great, great films
The great films … more or less in order … Masterworks that have impacted/influenced me in a complete and lasting way.
Persona / Ingmar Bergman, dir. (1966)
Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock, dir. (1958)
Zerkalo / Andrei Tarkovsky, dir. (1975)
L’Avventura / Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. (1960)
Rashomon / Akira Kurosawa, dir. (1950)
Dekalog / Krzysztof Kieślowski, dir. (1989)
Fa yeung nin wa / Wong Kar-Wai, dir. (2000)
2001: A Space Odyssey / Stanley Kubrick, dir. (1968)
Ordet / Carl Theodor Dreyer, dir. (1955)
Au hasard Balthazar / Robert Bresson, dir. (1966)
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Le Mépris / Jean-Luc Godard, dir. (1963)
L’année dernière à Marienbad / Alain Resnais, dir. (1961)
La double vie de Véronique / Krzysztof Kieślowski, dir. (1991)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles / Chantal Akerman, dir. (1975)
Banshun / Yasujiro Ozu, dir. (1949)
Ma nuit chez Maud / Eric Rohmer, dir. (1969)
Mulholland Dr. / David Lynch, dir. (2001)
Paris, Texas / Wim Wenders, dir. (1984)
Black Narcissus / Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, dir./writ. (1947)
Chimes at Midnight / Orson Welles, dir. (1965)
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La Jetée / Chris Marker, dir. (1962)
La Belle Noiseuse / Jacques Rivette, dir. (1991)
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes / Werner Herzog, dir. (1972)
Woman in the Dunes / Hiroshi Teshigahara, dir. (1964)
Apocalypse Now / Francis Ford Coppola, dir. (1979)
Harlan County, U.S.A. / Barbara Kopple, dir. (1976)
Ugetsu monogatari / Kenji Mizoguchi, dir. (1953)
Days of Heaven / Terrence Malick, dir. (1978)
Vivre sa vie / Jean-Luc Godard, dir. (1962)
Trois couleurs: Bleu, Blanc, Rouge / Krzysztof Kieślowski, dir. (1993-1994)
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The Night of the Hunter / Charles Laughton, dir. (1955)
Angst essen Seele auf / R. W. Fassbinder, dir. (1974)
Pather Panchali / Satyajit Ray, dir. (1955)
Spider / David Cronenberg, dir. (2002)
Pulp Fiction / Quentin Tarantino, dir. (1994)
Ikiru / Akira Kurosawa, dir. (1952)
Viridiana / Luis Buñuel, dir. (1961)
The Up Series (Seven Up! / 7 Plus Seven / 21 Up / 28 Up / 35 Up / 42 Up / 49 Up / 56 Up) / Paul Almond (Seven Up!) and Michael Apted (the other films), dir. (1964-2012)
An Angel at My Table / Jane Campion, dir. (1990)
Touch of Evil / Orson Welles, dir. (1958)
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La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / Carl Theodor Dreyer, dir. (1928)
Nattvardsgästerna / Ingmar Bergman, dir. (1963)
War Trilogy: Rome, Open City; Paisà; Germany Year Zero / Roberto Rossellini, dir. (1945, 1946, 1948)
Once upon a Time in the West / Sergio Leone, dir. (1968)
Close-up / Abbas Kiarostami, dir. (1990)
Les quatre cents coups / François Truffaut, dir. (1959)
Rear Window / Alfred Hitchcock, dir. (1954)
M / Fritz Lang, dir. (1931)
Written on the Wind / Douglas Sirk, dir. (1956)
Man with a Movie Camera / Dziga Vertov, dir. (1929)
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L’eclisse / Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. (1962)
The Exterminating Angel / Luis Buñuel, dir. (1962)
8 1/2 / Federico Fellini, dir. (1963)
A Canterbury Tale / Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, dir./writ. (1944)
Stalker / Andrei Tarkovsky, dir. (1979)
Shoah / Claude Lanzmann, dir. (1985)
Le Samouraï / Jean-Pierre Melville, dir. (1967)
Sans Soleil / Chris Marker, dir. (1982)
Breaking the Waves / Lars von Trier, dir. (1996)
Short Cuts / Robert Altman, dir. (1993)
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La battaglia di Algeri / Gillo Pontecorvo, dir. (1966)
Koyaanisqatsi / Godfrey Reggio, dir. (1982)
Picnic at Hanging Rock / Peter Weir, dir. (1975)
Andrei Rublev / Andrei Tarkovsky, dir. (1979)
The Searchers / John Ford, dir. (1956)
Shichinin no samurai / Akira Kurosawa, dir. (1954)
À bout de souffle / Jean-Luc Godard, dir. (1960)
La règle du jeu / Jean Renoir, dir. (1939)
Sullivan’s Travels / Preston Sturges, dir. (1941)
Tokyo Story / Yasujiro Ozu, dir. (1953)
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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters / Paul Schrader, dir. (1985)
Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami, dir. (2010)
L’Atalante / Jean Vigo, dir. (1934)
Short Cuts / Robert Altman, dir. (1993)
Taxi Driver / Martin Scorsese, dir. (1976)
The Gold Rush, / Charles Chaplin, dir. (1925)
Chung Hing sam lam / Wong Kar-Wai, dir. (1994)
Badlands / Terrence Malick, dir. (1973)
Lost in Translation / Sofia Coppola, dir. (2003)
Metropolis / Fritz Lang, dir. (1927)
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I Am Not Your Negro / Raoul Peck, dir. (2016)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, / Stanley Kubrick, dir. (1964)
A Man Escaped, / Robert Bresson, dir. (1956)
Pan’s Labyrinth / Guillermo del Toro, dir. (2006)
Blow-Up / Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. (1966)
Playtime / Jacques Tati, dir. (1967)
Chinatown / Roman Polanski, dir. (1974)
Citizen Kane / Orson Welles, dir. (1941)
Smultronstället / Ingmar Bergman, dir. (1957)
Imitation of Life / Douglas Sirk, dir. (1959)
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Barry Lyndon / Stanley Kubrick, dir. (1975)
Battleship Potemkin / Sergei Eisenstein, dir. (1925)
Orphée / Jean Cocteau, dir. (1950)
The Piano / Jane Campion, dir. (1993)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew / Pier Paolo Pasolini, dir. (1964)
Do the Right Thing / Spike Lee, dir. (1989)
Diary of a Country Priest / Robert Bresson, dir. (1951)
Vampyr / Carl Theodor Dreyer, dir. (1932)
Blade Runner / Ridley Scott, dir. (1982)
A Woman Under the Influence / John Cassavetes, dir. (1974)
***Lurking… So many films, so little time.
The Shining / Stanley Kubrick, dir. (1980)
The Conversation / Francis Ford Coppola, dir. (1974)
La Dolce Vita / Federico Fellini, dir. (1960)
Lawrence of Arabia / David Lean, dir. (1962)
Sunset Blvd. / Billy Wilder, dir. (1950)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest / Milos Forman, dir. (1975)
Russian Ark / Aleksandr Sokurov, dir. (2002)
The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick, dir. (2011)
Goodfellas / Martin Scorsese, dir. (1990)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / Robert Wiene, dir. (1920)
The Seventh Seal / Ingmar Bergman, dir. (1957)
No Country for Old Men / Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, dir. (2007)
Freaks / Tod Browning, dir. (1932)
Videodrome / David Cronenberg, dir. (1983)
The Third Man / Carol Reed, dir. (1949)
King Kong / Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, dirs. (1933)
Nosferatu / F.W. Murnau, dirs. (1922)
sam of the 10,000 things 
I’ve only seen 20 of these but several are now on my to do list, thank you. Did you compute the average year of production? Esp. pleased to see Ma nuit chez Maude among the lot…that movie stands out for me as a very personal one. Cheers from Berlin!
I don’t have the average. I’ll do that. I would say the 1960s is the dominant decade.
For better or worse, I am a product of the 1960s. My coming of age. That’s certainly reflected in my list. The films just after; the films just prior.
It’s an impressive list. Almost all the ones I’ve seen I like a great deal, and a number of those I haven’t seen I wish I had/would still like to. If I were picking a single Buster Keaton it would be Our Hospitality, or for short subjects Sherlock Jr. (which has the heft of a feature) but there are quite a few of his I’d include.
You haven’t intersected with the work of Ettore Scola at any time? He’s a favourite of mine and I’m sure you’d love his films. The Ruling Class? O Lucky Man!? Any of the post-Woman Under the Influence Cassavetes? (My personal favourite is Killing of a Chinese Bookie.) Also lean more to Miracle of Morgan’s Creek or The Great McGinty as a favourite Preston Sturges.
These are minor kvetches of course, and anyone’s list is bound to differ from anyone else’s. This is one of the more impressive I’ve seen. (When people on Cinema Discussions in Facebook list their ten favourite films of all time and five to seven of them are comic book blockbusters, the remainder being from the esteemed oeuvre of Adam Sandler and such, I begin to despair of the new generation.
Thanks for the note, Martin. The Great McGinty is a solid choice – as is Killing of a Chinese Bookie.