I’ve made a top 100 film list. I’ve tried to avoid objectivity or the temptation to pick ‘greatest’ films – instead I’ve tried to capture a snapshot of my tastes right now. I’ve tried not to pay attention to what would be my usual choices or agonise too much over my selection. I use Flickchart, so I had a starting point of a list of pretty much all the films I’ve seen, theoretically in ranked order – but to make this list I’ve cherry-picked only the films that are currently on my mind or that, when I see their titles, I want to rewatch immediately. It’s a skewed list, featuring lots of films I’ve seen for the first time in the last year or so – if I made a similar list next year, I’d guess that more than a quarter of the titles would be different. It’ll be interesting to see whether e.g. A Cottage on Dartmoor or The Swimmer stay with me.
I’ve listed the films in chronological order, which reveals a surprise: 11 of the films in this list were released this century. It’s notable that most of these recent titles are very downbeat and slow-paced – I hadn’t quite realised this is so clearly a factor in my tastes in modern cinema.
The director who appears most is Hitchcock, predictably. There are three by: Ingmar Bergman, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Buñuel, F.W. Murnau and Nicholas Ray. There are two each by: Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, David Lynch, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Tourneur, Jerzy Skolimowski, Robert Bresson, Roman Polanski, Thomas Vinterberg, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Andrei Tarkovsky.
Here’s the full list:
- Les Vampires (1915, Louis Feuillade)
- Nosferatu (1922, F.W. Murnau)
- Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
- The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)
- The General (1926, Buster Keaton)
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F.W. Murnau)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
- A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929, Anthony Asquith)
- Pandora’s Box (1929, Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
- The Blue Angel (1930, Josef von Sternberg)
- M (1931, Fritz Lang)
- Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
- Island of Lost Souls (1932, Erle C. Kenton)
- Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)
- Cleopatra (1934, Cecil B. DeMille)
- L’atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
- The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
- Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)
- Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston )
- In a Lonely Place (1950, Nicholas Ray)
- The Wages of Fear (1953, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
- Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
- Diabolique (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray)
- Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)
- A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)
- The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
- Night of the Demon (1957, Jacques Tourneur)
- The Abominable Snowman (1957, Val Guest)
- Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
- Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
- Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
- The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
- The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton)
- Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)
- Baron Prasil (1962, Karel Zeman)
- Knife in the Water (1962, Roman Polanski)
- Jason and the Argonauts (1963, Don Chaffey)
- Paranoiac (1963, Freddie Francis)
- The Silence (1963, Ingmar Bergman)
- Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
- Shock Corridor (1963, Samuel Fuller)
- Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, Byron Haskin)
- Diary of a Chambermaid (1964, Luis Buñuel)
- The Last Man on Earth (1964, Ubaldo Ragona)
- The Naked Prey (1965, Cornel Wilde)
- Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
- Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer)
- Cul-de-sac (1966, Roman Polanski)
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)
- The Nanny (1966, Seth Holt)
- Belle de Jour (1967, Luis Buñuel)
- The Swimmer (1968, Frank Perry)
- Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero)
- If…. (1968, Lindsay Anderson)
- The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
- Deep End (1970, Jerzy Skolimowski)
- Duel (1971, Steven Spielberg)
- Wake in Fright (1971, Ted Kotcheff)
- Frenzy (1972, Alfred Hitchcock)
- Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky)
- The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
- Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)
- Scenes from a Marriage (1973, Ingmar Bergman)
- Don’t Look Now (1973, Nicolas Roeg)
- F for Fake (1973, Orson Welles)
- The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)
- The Godfather Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
- The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, Werner Herzog)
- Robin and Marian (1976, Richard Lester)
- That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Buñuel)
- The American Friend (1977, Wim Wenders)
- The Shout (1978, Jerzy Skolimowski)
- Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
- Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders)
- The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg)
- Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)
- Withnail & I (1987, Bruce Robinson)
- The Vanishing (1988, George Sluizer)
- Barton Fink (1991, Joel & Ethan Coen)
- Cronos (1993, Guillermo del Toro)
- Irma Vep (1996, Olivier Assayas)
- Funny Games (1997, Michael Haneke)
- Festen (1998, Thomas Vinterberg)
- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, Anthony Minghella)
- In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-Wai)
- Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch)
- There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Certified Copy (2010, Abbas Kiarostami)
- Point Blank (2010, Fred Cavayé)
- Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols)
- Shame (2011, Steve McQueen)
- The Hunt (2012, Thomas Vinterberg)
- Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)
- Night Moves (2013, Kelly Reichardt)
- Force Majeure (2014, Ruben Östlund)