AFI: 100 Years... 100 Movies (2007)

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 The Godfather 1972 USA Francis Ford Coppola
3 Casablanca 1943 USA Michael Curtiz
4 Raging Bull 1980 USA Martin Scorsese
5 Singin' in the Rain 1952 USA Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
6 Gone with the Wind 1939 USA, USA Victor Fleming
7 Lawrence of Arabia 1962 UK David Lean
8 Schindler's List 1993 USA Steven Spielberg
9 Vertigo 1958 USA Alfred Hitchcock
10 The Wizard of Oz 1939 USA Victor Fleming
11 City Lights 1931 USA Charlie Chaplin
12 The Searchers 1956 USA John Ford
13 Star Wars 1977 USA, USA, USA George Lucas
14 Psycho 1960 USA Alfred Hitchcock
15 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 USA, UK Stanley Kubrick
16 Sunset Boulevard 1950 USA, USA Billy Wilder
17 The Graduate 1967 USA Mike Nichols
18 The General 1926 USA, UK Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman
19 On the Waterfront 1954 USA Elia Kazan
20 It's a Wonderful Life 1946 USA Frank Capra
21 Chinatown 1974 USA Roman Polanski
22 Some Like It Hot 1959 USA Billy Wilder
23 The Grapes of Wrath 1940 USA John Ford
24 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1982 USA Steven Spielberg
25 To Kill a Mockingbird 1962 USA, USA Robert Mulligan
26 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939 USA Frank Capra
27 High Noon 1952 USA Fred Zinnemann
28 All About Eve 1950 USA Joseph L. Mankiewicz
29 Double Indemnity 1944 USA Billy Wilder
30 Apocalypse Now 1979 USA Francis Ford Coppola
31 The Maltese Falcon 1941 USA John Huston
32 The Godfather Part II 1974 USA, USA, USA Francis Ford Coppola
33 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975 USA Miloš Forman
34 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 USA David Hand
35 Annie Hall 1977 USA Woody Allen
36 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 UK David Lean
37 The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 USA William Wyler
38 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 USA John Huston
39 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 USA, UK, UK Stanley Kubrick
40 The Sound of Music 1965 USA Robert Wise
41 King Kong 1933 USA Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
42 Bonnie and Clyde 1967 USA Arthur Penn
43 Midnight Cowboy 1969 USA John Schlesinger
44 The Philadelphia Story 1940 USA George Cukor
45 Shane 1953 USA George Stevens
46 It Happened One Night 1934 USA Frank Capra
47 A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 USA Elia Kazan
48 Rear Window 1954 USA Alfred Hitchcock
49 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages 1916 USA D.W. Griffith
50 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001 USA, New Zealand Peter Jackson
51 West Side Story 1961 USA Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins
52 Taxi Driver 1976 USA Martin Scorsese
53 The Deer Hunter 1978 USA, UK Michael Cimino
54 M*A*S*H 1970 USA Robert Altman
55 North by Northwest 1959 USA Alfred Hitchcock
56 Jaws 1975 USA Steven Spielberg
57 Rocky 1976 USA John G. Avildsen
58 The Gold Rush 1925 USA Charlie Chaplin
59 Nashville 1975 USA Robert Altman
60 Duck Soup 1933 USA Leo McCarey
61 Sullivan's Travels 1941 USA Preston Sturges
62 American Graffiti 1973 USA George Lucas
63 Cabaret 1972 USA Bob Fosse
64 Network 1976 USA Sidney Lumet
65 The African Queen 1952 USA, UK John Huston
66 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 USA Steven Spielberg
67 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966 USA Mike Nichols
68 Unforgiven 1992 USA Clint Eastwood
69 Tootsie 1982 USA Sydney Pollack
70 A Clockwork Orange 1971 USA, UK Stanley Kubrick
71 Saving Private Ryan 1998 USA Steven Spielberg
72 The Shawshank Redemption 1994 USA Frank Darabont
73 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 USA George Roy Hill
74 The Silence of the Lambs 1991 USA Jonathan Demme
75 In the Heat of the Night 1967 USA Norman Jewison
76 Forrest Gump 1994 USA Robert Zemeckis
77 All the President's Men 1976 USA, USA Alan J. Pakula
78 Modern Times 1936 USA Charlie Chaplin
79 The Wild Bunch 1969 USA Sam Peckinpah
80 The Apartment 1960 USA, USA Billy Wilder
81 Spartacus 1960 USA Stanley Kubrick
82 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927 USA F. W. Murnau
83 Titanic 1997 USA James Cameron
84 Easy Rider 1969 USA Dennis Hopper
85 A Night at the Opera 1935 USA Edmund Goulding, Sam Wood
86 Platoon 1986 USA, UK Oliver Stone
87 12 Angry Men 1957 USA Sidney Lumet
88 Bringing Up Baby 1938 USA Howard Hawks
89 The Sixth Sense 1999 USA M. Night Shyamalan
90 Swing Time 1936 USA George Stevens
91 Sophie's Choice 1982 USA, UK Alan J. Pakula
92 GoodFellas 1990 USA, USA, USA Martin Scorsese
93 The French Connection 1971 USA William Friedkin
94 Pulp Fiction 1994 USA Quentin Tarantino
95 The Last Picture Show 1971 USA Peter Bogdanovich
96 Do the Right Thing 1989 USA Spike Lee
97 Blade Runner 1982 USA, Hong Kong, UK Ridley Scott
98 Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 USA Michael Curtiz
99 Toy Story 1995 USA John Lasseter
100 Ben-Hur 1959 USA William Wyler