Film History

I would like to share with my readership of two one of my most beloved passions - film history. I attended Full Sail college in Orlando, FL from 1997-1998 and graduated with an Associates degree in Film & Video Production. My best class was, you guessed it, Film History. I enjoyed it so much and had such a good relationship with my instructor that after I graduated he asked me to teach his class for a week while he was on vacation! It was truly one of the best experiences I've ever had. 

While attending Full Sail AFI released their top 100 films of all times. Being in Film School I thought I should know more about the history of the major I was studying. I have to admit that I had not seen about half of the movies on that first list (yes, they updated the list ten years later in 2007 adding some new films and subtracting old ones). I set out to view all of the remaining films I had not seen as well as all of the Best Picture winners. Now 11 years later having seen all of the films on both AFI top 100 films of all time lists and viewed all of the Best Picture winners I have finally settled on my top 100 films of the 20th century! This was a long and agonizing process as I wrestled with thoughts such as "Who cares what I think are the greatest films of the 20th century?" and "Does this film really belong on such a list?". I finally concluded that I just needed to come to grips with the fact that I cannot be completely unbiased and pick solely on objective merits for a film's inclusion on such a list as this. I tried not to make this list too esoteric and "artsy-fartsy", but also not so popular that summer blockbuster entries made it because "it had that one great scene."

But I digress. Here it is, my final list (for now, until I get freaked out and think "What the hell is that film doing on the list? What was I thinking?!").

1916 Intolerance

1919 Broken Blossoms

1921 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

1924 He Who Gets Slapped

1925 The Gold Rush

1927 Sunrise

1927 The General

1931 City Lights

1931 Dracula

1931 Frankenstein

1933 Duck Soup

1934 It Happened One Night

1935 A Night at the Opera

1935 Top Hat

1936 Modern Times

1936 My Man Godfry

1938 Bringing Up Baby

1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1939 Ninotchka

1939 The Wizard of Oz

1940 Foreign Correspondent

1940 Gaslight

1940 The Grapes of Wrath

1940 The Great Dictator

1940 His Girl Friday

1940 The Philadelphia Story

1940 Rebecca

1941 Citizen Kane

1941 The Lady Eve

1941 The Maltese Falcon

1942 The Man Who Came to Dinner

1942 Sullivan's Travels

1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy

1943 Casablanca

1944 Arsenic & Old Lace

1944 Double Indemnity

1944 Laura

1946 The Best Years of Our Lives

1946 The Big Sleep

1946 It's a Wonderful Life

1946 My Darling Clementine

1946 Notorious

1947 Monsieur Verdoux

1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

1949 All the King's Men

1949 The Third Man

1949 White Heat

1950 All About Eve

1950 Sunset Boulevard

1951 An American in Paris

1952 The Bad and the Beautiful

1952 Singin' in the Rain

1953 Roman Holiday

1954 Dial 'M' for Murder

1954 On the Waterfront

1954 Rear Window

1955 Marty

1956 The Searchers

1957 12 Angry Men

1957 Bridge on the River Kwai

1957 Paths of Glory

1957 Sweet Smell of Success

1957 Witness for the Prosecution

1958 Touch of Evil

1958 Vertigo

1959 Ben-Hur

1959 North by Northwest

1959 Some Like it Hot

1960 The Apartment

1960 Pyscho

1961 One, Two, Three

1962 Lawrence of Arabia

1962 The Manchurian Candidate

1962 To Kill a Mockingbird

1963 The Haunting

1964 Dr. Strangelove

1964 My Fair Lady

1965 Doctor Zhivago

1965 Sound of Music

1965 A Thousand Clowns

1966 A Man for All Seasons

1968 2001: A Space Odyssey

1968 The Producers

1972 The Godfather

1974 The Godfather part II

1975 Jaws

1976 Rocky

1977 Star Wars

1981 Chariots of Fire

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982 Bladerunner

1985 Back to the Future

1986 Brazil

1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1992 Unforgiven

1993 Schindler's List

1995 Braveheart

1999 The Matrix

1999 The Sixth Sense