/

Ed Gonzalez: Top 10s

Slant's film editor ranks his favorite films from the silent era to the present.

Ed Gonzalez: Top 10s
Photo: Zipporah Films

This Top 10 project began as a rolling engagement on Slant Magazine’s blog in late 2005. Now the lists are collected here. All films prior to 2001—the year I started ranking films on Slant based on their U.S. theatrical release dates—go by their IMDB year. Titles in my Honorable Mention sections have been limited to 10, and the titles listed under Blind Spots are just that: films that have eluded me over the years for whatever reason. This latter section exists, without embarrassment, for two reasons: perspective (for you) and incentive (for me). The latest 20 films I’ve seen, not including any titles scheduled to be released during the current calendar year, are listed below. Any titles bumped from the Honorable Mention section to make room for a film, or any titles that are no longer “blind” but fail to make the list for their respective year, will disappear from this page without fanfare. You can follow my occasional ramblings on my Twitter feed. If you find errors on this page, feel free to shoot me a tweet, email me at [email protected], or make a comment below, where you can also shoot the shit.

Latest Seen: Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021), A Shape of Things to Come (J.P. Sniadecki and Lisa Malloy, 2020), No Time to Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021), The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Michael Showalter, 2021), Memory House (João Paulo Miranda Maria, 2020), The Fever (Maya Da-Rin, 2019), Procession (Robert Greene, 2021), Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, 2021), Spencer (Pablo Larraín, 2021), Passing (Rebecca Hall, 2021), Funny Face (Tim Sutton, 2020), Lamb (Valdimar Jóhannsson, 2021), Mass (Fran Kranz, 2021), The Beta Test (Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe, 2021), Wrath of Man (Guy Ritchie, 2021), Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021), Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021), The Two Sights (Joshua Bonnetta, 2020), Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green, 2021), Siberia (Abel Ferrara, 2020)

1910s:

1. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
2. Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919)
3. Victory (Maurice Tourneur, 1919)
4. The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)
5. Sir Arne’s Treasure (Marutiz Stiller, 1919)
6. The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjöström, 1918)
7. J’Accuse! (Abel Gance, 1919)
8. The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur, 1918)
9. Der Golem (Henrik Galeen & Paul Wegener, 1915)
10. Blind Husbands (Erich von Stroheim, 1919)

Honorable Mention: A Man There Was (Victor Sjöström), Snow White (J. Searle Dawley, 1916), Fantomas (Louis Feuillade, 1913), The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918), Praesidenten (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1919), Hell’s Hinges (Charles Swickard, 1916), The Student of Prague (Stellan Rye & Paul Wegener), Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916), Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918)

Blind Spots: Margaret Day (Victor Sjöström), A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew), In the Land of the Headhunters (Edward S. Curtis), Always Tell Your Wife (Leedham Bantock), The Wishing Ring (Maurice Tourneur), Cinderella (James Kirkwood), War Be Damned (Alfred Machin), The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille), Regeneration (Raoul Walsh), A Fool There Was (Frank Powell), Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Stuart Paton), Judex (Louis Feuillade), A Life for a Life (Yevgeni Bauer), Where Are My Children? (Phillips Smalley & Lois Weber), Civilization (Reginald Barker, Thomas H. Ince & Raymond B. West), Gretchen the Greehorn (Chester M. Franklin & Sidney Franklin), Blind Justice (Benjamin Christensen), The Merry Jail (Ernst Lubitsch), Straight Shooting (John Ford), The Fighting Gringo (John Ford), The Secret Man (John Ford), A Marked Man (John Ford), Bucking Broadway (John Ford), Joan the Woman (Cecil B. DeMille), The Little Princess (Marshall Neilan), The Poor Little Rich Girl (Maurice Tourneur), Tillie Wakes Up (Harry Davenport), Tom Sawyer (William Desmond Taylor), The Little American (Cecil B. DeMille & Joseph Levering), Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin), Stella Maris (Marshall Neilan), Hearts of the World (D.W. Griffith), Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (Marshall Neilan), Mickey (F. Richard Jones & James Young), Tarzan of the Apes (Scott Sidney), Shifting Sands (Albert Parker), Marriage a la Mode (Mauritz Stiller), South (Frank Hurley), Daddy Long Legs (Marshall Neilan), The Doll (Ernst Lubitsch), Back to God’s Country (David Hartford), True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith), Different from the Others (Richard Oswald), Eerie Tales (Richard Oswald), The Delicious Little Devil (Robert Z. Leonard), The Sentimental Bloke (Raymond Longford), When the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming & Theodore Reed), Harakiri (Fritz Lang), A Romance of Happy Valley (D.W. Griffith), Meyer from Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch), The Girl Who Stayed at Home (D.W. Griffith), The Greatest Question (D.W. Griffith), The Mother and the Law (D.W. Griffith), Madame DuBarry (Ernst Lubitsch), Don’t Change Your Husband (Cecil B. DeMille), Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille)

Advertisement

1920:

1. Monastery of Sendomir (Victor Sjöström)
2. The Penalty (Wallace Worsley)
3. The Parson’s Widow (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
4. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
5. Way Down East (D.W. Griffith)
6. The Last of the Mohicans (Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur)
7. Der Golem (Carl Boese and Paul Wegener)
8. I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch)
9. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John S. Robertson)
10. Kohlhiesel’s Daughters (Ernst Lubitsch)

Honorable Mention: Erotikon (Mauritz Stiller), Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (Ernst Lubitsch), The Toll Gate (Lambert Hillyer), The Saphead (Herbert Blaché), The Flapper (Alan Crosland), Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire (Robert Wiene), The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo), One Arabian Night (Ernst Lubitsch), Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux), The Wandering Image (Fritz Lang)

Blind Spots: Sex (Fred Niblo), Lost Atlantis (Jacques Feyder), Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille), Something New (Nell Shipman and Bert Van Tuyle), The Symbol of the Unconquered (Oscar Micheaux)

1921:

1. The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström)
2. Destiny (Fritz Lang)
3. Seven Years Bad Luck (Max Linder)
4. Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith)
4. The Kid (Charlie Chaplin)
5. The Ace of Hearts (Wallace Worsley)
6. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ignram)
7. Leaves from Satan’s Book (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
8. A Sailor-Made Man (Fred C. Newmeyer)
9. Johan (Mauritz Stiller)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Tol’able David (Henry King), Camille (Ray C. Smallwood), The Haunted Castle (F.W. Murnau), Janosik (Jaroslav Siakel), Little Lord Fauntleroy (Alfred E. Green & Jack Pickford), The Wildcat (Ernst Lubitsch), The Three Musketeers (Fred Niblo), The Sheik (George Melford)

Blind Spots: The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille), The Indian Tomb (Joe May), The Love Light (Frances Marion), The Conquering Power (Rex Ingram), My Boy (Albert Austin & Victor Heerman), Eldorado (Marcel L’Herbier), Leap Year (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle & James Cruze), The Blot (Phillips Smalley & Lois Weber), The Dark Road (F.W. Murnau), Hamlet (Sven Gade & Heinz Schall), Too Wise Wives (Lois Weber), Backstairs (Leopold Jessner & Paul Leni), Love Never Dies (King Vidor), The Adventures of Tarzan (Robert F. Hill & Scott Sidney), Dream Street (D.W. Griffith), The Nut (Theodore Reed), Miss Lulu Bett (William C. de Mille), Shattered (Lupu Pick), Jackie (John Ford), Peck’s Bad Boy (Sam Wood), Through the Back Door (Alfred E. Green & Jack Pickford), La Terre (André Antoine), Appearances (Donald Crisp), Dangerous Lies (Paul Powell), The Bonnie Brier Bush (Donald Crisp)

1922:

1. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau)
2. Foolish Wives (Erich Von Stroheim)
3. Haxan (Benjamin Christensen)
4. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
5. Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (Fritz Lang)
6. The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin)
7. Oliver Twist (Frank Lloyd)
8. Dr. Jack (Fred C. Newmeyer)
9. Burning Soil (F.W. Murnau)
10. Grandma’s Boy (Fred C. Newmeyer)

Honorable Mention: Robin Hood (Allan Dwan), The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac), Beyond the Rocks (Sam Wood), Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo), Down to the Sea in Ships (Elmer Clifton), Once Upon a Time (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Shadows (Tom Forman), Phantom (F.W. Murnau)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: Tess of the Storm Country (John S. Robertson), The Prisoner of Zenda (Rex Ingram), When Knighthood Was in Flower (Robert G. Vignola), Beauty’s Worth (Robert G. Vignola), Lorna Doone (Maurice Tourneur), Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki), Moran of the Lady Letty (George Melford), Crainquebille (Jacques Feyder), The Three Must-Get-Theres (Max Linder), Manslaughter (Cecil B. DeMille), The Young Rajah (Phil Rosen), The Primitive Lover (Sidney Franklin)

1923:

1. Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)
2. The Faithful Heart (Jean Epstein)
3. La Roue (Abel Gance)
4. Crime and Punishment (Robert Wiene)
5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley)
6. The Pilgrim (Charlie Chaplin)
7. Why Worry? (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)
8. Souls for Sale (Rupert Hughes)
9. Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone & Buster Keaton)
10. A Woman of Paris (Charlie Chaplin)

