90 Essential Films

The following list, like the entirety of this blog, is an experiment for the sake of posterity. The criteria are simple: 90 films, one film from each year in which a film was made that I have seen. No more than one film from each year. To further complicate/simplify things, I am only allowing one film per director.

The nature of these criteria prevent this from becoming an authoritative list of the "90 greatest films ever made," which is fine, because that is not the point. This list is neither meant to represent the best film from any particular year (for that you can peruse the rest of this blog), nor is it necessarily meant to display the best film by any of the auteur's represented. My goal for this is to distill the knowledge acquired through my career in movie-watching into an easily manageable list which will hopefully provide a kind of historical context and chronology for the progress of the motion picture art form.

In many cases I have intentionally decided to eschew the more well-known, critically successful films, not because they are inherently lesser works, but because the more I watch, the more I realize that there is an entire universe of cinema that even some of the most accomplished film viewers are still unaware exists. Each film in some way represents the year it was released in my own mind. They each manage to capture the spiritual, political, or cultural conditions of their time and, in my opinion, ultimately transcends them for all time. So while this may not necessarily represent the 90 greatest films ever made, these are 90 essential films which no true cinephile (or filmmaker) should go too long without seeing.

If anyone ever actually reads this, I'd welcome your comments, thoughts, arguments, discussions, complaints, etc.


1916: Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
1920: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
1921: The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
1922: Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
1923: Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone)
1924: Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
1925: Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
1926: Faust (F.W. Murnau)
1927: Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann)
1928: Street Angel (Frank Borzage)
1929: The Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
1930: Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
1931: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian)
1932: Shanghai Express (Joseph von Sternberg)
1933: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
1934: L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
1935: Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
1936: My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
1937: The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
1938: Holiday (George Cukor)
1939: The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1940: The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
1941: Meet John Doe (Frank Capra)
1942: The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
1943: I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
1944: Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eistenstein)
1945: Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer)
1946: A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
1947: The Red House (Delmer Daves)
1948: Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
1949: I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks)
1950: Wagon Master (John Ford)
1951: The River (Jean Renoir)
1952: Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini)
1953: I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock)
1954: Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
1955: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
1956: Attack! (Robert Aldrich)
1957: The Tin Star (Anthony Mann)
1958: Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu)
1959: Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher)
1960: Le Trou (Jacques Becker)
1961: Viridiana (Luis Bunuel)
1962: The Trial (Orson Welles)
1963: Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
1964: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov)
1965: Repulsion (Roman Polanski)
1966: Kill, Baby... Kill! (Mario Bava)
1967: Playtime (Jacques Tati)
1968: Shame (Ingmar Bergman)
1969: A Gentle Woman (Robert Bresson)
1970: Husbands (John Cassavetes)
1971: Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
1972: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
1973: Badlands (Terrence Malick)
1974: Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
1975: The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1976: Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
1977: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
1978: In a Year With 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
1979: Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
1980: Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
1981: Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
1982: Tenebre (Dario Argento)
1983: And the Ship Sails On (Federico Fellini)
1984: Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
1985: Come and See (Elem Klimov)
1986: Castle In the Sky (Hayao Miyazaki)
1987: September (Woody Allen)
1988: The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese)
1989: The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
1990: Vincent and Theo (Robert Altman)
1991: Slacker (Richard Linklater)
1992: Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara)
1993: A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood)
1994: Satantango (Bela Tarr)
1995: JLG/JLG (Jean-Luc Godard)
1996: A Summer's Tale (Eric Rohmer)
1997: A Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
1998: Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos)
1999: Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
2000: George Washington (David Gordon Green)
2001: Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2002: Japon (Carlos Reygades)
2003: The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
2004: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)
2005: Junebug (Phil Morrison)
2006: L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2007: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly)
2008: Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)

2008

1. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
2. Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols)
3. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
4. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
5. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
6. Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood)
7. Encounters At the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
8. Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero)
9. August Evening (Chris Eska)
10. My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar-Wai)

