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List of films voted the best

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Note: This article does not include films that had the highest box office receipts. For this information see: List of highest-grossing films and List of highest-grossing films throughout history.

While there is no agreement upon the greatest film of all time, many publications and organizations have tried to determine the films considered the greatest ever. The films mentioned in this article have all been mentioned in a notable survey — be it a critics' poll or popular poll. Many of these sources focus on American films or were polls of English-speaking filmgoers, but those considered the greatest within their respective countries are also included here.

None of these citations should be viewed as scientific measures of the film-watching world. All the surveys are flawed in one way or another. They are often influenced by vote-stacking or they survey a population with skewed demographics. Internet-based surveys have a self-selecting audience of unknown participants. The methodology of some surveys may be questionable. Sometimes (like in the case of the American Film Institute) voters were asked to select films from a limited list of entries.

In polls of critics and filmmakers

The Brussels World’s Fair, organized in 1958, offered the occasion for the organization by thousands of critics and filmmakers from all over the world, of the first universal film poll in history.[1]. These were the films chosen as most artistically fulfilled:

Rank Film Director Year
1 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship Potemkin) Sergei Eisenstein 1925
2 The Gold Rush Charles Chaplin 1925
3 Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) Vittorio De Sica 1948
4 La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928
5 La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion) Jean Renoir 1937
6 Greed Erich von Stroheim 1924
7 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages D. W. Griffith 1916
8 Мать (Mother) Vsevolod Pudovkin 1926
9 Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941
10 Земля (Earth) Alexander Dovzhenko 1930


Rank Film Director Year
1 Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941
2 Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock 1958
3 La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) Jean Renoir 1939
4 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick 1968
5 Federico Fellini 1963
6 The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola 1972
7 The Searchers John Ford 1956
8 七人の侍 (Seven Samurai) Akira Kurosawa 1954
9 東京物語 (Tokyo Story) Yasujiro Ozu 1953
10 Sunrise F. W. Murnau 1927

In audience polls

Rank Film Year Rating Votes
1 The Godfather 1972 9.1 276,344
2 The Shawshank Redemption 1994 9.1 326,734
3 The Godfather: Part II 1974 9.0 158,346
4 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966 8.9 91,425
5 Pulp Fiction 1994 8.9 280,413
6 Schindler's List 1993 8.8 187,287
7 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975 8.8 140,787
8 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back 1980 8.8 197,253
9 Casablanca 1942 8.8 122,174
10 Seven Samurai 1954 8.8 68,555

In particular genres

Action

Animation

  • Akira (1988) was chosen as the top anime ever by Anime Insider in fall 2001.
  • Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок) (1979): Yuriy Norshteyn's short film was voted by a large international jury to be the greatest animated film of all time at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad of Animation and the 2002 Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films.[13][14]
  • Toy Story (1995) was voted #1 on the Top 100 Animated Features of All Time by the Online Film Critics Society (list published March 2003).[15]

Comedy

Concert

  • The Last Waltz: Martin Scorsese's chronicling of The Band's farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day in 1976. Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune calls it "The greatest rock concert movie ever made -- and maybe the best rock movie, period." Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press comments that "This is one of the great movie experiences."[17] The review at Total Film comments "In what is rightly considered the greatest concert film ever shot...."[18] Rolling Stone dubbed it the greatest film about music ever made. All Movie Guide said that the film is "considered to be [one] of the best-looking and sounding rock films ever".[19]
  • Stop Making Sense (1984): Film critic James Berardinelli wrote that Jonathan Demme's capturing of the Talking Heads in concert was "the best concert film to date when it first came out, and nothing in the past decade-and-a-half has come close to toppling it from that position." Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle had similar praise: "Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized? I don't think so."

Disaster

Documentary

Epic

  • Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was voted best epic by readers of Total Film in May 2004. In addition, Peter O'Toole's performance as T.E. Lawrence was ranked number one in Premiere magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.

