All-Time 100 Best Movies

by Time Magazine

Introduction



Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Best Movies were selected by respected movie critics, Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel in mid-2005. Their unranked list comprised the 100 most influential movies of the past 82 years (since 1923, Time's first year of publication).

Facts and Commentary About the List:

  • The films spanned comedy, horror, drama, romance, action and more.
  • Almost half of the films were made outside the United States.
  • Best Films of the Decade: Metropolis (1927), Dodsworth (1936), Citizen Kane (1941), Ikiru (1952), Persona (1966), Chinatown (1974), The Decalogue (1989), Pulp Fiction (1994), Talk to Her (2002)
  • Britain was represented by the Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, Sir David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia, and Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
  • Of the 33 chosen films before 1950, all but six were from Hollywood during its "Golden Age." Of those 27 American films, nearly half (13), were directed by men born abroad: three in England (Chaplin, Hitchcock and James Whale), three in Germany (F.W. Murnau, Wyler and Lubitsch), three in Austria (Sternberg, Wilder and Edgar G. Ulmer - all native Viennese), one each in Hungary (Michael Curtiz), France (Jacques Tourneur) and one in Sicily (Capra).
  • Of the 100 films, all were directed by men - except for one, Germany's Leni Riefenstahl. And there were 11 non-Caucasian directors - all Asian: Japanese, Chinese or Indian.
  • Also, the list contained more entries—two—by each of five different directors (Lubitsch, Kubrick, Bergman, Kurosawa, and Leone) with Martin Scorsese scoring three entries.
  • Robert DeNiro, who starred in Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, had five of his films on the list, more than any other actor.

Omissions: Some of the more obvious choices (of American English-language films) were missing from Time's list, however, as noted by many readers, such as:


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