Honorable Mentions:
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant), Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen), Still Life (Jia Zhang Ke), Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh), Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson), Redbelt (David Mamet), The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen), Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris), The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan)

2007

1. No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
2. The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
3. Into Great Silence (Philip Groning)
4. Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
5. Sunshine (Danny Boyle)
6. Southland Tales (Richard Kelly)
7. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet)
8. The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
9. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)

Honorable Mentions:
Atonement (Joe Wright), Private Fears In Public Places (Alain Resnais), Offside (Jafar Panahi), I Don't Want To Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-Liang), I'm Not There (Todd Haynes), Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer), There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson), The Boss Of It All (Lars von Trier), Black Book (Paul Verhoeven), The Last Winter (Larry Fessenden)

2006

1. L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
3. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
4. Battle In Heaven (Carlos Reygades)
5. The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)
6. Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)
7. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
8. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
9. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
10. Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater)

Honorable Mentions:
A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman), Babel (Alejandro Gonazalez Inarritu), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro), Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood), Brick (Rian Johnson), Mary (Abel Ferrara), 49 Up (Michael Apted), United 93 (Paul Greengrass), The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma), Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid)

1910's

1. Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)
2. Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith)
3. Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith)
4. Blind Husbands (Erich von Stroheim)

1920

1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
2. Way Down East (D.W. Griffith)
3. The Scarecrow (s) (Buster Keaton and Edwards F. Kline)
4. The Parson's Widow (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
5. Neighbors (s) (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Kline)
6. The Golem (Carl Boese and Paul Wegener)

1921

1. Leaves From Satan's Book (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith)
3. Destiny (Fritz Lang)
4. The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
5. The Saphead (Herbert Blanche' and Winchell Smith)

1922

1. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
2. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors (F.W. Murnau)
3. Phantom (F.W. Murnau)
4. The Paleface (s) (Buster Keaton)
5. Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen)
6. Robin Hood (Allan Dwan)

1923

1. Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone and Buster Keaton)
2. Three Ages (Buster Keaton)
3. Safety Last (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
4. A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin)

1924

1. Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
2. The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau)
3. Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
4. The Navigator (Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton)
5. America (D.W. Griffith)
6. Michael (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
7. The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh)

1925

1. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
2. The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
3. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
4. Chess Fever (s) (Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky)
5. Go West (Buster Keaton)
6. The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian)

1926

1. Faust (F.W. Murnau)
2. Battling Butler (Buster Keaton)
3. Anemic Cinema (s) (Marcel Duchamp)
4. Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau)

1927

1. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau)
2. 7th Heaven (Frank Borzage)
3. The General (Buster Keaton)
4. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann)
5. The End of St. Petersberg (Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller)
6. Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
7. College (James W. Horne)
8. The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)

1928

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. The Circus (Charles Chaplin)
3. Street Angel (Frank Borzage)
4. Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
5. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
6. October (Sergei Eisenstein)
7. Spies (Fritz Lang)
8. Speedy (Ted Wilde)

1929

1. The Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
2. Un Chien Andalou (s) (Luis Bunuel)
3. Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim)
4. The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)
5. Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock)
6. The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley)

1930

1. L'Age D'Or (Luis Bunuel)
2. Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
3. City Girl (F.W. Murnau)
4. The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg)
5. The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh)
6. The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau)
7. Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch)
8. Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman)
9. Murder (Alfred Hitchcock)
10. All Quiet On the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)

1931

1. City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
2. Scarface (Howard Hawks)
3. M (Fritz Lang)
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian)
5. Frankenstein (James Whale)
6. The 3 Penny Opera (G.W. Pabst)
7. The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
8. The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman)
9. Dracula (Tod Browning)
10. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau)

Honorable Mentions:
Indiscreet (Leo McCarey), Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy), Arrowsmith (John Ford), Night Nurse (William A. Wellman), Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock), The Champ (King Vidor), The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock)