Daily · 19 June 2026
Top 100 Iconic Films of All Time
Ranked from 100 down to 1. Generated by /lad, illustrated by /iad.
#1
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles, 1941. The newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane and the dying word 'Rosebud'. Deep focus, non-linear editing. Topped Sight & Sound's poll for fifty years.
#2
Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock, 1958. James Stewart, Kim Novak, and the spiral pull of obsession. Sight & Sound's #1 in 2012; #2 in 2022.
#3
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman, 1975. 3 hours 21 minutes of a Belgian widow's domestic routine. Sight & Sound's #1 film in 2022.
#4
The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola, 1972. Don Vito Corleone, Michael Corleone, the offer you can't refuse. The American crime epic.
#5
The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, 1974. Two narratives — young Vito + Michael's reign. Won Best Picture, sequel-or-prequel debate begins.
#6
Tokyo Story
Yasujirō Ozu, 1953. Elderly couple visit their adult Tokyo children. The tatami-shot family drama at its peak.
#7
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick, 1968. From the Dawn of Man to the Star Child. Defined sci-fi cinema.
#8
Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa, 1954. Farmers hire seven masterless samurai to defend their village. Reset world cinema.
#9
Casablanca
Michael Curtiz, 1942. Bogart, Bergman, Vichy Morocco. 'Here's looking at you, kid.' AFI's most-quoted film.
#10
8½
Federico Fellini, 1963. Guido's blocked filmmaker dreaming his way through a cure. The film about not being able to make a film.
#11
Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa, 1950. Four contradictory accounts of one rape and murder. Gave English the term 'Rashomon effect'.
#12
Bicycle Thieves
Vittorio De Sica, 1948. A father and son search post-war Rome for the stolen bicycle he needs for work. Italian neorealism's keystone.
#13
The Rules of the Game
Jean Renoir, 1939. A French country-house weekend before the war. Sight & Sound top-10 fixture for decades.
#14
Singin' in the Rain
Gene Kelly + Stanley Donen, 1952. Title number, Make 'Em Laugh, Good Morning. Hollywood loving Hollywood.
#15
Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder, 1959. Marilyn Monroe, Lemmon and Curtis in drag fleeing the mob. 'Nobody's perfect.'
#16
Sunset Boulevard
Billy Wilder, 1950. Norma Desmond's faded silent-era stardom. 'I am big. It's the pictures that got small.'
#17
The Searchers
John Ford, 1956. Ethan Edwards's revenge mission across Monument Valley. The dark heart of the Western.
#18
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Sergio Leone, 1966. Eastwood, Van Cleef, Wallach hunt buried gold. The spaghetti-Western epic.
#19
Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean, 1962. T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt. 70 mm desert sweep that few films can match.
#20
Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola, 1979. Captain Willard up the river to find Colonel Kurtz. Heart-of-darkness in Vietnam.
#21
Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976. Travis Bickle alone in 70s NYC. 'You talkin' to me?'
#22
Raging Bull
Martin Scorsese, 1980. Jake LaMotta's boxing-ring rise and self-destructive fall. The best black-and-white film since the 60s.
#23
Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese, 1990. Henry Hill — 'as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.'
#24
Persona
Ingmar Bergman, 1966. A nurse and a mute actress merging identities on a Swedish island.
#25
The Seventh Seal
Ingmar Bergman, 1957. Antonius Block playing chess with Death. The defining medieval allegory in modern cinema.
#26
Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman, 1957. An ageing professor's day-and-memory-trip to Lund. Bergman's gentlest masterpiece.
#27
L'Avventura
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960. A woman disappears on a Sicilian island; her boyfriend and friend search and forget. Modernist alienation.
#28
Blow-Up
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966. Swinging-London photographer captures a possible murder. The mod-era enigma.
#29
Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960. Belmondo and Seberg, jump cuts and Paris. The French New Wave's founding text.
#30
The 400 Blows
François Truffaut, 1959. Antoine Doinel's wandering Paris boyhood. The most-influential debut of the New Wave.
#31
Cléo from 5 to 7
Agnès Varda, 1962. Two hours of a singer awaiting a cancer diagnosis. Real-time Parisian masterpiece.
#32
Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979. Three men in the Zone where wishes come true. Defining slow-cinema spiritual SF.
