Where to Stream the 100 Best Films of All Time from the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll
Where to Stream the 100 Best Films of All Time from the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll
Every 10 years, the British Film Institute pulls together critics from around the world to vote on its “Sight and Sound” poll to determine the best films ever made. In the most recent poll, traditional heavy-hitters like “Vertigo” and “Citizen Kane” were pushed aside as a new film was crowned the greatest.
According to the critics, the best film ever made is “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels” from 1975. You can catch this classic with a 7-day free trial of Max. In fact, a whopping 41 films from this list can be found on Max.
The list contains masterworks from geniuses like Kubrick, Chaplin, Scorsese, Wilder, Godard, Miyazaki, and Hitchcock. The most recent films on the list both come from 2019: “Parasite” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”
So pop the popcorn and fire up your favorite streaming device. Here’s the list of movies that surpass all others. How many have you seen?
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Get Out
February 24, 2017Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
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The General
December 25, 1926During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray’s beloved locomotive, ‘The General’—with Johnnie’s lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.
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Black Girl
March 17, 1966Eager to find a better life abroad, a Senegalese woman becomes a mere governess to a family in southern France, suffering from discrimination and marginalization.
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Tropical Malady
June 24, 2004The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.
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Once Upon a Time in the West
December 21, 1968As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
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A Man Escaped
November 11, 1956A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
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The Earrings of Madame de…
September 16, 1953In France of the late 19th century, the wife of a wealthy general, the Countess Louise, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off debts; she claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, & her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
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The Leopard
March 27, 1963As Garibaldi’s troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family’s accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
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Ugetsu
March 26, 1953In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage’s warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro’s pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei’s desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.
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Yi Yi
September 20, 2000Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life’s meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
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Parasite
May 30, 2019Facing unemployment, dwindling savings, and an uncertain future, the Kim family discovers a possible way out of their troubles thanks to the wealthy and glamorous Park family. What follows is a tense, funny, and moving story about ambition, jealousy, and class warfare.
This brilliant film won 4 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film.
Don’t be spooked by the subtitles. You will love this movie.
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Chungking Express
July 14, 1994Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
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The Shining
May 23, 1980Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren’t prepared for the madness that lurks within.
Stanley Kubrick’s classic spin on a Stephen King story has been hugely influential since its release, though King has been consistently critical of the adaptation.
Poor Shelley Duvall had a horrific experience during filming. According to the “Guinness Book of Records,” Kubrick demanded to reshoot the scene where she goes down the stairs with the baseball bat 127 times. She became so stressed during filming that her hair began falling out.
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Histoire(s) du Cinéma 1a: All the (Hi)stories
November 16, 1989A very personal look at the history of cinema directed, written and edited by Jean-Luc Godard in his Swiss residence in Rolle for ten years (1988-98); a monumental collage, constructed from film fragments, texts and quotations, photos and paintings, music and sound, and diverse readings; a critical, beautiful and melancholic vision of cinematographic art.
This film is actually eight parts. It’s currently unavailable to stream.
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Pierrot le Fou
November 5, 1965Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
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The Spirit of the Beehive
October 8, 1973In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale’s 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.
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Blue Velvet
September 19, 1986Clean-cut Jeffrey Beaumont realizes his hometown is not so normal when he discovers a human ear in a field, the investigation soon catapulting him toward a disturbed nightclub singer and a drug-addicted sadist.
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Céline and Julie Go Boating
September 18, 1974Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.
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A Matter of Life and Death
December 15, 1946When a young RAF pilot miraculously survives bailing out of his aeroplane without a parachute, he falls in love with an American radio operator. But the officials in the other world realise their mistake and dispatch an angel to collect him.
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Modern Times
February 5, 1936A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..
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A Brighter Summer Day
July 27, 1991A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.
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Satantango
February 8, 1994Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town’s source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
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Sunset Boulevard
August 10, 1950A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
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Sansho the Bailiff
March 31, 1954In medieval Japan, a woman and her children journey to find the family’s patriarch, who was exiled years before.
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Imitation of Life
June 26, 1959In 1940s New York, a white widow who dreams of being on Broadway has a chance encounter with a black single mother, who becomes her maid.