High School/Teen Film

Horror

Independent Film

Musical

Propaganda

Romance

Science fiction

Superhero/Comic book adaptations

  • Batman Begins (2005) listed as #1 on IGN's list of the 'Best & Worst Comic-Book Movies'. [31]
  • Ghost World (2001) topped MSN Movies' list of the 'Top 10 Comic Book Movies' [32] and Fandango's 'The Fantastic 10: The Top Comic Book Movies of All Time' [33]
  • Sin City (2005) placed first on AOL's list of the 'Best Films Based on Comic Books' [34]
  • Spider-Man 2 (2004) was selected the number one comic-to-cinema adaption in a poll of critics at rottentomatoes.com.[35] and was named as the greatest superhero movie ever made by film critic Roger Ebert.
  • X2: X-Men United (2003) was voted greatest comic book film of all time by Empire Magazine.[36]

Sport

  • Bull Durham (1988) was number 1 on the Rotten Tomatoes countdown of the top sports movies. [37]
  • Rocky (1976) was also listed as the number 1 sports movie of all time by MovieFone. [38]

War

Western

In particular countries

Australia

Brazil

  • City of God (2002) is the highest rated Brazilian film according to IMDB users. Brazilian critics, however, have selected Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964) as the best film of all several times, such as the 27th edition of Brazilian film magazine Contracampo[43] and a special issue of the magazine Bravo, entitled "100 essential films". The other Brazilian films included in Bravo's list are City of God, Pixote and Lavoura Arcaica, in that order.

Canada

China

Egypt

France

Germany

India

Israel

  • Giv'at Halfon Eina Ona (1976) was voted "Favorite Israeli Film of all time" in a 2004 poll by Ynet, the web site of Israel's most popular newspaper. The film got 25,000 votes.

Iran

Ireland

Italy

Japan

  • Rashomon (羅生門): This 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa was the first Japanese film to gain world-wide acclaim. The highest-ranked Japanese film (#10) on the Village Voice list of 100 Best Films of the 20th Century. It was also the highest-ranked Japanese film on the Sight and Sound 2002 Directors' Top Ten Poll.
  • Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no samurai), 1954: Also by Kurosawa, this period adventure film is frequently cited as the greatest Japanese film ever; at #10, it is the highest ranked Japanese film in the IMDB Top 250 (as of March 2007).
  • Tokyo Story (東京物語 Tokyo Monogatari), 1953. This film by Yasujiro Ozu about an aging couple as they journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in postwar Tokyo was declared the greatest film ever by Halliwell's Film Guide in 2005.[45] It was also the highest-ranked Japanese film on the Sight and Sound 2002 Critics' Top Ten Poll.

South Korea

  • Obaltan (오발탄): Released in 1960. This film is widely regarded as the best South Korean film of all time. It also listed as No.1 in "The Best Korean Films" by Film 2.0 Magazine. [46]
  • Oldboy (올드보이): This 2003 South Korean film is the highest rated Korean language film on the IMDB top 250 list. It also won the Grand Prix of the jury at Cannes.

Mexico

  • El callejón de los milagros (Miracle Alley) is the most awarded film in Mexican history with 49 international awards. [citation needed]
  • Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) is the highest rated film in Spanish on IMDb. While this film is set in Spain and primarily features Spanish actors, it was written and produced in Mexico and is considered a Mexican film.

The Netherlands

New Zealand

See : Lord of the Rings in the Films acclaimed in audience polls section above.

Norway

  • Flåklypa Grand Prix (Pinchcliffe Grand Prix - 1975 - Ivo Caprino): The people's choice for "Best Norwegian Film of the Century" during the 2005 Bergen International Film Festival.[48]
  • Ni Liv (Nine Lives - 1957 - Arne Skouen): The critics' choice for "Best Norwegian Film of the Century" during the 2005 Bergen International Film Festival. [citation needed]

The Philippines

Russia

Sweden

  • The Emigrants (Utvandrarna): Jan Troell's naturalist masterwork is often cited in Sweden as the greatest Swedish film of all-time.[citation needed]
  • Persona: Acclaimed director Ingmar Bergman's movie reached the highest position (#5 in 1972) of any Swedish film on any of Sight & Sound's lists of greatest films of all time.
  • The Seventh Seal, also directed by Ingmar Bergman, is the highest rated Swedish film on the IMDB.

