List of movies that have been considered the greatest ever
This is a partial list of films that have been regarded as the greatest ever.There is no uniform opinion as to which film is the greatest ever, but a number of films have been presented as such.
Generally speaking, these tend to be films that can be said to have advanced both the art form and the technique of cinema, and are usually agreed upon by a consensus of critics and scholars to have been inordinately successful on both these grounds.
Different groups have very different criteria for what is greatness, however. While critics and film aficionados would agree to the above definition, others would argue that popular appeal is a more important measure of greatness. Those who work in the movie industry, however, would probably consider the most profitable film to be the greatest.
There is very often incompatibility between these definitions. Commercial popularity is rarely a criterion for artistic excellence; often the films most popular with the public are entertainments that work within established artistic formulas, rather than striking out into new artistic territory. And yet it can fairly be said that the films considered the best of all time are, for the most part, quite popular with general audiences as well.
- Battleship Potemkin: for many years generally considered the greatest film ever; voted as such by a panel of experts at the 1958 World's Fair.
- Ben-Hur: tied with Titanic for the most Academy Awards ever.
- The Bicycle Thief: voted top film in a Sight & Sound magazine poll in 1952.
- Casablanca: widely cited as the greatest film of all time and voted as such by readers of the Los Angeles Daily News in 1997.
- Citizen Kane: Roger Ebert has stated that he considers it the best film ever; selected as number one for the last forty years in Sight & Sound’s poll of film critics. Extremely influential in pioneering numerous artistic innovations.
- The Godfather: has long stood atop IMDb's list of the top 250 films.
- The Godfather Part II: often considered better than the original; voted best film ever by TV Guide readers in 1998.
- Gone With the Wind: nine Academy Awards, National Film Registry, when adjusted for inflation is still the highest grossing film ever.
- Titanic: highest grossing film ever and winner of eleven Academy Awards.
Films that are considered among the greatest in their particular genre:
- Action and Adventure
- The Adventures of Robin Hood: Errol Flynn's finest and most famous role, widely considered the greatest of all swashbucklers.
- Raiders of the Lost Ark: Steven Spielberg's tribute to the adventure serials of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
- Animation (traditional)
- Fantasia: Walt Disney opus from 1940 married animated scenes with classical music performances.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: first Technicolor feature from Disney.
- The Lion King: Most successful animated feature world-wide.
- Anime
- Spirited Away: Hayao Miyazaki film, the highest grossing movie in Japanese history, and the only movie to earn $250M before its US release. Voted best animated movie by IMDb users.
- Comedy
- A Night at the Opera: the Marx Brothers' biggest hit, and often considered the best of their comedies (though the box-office flop Duck Soup often vies for the same honor)
- Some Like It Hot: Billy Wilder's biggest hit, and considered to be Marilyn Monroe's best role as one of the funniest movies of all time.
- Documentary
- '\'Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens''): Leni Riefenstahl's notorious documentary about Adolf Hitler and the Nuremberg rally is still, by objective critics, regarded as cinema's greatest achievement in propaganda.
- Film noir
- The Big Sleep: Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, with his bride Lauren Bacall.
- The Maltese Falcon: Bogart again, this time as Sam Spade.
- Horror
- Psycho: Alfred Hitchcock classic is considered the most important horror film of all time. Voted the best horror film by IMDb users.
- Musical
- Romantic comedy
- Annie Hall: Oscar-winner for Best Picture cemented reputation of director Woody Allen. Voted best comedy ever by the AFI.
- Science fiction
- 2001: A Space Odyssey: Influential metaphysical science fiction epic by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.
- Blade Runner: widely acclaimed science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott based on a Philip K. Dick story, which set the tone for the science fiction noir/cyberpunk genre
- Forbidden Planet: first real instance of science fiction being taken seriously as a genre in Hollywood, with a large budget for its time; script was loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest
- Star Wars: phenomenally popular 1977 science fiction adventure is credited with creating the concept of the event movie and voted top film by Channel 4 viewers in the UK; the 1997 "special edition", it should be noted, is widely considered inferior.
- Western
- Stagecoach: established prominence of director John Ford.
- The Searchers: Nearly twenty years after Stagecoach, John Ford directed what is often considered the greatest Western of all, and one of the greatest films ever.
Films that are considered greatest from a particular country:
- Germany:
- Italy:
- Japan:
- The Seven Samurai: Akira Kurosawa action epic earned him worldwide fame; was remade in the United States as The Magnificent Seven.
- The Seven Samurai: Akira Kurosawa action epic earned him worldwide fame; was remade in the United States as The Magnificent Seven.
- Sweden:
- United Kingdom:
- The Third Man: Voted best British film ever by members of the British Film Institute in 1999.
- The Third Man: Voted best British film ever by members of the British Film Institute in 1999.
- United States:
- Citizen Kane: voted the best American film ever by the American Film Institute
Movies that are widely considered important, if not the greatest ever
- The 400 Blows: seminal coming of age comedy launched the career of Francois Truffaut.
- 8 1/2: autobiographical film by Federico Fellini is widely considered the greatest film about filmmaking.
- The Birth of a Nation: considered a watershed film in developing cinema narrative. In more recent times, it has been critcized for expressing racism.
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: scathing black comedy about US/Soviet Cold War tensions by Stanley Kubrick.
- A Fistful of Dollars: first film in Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" or "Dollars" trilogy introduced international audiences to both the spaghetti western genre and Clint Eastwood; a remake of Yojimbo.
- The General: known as one of the best silent films, a Buster Keaton classic.
- The Gold Rush: Charlie Chaplin in his role as "The Little Tramp".
- Greed: Socially-conscious silent film by Erich von Stroheim, cut down from original eight-hour running time, still galvanizes audiences; noted for climactic scene shot in Death Valley.
- Intolerance: three-hour D.W. Griffith silent epic was the biggest production of its time.
- Lawrence of Arabia: popular and influential biopic of the desert adventurer by David Lean.
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy: directed by New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson from the classic series of novels. One of the most popular and critically acclaimed special effects fantasy blockbusters ever. Revolutionary in how it was shot (three films simultaneously), and in its use of state-of-the-art digital effects to enhance and serve the story. Some criticism from J. R. R. Tolkien purists over deviations from the novels. The three films are:
- Mean Streets: early Martin Scorsese film paved the way for extreme realism in American films in the 1970s, launched career of Robert de Niro.
- Metropolis: German expressionist science fiction epic by Fritz Lang pioneered many optical special effects.
- Modern Times: last silent film by Charlie Chaplin.
- Pulp Fiction: elaborately structured crime saga redefined American independent cinema in the 1990s, made Quentin Tarantino America's most emulated and prominent director.
- Rebecca: gothic romance by Alfred Hitchcock from the Daphne du Maurier novel.
- The Red Shoes: by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with noteworthy Technicolor cinematography.
- The Shawshank Redemption: box office failure that became a popular rental, highly ranked on IMDb's list of the top 250 films; generally held in higher regard by the public than critics.
- Vertigo: labyrinthine mystery by Alfred Hitchcock, cited by some as more important than Psycho.
- Yojimbo: seminal samurai action film, widely copied and remade.