergei Eisenstein, 1932; 1979)
Night and Fog in Japan(Nagisa Oshima, 1960)
In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001)
The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1928)
Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1931)
Chimes at Midnight(Orson Welles, 1965)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
Viridiana (Luis Bu ñuel, 1961)
Francesco, giullare di Dio (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
The Constant Factor (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1980)
The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, 1963)
The General (Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
The End of St. Petersburg(Vsevolod I. Pudovkin, 1927)
Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1929)
L’age d’Or (Luis Buñuel, 1930)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1930)
The Crime of M. Lange (Jean Renoir, 1935)
The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
The Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens, 1937)
Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
Madame de . . . (Max Ophüls, 1952)
Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
The Roundup (Miklós Jancsó, 1965)
Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
The Wall (Jürgen Böttcher, 1990)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
Five Long Takes Live Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003)
Images of a Lost City (Jon Jost, 2011)
ROUNDING OUT MY NEW LIST OF THE 100 BEST “FILMS” OF ALL TIME
The list below is chronological by year, except where there is more than one film for a given year, in which case those titles are listed alphabetically:
Les vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
Destiny (Fritz Lang, 1921)
Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
Mother (Vsevolod I. Pudovkin, 1926)
Die Dreigroschenoper (G. W. Pabst, 1931)
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)
Une partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936)
The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940)
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944)
San Pietro (John Huston, 1945)
Germany, Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1947)
City Streetcleaners (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1948)
Guernica (Alain Resnais, Robert Hessens, 1950)
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
The Fiancés (Ermanno Olmi, 1962)
Les carabinièrs (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Diamonds of the Night (Jan Němec, 1964)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
The RedDesert(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1966)
The Hour of the Furnaces (Fernando Ezequiel Solanas, Octavio Getino et al., 1968)
Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog, 1969)
The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969)
The Age of Cosimo de Medici, Parts I, II & III (Roberto Rossellini, 1973)
Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray, 1973)
The Pharmacy (Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan, 1975)
Harvest 3,000 Years (Haile Gerima, 1975)
The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, Iran)
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Christ Stopped at Eboli (3½-hour version only) (Francesco Rosi, 1979)
Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986)
Damnation (Béla Tarr, 1987)
Long Live the Lady (Ermanno Olmi, 1987)
Europa (Lars von Trier, 1991)
Don Quijote (Orson Welles, 1992)
Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997)
The Saltmen of Tibet (Ulrike Koch, 1997)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)
La Commune (Paris 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000)
In Vanda’s Room (Pedro Costa, 2000)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
Shadow Kill (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 2002)
Supplement (Krzysztof Zanussi, 2002)
Eccentricities of a Blonde (Manoel de Oliveira, 2009)
The Wind Journeys (Ciro Guerra, 2009)
Dennis Grunes 