United Kingdom

United States

Since 1998, the American Film Institute has assembled juries of film community leaders and polled them for a series of top 100 lists. Two of the lists from the series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies from 1998 and AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007, identified Citizen Kane as the best American film ever. In other years, AFI's jury members selected Some Like It Hot the greatest American comedy, Psycho as the greatest American thriller, Casablanca as the greatest American love story, Singin' in the Rain as the greatest American film musical, and It's a Wonderful Life as the most inspiring American film.[50]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Władysław Jewsiewicki: "Kronika kinematografii światowej 1895-1964", Warsaw 1967, no ISBN, page 129 (in Polish)
  2. ^ Total Film Who is the Greatest?
  3. ^ Lieblings Filme
  4. ^ Filmsite.org posting about Entertainment Weekly's book
  5. ^ Filmsite.org posting about Time out reader's poll
  6. ^ 50 Greatest Movies from TV Guide
  7. ^ presseportal.de (german)
  8. ^ boxofficemojo user grades
  9. ^ Magische Filmmomente Top 100 Filme anno 2000 News & Specials.Alle Specials
  10. ^ Best Films
  11. ^ Greatest.Empireonline.com
  12. ^ Total Film Presents the Top 100 Movies of All Time
  13. ^ A. S. Byatt (2005-04-16). "Sweet little mystery". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2008-02-06. Tale of Tales has been called the greatest animated film ever. But what does it mean?
  14. ^ Malpas, Anna (2005-04-08). "Teller of Tales". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2008-02-06. Some people consider Yury Norshtein the greatest animator in history
  15. ^ Top 100 Animated Features of All Time at the Online Film Critics Society website.
  16. ^ 50 Greatest Comedy Films vote from channel4.com/film
  17. ^ Movie: The Last Wltz
  18. ^ The Last Waltz - Total Film
  19. ^ Allmovie: The LasztlaW t
  20. ^ Poseidon Adventure tops film poll
  21. ^ Documentary.com
  22. ^ The 50 best high school movies: No. 1 | The Breakfast Club | Movie Commentary | News | Entertainment Weekly
  23. ^ Total Film - Shock Horror!
  24. ^ 50 Greatest Independent Films From Empire
  25. ^ 25 Best Musicals
  26. ^ West Side Story Tops Best Movie Musical
  27. ^ Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film propagandist, dies at 101 | World news | The Guardian
  28. ^ ""2001: A Space Odyssey Named the Greatest Sci-Fi Film of All Time By the Online Film Critics Society"". Online Film Critics Society. Retrieved 2006-12-15.
  29. ^ Scientists vote Blade Runner best sci-fi film of all time
  30. ^ ET named top Sci-Fi Movie
  31. ^ IGN: Best & Worst Comic-Book Movies
  32. ^ Top 10 Comic Book Movies - MSN Movies News
  33. ^ http://www.fandango.com/commentator_thefantastic10_11?source=ca_title
  34. ^ http://movies.aol.com/movie-photo-ffx/best-movie-based-on-comic-book-300-spider-man
  35. ^ Comix Worst to Best
  36. ^ "The 20 Greatest Comic Book Movies". Empireonline.com. Retrieved 2006-10-20.
  37. ^ "Rotten Tomatoes Best Sports Films". Rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved 2007-09-13.
  38. ^ "MovieFone's Top 25 Sports Films". movies.aol.com. Retrieved 2007-10-13.
  39. ^ "Best War Movies of All Time". Aol.com. Retrieved 2007-09-13.
  40. ^ "Top 10 War Movies MSN Movies". Msn.com. Retrieved 2007-09-13.
  41. ^ "100 Greatest War Films". Channel4.com. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  42. ^ Hanging Rock
  43. ^ Tose, Juliano. "contracampo - revista de cinema" (in Portugese). Retrieved 2008-02-06. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  44. ^ Herzog Nosferatu
  45. ^ Peter Bradshaw pays tribute to Tokyo Story | Features | guardian.co.uk Film
  46. ^ FILM2.0 :: Feature
  47. ^ "TheyShootPictures.com". August 7, 2007.
  48. ^ "Norsk film i 100". October 23, 2005.
  49. ^ Python's Grail 'best Brit film'. BBC News (2004-2-12)
  50. ^ AFI told their jury to consider "Movies that inspire with characters of vision and conviction who face adversity and often make a personal sacrifice for the greater good. Whether these movies end happily or not, they are ultimately triumphant—both filling audiences with hope and empowering them with the spirit of human potential.