Honorable Mention: Three Ages (Buster Keaton), The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille), Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison), The Extra Girl (F. Richard Jones), White Tiger (Tod Browning)

Blind Spots: Salome (Charles Bryant), Scaramouche (Rex Ingram), Souls for Sale (Rupert Hughes), Little Old New York (Sidney Olcott), The Covered Wagon (James Cruze), The Net (J. Gordon Edwards), The Shock (Lambert Hillyer), Fire on Board (Victor Sjöström), Merry-Go-Round (Rupert Julian), The White Rose (D.W. Griffith), The White Sister (Henry King), The Treasure (G.W. Pabst), Adam’s Rib (Cecil B. DeMille), The Red Inn (Jean Epstein), Woman to Woman (Graham Cutts), Anna Christie (John Griffith Wray), Gunnar Hede’s Saga (Mauritz Stiller)

1924:

1. Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
2. Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
3. Kinoglaz (Dziga Vertov)
4. The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau)
5. He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjöström)
6. The Hands of Orlac (Robert Wiene)
7. Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang)
8. Waxworks (Paul Leni)
9. The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh)
10. Michael (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch), The Saga of Gosta Berling (Mauritz Stiller), The Navigator (Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton), The Chechahcos (Lewis S. Moomaw)

Blind Spots: Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor), Aelita (Yakov Protazanov), The Iron Horse (John Ford), Hot Water (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor), Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon), The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov), The Red Lily (Fred Niblo), America (D.W. Griffith), Manhandled (Allan Dwan), The Sea Hawk (Frank Lloyd), The New Enchantment (Marcel L’Herbier), The Beautiful Rebel (E. Mason Hopper), Finances of the Grand Duke (F.W. Murnau), Isn’t Life Wonderful (D.W. Griffith), Forbidden Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch), Beau Brummel (Harry Beaumont), Helen’s Babies (William A. Seiter), Romola (Henry King), Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott), The Cigarette Girl from Moscow (Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky), Open All Night (Paul Bern), Helen of Troy (Manfred Noa), Captain January (Edward F. Cline), Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (Marshall Neilan), The Enchanted Cottage (John S. Robertson), The Age of Innocence (Wesley Ruggles), The Prude’s Fall (Graham Cutts), Backbiters (Albert Dieudonné and Jean Renoir), Name the Man (Victor Sjöström)

1925:

1. Go West (Buster Keaton)
2. Battleship Potemkin (Grigori Aleksandrov & Sergei Eisenstein)
3. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein)
4. The Freshman (Fred C. Newmayer & Sam Taylor)
5. Lazybones (Frank Borzage)
6. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
7. The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin)
8. Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst)
9. Sally of the Sawdust (D.W. Griffith)
10. Grass (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: The Unholy Three (Tod Browning), The Merry Widow (Erich Von Stroheim), The Big Parade (King Vidor), Whirlpool of Fate (Jean Renoir), Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch), The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian), Master of the House (Carl Theodor Dreyer), The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt), The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock), The Plastic Age (Wesley Ruggles)

Blind Spots: Verité (Ewald André Dupont), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Fred Niblo), The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt), The Eagle (Clarence Brown), The Rag Man (Edward F. Cline), The Monster (Roland West), Braveheart (Alan Hale), The Vanishing American (George B. Seitz), Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina), Zander the Great (George W. Hill), Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown)

1926:

1. A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
2. Faust (F.W. Murnau)
3. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger)
4. The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström)
5. Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau)
6. Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
7. Moana (Robert J. Flaherty)
8. The Battling Butler (Buster Keaton)
9. Nana (Jean Renoir)
10. The Black Pirate (Albert Parker)

Honorable Mention: Secrets of the Soul (G.W. Pabst), Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown), The Temptress (Fred Niblo), The Show Off (Malcolm St. Clair), Three Bad Men (John Ford)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: La Boheme (King Vidor), For Heaven’s Sake (Sam Taylor), The Strong Man (Frank Capra), So’s Your Old Man (Gregory La Cava), So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch), The Black Pirate (Albert Parker), Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice), Sparrows (William Beaudine), Tell It to the Marines (George W.Hill), Don Juan (Alan Crosland), Torrent Monta Bell), The Holy Mountain (Arnold Fanck), Carmen (Jacques Feyder), Brown of Harvard (Jack Conway), The Bat (Roland West), The Boob (William A. Wellman), Nana (Jean Renoir), Exit Smiling (Sam Taylor), The Blackbird (Tod Browning), The Student of Prague (Henrik Galeen), What Price Glory (Raoul Walsh), Beau Geste (Herbert Brenon), Mantrap (Victor Fleming), By the Law (Lev Kuleshov)

1927:

1. Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
2. Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage)
3. Hindle Wakes (Maurice Elvey)
4. The Unknown (Tod Browning)
5. The General (Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton)
6. October (Grigori Aleksandrov & Sergei Eisenstein)
7. The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)
8. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann)
9. The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst)
10. Napoleon (Abel Gance)

Honorable Mention: Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack), Metropolis (Fritz Lang), College (James W. Horne), Downhill (Alfred Hitchcock), The Kid Brother (J.A. Howe & Ted Wilde), The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni), The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch), The Beloved Rogue (Alan Crosland), The Girl With the Hat Box (Boris Barnet)

Blind Spots: It (Clarence G. Badger), The King of Kings (Cecil B. DeMille), My Best Girl (Sam Taylor), The End of St. Petersberg (Vsevolod Pudovkin & Mikhail Doller), Love (Edmund Goulding), Underworld (Josef von Sternberg), Two Arabian Nights (Lewis Milestone), The Love of Sunya (Albert Parker), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harry A. Pollard)

Advertisement

1928:

1. The Crowd (King Vidor)
2. The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
4. The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick)
5. The Wind (Victor Sjöström)
6. Lonesome (Pál Fejös)
7. Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
8. The Docks of New York (Josef Von Sternberg)
9. Show People (King Vidor)
10. Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh)

Honorable Mention: Street Angel (Frank Borzage), The Last Command (Josef Von Sternberg), Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon), West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning), The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim), The Circus (Charlie Chaplin), Beggars of Life (William A. Wellman), Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin), Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner), and The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)

Blind Spots: The Farmer’s Wife (Alfred Hitchcock), Noah’s Ark (Michael Curtiz), Sex in Chains (William Dieterle), White Shadows in the South Seas (W.S. Van Dyke), Four Sons (John Ford), Across to Singapore (William Nigh), The Battle of the Sexes (D.W. Griffith), Hangman’s House (John Ford), The Divine Woman (Victor Sjöström), The Matinee Idol (Frank Capra), West Point (Edward Sedgwick), The Garden of Eden (Lewis Milestone), White Shadows in the South Seas (W.S. Van Dyke)

1929:

1. The Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
2. Diary of a Lost Girl (G.W. Pabst)
3. Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst)
4. The General Line (Grigori Aleksandrov & Sergei Eisenstein)
5. Asphalt (Joe May)
6. Coconauts (Robert Florey & Joseph Stantley)
7. Piccadilly (E.W. Dupont)
8. The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)
9. Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick & Buster Keaton)
9. Blackmail (Alred Hitchcock)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim), Hallelujah (King Vidor), Applause (Rouben Mamoulian), The Woman in the Moon (Fritz Lang), The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner), The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock), The Great Gabbo (James Cruze & Erich von Stroheim), Our Modern Maidens (Jack Conway).

Blind Spots: Dans La Nuit (Charles Vanel), Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch), The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan), The Kiss (Jacques Feyder), The Virginian (Victor Fleming), Bulldog Drummond (F. Richard Jones), White Hell of Pitz Palu (Arnold Fanck & G.W. Pabst), The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner), Dynamite (Cecil B. DeMille), The Mysterious Island (Lucien Hubbard, Benjamin Christensen & Maurice Tourneur), Their Own Desire (E. Mason Hopper), The Thirteenth Chair (Tod Browning), Wild Orchids (Sidney Franklin), Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman & Malcolm St. Clair), Untamed (Jack Conway), The Single Standard (John S. Robertson), Rio Rita (Luther Reed), The Canary Murder Case (Malcolm St. Clair & Frank Tuttle)

1930:

1. Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
2. The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau)
3. L’ Age D’Or (Luis Buñuel)
4. Under the Roofs of Paris (Rene Clair)
5. City Girl (F.W. Murnau)
6. Morocco (Josef Von Sternberg)
7. Westfront 1918 (G.W. Pabst)
8. The Blue Angel (Josef Von Sternberg)
9. All Quiet On the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
10. Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman)

Honorable Mention: Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch), Min and Bill (George W. Hill), Hell’s Angels (Howard Hughes), Anna Christie (Clarence Brown), Free and Easy (Edward Sedgwick), Our Blushing Brides (Harry Beaumont), Prix de Beaute (Augusto Genina)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: Salt for Svanetia (Mikheil Kalatozishvili), People on Sunday (Kurt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Fred Zinnemann), The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor and Cyril Gardner), The Devil to Pay! (George Fitzmaurice), Holiday (Edward H. Griffith), The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh)

1931:

1. M (Fritz Lang)
2. Stolen Heaven (George Abbott)
3. Tabu (F.W. Murnau)
4. The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
5. Frankenstein (James Whale)
6. Le Million (Rene Clair)
7. The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman)
8. Dishonored (Josef Von Sternberg)
9. Kameradschaft (G.W. Pabst)
10. Man of the World (Edward Goodman & Richard Wallace)

