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AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies The American Film Institute whittled down 400 nominations to a Top 100 of American movies. The aim was to compile a list of movies 'which set the standard and mark the excellence of the first century of American cinema'. This was broadcast as a CBS TV special on 16th June, 1998, making this the most prominent Top 100 list out there, though not the first. In 2007, for the tenth anniversary special, the AFI produced a revamped list, which kept Citizen Kane at the top but added in films like Titanic, The Sixth Sense and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm not sure if this was meant to be an improvement or not. The main criticism of the original 100 Years... 100 Movies list and surely the revamped version was that it appeared to play it very safe indeed. Many people have offered criticism and a few have offered alternatives. I find Jonathan Rosenbaum's Alternate 100 a far more fascinating list to work through, even though my average ratings are currently still higher for this one. Here's a link to the official AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies site page, which also links to the further AFI lists, compiled one per year. The List # Title Year Director IMDb 1 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles IMDb 2 Casablanca 1942 Michael Curtiz IMDb 3 The Godfather 1972 Francis Ford Coppola IMDb 4 Gone with the Wind 1939 Victor Fleming IMDb 5 Lawrence of Arabia 1962 David Lean IMDb 6 The Wizard of Oz 1939 Victor Fleming IMDb 7 The Graduate 1967 Mike Nichols IMDb 8 On the Waterfront 1954 Elia Kazan IMDb 9 Schindler's List 1993 Steven Spielberg IMDb 10 Singin' in the Rain 1952 Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen IMDb 11 It's a Wonderful Life 1946 Frank Capra IMDb 12 Sunset Boulevard 1950 Billy Wilder IMDb 13 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 David Lean IMDb 14 Some Like It Hot 1959 Billy Wilder IMDb 15 Star Wars 1977 George Lucas IMDb 16 All About Eve 1950 Joseph L. Mankiewicz IMDb 17 The African Queen 1951 John Huston IMDb 18 Psycho 1960 Alfred Hitchcock IMDb 19 Chinatown 1974 Roman Polanski IMDb 20 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975 Elia Kazan IMDb 21 The Grapes of Wrath 1940 John Ford IMDb 22 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick IMDb 23 The Maltese Falcon 1941 John Huston IMDb 24 Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese IMDb 25 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial 1982 Steven Spielberg IMDb 26 Dr. Strangelove 1964 Stanley Kubrick IMDb 27 Bonnie and Clyde 1967 Arthur Penn IMDb 28 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola IMDb 29 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939 Frank Capra IMDb 30 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 John Huston IMDb 31 Annie Hall 1977 Woody Allen IMDb 32 The Godfather Part II 1974 Francis Ford Coppola IMDb 33 High Noon 1952 Fred Zinnemann IMDb 34 To Kill a Mockingbird 1962 Robert Mulligan IMDb 35 It Happened One Night 1934 Frank Capra IMDb 36 Midnight Cowboy 1969 John Schlesinger IMDb 37 The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 William Wyler IMDb 38 Double Indemnity 1944 Billy Wilder IMDb 39 Doctor Zhivago 1965 David Lean IMDb 40 North by Northwest 1959 Alfred Hitchcock IMDb 41 West Side Story 1961 Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins IMDb 42 Rear Window 1954 Alfred Hitchcock IMDb 43 King Kong 1933 Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack IMDb 44 The Birth of a Nation 1915 D. W. Griffith IMDb 45 A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 Elia Kazan IMDb 46 A Clockwork Orange 1971 Stanley Kubrick IMDb 47 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese IMDb 48 Jaws 1975 Steven Spielberg IMDb 49 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 David Hand et al IMDb 50 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 George Roy Hill IMDb 51 The Philadelphia Story 1940 George Cukor IMDb 52 From Here to Eternity 1953 Fred Zinnemann IMDb 53 Amadeus 1984 Milos Forman IMDb 54 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930 Lewis Milestone IMDb 55 The Sound of Music 1965 Robert Wise IMDb 56 M*A*S*H 1970 Robert Altman IMDb 57 The Third Man 1949 Carol Reed IMDb 58 Fantasia 1940 Samuel Armstrong et al IMDb 59 Rebel Without a Cause 1955 Nicholas Ray IMDb 60 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 Steven Spielberg IMDb 61 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock IMDb 62 Tootsie 1982 Sydney Pollack IMDb 63 Stagecoach 1939 John Ford IMDb 64 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 Steven Spielberg IMDb 65 The Silence of the Lambs 1991 Jonathan Demme IMDb 66 Network 1976 Sidney Lumet IMDb 67 The Manchurian Candidate 1962 John Frankenheimer IMDb 68 An American in Paris 1951 Vincente Minnelli IMDb 69 Shane 1953 George Stevens IMDb 70 The French Connection 1971 William Friedkin IMDb 71 Forrest Gump 1994 Robert Zemeckis IMDb 72 Ben-Hur 1959 William Wyler IMDb 73 Wuthering Heights 1939 William Wyler IMDb 74 The Gold Rush 1925 Charles Chaplin IMDb 75 Dances with Wolves 1990 Kevin Costner IMDb 76 City Lights 1931 Charles Chaplin IMDb 77 American Graffiti 1973 George Lucas IMDb 78 Rocky 1976 John G. Avildsen IMDb 79 The Deer Hunter 1978 Michael Cimino IMDb 80 The Wild Bunch 1969 Sam Peckinpah IMDb 81 Modern Times 1936 Charles Chaplin IMDb 82 Giant 1956 George Stevens IMDb 83 Platoon 1986 Oliver Stone IMDb 84 Fargo 1996 Joel Coen IMDb 85 Duck Soup 1933 Leo McCarey IMDb 86 Mutiny on the Bounty 1935 Frank Lloyd IMDb 87 Frankenstein 1931 James Whale IMDb 88 Easy Rider 1969 Dennis Hopper IMDb 89 Patton 1970 Franklin J. Schaffner IMDb 90 The Jazz Singer 1927 Alan Crosland IMDb 91 My Fair Lady 1964 George Cukor IMDb 92 A Place in the Sun 1951 George Stevens IMDb 93 The Apartment 1960 Billy Wilder IMDb 94 Goodfellas 1990 Martin Scorsese IMDb 95 Pulp Fiction 1994 Quentin Tarantino IMDb 96 The Searchers 1956 John Ford IMDb 97 Bringing up Baby 1938 Howard Hawks IMDb 98 Unforgiven 1992 Clint Eastwood IMDb 99 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967 Stanley Kramer IMDb 100 Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 Michael Curtiz IMDb

Last update: 18th August, 2025