#33
Andrei Rublev
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966. The 15th-century icon painter's spiritual journey. Released cut by the Soviets, restored in 1971.
#34
Mirror
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975. Memory and dream of a dying poet. Cinema's most-personal autobiographical film.
#35
Solaris
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972. Psychologist Kris Kelvin meets his dead wife on a space-station above the sentient ocean.
#36
Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein, 1925. The Odessa Steps sequence — montage's most-imitated five minutes.
#37
M
Fritz Lang, 1931. A child-killer hunted by the Berlin police and the criminal underworld. Peter Lorre's career-launching whistle.
#38
Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927. Workers in the underground city, elites above. The visual template for every dystopia since.
#39
Nosferatu
F. W. Murnau, 1922. Unauthorised Dracula adaptation — the silent-cinema vampire foundation.
#40
Sunrise
F. W. Murnau, 1927. Country couple visiting the city — the first feature with a synchronised musical score. Won the first Best Unique and Artistic Picture Oscar.
#41
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene, 1920. German Expressionism's painted-set founding text.
#42
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928. Close-ups of Maria Falconetti's face that defined screen acting forever.
#43
City Lights
Charlie Chaplin, 1931. The Tramp and the blind flower-girl. Last great silent film.
#44
Modern Times
Charlie Chaplin, 1936. The Tramp on the assembly line — Depression-era industrial satire.
#45
The General
Buster Keaton, 1926. Confederate train engineer chasing his locomotive. Considered Keaton's masterpiece.
#46
Sherlock Jr.
Buster Keaton, 1924. The film-projectionist who walks into the screen. 45 minutes of perfect physical comedy.
#47
Dr. Strangelove
Stanley Kubrick, 1964. 'You can't fight in here! This is the war room!' Black-comedy Cold War nuclear paranoia.
#48
A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick, 1971. Alex and his droogs — ultra-violence and Beethoven.
#49
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick, 1980. Jack Torrance loses it in the Overlook Hotel. Famously the film King hated.
#50
Barry Lyndon
Stanley Kubrick, 1975. 18th-century Ireland through candle-lit interiors. The most beautiful film ever shot.
#51
Eyes Wide Shut
Stanley Kubrick, 1999. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in a marriage-and-masked-orgy dream.
#52
Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino, 1994. Non-linear interlocking stories around Vincent and Jules. Palme d'Or 1994.
#53
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino, 1992. Color-coded thieves in a warehouse after a botched heist. Tarantino's breakthrough.
#54
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Quentin Tarantino, 2003. The Bride's revenge across multiple genres in one film.
#55
Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino, 2009. WWII rewritten in a Paris cinema basement. Christoph Waltz's career-launching Hans Landa.
#56
Schindler's List
Steven Spielberg, 1993. Oskar Schindler and the 1,200 Jews he saved. Won 7 Oscars.
#57
Saving Private Ryan
Steven Spielberg, 1998. Omaha Beach landing reset the war-film. Captain Miller goes behind the lines.
#58
Jaws
Steven Spielberg, 1975. The shark you don't see. Birth of the summer blockbuster.
#59
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Steven Spielberg, 1982. The alien who phones home. The first Spielberg of family-feel cinema.
#60
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Steven Spielberg, 1981. Indiana Jones, Nazis, the Ark of the Covenant. Action-adventure benchmark.
#61
Star Wars (A New Hope)
George Lucas, 1977. Luke, Han, Leia, the Death Star. Forced the modern blockbuster economy.
#62
The Empire Strikes Back
Irvin Kershner, 1980. 'I am your father.' Often called the best Star Wars.
#63
Alien
Ridley Scott, 1979. Working-class space-truckers vs xenomorph. The chest-burst scene shocked first audiences silly.
#64
Blade Runner
Ridley Scott, 1982. Deckard, replicants, neon LA in 2019. The cyberpunk noir blueprint.
#65
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Peter Jackson, 2001. Tolkien's first book on screen — the trilogy that legitimised fantasy as Best Picture material.
#66
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Peter Jackson, 2003. 11 Oscars including Best Picture. Sweeping conclusion.
#67
Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki, 2001. Chihiro in the bathhouse for spirits. First non-English-language Best Animated Feature.