Honorable Mention: The Last Flight (William Dieterle), La Chienne (Jean Renoir), The Front Page (Lewis Milestone), Monkey Business (Norman Z. McLeod), This Modern Age (Nick Grinde), À Nous la Liberté (Rene Clair), Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy), The Champ (King Vidor), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian), City Lights (Charlie Chaplin)

Blind Spots: Tokyo Chorus (Yasujirô Ozu), The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra), Hippolyt, the Lackey (Steve Sekely), Limite (Mario Peixoto), Girls in Uniform (Leontine Sagan), Marius (Alexander Korda & Marcel Pagnol), The Black Camel (Hamilton MacFadden), Emil and the Detectives (Gerhard Lamprecht), Erik Charell (Congress Dances), Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra), Laugh and Get Rich (Gregory La Cava), Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman), Other Men’s Women (William A. Wellman), Berlin Alexanderplatz (Piel Jutzi), Girls About Town (George Cukor)

Advertisement

1932:

1. Freaks (Tod Browning)
2. Blonde Venus (Josef Von Sternberg)
3. Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir)
4. ¡Que viva México! (Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei Eisenstein)
5. Red Dust (Victor Fleming)
6. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)
7. Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)
8. Rain (Lewis Milestone)
9. If I Had a Million (Lots of People)
10. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy)

Honorable Mention: Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding), One Hour With You (George Cukor and Ernst Lubistch), I Was Born, But… (Yasujirô Ozu), Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Shanghai Express (Josef Von Sternberg), Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy), The Old Dark House (James Whale), A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage), So Big! (William A. Wellman), Number Seventeen (Alfred Hitchcock)

Blind Spots: Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle), Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille), This Is the Night (Frank Tuttle). and Doctor X (Michael Curtiz)

1933:

1. Hallelujah I’m a Bum (Lewis Milestone)
2. Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
3. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)
4. Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo)
5. Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch)
6. Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter)
7. The Invisible Man (James Whale)
8. Liebelei (Max Ophüls)
9. Secrets (Frank Borzage)
10. The Private Life of Henvy VIII (Alexander Korda)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy), Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu), 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon), Ever in My Heart (Archie Mayo), Passing Fancy (Yasujirô Ozu), Lady for a Day (Frank Capra), The Devil’s Brother (Hal Roach & Charley Rogers), Baby Face (Alfred E. Green), I’m No Angel (Wesley Ruggles), Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner)

Blind Spots: Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage), The Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz), Picture Snatcher (Lloyd Bacon), Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton), Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon), The Good Companions (Victor Saville), Only Yesterday (John Stahl), The Silver Cord (John Cromwell), The Stranger’s Return (King Vidor), Our Betters (George Cukor), Hello, Sister (Eric Von Stroheim), Bed of Roses (Gregory La Cava), Heroes for Sale (William A. Wellman), The Water Magician (Kenji Mizoguchi), Wild Boys of the Road (William A. Wellman)

1934:

1. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
2. The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer)
3. Three Songs of Lenin (Dziga Vertov)
4. Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl)
5. Liliom (Fritz Lang)
6. Man of Aran (Robert J. Flaherty)
7. The Scarlet Empress (Josef Von Sternberg)
8. It’s a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod)
9. Six of a Kind (Leo McCarey)
10. The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch)

Honorable Mention: We’re Not Dressing (Norman Taurog), You’re Telling Me! (Erle C. Kenton), Judge Priest (John Ford), Our Daily Bread (King Vidor), It Happened One Night (Frank Capra), The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke), Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks), The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich), The Story of the Floating Weeds (Yasujirô Ozu), Sadie McKee (Clarence Brown)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock), Hips Hips Hooray! (Mark Sandrich), No Greater Glory (Frank Borzage), Mills of the Gods (Roy William Neill), One More River (James Whale), Death Takes a Holiday (Mitchell Leisen), Murder at the Vanities (Mitchell Leisen), La Signora di Tutti (Max Ophüls), The Lost Patrol (John Ford), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin), Fog Over Frisco (William Dieterle), The Count of Monte Cristo (Rowland V. Lee), 6 Day Bike Rider (Lloyd Bacon), Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage), Plunder of Peach and Plum (Ying Yunwei)

1935:

1. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
2. The Informer (John Ford)
3. The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. A Night at the Opera (Edmund Goulding & Sam Wood)
5. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
6. Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor)
7. Roberta (William A. Seiter)
8. The Devil Is a Woman (Josef Von Sternberg)
9. Peter Ibbetson (Henry Hathaway)
10. Toni (Jean Renoir)

Honorable Mention: The Good Fairy (William Wyler), Top Hat (Mark Sandrich), Mad Love (Karl Freund), Goin’ to Town (Alexander Hall), Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen), Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown), The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle), Man on the Flying Trapeze (Clyde Bruckman & W.C. Fields), Alice Adams (George Stevens), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Dieterle & Max Reinhardt)

Blind Spots: The Raven (Lew Landers), Four Hours to Kill! (Mitchell Leisen), ’G’ Men (William Keighley), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway), Lucrezia Borgia (Abel Gance), The Ghost Goes West (René Clair), The Phantom Light (Michael Powell), Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown), Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder), The Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley), No More Ladies (Edward H. Griffith & George Cukor), The Whole Town’s Talking (John Ford), Naughty Marietta (Robert Z. Leonard & W.S. Van Dyke), The Black Room (Roy William Neill), Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)

Advertisement

1936:

1. Fury (Fritz Lang)
2. Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. Desire (Frank Borzage)
4. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir)
5. The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo)
6. Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. The Only Son (Yasujirô Ozu)
8. My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
9. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin)
10. Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu)

Honorable Mention: Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies), Dodsworth (William Wyler), Libeled Lady (Jack Conway), Swing Time (George Stevens), Dracula’s Daughter (Lambert Hillyer), Camille (George Cukor), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra), Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock), The Devil-Doll (Tod Browning), The Milky Way (Leo McCarey)

Blind Spots: They Were Five (Julien Duvivier), It’s Love Again (Victor Saville), Cesar (Marcel Pagnol), The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Lothar Mendes), The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir), Show Boat (James Whale), Woman of Osaka (Kenji Mizoguchi), Mary of Scotland (John Ford), After the Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke), The Plainsman (Cecile B. DeMille), Craig’s Wife (Dorothy Arzner), San Francisco (W.S. Van Dyke), These Three (William Wyler), Mayerling (Anatole Litvak), The Garden of Allah (Richard Boleslawski), Come and Get It (Howard Hawks and William Wyler), Three Godfathers (Richard Boleslawski), The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks), Small Town Girl (William A. Wellman), Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry)

1937:

1. Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
2. Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
3. You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang)
4. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
5. Stage Door (Gregory La Cava)
6. Mannequin (Frank Borzage)
7. Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier)
8. Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock)
9. Stella Dallas (King Vidor)
10. The Hurricane (John Ford)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Lots of People), History Is Made at Night (Frank Borzage), The Last of Mrs. Cheney (Richard Boleslawski), Topper (Norman Z. McLeod), Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman), Way Out West (James W. Horne), A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman), It’s Love I’m After (Archie Mayo), Shall We Dance (Mark Sandrich), A Day at the Races (Sam Wood)

Blind Spots: Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka), Dick Tracy (Alan James & Ray Taylor), Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen), Bizarre, Bizarre (Marcel Carné), Life Dances On (Julien Duvivier), Oh, Mr. Porter! (Marcel Varnel), Angel (Ernst Lubitsch), Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen), Regain (Marcel Pagnol), To New Shores (Douglas Sirk), They Won’t Forget (Mervyn LeRoy), Confession (Joe May), The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell), Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford)

1938:

1. The Human Beast (Jean Renoir)
2. Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz)
3. Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev)
4. The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné)
6. The Citadel (King Vidor)
7. Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl)
8. The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu)
9. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)
10. You Can’t Take It With You (Frank Capra)

Honorable Mention: The Baker’s Wife (Marcel Pagnol), Block-Heads (John G. Blystone), Room Service (William A. Seiter), Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard), Swiss Miss (John G. Blystone), Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938), The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding), La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir), Boys’ School (Christian-Jaque), The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (Mark Donskoy)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: Mad About Music (Norman Taurog), Mars Attacks the World (Ford Beebe and Robert F. Hill), Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carné), Ask a Policeman (Marcel Varnel), The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason), King of Alcatraz (Robert Florey), The Shopworn Angel (H.C. Potter), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Norman Taurog), The Shining Hour (Frank Borzage), Joy of Living (Tay Garnett), Sidewalks of London (Tim Whelan), A Slight Case of Murder (Lloyd Bacon)

1939:

1. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
2. Stagecoach (John Ford)
3. The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh)
4. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi)
5. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
6. The Women (George Cukor)
7. Daybreak (Marcel Carne)
8. The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
9. Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming)
10. Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding)

Honorable Mention: Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford), Midnight (Mitchell Leisen), The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding), Each Dawn I Die (William Keighley), Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch), Love Affair (Leo McCarey), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra), Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock), Destry Rides Again (George Marshall)

