What makes a great film? Long-running French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma published a best films list in 2008. It was constructed with the help of surveys taken amongst cinema lovers. All 100 films listed were screened in Paris from December 2008 to July 2009. Here is the full program with links to the trailers of each film.
1. Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
2. The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
3. The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
4. Sunrise – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
5. L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
6. M – Fritz Lang
7. Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
8. Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
9. Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
10. The Searchers – John Ford
11. Greed – Erich von Stroheim
12. Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
13. To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
14. Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
15. Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
16. Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
17. City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
18. The General – Buster Keaton
19. Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
20. The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
21. Freaks – Tod Browning
22. Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
23. The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
24. The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
25. The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
26. Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
27. The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
28. North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
29. Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
30. Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
31. The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
32. Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
33. Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
34. Pleasure – Max Ophüls
35. The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
36. The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
37. Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
38. Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
39. Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
40. The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
41. Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
42. The Wind – Victor Sjöström
43. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
44. Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
45. The Crowd – King Vidor
46. 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
47. La Jetée – Chris Marker
48. Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
49. Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
50. Amarcord – Federico Fellini
51. Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
52. Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
53. Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
54. Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
55. King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
56. Laura – Otto Preminger
57. The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
58. The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
59. La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
60. The Dead – John Huston
61. Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
62. It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
63. Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
64. The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
65. À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
66. Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
67. Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
68. La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
69. Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
70. A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
71. Playtime – Jacques Tati
72. Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
73. Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
74. Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
75. Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
76. An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
77. Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
78. The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
79. Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
80. Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
81. The Party – Blake Edwards
82. Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
83. The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
84. A Star Is Born – George Cukor
85. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
86. America, America – Elia Kazan
87. El – Luis Buñuel
88. Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
89. Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
90. Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
91. Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
92. Lola – Jacques Demy
93. Manhattan – Woody Allen
94. Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
95. My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
96. Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
97. The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
98. Scarface – Howard Hawks
99. Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
100. Napoléon – Abel Gance
Popularity: 2% [?]