#68
My Neighbor Totoro
Hayao Miyazaki, 1988. Two sisters, a forest spirit, a catbus. Studio Ghibli's icon image.
#69
Princess Mononoke
Hayao Miyazaki, 1997. Forest gods vs iron-town humans. Most violent Ghibli.
#70
Toy Story
John Lasseter, 1995. First feature entirely computer-animated. Reset what animation could be.
#71
WALL-E
Andrew Stanton, 2008. Trash-cleaning robot on an abandoned Earth. Pixar at its most ambitious.
#72
The Lion King
Roger Allers + Rob Minkoff, 1994. Hamlet on the savannah. Hand-drawn Disney's peak.
#73
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Disney, 1937. First feature-length cel-animated film. The platform on which Hollywood animation built.
#74
Parasite
Bong Joon-ho, 2019. The Kim family infiltrating the Park household. First non-English Best Picture winner.
#75
Memories of Murder
Bong Joon-ho, 2003. South Korean detectives and the unsolved Hwaseong serial murders.
#76
Oldboy
Park Chan-wook, 2003. Oh Dae-su, locked in a room for 15 years and then released. Korean revenge-cinema peak.
#77
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai, 2000. Neighbours in 1962 Hong Kong realising their spouses are having an affair with each other. Often-cited 21st-century best film.
#78
Chungking Express
Wong Kar-wai, 1994. Two parallel love stories in Hong Kong. Quentin Tarantino's pet film.
#79
A Brighter Summer Day
Edward Yang, 1991. Four-hour Taiwanese teenage-gang epic of 1960. Often cited as cinema's most-perfect film.
#80
Yi Yi
Edward Yang, 2000. Three generations of a Taipei family. Critic's-favourite of the 2000s.
#81
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch, 2001. Hollywood dreamscape rewritten. The 21st-century best-film polls' #1 in many lists.
#82
Blue Velvet
David Lynch, 1986. Severed ear opens a small-town nightmare. Frank Booth.
#83
Eraserhead
David Lynch, 1977. Henry Spencer and his alien-baby nightmare. Cult-cinema founding artefact.
#84
There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. Daniel Plainview drilling for California oil. 'I drink your milkshake.'
#85
Magnolia
Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999. Interlocking San Fernando Valley stories raining frogs.
#86
Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997. The late-70s porn industry and Dirk Diggler's rise.
#87
The Tree of Life
Terrence Malick, 2011. A Texas family interleaved with the cosmos's creation. Palme d'Or.
#88
Days of Heaven
Terrence Malick, 1978. Magic-hour cinematography by Néstor Almendros. Pre-WWI Texas Panhandle wheat-farm love triangle.
#89
Annie Hall
Woody Allen, 1977. Alvy Singer and Annie Hall. The romantic-comedy template + Oscar Best Picture.
#90
Manhattan
Woody Allen, 1979. Gordon Willis's black-and-white Manhattan. The film over the Rhapsody in Blue opening.
#91
The Apartment
Billy Wilder, 1960. Jack Lemmon's lonely Manhattan bachelor and his bosses' borrowed flat. Best Picture.
#92
Chinatown
Roman Polanski, 1974. Jake Gittes, LA water, and 'forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' Noir's modern peak.
#93
Rosemary's Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968. Pregnant Rosemary in the Bramford. Devil-cult horror via domestic anxiety.
#94
The Exorcist
William Friedkin, 1973. 12-year-old Regan possessed; two priests called. Highest-grossing R-rated film for years.
#95
Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock, 1960. The shower scene reset cinema. Bernard Herrmann's screaming strings.
#96
Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock, 1954. James Stewart in a wheelchair watching across the courtyard. The single-set thriller perfected.
#97
North by Northwest
Alfred Hitchcock, 1959. Cary Grant chased across America — the crop-duster scene, the Mount Rushmore climax.
#98
Notorious
Alfred Hitchcock, 1946. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, post-war Nazi infiltration in Rio. The most-elegant Hitchcock.
#99
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone, 1968. Harmonica vs Frank in the post-railroad West. Ennio Morricone's most-haunting score.
#100
Once Upon a Time in America
Sergio Leone, 1984. Noodles and Max — Jewish-gangster epic across decades. Leone's last film.