CounterPunch’s 100 Favorite Films

The 39 Steps

Alfred Hitchcock

1935

The 400 Blows

François Truffaut

1959

1900

Bernardo Bertolucci

1977

A Man Escaped

Robert Bresson

1956

My Night At Maud’s

Eric Rohmer

1969

The Agony and The Ecstasy

Carol Reed

1965

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Werner Herzog

1972

Anatomy of a Murder

Otto Preminger

1959

…And God Created Woman

Roger Vadim

1956

Badlands

Terence Malick

1973

The Bank Dick

Eddie Cline/WC Fields

1940

The Battle of Algiers

Gillo Pontecorvo

1966

Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein

1925

Beat the Devil

John Huston

1953

Belle de Jour

Luis Buñuel

1967

Behind the Green Door

Artie Mitchell, Jim Mitchell

1972

The Big Sleep

Howard Hawks

1946

The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock

1963

Black Orpheus

Marcel Camus

1959

The Blue Angel

Josef von Sternberg

1930

Blue Velvet

David Lynch

1986

Bob le Flambeur

Jean-Pierre Melville

1955

Body and Soul

Robert Rossen

1947

The Bride of Frankenstein

James Whale

1935

Carry on Up the Kyber

Gerald Thomas

1968

Cat People

Jacques Tourneur

1942

Celine and Julie Go Boating

Jacques Rivette

1974

Chinatown

Roman Polanski

1974

Closely Watched TrainsJirí Menzel1966

The Conformist

Bernardo Bertolucci

1970

Detour

Edgar Ulmer

1945

The Devil in Miss Jones

Gerard Damiano

1972

Dr. Strangelove

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Stanley Kubrick

1964

Duck Soup

Leo McCarey

1933

F for Fake

Orson Welles

1975

Floating Weeds

Yasujiru Ozu

1959

Freaks

Todd Browning

1932

From Russia with Love

Terrence Young

1963

Fury

Fritz Lang

1936

Gap-Toothed Women

Les Blank

1987

Gold and Diamond Mines of South Africa

Edison and Company

1917

The Girl Can’t Help It

Frank Tashlin

1956

Greed

Erich von Stroheim

1924

 Gun Crazy

Joseph L. Lewis

1949

Hairspray

John Waters

1988

Hamlet

Grigori Kozintsev

1964

High and Low

Akira Kurosawa

1962

History Is Made at Night

Frank Borzage

1937

The Hustler

Robert Rossen

1961

Image of an Assassination

Abraham Zapruder

1963

In a Lonely Place

Nicholas Ray

1950

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Vitorrio de Sica

1970

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Bert Stern

1959

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Rouben Mamoulian

1931

Johnny Guitar

Nicholas Ray

1954

Kanal

Andrei Wadja

1957

 King Lear

Peter Brook

1971

Kiss Me Deadly

Robert Aldrich

1955

 

Kon Tiki

Thor Heyerdahl

1951

The Lady Eve

Preston Sturges

1941

Last Tango in Paris

Bernardo Bertolucci

1972

L’Atalante

Jean Vigo

1932

L’Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni

1960

La Marseillaise

Jean Renoir

1938

Le Samouraï

Jean-Pierre Melville

1967

Lola Montès

Max Ophuls

1955

Les Bonnes Femmes

Claude Chabrol

1960

The Life of Oharu

Kenji Mizoguchi

1952

Lucifer Rising

Kenneth Anger

1972

M

Fritz Lang

1931

Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov

1929

Ministry of Fear

Fritz Lang

1944

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

Preston Sturges

1944

Modern Times

Charles Chaplin

1936

Nanook of the North

Robert Flaherty

1922

Night and Fog

Alain Resnais

1955
The Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton

1955

The Nutty Professor

Jerry Lewis

1963

Oedipus Rex

Pier Paolo Pasolini

1967

Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone

1968

Ordet

Carl Dreyer

1955

Ossessione

Luchino Visconti

1942

Pandora’s Box

G.W. Pabst

1929

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Dreyer

1928

The Piano

Jane Campion

1993

 

Pickup on South Street

Samuel Fuller

1953
Pierrot le Fou

Jean-Luc Godard

1965

Point of Order

Emile di Antonio

1964
The Producers

Mel Brooks

1967 

Purple Noon

René Clement

1960
Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni

1964
Repo Man

Alex Cox

1984

 Richard Pryor: Live in Concert

Jeff Margolis / Richard Pryor

1979

 

Rodney King Beating Videotape

George Halliday

March 3, 1991

 
Rome, Open City

Roberto Rossellini

1945

 

The Rules of the Game

Jean Renoir

1939

Safety Last!

Sam Taylor / Harold Lloyd

1923

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Pier Paolo Pasolini

1975

 

Satan’s Brew

Rainier Werner Fassbinder

1976

Stray Dog

Akira Kurosawa

1964

  Shoeshine

Vittorio de Sica

1947

The Silent World

Jacques Cousteau / Louis Malle

1957

The Sorrow and the Pity

Marcel Ophuls

1969

Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick

1960

Strike

Sergei Eisenstein

1925
Summer with Monika

Ingmar Bergman

1952

Sunrise

FW Murnau

1927

 

 Sweet Smell of Success

Alexander Mackendrick

1957

Sherlock Jr.

Buster Keaton

1924

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas 

FW Murnau

1931

The Tomb of Ligeia

Roger Corman

1964 Touch of Evil

Orson Welles

1958

Trash

Paul Morrisey/Andy Warhol

1970

Un Chien Andalou

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali

1929

Viridiana 

Luis Buñuel

1961

The Wages of Fear

Henri-Georges Clouzot

1953

Walkabout

Nicholas Roeg

1971

 

Week-End

Jean-Luc Godard

1967

White Heat

Raoul Walsh

1949

The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah

1969

 

Written on the Wind

Douglas Sirk

1956