Ranking: #111/111 Director: Robert Bresson (France) Genre: Spiritual Drama Diary of a Country Priest is a spiritual parable with lots of depth. It adopts an austere tone and relies on natural settings and fairly bare interiors, as is common in Bresson films. A...

Ranking: #110/111 Director: Mikhail Kalatozov (Georgia/Soviet) Genre: Poetic Ethnographic Documentary In the work of the Georgian-Soviet film director, Mikhail Kalatozov, the image always reigns supreme. This film is what I would call a poetic ethnographic...

Ranking: #109/111 Director: Hans Karl Breslauer (Austria) Genre: Political Drama Based on a 1922 novel by Jewish writer and journalist, Hugo Bettauer, this powerful political drama prefigures the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, as well as the birth of Israel, in a...

Ranking: #108/111 Director: Akira Kurosawa (Japan) Genre: Socio-Psychological Drama The movie begins with a startling opening shot of an X-ray of the stomach of the main protagonist, who is the Public Affairs Section Chief in the civil service, which reveals signs of...

Ranking: #107/111 Director: Hu Mei (China) Genre: Epic Historical Period Drama This is an epic historical drama about one of the world’s greatest philosophers and sages, made by one of the most talented female directors around today, Ms Hu Mei. Renowned Chinese actor,...

Ranking: #106/111 Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa (Japan) Genre: Historical Period Drama/Romance Teinosuke Kinugasa has created here a great historical drama, richly filmed in Eastman colour, which has become a classical work of Japanese film art. Gate of Hell is a...

Ranking: #105/111 Director: Jean-Pierre Melville (France)     Genre: War Drama Melville creates a sombre blue-grey undertone, with blue-toned pastel colours predominating in the movie, to convey a mood of sadness. This is a disciplined, yet...

Ranking: #104/111 Director: Luis Buñuel (Spain/Mexico)       Genre: Spiritual Drama Buñuel’s stark grey palette is the ideal filmic “paint” for this moving portrait of Christian spirituality coming face to face with a brutish social...

Ranking: #103/111 Director: Hennig Carlsen (Denmark) Genre: Socio-Psychological Drama Sult (Hunger) is a classic of Scandinavian cinema, a bold and unique film, painted in stark black-and-white tones, about a starving writer. Based on the novel Hunger by Norwegian...

Ranking: #102/111 Director: Andrei Konchalovsky (Russia)    Genre: Historical Biographical Period Drama Konchalovsky creates a stunning naturalistic vision of the world of Renaissance Italy. This colourful, dirty and chaotic world, brought to life...

Ranking: #101/111 Director: Damien Chazelle (USA) Genre: Historical Biographical Space Drama First Man is an epic account of the birth of the space age in America. The moon shot was a superhuman goal and the film methodically recreates the rawness of the effort it...

Ranking: #100/111 Director: Oliver Stone (USA) Genre: War Drama This is perhaps the most visceral, incisive and insightful depiction of the Vietnam war in cinema. Written and directed by Olive Stone, it’s a semi-autobiographical story about the fate of Bravo Company...

Ranking: #99/111 Director: Martin Scorsese (USA)                Genre: Neo-Noir Psycho-Social Drama This is a masterly neo-noir portrait of alienation and loneliness within a decaying, degenerating...

Ranking: #98/111 Director: Alfred Hitchcock (Britain) Genre: Film Noir Psychological Thriller Psycho is not just Hitchcock’s most intense work of art – it is one of cinema’s greatest Film Noir thrillers. From the opening credits, whose format is designed to reflect...

Ranking: #97/111 Director: Roman Polanski (Poland) Genre: Shakespearean Drama Faithful to the play, this is an epic version of Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty tale of evil ambition and the destruction it can bring. It is an intense, evocative adaption of a macabre play...

Ranking: #96/111 Director: Robert Wiener (Germany)          Genre: Psychological Horror Drama The Cabinet of Dr Caligari deservesto be seen as a masterpiece of German silent cinema as well as one of the greatest works of...

Ranking: #95/111 Director: Basil Dearden (Britain) Genre: Film Noir Crime Drama American film critic and theoretician, James Monaco, categorises this film accurately as follows: “Part detective story, part gangster, part urban melodrama, Film Noir was identified most...

Ranking: #94/111 Director: Roman Polanski (Poland)            Genre: Surrealistic Horror/ Psychological Drama From the opening shots of Polanski’s masterpiece of cinematic surrealism, which shows a close-up of the...

Ranking: #93/111 Director: D.W. Griffith (USA)        Genre: Epic Social Drama Intolerance set the standard for spectacular sets in cinema as far back as in 1916, with D.W. Griffith being one of the great pioneers of epic dramas in...

Ranking: #92/111 Director: Kaneto Shindo (Japan) Genre: Pastoral Drama This is a moving, poetic film about a harsh life of subsistence farming on a small and remote Japanese island. Its beauty lies in its delicate cinematography, in its recreation of the timeless...

Ranking: #91/111 Director: Francois Truffaut (France) Genre: Coming-of-Age Drama This coming-of-age drama is semi-autobiographical, based on the director’s adolescence. The grey palette used by Truffaut in this black-and-white movie suits the sombre portrait of a boy...

Ranking: #90/111 Director: Roberto Rossellini (Italy) Genre: Post-War Social Drama This incisive masterpiece of Neo Realism, shot in stark black-and-white photography amongst the actual rubble of Berlin of the time, provides a memorable and authentic portrait of...

Ranking: #89/111 Director: Fritz Lang (Germany) Genre: Film Noir Crime Thriller This major psychological crime thriller was German film legend Fritz Lang’s first sound film. He makes a seamless transition from silent to a talking movie, showing how skilful he was as a...

Ranking: #88/111 Director: Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy) Genre: Social Drama/Romance In La Notte (The Night), Antonioni, a master of filming physical locations and the geometric spaces in which his characters move and interact, has created a striking black-and-white...

Ranking: #87/111 Director: Werner Herzog (Germany) Genre: Allegorical Historical Drama This historical drama depicts the expedition of the sixteenth-century colonialist adventurer Don Lope de Aquirre, whose mission was to find and conquer the mythical South American...

Ranking: #86/111 Director: John Frankenheimer (USA) Genre: Prison Drama Prison dramas, whether during war time, like The Great Escape, or in peace time like Shawshank Redemption, Escape from Alcatraz or Midnight Express, have been a successful genre of Western movies...

Ranking: #85/111 Director: Vittorio De Sica (Italy) Genre: War Drama Two Women is a delicately executed Neo Realist portrait of Italy during World War 2, its story told through the eyes of the character played by the legendary actress Sophia Loren, a widower and...

Ranking: #84/111 Director: Anthony Pelissier (Britain) Genre: Film Noir Social Drama Rocking Horse Winner is a brilliantly atmospheric Film Noir social drama. Essentially a tragedy, the film offers a crushing social critique of materialism. It’s one of the most...

Ranking: #83/111 Director: Kevin Costner (USA) Genre: Western This is a Western story of great emotional intelligence turned into a wonderful visual and sonic cinematic experience.  It has one of cinema’s most lush and evocative scores, composed by one of the...

Ranking: #82/111 Director: Michael Cimino (USA) Genre: War Drama/Romance Another genuine American masterpiece and culturally significant work of film art is Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Yes, it’s anti-war themes are important and powerful, but it’s the...