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Spirited Away
July 20, 2001A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
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My Neighbor Totoro
April 16, 1988Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
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Journey to Italy
September 7, 1954This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.
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L'Avventura
September 14, 1960Claudia and Anna join Anna’s lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna’s disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.
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Metropolis
February 6, 1927In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city’s mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
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The Gleaners and I
July 7, 2000Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.
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The Red Shoes
September 6, 1948In this classic drama, Vicky Page is an aspiring ballerina torn between her dedication to dance and her desire to love. While her imperious instructor, Boris Lermontov, urges to her to forget anything but ballet, Vicky begins to fall for the charming young composer Julian Craster. Eventually Vicky, under great emotional stress, must choose to pursue either her art or her romance, a decision that carries serious consequences.
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La Jetée
February 16, 1962A man is sent back and forth and in and out of time in an experiment that attempts to unravel the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a perpetual reminiscence of past events that are recreated on an airport’s viewing pier.
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Andrei Rublev
December 16, 1966An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.
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Touki Bouki
May 10, 1973Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.
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Casablanca
January 15, 1943In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
If you’ve never seen it, now is the time! It’s one of the best scripts ever, filled with quotable lines, fantastic supporting performances, and one of the most famous endings in movie history.
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The Third Man
August 31, 1949In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a “third man” present at the time of Harry’s death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover, Anna.
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GoodFellas
September 12, 1990The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
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Daughters of the Dust
January 24, 1991In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.
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Moonlight
October 21, 2016The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
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La Dolce Vita
February 5, 1960Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome’s elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
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Sans Soleil
January 1, 1983A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
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Sherlock Jr.
April 17, 1924A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend’s father’s pocketwatch.
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The Apartment
June 21, 1960Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he’s left with a major problem to solve.
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Battleship Potemkin
December 24, 1925A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.
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Blade Runner
June 25, 1982In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
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Contempt
October 29, 1963A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of “The Odyssey,” but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
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News from Home
May 20, 1977Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman’s loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
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Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
March 5, 1974Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi’s family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.
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The Piano
May 18, 1993When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
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The 400 Blows
June 3, 1959For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
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Wanda
September 1, 1970After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.
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Ordet
January 9, 1955The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father’s religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel’s wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone’s beliefs are put to the test.
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North by Northwest
July 8, 1959Advertising man Roger Thornhill is mistaken for a spy, triggering a deadly cross-country chase.
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The Battle of Algiers
September 8, 1966Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels’ struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
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Barry Lyndon
December 18, 1975An Irish rogue uses his cunning and wit to work his way up the social classes of 18th century England, transforming himself from the humble Redmond Barry into the noble Barry Lyndon.
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Killer of Sheep
November 14, 1978An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
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Stalker
May 25, 1979Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
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Rashomon
August 26, 1950Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, “Rashomon” is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife.
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Bicycle Thieves
July 21, 1948Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.
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Rear Window
August 1, 1954A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
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Some Like It Hot
March 19, 1959Two musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) witness a mob hit and struggle to find a way out of the city before they are found by the gangsters. Their only opportunity is to join an all-girl band as they leave on a tour. To make their getaway they must first disguise themselves as women, then keep their identities secret and deal with the problems this brings - such as an attractive bandmate (Marilyn Monroe) and a very determined suitor.
This classic farce from director Billy Wilder was ranked the best comedy of all time in the American Film Institute's “100 Years…100 Laughs” list in 2000.
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Breathless
March 16, 1960A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
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May 11, 1931In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert’s heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.
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City Lights
February 6, 1931A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl’s benefactor and suitor.
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Pather Panchali
August 26, 1955Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1996.
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L'Atalante
April 24, 1934Capricious small-town girl Juliette and barge captain Jean marry after a whirlwind courtship, and she comes to live aboard his boat, L’Atalante. As they make their way down the Seine, Jean grows weary of Juliette’s flirtations with his all-male crew, and Juliette longs to escape the monotony of the boat and experience the excitement of a big city. When she steals away to Paris by herself, her husband begins to think their marriage was a mistake.
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Psycho
June 22, 1960When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cares for his housebound mother.
