102 Movies to Literacy

Found this list by Jim Emerson on the top 102 movies he thinks one should watch to have at least a good starting point to movie literacy. Found it through Kottke, and though I’d try my hand at how many I’d seen as well. List is after the jump.


An * denotes a movie I’ve seen.

*”2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
*”Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
*”All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
*”Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
*”Bambi” (1942) Disney
“The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
*”Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
*”Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
*”Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
*”Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
*”A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
*”Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
*”E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
*”The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
*”Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
*”Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
*”The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
*”Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
*”The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
*”A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
*”It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
*”Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
*”Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
*”Mad Max 2″ / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
*”Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
*”Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
*”North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
*”Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
*”Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
*”Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
*”Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
*”Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
*”The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
*”Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
*”The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

By my count 34 of 102. I’ve got a bit of work to do.

3 thoughts on “102 Movies to Literacy”

  1. I’ve seen 44, but I credit the number mostly to my time studying in LA and having a film critic brother. Despite his graduate education in film he has only seen 64, which tells me that this is a pretty obscure collection.

    TFW

  2. It’s got a lot of international films that just don’t really get widely watched, and dont’ show up at the local blockbuster when we were kids. Not that we would have even gotten them then.

    Dang. I need to catch up. Come on netflix queue!

Leave a Reply to TFW Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Bitnami