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| "The results are in. The greatest movie ever made is... Spice World, Don Corleone." |
Updated: May 1, 2024
How do we figure out which film is the greatest of all time?
It's a question we've wanted to answer ever since we started making movies, and it's one we can never solve. Until now.*
In 1998, I stumbled upon the American Film Institute's list of the greatest American films of all time. It sparked a life-long passion for cinema and an obsession with similar film lists. I wanted to see all the great movies, and these lists told me which ones to start with. As time went on, the lists blurred together into one huge list on my computer, which then made me wonder what would happen if I compiled them properly in a spreadsheet. Would it tell me what the greatest film of all time was?
Below is the result of that ridiculous thought. I have collected 82 lists, each containing between 30 and 101 films. Some were alphabetised, some were ranked, some were arranged chronologically, so I used a rudimentary weighting system to even them out - basically an appearance on an unranked list got you a five, while an appearance on a ranked list started at 10 points for the top 10, nine for being in the next 10, and so on. I sought out lists of under-represented films - those from certain continents, or of certain genres, or certain eras, or directed by women - in a further attempt to even things out.
I realise what a flawed endeavour this is, and that my methodology is also flawed, but here are the results nonetheless.
- The Godfather
- Citizen Kane
- Casablanca
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Vertigo
- Star Wars
- Singin' in the Rain
- The Godfather Part II
- Psycho
- The Wizard of Oz
- Lawrence of Arabia
- Pulp Fiction
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
- It's a Wonderful Life
- Some Like It Hot
- Schindler's List
- Gone With the Wind
- Taxi Driver
- Annie Hall
- Chinatown
- Raging Bull
- Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
- Apocalypse Now
- Jaws
- The Searchers
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Blade Runner
- North by Northwest
- Goodfellas
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Seven Samurai
- The Silence of the Lambs
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- City Lights
- On the Waterfront
- Rear Window
- The Graduate
- King Kong
- Double Indemnity
- Alien
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Sunset Boulevard
- The Exorcist
- Spirited Away
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Tokyo Story
- All About Eve
- Titanic
- Breathless
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Third Man
- Saving Private Ryan
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- La Regle du Jeu
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Matrix
- The Sound of Music
- The General
- Rashomon
- Sunrise
- 8 1/2
- Toy Story
- Fargo
- Aliens
- The 400 Blows
- The Maltese Falcon
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- High Noon
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Do the Right Thing
- The Deer Hunter
- In The Mood For Love
- The Wild Bunch
- Persona
- Battleship Potemkin
- Trainspotting
- The Philadelphia Story
- The Piano
- The Night of the Hunter
- Nashville
- Blue Velvet
- The African Queen
- Pather Panchali
- The Seventh Seal
- Terminator 2
- Seven
- La Dolce Vita
- This Is Spinal Tap
- The Shining
- Mulholland Drive
- Modern Times
- Mr Smith Goes to Washington
- Bicycle Thieves
- Metropolis
- M
- Touch of Evil
- It Happened One Night
- The Princess Bride
- Cabaret
- Back To The Future
- The Best Years of Our Lives
- His Girl Friday
- L.A. Confidential
- Forrest Gump
- Sullivan's Travels
- Sherlock Jr
- Duck Soup
- West Side Story
- The Gold Rush
- Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
- Die Hard
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- There Will Be Blood
- Bringing Up Baby
- Moulin Rouge!
- Jurassic Park
- The Passion of Joan of Arc
- Notorious
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Midnight Cowboy
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- The Lion King
- The Apartment
- Pinocchio
- 12 Angry Men
- The Red Shoes
- Life Of Brian
- Frankenstein
- Don't Look Now
- Ben-Hur
- Beau Travail
- When Harry Met Sally...
- The Usual Suspects
- The Lady Eve
- Manhattan
- Withnail & I
- Pan's Labyrinth
- Nosferatu
- The Terminator
- Andrei Rublev
- Aguirre, The Wrath Of God
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Airplane!
- The Dark Knight
- Stagecoach
- Man With A Movie Camera
- Unforgiven
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
In the top 100, In The Mood For Love appeared on the least number of lists (11).
The highest ranking non-English language film is The Seven Samurai (#31), the highest silent film is City Lights (#34), and the most recent films in the top 70 are 2002's Spirited Away (#44) and 2001's The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (#67). The oldest films in the top 60 are 1926's The General (#58) and 1927's Sunrise (#60).
Of the films in the top 100, The Godfather had the highest average score per list (8.5), while Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption, La Regle du Jeu and In The Mood For Love were the only other films to also average higher than 8.
For films that appeared on a minimum of five lists, the best average is The Godfather and Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (8.5), Withnail & I, There Will Be Blood (8.6), and Citizen Kane (8.4), and In The Mood For Love and City Of God (8.2).
The only films in the top 100 directed by women are The Wachowski's The Matrix (#56) and Jane Campion's The Piano (#79). The next highest is Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (#111), Claire Denis' Beau Travail (#132), and Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation (#157).
* Just kidding. We'll never know the answer.