The impact of this Alfred Hitchcock classic cannot be understated. Psycho was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Leigh) and Best Director (Hitchcock). In 1992, the film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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Mirror
March 7, 1975A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
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8½
February 14, 1963Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire
September 18, 2019At the end of the 18th century, a female painter is hired to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman. But there are a couple of problems: the woman doesn’t want to get married and she doesn’t want to pose for a painting. What follows is a masterpiece of cinema. The painter studies her subject and her subject studies back.
The film draws the two women closer and closer before the inevitable separation. And through the prism of art (paintings, music, and even mythological stories), we see the relationship change, even after it’s finished.
The movie will churn up your old lost loves and force you to reexamine them. “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” one character asks. If there’s a better way to describe falling in love, we haven’t heard it.
Trust the critics and take the leap. This is one film you shouldn’t miss.
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Taxi Driver
February 9, 1976In this landmark Martin Scorsese masterpiece, Robert De Niro portrays Travis Bickle, a loner who wavers between flights of heroism and chasms of misanthropy. His failures with women send him spiraling, and he finds himself itching for vengeance.
When it debuted, the movie won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. When the British Film Institute surveyed nearly 500 directors for its esteemed “Sight and Sound” poll in 2022, “Taxi Driver” was named the 12th best film of all time. It has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
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Daisies
December 30, 1966Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.
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Shoah
April 21, 1985Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
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The Night of the Hunter
August 26, 1955In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.
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Au Hasard Balthazar
May 25, 1966The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
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Do the Right Thing
June 14, 1989Salvatore “Sal” Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin’ Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
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PlayTime
December 13, 1967Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.
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Late Spring
September 13, 1949Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry — that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa’s matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.
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The Passion of Joan of Arc
April 21, 1928A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she’d spoken to God, Jeanne d’Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
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Seven Samurai
April 26, 1954A samurai answers a village’s request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
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Apocalypse Now
May 19, 1979At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, “does not exist, nor will it ever exist.” His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
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Persona
October 18, 1966A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
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Close-Up
May 9, 1990This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
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Meshes of the Afternoon
January 1, 1943A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
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The Searchers
May 16, 1956As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.
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Cléo from 5 to 7
April 11, 1962Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
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The Rules of the Game
July 9, 1939A weekend at a marquis’ country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances.
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The Godfather
March 14, 1972Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
Often cited as one of the greatest movies ever made, “The Godfather” is endlessly rewatchable and endlessly quotable. Francis Ford Coppola created a masterpiece with an unforgettable cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, and Diane Keaton.
The film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay (for Mario Puzo and Coppola). From the first line (“I believe in America”) to the last image of a closing door, this movie is a phenomenon.
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Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
November 4, 1927A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
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Singin' in the Rain
April 9, 1952In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.
If you have never seen this musical classic, be aware that there is so much more than singing and dancing. It’s a truly funny takedown of Hollywood, and it still holds up almost 70 years later! Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor make this film a phenomenon.
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Man with a Movie Camera
May 12, 1929A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
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Mulholland Drive
June 6, 2001Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
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Beau Travail
May 3, 2000Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup’s mind.
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2001: A Space Odyssey
April 2, 1968Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world’s most advanced super computer.
This brilliant Stanley Kubrick film takes us from the dawn of humanity to the possible future beyond the Earth. Its startling special effects still dazzle audiences. The British Film Institute polled 480 directors in 2022 and they chose “2001” as the greatest film ever made.
The immobile, calculating HAL 9000 was rated the 13th greatest villain in movie history by the American Film Institute.
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In the Mood for Love
September 29, 2000In 1962 Hong Kong, two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses.
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Tokyo Story
November 3, 1953The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don’t have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
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Citizen Kane
April 17, 1941Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
“Citizen Kane” was ranked the best film of all time in the American Film Institute's “100 Years…100 Movies” list, and it defended that title when the list was reconsidered 10 years later.
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Vertigo
May 28, 1958A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend’s wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
This classic Hitchcock story of obsession stars Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. It was cited as the greatest film ever made in the British Film Insitute’s Sight and Sound critics’ poll of 2012.
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
January 21, 1976A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.
The film does require patience. It’s just under three and a half hours and the camera never moves.
This movie was named the best of all time in the British Film Insitute's 2022 “Sight and Sound” poll.
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