Recommended Film List

A very bare list, it is not exclusive; there are ALWAYS more films to see.  I’ve tried to offer films which are historically important as well as instructive, insightful, and entertaining.  Some titles manage to be all three.  You should also check out some of the "women’s films" from the 1930s and 40s, with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, etc. (i.e. Little Foxes, Jezebel,  Mildred Pierce, etc., etc.).  Also see the work of director William Wyler, and cinematographer Gregg Toland).

SILENT FILMS

German

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919; great early film expressionism)
Nosferatu (1922, Murnau)
The Joyless Street (1924, Pabst)
Metropolis (1927, Lang)
 

U.S.

Nanook of the North (1922, Flaherty; documentary)
Greed (1924, Von Stroheim)
The Merry Widow (1925, Von Stroheim)
Gold Rush (1925, Chaplin)
Sunrise (1927, Murnau)
The General (1927, Keaton)
Tabu (1931, Murnau)
 

Soviet

Battleship Potemkin (1925, Eisenstein)
Bed and Sofa (1927, Room)
Storm Over Asia (1928, Pudovkin)
Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Vertov; documentary)
Earth (1930, Dovzhenko)
 

SOUND FILMS

Western Europe

Zéro de conduite (Vigo, 1933)
Maedchen in Uniform (1933 Sagan)
L’Atalante (1934, Vigo)
Grand Illusion (1937, Renoir)
Rules of the Game (1938, Renoir)
Beauty and the Beast (1946, Cocteau)
400 Blows (1959, Truffaut)
Breathless (1959, Godard)
La dolce vita (1960, Fellini)
La Jetée (1963, Marker)
Weekend (1964, Godard)
Persona (1968, Bergman)
Blow Up (1968, Antonioni)
Fox and his Friends (1972, Fassbinder)
Amarcord (1974, Fellini)
Padre Padrone (1977, Taviani)
Germany Pale Mother (1979, Sanders-Brahms)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, Fassbinder)
A Question of Silence (1981, Gorris)
Diva (1981, Beineix)
Paris, Texas (1984, Wenders)
Men (1985, Doerrie)
Wings of Desire (1987, Wenders)
The Pianist (2002, Polanski)
 

Latin America

Lucia (1969, Solás)
Alsino and the Condor (1983, Littín)
Man Facing Southeast (1986, Subiela)
 

U.S.

Scarface (1932, Hawks)
It Happened One Night (1934, Capra)
Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
Bringing Up Baby (1939, Hawks)
His Girl Friday (1939, Hawks)
Stagecoach (1939, Ford)
Gone with the Wind (1939, Fleming)
Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, Houston)
Meshes in the Afternoon (1943, Deren)
Double Indemnity (1944, Wilder)
My Darling Clementine (1946, Ford)
Gilda (1947, Vidor)
Out of the Past (1947, Tourneur)
Lady from Shanghai (1947, Welles)
Red River (1948, Hawks)
Macbeth (1948, Welles)
The Reckless Moment (1948, Ophuls)
They Live by Night (1949, Ray)
D.O.A. (1949, Maté)
Gun Crazy (1949, Lewis)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Wilder)
The Thing (1951, Nyby)
High Noon (1952, Zinnemann)
Invaders from Mars (1953, Menzies)
Shane (1953, Stevens)
All that Heaven Allows (1954, Sirk)
The Big Combo (1955, Lewis)
Forbidden Planet (1956, Wilcox, in cinemascope only)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Siegal)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Rebel without a Cause (1956, Ray)
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958, Fowler Jr.)
Touch of Evil (1957, Welles)
Paths of Glory (1957, Kubrik)
Dr. Strangelove (1963, Kubrik)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Penn)
The Graduate (1967, Nichols)
2001 (1967, Kubrik)
The Wild Bunch (1969, Peckinpah)
M.A.S.H (1970, Altman)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1970, Altman)
The Godfather (all 3) (1970s-80s, Coppola)
American Graffiti (1971, Lucas)
Clockwork Orange (1971, Kubrik)
The Last Picture Show (1972, Bogdanovich)
Play it Again, Sam (1972, Allen)
Mean Streets (1973, Scosese)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
The Conversation (1974, Coppola)
Network (1974, Lumet)
One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest (1975, Foreman)
Nashville (1975, Altman)
Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976, Kopple)
Annie Hall, (1976, Allen)
Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese)
Days of Heaven (1978, Malik)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)
One from the Heart (1980, Coppola)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
Zoot Suit (1981, Valdez)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, Heckerling)
Liquid Sky (1982, Tsukerman)
Repo Man (1984, Cox)
Stranger than Paradise (1984, Jarmusch)
Down by Law (1986, Jarmusch)
Working Girls (1986, Bordon)
Full Metal Jacket (1987, Kubrik)
Apartment Zero (1988, Donovan)
Do the Right Thing (1988, Lee)
House of Games (1988, Mamet)
Earth Girls Are Easy (1989, Temple)
Heathers (1989, Lehmann)
Pump Up the Volume (1989, Moyle)
Sex, lies and videotape (1989, Soderbergh)
Go Fish (1994, Troche)
One False Move (1994, Franklin)
Clueless (1995, Heckerling)
Sling Blade (1996, Thornton)
L.A. Confidential (1997, Hanson)
Smoke Signals (1998, Eyre)
The Thin Red Line (1998, Malik)
Wag the Dog (1998, Levinson)
Three Kings (1999, Russell)
Memento (2000, Nolan)
Traffic (2000, Soderbergh)
Bowling for Columbine (2002, Moore)
 
 

Hitchcock

Blackmail (1929, Hitchcock)
The Thirty Nine Steps (1935, Hitchcock)
Spellbound (1945, Hitchcock)
Notorious (1946, Hitchcock)
Rope (1949, Hitchcock)
Strangers on a Train (1952, Hitchcock)
Vertigo (1956, Hitchcock)
Rear Window (1957, Hitchcock)
North by Northwest (1959, Hitchcock)
Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
 
 

Senegal, Africa

Borom Sarret (1963, Sembéme)
Black Girl (1966, Sembéne)
Ceddo (1977, Sembéne)
 

Japanese/Chinese

Rashoman (1950, Kurosawa)
Seven Samurai (1954, Kurosawa)
Late Autumn (1960, Ozu)
Ugetsu (1976, Kurosawa)
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983, Oshima)
Ballad of Narayama (1983, Imamura)
Himatsuri (1985, Yanagimachi)
Tampopo (1986, Itami)
Red Sorghum (1988, Zhang)
 

Eastern Europe/Soviet Block

Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Wajda)
Closely Watched Trains (1966, Menzel)
An Affair of the Heart, or the Tragedy of the Switchboard Operator (1967, Makavejev)
 
 

Feminist

Bed and Sofa (1927, Room)
Maedchen in Uniform (1933, Sagan)
Meshes in the Afternoon (1943, Deren)
Gaslight (1944, Cukor)
Gilda (1947, Vidor)
The Reckless Moment (1948, Ophuls)
Black Girl (1966, Sembéne)
Germany Pale Mother (1979, Sanders-Brahms)
A Question of Silence (1981, Gorris)
Liquid Sky (1982, Tsukerman)
Men (1985, Doerrie)
Working Girls (1986, Bordon)
The Stepfather (1987, Rubin)
The Piano (1993, Campion)
Go Fish (1994, Troche)
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999, Babbit)
Real Women Have Curves (2002, Cardoso)
Bend it like Beckham (2003, Chadha)


 

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updated August 22, 2003