TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films

Orson Wells was 26 when he made his first feature film Citizen Kane. The film became known as one of the greatest of all time and earned him international celebrity. The story is about the publishing business and how one thrill-seeker’s struggle for power negatively affected everybody he came in contact with and eventually lead to a merciless war.

An ex-police officer is asked to follow an old friends wife who thinks she is being followed by ghosts. A classic Hitchcock about a man who’s afraid of heights and a woman he must unfortunately follow to great heights.

The highly respected and often cited milestone in Science Fiction cinema. Director Stanley Kubrick takes us into the future, into outer space and aboard a spacecraft that’s controlled by a seemingly trustworthy computer named HAL.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a comedic drama about a Parisian aristocrat. The film was released shortly before the start of World War II.

The classic star-studded film from the brilliant direction of Francis Ford Coppola tells the saga of New York mafia family’s everyday life. The film from 1972 became the new ultimate gangster film in the new Hollywood movement.

With 8 ½ Frederico Fellini leaves a self-portrait where dreams and reality are a mix. With help from a most excellent cast and unique scenery this self reflecting film is one of his master works.

The first film from director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau to be finished in the States. The film has the tangible elements of German expressionism. Murnau received a big budget from Fox and the ability to make all the filmmaking decisions. The film has been called the greatest silent film of all time.

As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.

Seven Samurai is the masterpiece from Akira Kurosawa from 1954 in which a town hires an old samurai to protect their village. A mix of action, comedy, and social drama. This epic film is an intimate look into the powerful emotions of the characters and named the greatest film in Japanese cinema history.

Hollywood's attempts to move from the 'silent' era to the 'Talkies' are not going as planned.

A lonely, ritual-obsessed 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. When one of her clients causes her to have her first-ever orgasm, her life slowly falls apart.

During the Vietnam War, the assigned mission of Captain Willard take him through some strange and seemingly impossible scenarios in the jungle of Vietnam. Little by little Willard forgets his mission’s purpose as he becomes more and more hallucinatory and starts to lose sense of reality.

Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle in this oppressive psychodrama about a Vietnam veteran who rebels against the decadence and immorality of big city life in New York while working the nightshift as a taxi driver.

A man and his son search for a stolen bicycle vital for his job.

Persona is a psychoanalytical film from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and reputed as his greatest masterpiece. The film deals with a silent actress and her relationship with her nurse who narrates her story.

In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.

A bout de Souffle is Godard’s debut film and a French classic. With this film Godard begins a new style of filming that revolutionized the film industry.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is the masterpiece from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer that depicts the story of French martyr Joan from Orleans seven years after her canonization from the catholic church.

Battleship Potemkin is the classic masterpiece silent film from director Sergej Eisenstein from 1925. The film is based on the true events of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and was a masterful example of montage editing.

Newly married couple Juliette and ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'Atalante along with the captain's first mate and a cabin boy.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

A 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.

Psycho is one of the most famous masterpieces from Hitchcock and for it’s time was unparalleled in it’s horror effect. A chilling score sets the pace for an introverted killer and a mystery thriller case of multiple dimensions. The credits for the film directed by Saul Bass were revolutionary for their time.

In ancient Japan a crime take place as told from three different travelers who have experienced the crime: a man being killed and his wife being raped. Which if any of the stories is true? A Akira Kurosawa film about morals, truth, and communication.

City Lights is the first silent film that Charlie Chaplin directed after he established himself with sound accompanied films. The film is about a penniless man who falls in love with a flower girl. The film was a great success and today is deemed a cult classic.

The 400 Blows is Francois Truffaut’s first feature film about a boy who is misunderstood by his parents causing him to leave them and enter into a life of crime. A powerful film set in Paris that gives a glimpse into Paris life of the 1950’s along with a Jazz soundtrack.

After four years of production the film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky would be banned soon after it’s release leading it to be shown only at foreign film festivals. The film is about a Russian icon painter Andrej Rubljow and the relationship of artists and their unique power.

After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

After the extraordinary success of the first Godfather film came this second saga of the New York mafia family. This mafia epic tells the story of Michael Corleone and his father Vito.

PLEASE DELETE, EXISTS ALREADY!

The 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.

An episodic romantic film, built up with many stories instead of one main plot, that ponders the voids and decadence of high society. A classic film and upon it’s first night out a scandal. The 1960 film by Federico Fellini is named the film that split up his earlier neo-realist films from the art films he did later in his career.

The 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 ...

An emotionally self-destructive boxer's journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring, destroys his life outside it.

A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

A woman disappears during a Mediterranean boating trip. But during the search, her lover and her best friend become attracted to each other.

From the atmospheric vision of Ridley Scott comes this futuristic film noir declared by many as the greatest Science Fiction movie of all time. Based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick.

Jefferies has had his leg in a cast for weeks and has nothing to do but watch his neighbors from his window. His voyeurism leads him to think that he’s witnessed a murder. Together with his girlfriend Lisa and his nurse Stella they try to solve the mystery and possibly a murder.

Director Billy Wilder is ice cold in his captivating Hollywood drama Sunset Blvd. A screenwriter begins an affair with a silent film actress who thinks she’s at the top of her field...

Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town.

An 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.

Contempt / Le Mépris is a film about filmmaking. Godard’s Masterfully staged melodrama tells of a woman’s love for a middle-class lifestyle and how a film maker must buy it for her while at the same time working as a writer for the film ‘The Odyssey’ to be directed by Fritz Lang.

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime, a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while th...

This 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.

Lawrence of Arabia is the classic film from David Lean starring Peter O’Toole and based on the autobiography from Thomas Edward Lawrence who during the first World War was on assignment by the British Empire in Arabia. The film would become a cult classic and is known today as a masterpiece.

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers. Over his wife's numerous objections, a man rises in the dead of night: he's a stalker, one of a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone to the Room, a place where one's secret hopes come true.

The General is an American silent film comedy from Buster Keaton from 1927. The film was in its time a flop yet now days is regarded as the height of silent film comedy. The film is based on events from America’s civil war.