AFI: 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998)

The American Film Institute polled more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry to determine the 100 best American films. The list was first unveiled in 1998, then updated on its 10th anniversary in 2007.

# Film Year Country Director
1 Citizen Kane 1941 USA Orson Welles
2 Casablanca 1943 USA Michael Curtiz
3 The Godfather 1972 USA Francis Ford Coppola
4 Gone with the Wind 1939 USA, USA Victor Fleming
5 Lawrence of Arabia 1962 UK David Lean
6 The Wizard of Oz 1939 USA Victor Fleming
7 The Graduate 1967 USA Mike Nichols
8 On the Waterfront 1954 USA Elia Kazan
9 Schindler's List 1993 USA Steven Spielberg
10 Singin' in the Rain 1952 USA Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
11 It's a Wonderful Life 1946 USA Frank Capra
12 Sunset Boulevard 1950 USA, USA Billy Wilder
13 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 UK David Lean
14 Some Like It Hot 1959 USA Billy Wilder
15 Star Wars 1977 USA, USA, USA George Lucas
16 All About Eve 1950 USA Joseph L. Mankiewicz
17 The African Queen 1952 USA, UK John Huston
18 Psycho 1960 USA Alfred Hitchcock
19 Chinatown 1974 USA Roman Polanski
20 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975 USA Miloš Forman
21 The Grapes of Wrath 1940 USA John Ford
22 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 USA, UK Stanley Kubrick
23 The Maltese Falcon 1941 USA John Huston
24 Raging Bull 1980 USA Martin Scorsese
25 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982 USA Steven Spielberg
26 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 USA, UK, UK Stanley Kubrick
27 Bonnie and Clyde 1967 USA Arthur Penn
28 Apocalypse Now 1979 USA Francis Ford Coppola
29 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939 USA Frank Capra
30 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 USA John Huston
31 Annie Hall 1977 USA Woody Allen
32 The Godfather Part II 1974 USA, USA, USA Francis Ford Coppola
33 High Noon 1952 USA Fred Zinnemann
34 To Kill a Mockingbird 1962 USA, USA Robert Mulligan
35 It Happened One Night 1934 USA Frank Capra
36 Midnight Cowboy 1969 USA John Schlesinger
37 The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 USA William Wyler
38 Double Indemnity 1944 USA Billy Wilder
39 Doctor Zhivago 1965 USA, UK, Italy David Lean
40 North by Northwest 1959 USA Alfred Hitchcock
41 West Side Story 1961 USA Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins
42 Rear Window 1954 USA Alfred Hitchcock
43 King Kong 1933 USA Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
44 The Birth of a Nation 1915 USA, USA D.W. Griffith
45 A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 USA Elia Kazan
46 A Clockwork Orange 1971 USA, UK Stanley Kubrick
47 Taxi Driver 1976 USA Martin Scorsese
48 Jaws 1975 USA Steven Spielberg
49 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 USA David Hand
50 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 USA George Roy Hill
51 The Philadelphia Story 1940 USA George Cukor
52 From Here to Eternity 1953 USA Fred Zinnemann
53 Amadeus 1984 France, USA Miloš Forman
54 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930 USA Lewis Milestone
55 The Sound of Music 1965 USA Robert Wise
56 M*A*S*H 1970 USA Robert Altman
57 The Third Man 1949 UK Carol Reed
58 Fantasia 1940 USA David Hand, James Algar, Samuel Armstrong
59 Rebel Without a Cause 1955 USA Nicholas Ray
60 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 USA Steven Spielberg
61 Vertigo 1958 USA Alfred Hitchcock
62 Tootsie 1982 USA Sydney Pollack
63 Stagecoach 1939 USA John Ford
64 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 USA Steven Spielberg
65 The Silence of the Lambs 1991 USA Jonathan Demme
66 Network 1976 USA Sidney Lumet
67 The Manchurian Candidate 1962 USA, USA John Frankenheimer
68 An American in Paris 1951 USA Vincente Minnelli
69 Shane 1953 USA George Stevens
70 The French Connection 1971 USA William Friedkin
71 Forrest Gump 1994 USA Robert Zemeckis
72 Ben-Hur 1959 USA William Wyler
73 Wuthering Heights 1939 USA William Wyler
74 The Gold Rush 1925 USA Charlie Chaplin
75 Dances with Wolves 1990 USA, UK Kevin Costner
76 City Lights 1931 USA Charlie Chaplin
77 American Graffiti 1973 USA George Lucas
78 Rocky 1976 USA John G. Avildsen
79 The Deer Hunter 1978 USA, UK Michael Cimino
80 The Wild Bunch 1969 USA Sam Peckinpah
81 Modern Times 1936 USA Charlie Chaplin
82 Giant 1956 USA George Stevens
83 Platoon 1986 USA, UK Oliver Stone
84 Fargo 1996 USA, UK Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
85 Duck Soup 1933 USA Leo McCarey
86 Mutiny on the Bounty 1935 USA Frank Lloyd
87 Frankenstein 1931 USA James Whale
88 Easy Rider 1969 USA Dennis Hopper
89 Patton 1970 USA Franklin J. Schaffner
90 The Jazz Singer 1928 USA Alan Crosland
91 My Fair Lady 1964 USA George Cukor
92 A Place in the Sun 1951 USA George Stevens
93 The Apartment 1960 USA, USA Billy Wilder
94 GoodFellas 1990 USA, USA, USA Martin Scorsese
95 Pulp Fiction 1994 USA Quentin Tarantino
96 The Searchers 1956 USA John Ford
97 Bringing Up Baby 1938 USA Howard Hawks
98 Unforgiven 1992 USA Clint Eastwood
99 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967 USA Stanley Kramer
100 Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 USA Michael Curtiz