Blind Spots: The Four Feathers (Zoltan Korda), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred L. Werker), Beau Geste (William Wellman), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle), and The Spy in Black (Michael Powell)

Advertisement

1940:

1. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
2. Christmas in July (Preston Sturges)
3. Pinocchio (Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen)
4. The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline)
5. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
6. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
7. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
8. Rebecca (Alred Hitchcock)
9. Fantasia (Lots of People)
10. Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)

Honorable Mention: My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline), Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy), The Sea Hawk (Micharl Curtiz), A Chump at Oxford (Alfred J. Goulding), They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh), The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell and Tim Whelan), The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall), The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin), The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges), The Long Voyage Home (John Ford)

Blind Spots: Stranger on the Third Floor (Boris Ingster), You’re Missing the Point (Juan Bustillo Oro), The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage), Strange Cargo (Frank Borzage), Edison, the Man (Clarence Brown), City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak), Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen), The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed), Murder Over New York (Harry Lachman), Contraband (Michael Powell), Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (John Cromwell), Santa Fe Trail (Michael Curtiz), Northwest Passage (King Vidor), Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor), I Love You Again (W.S. Van Dyke), Torrid Zone (William Keighley), Escape (Mervyn LeRoy), Primrose Path (Gregory La Cava), From Mayerling to Sarajevo (Max Ophüls)

1941:

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges)
3. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)
4. How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
5. Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen)
6. The Little Foxes (William Wyler)
7. Hellzapoppin (H.C. Potter)
8. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
9. Man Hunt (Fritz Lang)
10. 49th Parallel (Michael Powell)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu), The Maltese Falcon (John Huston), Sergeant York (Howard Hawks), Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen), High Sierra (Raoul Walsh), The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi), Meet John Doe (Frank Capra), Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock), The Shanghai Gesture (Josef Von Sternberg), I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone)

Blind Spots: Swamp Water (Jean Renoir), H.M Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor), Dead Men Tell (Harry Lachman), A Woman’s Face (George Cukor), The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz), Smilin’ Through (Frank Borzage), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F. Cline), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming), Manpower (Raoul Walsh), Adventures of Captain Marvel (John English & William Witney), It Started With Eve (Henry Koster)

1942:

1. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
2. To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
3. The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
4. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)
5. The Talk of the Town (George Stevens)
6. Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle)
8. Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy)
9. There Was a Father (Yasujirô Ozu)
10. Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper)

Honorable Mention: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz), The Glass Key (Stuart Heisler), Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh), Son of Fury (John Cromwell), Reap the Wild Wind (Cecil B. DeMille), In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean), In This Our Life (John Huston), Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich), I Married a Witch (René Clair), Reunion in France (Jules Dassin)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Liesen), The Pied Piper (Irving Pichel), Once Upon a Honeymoon (Leo McCarey), My Sister Eileen (Alexander Hall), Johnny Eager (Mervyn LeRoy), The Major and the Minor (Billy Wilder), Road to Morocco (David Butler), My Favorite Blonde (Sidney Lanfield), For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley), The Lady is Willing (Mitchell Liesen), The Black Swan (Henry King), All Through the Night (Vincent Sherman), Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming), The Devil’s Envoys (Marcel Carne), Castle in the Desert (Harry Lachman), Pardon My Sarong (Erle C. Kenton)

1943:

1. The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur)
2. Hangmen Also Die (Fritz Lang)
3. The Ow-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman)
4. Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
6. The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson)
7. Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
8. Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
9. Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
10. Sahara (Zoltan Korda)

Honorable Mention: Ghost Ship (Mark Robson), Stormy Weather (Andrew L. Stone), Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli), Old Acquaintance (Vincent Sherman), Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch), So Proudly We Hail! (Mark Sandrich), The More the Merrier (George Stevens), Guadalcanal Diary (Lewis Seiler), Air Force (Howard Hawks), Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings)

Blind Spots: This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir), Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder), Mr. Lucky (H.C. Potter), Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone), Girl Crazy (Norman Taurog & Busby Berkeley), Hitler’s Children (Edward Dmytryk), The Desperados (Charles Vidor), The Gang’s All Here (Busby Berkeley), The Hard Way (Vincent Sherman), A Night to Remember (Richard Wallace), Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler), Munchhausen (Josef von Báky)

Advertisement

1944:

1. Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang)
2. Dark Waters (Andre de Toth)
3. Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges)
5. The Children are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica)
6. Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak)
7. The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise)
8. Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
9. Laura (Otto Preminger)
10. To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)

Honorable Mention: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli), Henry V (Laurence Olivier), Mr. Skeffington (Vincent Sherman), Going My Way (Leo McCarey), Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra), The Scarlet Claw (Roy William Neill), Gaslight (George Cukor), Since You Went Away (John Cromwell), Jane Eyre (Robert Stevensen)

Blind Spots: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges), The Suspect (Robert Siodmak), The Great Moment (Preston Sturges), Frenchman’s Creek (Mitchell Leisen), Youth Runs Wild (Mark Robson), Bluebeard (Edgar G. Ulmer), Torment (Alf Sjöberg), Mademoiselle Fifi (Robert Wise), The Sullivans (Lloyd Bacon), An American Romance (King Vidor), Block Busters (Wallace Fox), The Uninvited (Lewis Allen), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (Mervyn LeRoy)

1945:

1. Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang)
2. Brief Encounter (David Lean)
3. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné)
4. The Southerner (Jean Renoir)
5. Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl)
6. The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang)
7. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
8. Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer)
9. Open City (Roberto Rossellini)
10. Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: My Name Is Julia (Joseph H. Lewis), I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945), Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcani, Charles Crichton, Basi Dearden & Robert Hamer), Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder), Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger), The Enchanted Cottage (John Cromwell), Love Letters (William Dieterle), The House on 92nd Street (Henry Hathaway)

Blind Spots: And Then There Were None (René Clair), The White Gorilla (H.L. Fraser), They Were Expendable (John Ford), Murder, He Says (George Marshall), Wonder Man (H. Bruce Humberstone), A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone), The Story of G.I. Joe (William A. Wellman), The Corn Is Green (Irving Rapper), Objective, Burma! (Raoul Walsh)

1946:

1. Shoeshine (Vittorio de Sica)
2. My Darling Clementine (John Ford)
3. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)
4. Great Expectations (David Lean)
5. Paisan (Roberto Rossellini)
6. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett)
8. Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau)
9. Gilda (Charles Vidor)
10. Bedlam (Mark Robson)

Honorable Mention: Decoy (Jack Bernhard), Humoresque (Jean Negulesco), Duel in the Sun (King Vidor), The Razor’s Edge (Edmund Goulding), A Scandal in Paris (Douglas Sirk), No Regrets For Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa), The Stranger (Orson Welles), The Killers (Richard Siodmak), Tomorrow is Forever (Irving Pichel), Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: Murders Among Us (Wolfgang Staudte), The Kid from Brooklyn (Norman Z. McLeod), Dangerous Money (Terry O. Morse), Dear Alibi (Phil Karlson), I See a Dark Stranger (Frank Launder)

1947:

1. Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger)
2. Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin)
3. Quai des Orfevres (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
4. The Record of a Tenament Gentleman (Yasujirô Ozu)
5. Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)
6. The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
7. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
8. Pursued (Raoul Walsh)
9. Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding)
10. Brute Force (Jules Dassin)

Honorable Mention: Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway), Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt), Railroaded! (Anthony Mann), They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti), Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk), Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan), Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (John Rawlins), The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock), Born to Kill (Robert Wise), Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)

Blind Spots: The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir), Mad Wednesday (Preston Sturges), The Fugitive (John Ford), The Red House (Delmer Daves), Desperate (Anthony Mann), Lured (Douglas Sirk), The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz), Pitfall! (Andre de Toth), Boomerang! (Elia Kazan), Brighton Rock (John Boulting), Angel and the Badman (James Edward Grant), A Double Life (George Cukor), The Bishop’s Wife (Henry Koster), Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (Stuart Heisler), Ride the Pink Horse (Robert Montgomery)

Advertisement

1948:

1. Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle)
2. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls)
3. The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica)
4. Red River (Howard Hawks)
5. Moonrise (Frank Borzage)
6. Berlin Express (Jacques Tourneur)
7. Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
8. Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
9. Oliver Twist (David Lean)
10. The Boy With the Green Hair (Joseph Losey)

Honorable Mention: They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray), Raw Deal (Anthony Mann), The Naked City (Jules Dassin), The Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang), The Big Clock (John Farrow), The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed), Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston), The Street With No Name (William Keighley), La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)

Blind Spots: Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mui), Fort Apache (John Ford), Hen in the Wind (Yasujirô Ozu)

1949:

1. Beyond the Forest (King Vidor)
2. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
3. White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
4. The Great Madcap (Luis Buñuel)
5. Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin)
6. Holiday (Jacque Tati)
7. The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls)
8. Caught (Max Ophüls)
9. Whirlpool (Otto Preminger)
10. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)

Advertisement

Honorable Mention: Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann), On the Town (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly), Adam’s Rib (George Cukor), I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks), The Big Steal (Don Siegel), Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick), Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis), House of Strangers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Border Incident (Anthony Mann), and Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)

Blind Spots: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford), Le Silence de la Mer (Jean-Pierre Melville), The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson), Champion (Mark Robson), The Secret Garden (Fred M. Wilcox), Home of the Brave (Mark Robson), Yellow Sky (William A. Wellman), Madame Bovary (Vincente Minnelli), Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh), Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak), The Small Back Room (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger), Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown), The Set-Up (Robert Wise), The Window (Ted Tetzlaff), The Hasty Heart (Vincent Sherman), Battleground (William A. Wellman)

1950:

1. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
2. Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini)
3. Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel)
4. Side Street (Anthony Mann)
5. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
6. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder)
7. Night and the City (Jules Dassin)
8. Winchester ’73 (Anthony Mann)
9. Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger)
10. La Ronde (Max Ophüls)

Honorable Mention: Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan), House by the River (Fritz Lang), Try and Get Me! (The Sound and the Fury) (Cy Endfield), Orpheus (Jean Cocteau), Outrage (Ida Lupino), The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini), Caged (John Cromwell), The Damned Don’t Cry (Vincent Sherman), The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston), All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Advertisement

Blind Spots: Scandal (Akira Kurosawa), The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz), So Long at the Fair (Antony Darnborough and Terence Fisher), Last Holiday (Henry Koss), No Man Of Her Own (Mitchell Leisen), The Munekata Sisters (Yasujirô Ozu), The Gunfighter (Henry King)

1951:

1. The Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller)
2. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder)
3. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise)
4. Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica)
5. The Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
6. The Tall Target (Anthony Mann)
7. Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
8. The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton)
9. A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan)
10. A Place in the Sun (George Stevens)

Honorable Mention: Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman), The River (Jean Renoir), The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick), Susana (Luis Buñuel), Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller), Alice in Wonderland (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske), Hard, Fast and Beautiful (Ida Lupino), Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur), He Ran All the Way (John Berry)

Blind Spots: The Prowler (Joseph Losey), Detective Story (William Wyler), His Kind of Woman (John Farrow), The Red Badge of Courage (John Huston), Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen)

Advertisement

1952:

1. The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
2. Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica)
3. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray)
4. Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls)
5. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Orson Welles)
6. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen)
7. Limelight (Charlie Chaplin)
8. The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray)
9. The Marrying Kind (George Cukor)
10. Casque d’Or (Jacques Becker)

Honorable Mention: Mexican Bus Ride (Luis Buñuel), Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa), The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli), Waiting Women (Ingmar Bergman), Okasan (Mikio Naurse), The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer), Forbidden Games (Rene Clement), Sudden Fear (David Miller), The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Yasujirô Ozu), Monkey Business (Howard Hawks), and A Woman Without Love (Luis Buñuel)

Blind Spots: The White Reindeer (Erik Blomberg), The Little World of Don Camillo (Julien Duvivier), The Card (Ronald Neame), Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed), Pat and Mike (George Cukor), Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson), 5 Fingers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Europa ’51 (Roberto Rossellini), Fanfan la Tulipe (Christian-Jaque), The Overcoat (Alberto Lattuada), Ruby Gentry (King Vidor)

1953:

1. Él (Luis Buñuel)
2. Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. I Confess (Alred Hitchcock)
4. The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
5. Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
6. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati)
7. Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
8. Tokyo Story (Yasujirô Ozu)
9. It Came from Outer Space (Jack Arnold)
10. The Bigamist (Ida Lupino)

Honorable Mention: The Moon is Blue (Otto Preminger, Madame de… (Max Ophüls), The Brute (Luis Buñuel), The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino), The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann), The Glass Web (Jack Arnold), The Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks), A Geisha (Kenji Mizoguchi), Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman)

Blind Spots: The Cruel Sea (Charles Frend), I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini), The Actress (George Cukor), Genevieve (Henry Cornelius), Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney), Beat the Devil (John Huston), Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies), Take Me to Town (Douglas Sirk), All I Desire (Douglas Sirk), Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel & Ruth Orkin)

1954:

1. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
2. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
4. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
5. Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
6. Wuthering Heights (Luis Buñuel)
7. Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk)
8. Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Luis Buñuel)
9. Black Tuesday (Hugo Fregonese)
10. Crime Wave (Andre de Toth)

Honorable Mention: On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan), Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger), Sound of the Mountain (Mikio Naruse), La Strada (Federico Fellini), The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Dial M For Murder (Alfred Hitchcock), Them! (Gordon Douglas), Godzilla (Ishirô Honda), Senso (Luchino Visconti), Illusion Travels by Streetcar (Luis Buñuel)

Blind Spots: Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse), The Tale of the Crucified Lovers (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Woman in the Rumor (Kenji Mizoguchi), Riot in Cell Block 11 (Don Siegel), Apache (Robert Aldrich), It Should Happen to You (George Cukor), Sleeping Tiger (Joseph Losey), Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel), Taza, Son of Cochise (Douglas Sirk), Susan Slept Here (Frank Tashlin), Suddenly (Lewis Allen), An Inspector Calls (Guy Hamilton), Rogue Cop (Roy Rowland), Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich), Salt of the Earth (Herbert J. Biberman)

1955:

1. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
2. The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Luis Buñuel)
3. All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk)
4. Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray)
5. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich)
6. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman)
7. Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
8. Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse)
9. Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
10. Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles)

Honorable Mention: The Man with the Golden Arm (Otto Preminger), Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray), The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis), Lola Montès (Max Ophüls), Rififi (Jules Dassin), Bob le Fambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville), Summertime (David Lean), The Phenix City Story (Phil Carlson), Dreams (Ingmar Bergman), and House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller)

Blind Spots: Captain Lightfoot (Douglas Sirk), Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni), Les Grandes Manoeuvres (Rene Clair), The Indian Fighter (Andre de Toth), Murder is My Beat (Edgar G. Ulmer), Tales of the Taira Clan (Kenji Mizoguchi), Man Without a Star (King Vidor), Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin), Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann), We’re No Angels (Michael Curtiz), My Sister Eileen (Richard Quine), Stella (Michael Cacoyannis), It’s Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly), The African Lion (James Algar), Marcelino Pan y Vino (Ladislao Vajda), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson), To Hell and Back (Jesse Hibbs), Richard III (Laurence Olivier), The Long Gray Line (John Ford), Run for Cover (Nicholas Ray)

1956:

1. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
2. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
3. The Searchers (John Ford)
4. The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
6. While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang)
7. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
8. The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa)
9. La Pointe Courte (Agnès Varda)
10. Autumn Leaves (Robert Aldrich)

Honorable Mention: Street of Shame (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Killer Is Loose (Budd Boetticher), The Killing (Stanley Kubrick), Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson), Death in the Garden (Luis Buñuel), The Girl Can’t Help It (Frank Tashlin), Calle Mayor (Juan Antonio Bardem), Slightly Scarlet (Allan Dwan), Baby Doll (Elia Kazan)

Blind Spots: There’s Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk), War and Peace (King Vidor), Bhowani Junction (George Cukor), Intimate Stranger (Joseph Losey), Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli), Hollywood or Bust (Frank Tashlin), Great Day in the Morning (Jacques Tourneur), Le Monde du Silence (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle), Patterns (Fielder Cook), Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahari), Pursuit of the Graf Spree (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), Carnival in Moscow (Eldar Ryazanov), Early Spring (Yasujirô Ozu), The Mystery of Picasso (Henri-Georges Clouzot), Deadlier Than the Male (Julien Duvivier), Four Bags Full (Claude Autant-Lara), Friendly Persuasion (William Wyler), Attack (Robert Aldrich)

1957:

1. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
2. The Cranes are Flying (Mikheil Kalatozishvili)
3. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
4. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
5. Aparajito (Satyajit Ray)
6. Funny Face (Stanley Donen)
7. Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni)
8. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
9. Curse of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)
10. Kanal (Andrzej Wajda)

Honorable Mention: La Notte Bianche (Luchino Visconti), The Pajama Game (George Abbott and Stanley Donen), Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray), The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean), Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller), The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman), Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick), and The River’s Edge (Allan Dwan)

Blind Spots: The Tall T (Budd Boetticher), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges), Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher), Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey), The Devil Strikes at Night (Richard Siodmak), Desk Set (Walter Lang), Nine Lives (Arne Skouen), Edge of the City (Martin Ritt), Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder), Barnacle Bill (Charles Frend), The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold), Les Girls (George Cukor), The Enemy Below (Dick Powell), Seven Waves Away (Richard Sale)

1958:

1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchock)
2. The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk)
3. The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa)
4. Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati)
5. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
6. Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger)
7. The Music Room (Satyajit Ray)
8. Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
9. The Magician (Ingmar Bergman)
10. Fiend Without a Face (Arthur Crabtree)

Honorable Mention: Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli), Ivan the Terrible II (Sergei Eisenstein), The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth), Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda), Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli), The Fly (Kurt Neumann), The Horse’s Mouth (Ronald Neame), A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker), Giants and Toys (Masumura Yasuzô), Party Girl (Nicholas Ray)

Blind Spots: It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda), Underworld Beauty (Seijun Suzuki), Modigliani of Montparnasse (Jacques Becker), The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn), The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk), Brink of Life (Ingmar Bergman), Le Beau Serge (Claude Chabrol), China Doll (Frank Borzage), Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! (Leo McCarey), The Gentleman and the Gypsy (Joseph Losey), Machine-Gun Kelly (Roger Corman), Terror in a Texas Town (Joseph H. Lewis), The Lineup (Don Siegel), Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher), The Big Country (William Wyler), Saddle the Wind (Robert Parrish), Les Amants (Louis Malle), Enjo (Kon Ichikawa), Auntie Mame (Morton DaCosta), Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle), The Long, Hot Summer (Martin Ritt)

1959:

1. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)
2. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
3. Nazarín (Luis Buñuel)
4. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
5. Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Alain Resnais)
6. Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger)
7. Fate of a Man (Sergei Bondarchuk)
8. Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhraj)
9. Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)
10. Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher)

Honorable Mention: The Crimson Kimono (Samuel Fuller), The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray), Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi), Good Morning (Yasujirô Ozu), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock), Picnic on the Grass (Jean Renoir), The Scapegoat (Robert Hamer), Floating Weeds (Yasujirô Ozu), Shadows (John Cassavetes), Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder)

Blind Spots: The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang), Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed), Two Men in Manhattan (Jean-Pierre Melville), Verboten! (Samuel Fuller), Human Condition I (Masaki Kobayashi), Human Condition II (Masaki Kobayashi), Compulsion (Richard Fleischer), Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol), The Lady With the Dog (Iosif Kheifits), The Great War (Mario Monicelli), Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa), The Bridge (Bernhard Wicki), Room at the Top (Jack Clayton), Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger), Kapo (Gillo Pontecorvo), Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson), The Cow and I (Henri Verneuil), It’s All Right Jack (John Boulting), The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden), Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson), The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold), On the Beach (Stanley Krammer), Odd Obsession (Kon Ichikawa), Day of the Outlaw (Andre de Toth), Blind Date (Joseph Losey), Samurai Saga (Hiroshi Inagaki)

1960:

1. L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
2. The Young One (Luis Buñuel)
3. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
5. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse)
6. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
7. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
8. Two Women (Vittorio De Sica)
9. Purple Noon (Rene Clement)
10. Cruel Story of Youth (Nagisa Oshima)

Honorable Mention: The Island (Kaneto Shindô), The Apartment (Billy Wilder), Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut), Devi (Satyajit Ray), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz), Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti), The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis), Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Aram Avakian and Bert Stern), Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman), and Steamroller and the Violin (Andrei Tarkovsky)

Blind Spots: The Approach of Autumn (Mikio Naruse), The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young), Pollyanna (David Swift), The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang), Mysterious Case of the Rygseck Murders (Matti Kassila), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher), Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)

1961:

1. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
2. Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda)
3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards)
4. Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
5. The Innocents (Jack Clayton)
6. A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
7. Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller)
8. The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis)
9. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
10. Two Daughters (Satyajit Ray)

Honorable Mention: Pigs and Battleships (Shôhei Imamura), King of Kings (Nicholas Ray), Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan), Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman), One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder), Divorce, Italian Style (Pietro Germi), The Hustler (Robert Rossen), The Misfits (John Huston), Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi), Lola (Jacques Demy)

Blind Spots: A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson), My Mother and Her Guest (Shin Sang-ok), The Human Condition III (Masaki Kobayashi), El Cid (Anthony Mann), Placido (Luis García Berlanga), Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini), Chronicle of a Summer (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch)

1962:

1. The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel)
2. Confessions of an Opium Eater (Albert Zugsmith)
3. My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
5. Jules and Jim (François Truffaut)
6. Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson)
7. The Elusive Corporal (Jean Renoir)
8. Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
9. The Twelve Chairs (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1962)
10. Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey)

Honorable Mention: Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski), Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger), The Manchurian Candidate (John Frakenheimer), The Trial (Orson Welles), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Sidney Lumet), The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes), Lolita (Stanley Kubrick), Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa), What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich), and David and Lisa (Frank Perry)

Blind Spots: The Easy Life (Dino Risi), 47 Samurai (Hiroshi Inagaki), A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil)

1963:

1. The Servant (Joseph Losey)
2. Vidas Secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos)
3. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
4. Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith)
5. A Child Is Waiting (John Cassavetes)
6. Charade (Stanley Donen)
7. Irma la Dulce (Billy Wilder)
8. Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy)
9. The Whip and the Body (Mario Bava)
10. Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev)

Honorable Mention: Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller), 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini), Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman), The Great Escape (John Sturges), The Haunting (Robert Wise), Suzanne’s Career (Eric Rohmer), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock), The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis), Who’s Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin), The Insect Woman (Shôhei Imamura)

Blind Spots: I Step Through Moscow (Georgi Daneliya), Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard), Donovan’s Reef (John Ford), 55 Days at Peking (Nicholas Ray), The Ugly American (George Englund), Judex (Georges Franju), The Virgin of Nuremberg (Antonio Margheritti), The Big City (Satyajit Ray), The Raven (Roger Corman), Raven’s End (Bo Widerberg), Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard), Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig), 4 for Texas (Robert Aldrich), These Are the Damned (Joseph Losey), The Fiances (Ermanno Olmi), Monsieur Gangster (Georges Lautner), The Organizer (Mario Monicelli), 15 from Rome (Dino Rosi), Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil), The Fire Within (Louis Malle)

1964:

1. I Am Cuba (Mikheil Kalatozishvili)
2. The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller)
3. The Gospel According to Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
4. Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel)
5. Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
6. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
8. Yearning (Mikio Naruse)
9. Intentions of Murder (Shôhei Imamura)
10. Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes)

Honorable Mention: Man’s Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks), The Last Man on Earth (Sidney Salkow), Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava), Onibaba (Kaneto Shindô), A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone), Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer), Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni), Charulata (Satyajit Ray), Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi), The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton)

Blind Spots: Manji (Yasuo Masumura), Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci), Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec), That Man from Rio (Philippe de Broca), The Enchanted Desna (Yuliya Solntseva)

1965:

1. Repulsion (Roman Polanski)
2. Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel)
3. My Hustler (Andy Warhol)
4. Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger)
5. Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
7. Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
8. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)
9. Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda)
10. Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)

Honorable Mention: For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone), Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles), The War Game (Peter Watkins), The Shop on Main Street (Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos), Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa), The Nanny (Seth Holt), The Family Jewels (Jerry Lewis), Vinyl (Andy Warhol), The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich), and Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio)

Blind Spots: What’s New, Pussycat? (Clive Donner), A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe), Mickey One (Arthur Penn), Sandra of a Thousand Delights (Luchino Visconti), Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff), Yoyo (Pierre Étaix), Help! (Richard Lester), The Great Race (Blake Edwards), The Hill (Sidney Lumet), The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie), Samurai (Kihachi Okamoto), The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has)

1966:

1. Masculine, Feminine (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)
3. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
4. Kill, Baby…Kill! (Mario Bava)
5. Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni)
6. Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène)
7. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone)
8. Chelsea Girls (Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol)
9. Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
10. Hunger (Henning Carlsen)

Honorable Mention: Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (Jean Eustache), Cul-de-Sac (Roman Polanski), Made in the U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard), The Hawks and the Sparrows (Pier Paolo Pasolini), The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara), The Glass Bottom Boat (Frank Tashlin), The Pornographers (Shôhei Imamura), Seconds (John Frankenheimer), Daisies (Vera Chytilová), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)

Blind Spots: Watch Out for the Automobile (Eldar Ryazanov), Second Breath (Jean-Pierre Melville), The Nun (Jacques Rivette), The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes), The Trap (Sidney Hayers), El Dorado (Howard Hawks), Come Drink With Me (King Hu), King of Hearts (Philippe de Broca)

1967:

1. Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman)
2. Playtime (Jacques Tati)
3. Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel)
5. Point Blank (John Boorman)
6. Wavelength (Michael Snow)
7. The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó)
8. David Holzman’s Diary (Jim McBride)
9. The Shooting (Monte Hellman)
10. Mouchette (Robert Bresson)

Honorable Mention: Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse), Accident (Joseph Losey), The Graduate (Mike Nichols), Marat/Sade (Peter Brook), Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville), La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer), Two for the Road (Stanley Donen), The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich), The Commissar (Aleksandr Askoldov), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard)

Blind Spots: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (David Swift), The President’s Analyst (Theodore J. Flicker), Samurai Rebellion (Masaki Kobayashi), Far from the Maddening Crowd (John Schlesinger), The Night of the Generals (Anatole Litvak), Peppermint Frappe (Carlos Saura), The Thief of Paris (Louis Malle), Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini), Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker), Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil), Bedazzled (Stanley Donen), Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dusan Makavejev), Hombre (Martin Ritt), One-Armed Swordsman (Cheh Chang), The Stranger (Luchino Visconti), The Two of Us (Claude Berri)

1968:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
2. Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski)
3. Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea)
4. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
5. Faces (John Cassavetes)
6. Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindô)
7. Shame (Ingmar Bergman)
8. Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman)
9. High School (Frederick Wiseman)
10. Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Honorable Mention: The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Paradjanov), Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves), Flesh (Paul Morrissey), The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich), The Producers (Mel Brooks), The Party (Blake Edwards), Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman), Targets (Peter Bogdanovich), Mandabi (Ousmane Sembène), and Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)

Blind Spots: Le Révélateur (Philippe Garrel), Nanami: The Inferno of Lost Love (Sasumu Hani), Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima), Partner (Bernardo Bertolucci), Madigan (Don Siegel), I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (Hy Averback), Head (Bob Rafelson), The Legend of Lylah Clare (Robert Aldrich), Me (Maurice Pialat), Play Dirty (Andre de Toth), The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher), J’taime, J’taime (Alain Resnais), War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk), Who’s That Knocking at My Door (Martin Scorsese), Profound Desire of the Gods (Shôhei Imamura)

1969:

1. Kes (Ken Loach)
2. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)
3. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
4. Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
5. Putney Swope (Robert Downey Sr.)
6. Blind Beast (Masumura Yasuzô)
7. Diaries, Notebooks and Sketches (Jonas Mekas)
8. My Night of Maud’s (Eric Rohmer)
9. That Cold Day in the Park (Robert Altman)
10. Women In Love (Ken Russell)

Honorable Mention: The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol), Double Suicide (Masahiro Shinoda), Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini), Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler), The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman), Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin), Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen), Z (Costa Gavras)

Blind Spots: Go, Go Second Time Virgin (Koji Wakamatsu), Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman), Burn! (Gillo Pontecorvo), The Gypsy Moths (John Frankenheimer), The Rain People (Francis Ford Coppola), The Reivers (Mark Rydell), The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer), The Witness (Péter Bacsó), The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil), The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls), Mississippi Mermaid (François Truffaut), King Lear (Grigori Kozintsev and Iosif Shapiro), The Boys of Paul Street (Zoltán Fábri), A Gentle Woman (Robert Bresson), This Man Must Die (Claude Chabrol), Ådalen ’31 (Bo Widerberg), Support Your Local Sheriff! (Burt Kennedy), A Walk With Love and Death (John Huston), Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade), True Grit (Henry Hathaway), Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan), Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton), Hello Dolly! (Gene Kelly), Cactus Flower (Gene Saks), Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse)

1970:

1. The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
2. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica)
3. Trash (Paul Morrissey)
4. Claire’s Knee (Eric Rohmer)
5. Performance (Nicolas Roeg)
6. Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)
7. Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray)
8. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
9. Zorn’s Lemma (Hollis Frampton)
10. Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog)

Honorable Mention: Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson), The Butcher (Claude Chabrol), El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky), The Watermelon Man (Melvin Van Peebles), Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman), The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento), Hatchet for a Honeymoon (Mario Bava), Five Dolls for an August Moon (Mario Bava), 7 Plus Seven (Michael Apted), and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer)

Blind Spots: Last Known Address (José Giovanni), The Go-Between (Joseph Losey), Fast Company (David Cronenberg), The Ear (Karel Kachyna), La Rupture (Claude Chabrol), Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin), Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis), The Spider’s Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci), The Confession (Costa-Gavras), Little Big Man (Arthur Penn), The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls), Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah), Something For Everyone (Harold Prince), I Never Sang for My Father (Gilbert Cates)

1971:

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
2. Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg)
3. Whity (Rainer Werner Fassbiner)
4. Macbeth (Roman Polanski)
5. Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)
6. Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood)
7. La Région Centrale (Michael Snow)
8. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
9. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)
10. The Cat o’ Nine Tails (Dario Argento)

Honorable Mention: Boys in the Sand (Wakefield Poole), Wanda (Barbara Loden), Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog), Bay of Blood (Mario Bava), Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog), Two English Girls (François Truffaut), Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman), Vampyros Lesbos (Jesús Franco), The Devils (Ken Russell), The Beguiled (Don Siegel)

Blind Spots: Basic Training (Frederick Wiseman), Taking Off (Milos Forman), The Touch (Ingmar Bergman), Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood), The Clowns (Federico Fellini), Bleak Moments (Mike Leigh), Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson), Family Life (Ken Loach), Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles), The Working Class Goes to Heaven (Elio Petri), WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev)

1972:

1. Aguirre, The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
2. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
3. Cries & Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
4. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel)
5. Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
6. Heat (Paul Morrissey)
7. Bone (Larry Cohen)
8. Sounder (Martin Ritt)
9. Images (Robert Altman)
10. The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May)

Honorable Mention: The Merchant of Four Seasons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci), The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Avanti! (Billy Wilder), Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer), Fat City (John Huston), The Score (Radley Metzger), Last House on the Left (Wes Craven), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas), Pink Flamingos (John Waters)

Blind Spots: Savage Messiah (Ken Russell), The Candidate (Michael Ritchie), Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie), Travels with My Aunt (George Cukor), J.W. Coop (Cliff Robertson), Across 110th Street (Barry Shear), Superfly (Gordon Parks Jr.), The Assassination of Trotsky (Joseph Losey), Ulzana’s Raid (Robert Aldrich), The Carey Treatment (Blake Edwards), Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41 (Shunya Ito), Ciao Manhattan (John Palmer and David Weisman), Bad Company (Robert Benton), Sword of Vengeance I (Kenji Misumi), Tales from the Crypt (Freddie Francis), Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), We Will Not Grow Old Together (Maurice Pialat)

1973:

1. Badlands (Terrence Malick)
2. The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice)
3. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
4. Sisters (Brian De Palma)
5. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
6. Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich)
7. Black Caesar (Larry Cohen)
8. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
9. The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
10. Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg)

Honorable Mention: Amarcord (Federico Fellini), The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann), The Exorcist (William Friedkin), Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey), The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky), The Last Detail (Hal Ashby), Lisa and the Devil (Mario Bava), Season of the Witch (George A. Romero), Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman), Sleeper (Woody Allen)

Blind Spots: Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray), Wattstax (Mel Stuart), Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (Gilbert Cates), The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (Wojciech Has), Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Kinji Fukasaku), Kid Blue (James Frawley), The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer), Turkish Delight (Paul Verhoeven), Dillinger (John Milius), Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani), Love and Anarchy (Lina Wertmüller), O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson), State of Siege (Costa-Gravas), The Mackintosh Man (John Huston), Coffy (Jack Hill), Detroit 9000 (Arthur Marks), The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon), The Mack (Michael Campus), Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse), Wedding in Blood (Claude Chabrol), Scarlet Letter (Wim Wenders), Emperor of the North Pole (Robert Aldrich), Blood Brothers (Cheh Chang), Snow of Blood (Toshiya Fujita), The Homecoming (Peter Hall), Blume in Love (Paul Mazursky)

1974:

1. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper)
3. The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
4. The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Buñuel)
5. Martha (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
6. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
7. The Traveler (Abbas Kiarostami, 1974)
8. Deathdream (Bob Clark)
9. Hearts and Minds (Peter David)
10. Chinatown (Roman Polanski)

Honorable Mention: Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman), Place de la République (Louis Malle), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola), Black Christmas (Bob Clark), Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey), Female Trouble (John Waters), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog), Effi Briest (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Mes Petites Amoureuses (Jean Eustache), Rabid Dogs (Mario Bava)

Blind Spots: The Deluge (Jerzy Hoffman), Orderers (Michel Brault), Jacob the Liar (Frank Beyer), We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola), Stavisky… (Alain Resnais), Three Wishes for Cinderella (Václav Vorlícek), Electra, My Love (Miklós Jancsó), Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev), Ankur (Shyam Benegal), The Nada Gang (Claude Chabrol), The Fierce One (Tolomush Okeyev), Italianamerican (Martin Scorsese), Going Places (Bertrand Blier), Scent of a Woman (Dino Risi), Pastoral: To Die In the Country, The Traveller (Abbas Kiarostami), That’s Entertainment! (Jack Haley Jr.), The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards), Nightmare Circus (Alan Rudolph), Penthesilea (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen), Juggernaut (Richard Lester), Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti)

1975:

1. Nashville (Robert Altman)
2. Deep Red (Dario Argento)
3. Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
4. Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
5. Welfare (Frederick Wiseman)
6. Xala (Ousmane Sembène)
7. Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
8. Thundercrack! (Curt McDowell)
9. Promised Land (Andrzej Wajda)
10. The Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger)

Honorable Mention: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta), Shivers (David Cronenberg), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick), Tommy (Ken Russell), Fear of Fear (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa), Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller), Grey Gardens (Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Muffie Meyer)

Blind Spots: Hustle (Robert Aldrich), Crazy Mama (Jonathan Demme), French Connection II (John Frankenheimer), Numero Deux (Jean-Luc Godard), The Killer Elite (Sam Peckinpah), Keetje Tippel (Paul Verhoeven), Wrong Move (Wim Wenders), The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston), Une Partie de Plaisir (Claude Chabrol), Innocents with Dirty Hands (Claude Chabrol), The Old Gun (Robert Enrico), Fear Over the City (Henri Verneuil), Smile (Michael Ritchie), Mandingo (Richard Fleischer), Switchblade Sisters (Jack Hill), Rollerball (Norman Jewison)

1976:

1. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
2. The Tenant (Roman Polanski)
3. Mickey and Nicky (Elaine May)
4. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
5. Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman)
6. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
7. Monsieur Klein (Joseph Losey)
8. Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
9. Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders)
10. Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)

Honorable Mention: Meat (Frederick Wiseman), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes), Obsession (Brian De Palma), God Told Me To (Larry Cohen), 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci), Heart of Glass (Werner Herzog), Small Change (François Truffaut), Salo (Pier Paolo Pasolini), In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima), Insiang (Lino Brocka), and Alice, Sweet Alice (Alfred Sole)

Blind Spots: The Marquise of O (Eric Rohmer), I Only Want You To Love Me (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), The Message (Moustapha Akkad), Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Bruno Barreto), The Front (Martin Ritt), Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn), The Context (Francesco Rosi), Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Ettore Scola), Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker), A Matter of Time (Vincente Minnelli), The Middleman (Satyajit Ray), Personel (Krzysztof Kieślowski), Stay Hungry (Bob Rafelson), Barocco (André Téchiné), Hollywood Boulevard (Allan Arkush and Joe Dante), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Herbert Ross), The Last Woman (Marco Ferreri), Face to Face (Ingmar Bergman), The Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg), Robin and Marian (Richard Lester)

1977:

1. Suspiria (Dario Argento)
2. Padre Padrone (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
3. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
4. 3 Women (Robert Altman)
5. The Stationmaster’s Wife (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
6. Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah)
7. That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel)
8. Eraserhead (David Lynch)
9. Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
10. Providence (Alain Resnais)

Honorable Mention: Opening Night (John Cassavetes), Stroszek (Werner Herzog), 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci), Desperate Living (John Waters), Rabid (David Cronenberg), Word Is Out (Lots of People), My American Friend (Wim Wenders), Scum (Alan Clarke), Citizen’s Band (Jonathan Demme), Sorcerer (William Friedkin)

Blind Spots: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (Larry Cohen), The Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik), Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda), Alambrista! (Robert M. Young), The Duellists (Ridley Scott), A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker), The Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg), Short Eyes (Robert M. Young), Outrageous! (Richard Benner), News from Home (Chantal Akerman), Twlight’s Last Gleaming (Robert Aldrich), The Choirboys (Robert Aldrich), New York, New York (Martin Scorsese), The Late Show (Robert Benton)

1978:

1. In a Year of 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
2. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick)
3. Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero)
4. The Fury (Brian De Palma)
5. Halloween (John Carpenter)
6. The Driver (Walter Hill)
7. Despair (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
8. A Place Without Limits (Arturo Ripstein)
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman)
10. The Eyes of Laura Mars (Irvin Kirshner)

Honorable Mention: The Green Room (François Truffaut), Piranha (Joe Dante), Backyard (Ross McElwee), Fingers (James Toback), Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman), Get Out Your Hankerchiefs (Bertrand Blier), You Are Not Alone (Ernst Johansen and Lasse Nielsen), Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima), Superman (Richard Donner), Alexandria, Why? (Youssef Chahine)

Blind Spots: California Suite (Herbert Ross), The Medusa Touch (Jack Gold), Meetings with Anna (Chantal Akerman), American Hot Wax (Floyd Mutrux), Blue Collar (Paul Schrader), Le Dossier 51 (Michel Deville), The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Margarethe von Trotta), The Buddy Holly Story (Steve Rash), Go Tell the Spartans (Ted Post), Newsfront (Phillip Noyce), Five Deadly Venoms (Cheh Chang), Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph), Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard), Scared Straight! (Arnold Shapiro), Who’ll Stop the Rain? (Karel Reisz), Our Hitler (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg), The Herd (Zeki Ökten and Yilmaz Güney), Knife in the Head (Reinhard Hauff), The Silent Partner (Daryl Duke)

1979:

1. Siberiade (Andrei Konchalovsky)
2. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
3. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
4. The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
5. Vengeance Is Mine (Shôhei Imamura)
6. Wise Blood (John Huston)
7. When a Stranger Calls (Fred Walton)
8. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
9. The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara)
10. The Warriors (Walter Hill)

Honorable Mention: The Perfect Couple (Robert Altman), The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard), Scum (Alan Clarke), The Brood (David Cronenberg), Arrebato (Iván Zulueta), Woyzeck (Werner Herzog), Being There (Hal Ashby), Real Life (Albert Brooks), Perceval (Eric Rohmer), The Tin Drum (Volker Schlondorff)

Blind Spots: The Third Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Sympathy for a Sinner (George Kuchar), Christ Stopped at Eboli (Francesco Rosi), The In-Laws (Arthur Hiller), ’Breaker’ Morant (Bruce Beresford), Bloody Kiss (Stephen Frears), Without Anesthesia (Andrzej Wajda), Best Boy (Ira Wohl), My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong), Head Over Heels (Joan Micklin Silver), Bye Bye Brazil (Carlos Diegues), The Europeans (James Ivory), The Jerk (Carl Reiner), Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira), Time After Time (Nicholas Meyer), Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam), Saint Jack (Peter Bogdanovich), Cold Cuts (Bertrand Blier), Angi Vera (Pál Gábor)

1980:

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
2. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
3. Mon Oncle d’Amerique (Alain Resnais)
4. Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme)
5. Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma)
6. The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
7. The Changeling (Peter Medak)
8. Voyage en Douce (Michel Deville)
9. The Fog (John Carpenter)
10. Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa)

Honorable Mention: Pepi, Luci, Bom (Pedro Almodóvar), Maniac (William Lustig), The Long Riders (Walter Hill), Inferno (Dario Argento), The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller), Popeye (Robert Altman), From the Life of the Marionettes (Ingmar Bergman), Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker), Atlantic City (Louis Malle), and The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)

Blind Spots: God’s Angry Man (Werner Herzog), The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty), Return of the Secaucus 7 (John Sayles), Health (Robert Altman), Every Man for Himself (Jean-Luc Godard), Carny (Robert Kaylor), Loulou (Maurice Pialat), Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier), The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys), The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle (Julien Temple), Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper), Shogun Assassin (Robert Houston), The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Connie Field), Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis)

1981:

1. Possession (Andrzej Zulawski)
2. Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara)
3. Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
4. Polyester (John Waters)
5. Pixote (Héctor Babenco)
6. Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda)
7. Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer)
8. The Aviator’s Wife (Eric Rohmer)
9. Mommie Dearest (Frank Perry)
10. Circle of Deceit (Volker Schlondorff)

Honorable Mention: The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi), Escape from New York (John Carpenter), Beau Pere (Bertrand Blier), Reds (Warren Beatty), Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg), Southern Comfort (Walter Hill), They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich), Modern Romance (Albert Brooks), Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)

Blind Spots: Tree of Knowledge (Nils Malmros), Marianne and Juliane (Margarethe von Trotta), Three Brothers (Francesco Rosi), Assassination Attempt (Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov), The Professional (Georges Lautner), Prince of the City (Sidney Lumet), S.O.B. (Blake Edwards), True Confessions (Ulu Grosbard), Taxi Zum Klo (Frank Ripploh), Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Emir Kusturica), All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich), Rich and Famous (George Cukor), Full Moon High (Larry Cohen), Eijanaika (Shôhei Imamura), Montenegro (Dusan Makavejev)

1982:

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg)
2. Cecilia (Humberto Solás)
3. Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
4. Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
5. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
6. The Atomic Cafe (Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty)
7. Night of the Shooting Stars (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
8. White Dog (Samuel Fuller)
9. Tenebre (Dario Argento)
10. Yol (Serif Gören and Yilmaz Güney)

Honorable Mention: Liquid Sky (Slava Tsuckerman), Eating Raoul (Paul Bartel), The Draughtman’s Contract (Peter Greenaway), Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper), Made in Britain (Alan Clarke), A Good Marriage (Eric Rohmer), Labyrinth of Passion (Pedro Almodóvar), Cat People (Paul Schrader), Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman), Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Blind Spots: Passion (Jean-Luc Godard), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (Carl Reiner), Identification of a Woman (Michelangelo Antonioni), La Traviata (Franco Zeffirelli), Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski), My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin), All Night Long (Chantal Akerman), The State of Things (Wim Wenders), La Truit (Joseph Losey), On Top of the Whale (Raúl Ruiz), So Is This (Michael Snow), Time Stands Still (Péter Gothár), Barbarosa (Fred Schepisi), Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette), Too Early, Too Late (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub)

1983:

1. L’Argent (Robert Bresson)
2. Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
3. Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky)
4. Ballad of Narayama (Shôhei Imamura)
5. The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven)
6. Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer)
7. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
8. Testament (Lynne Littman)
9. El Sur (Víctor Erice)
10. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)

Honorable Mention: Scarface (Brian De Palma), Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio), Dark Habits (Pedro Almodóvar), The Dead Zone (David Cronenberg), Christine (John Carpenter), A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat), Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford), Warriors of the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark), Zelig (Woody Allen)

Blind Spots: A Brutal Game (Jean-Claude Brisseau), Danton (Andrzej Wajda), Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raúl Ruiz), Faux-Fuyants (Alain Bergala and Jean-Pierre Limosin), Carmen (Carlos Saura), El Norte (Gregory Nava), Entre Nous (Diane Kurys), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima), Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood), Exposed (James Toback), Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis), Betrayal (David Hugh Jones), Life Is a Bed of Roses (Alain Resnais), Sugar Cane Alley (Euzhan Palcy), Under Fire (Roger Spottiswoode)

1984:

1. Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen)
2. Crimes of Passion (Ken Russell)
3. Love Streams (John Cassavetes)
4. My Summer at Grandpa’s (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
5. Body Double (Brian De Palma)
6. Streetwise (Martin Bell)
7. Kaos (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
8. What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Pedro Almodóvar)
9. The Terminator (James Cameron)
10. The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles)

Honorable Mention: Gremlins (Joe Dante), In the Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan), The Home and the World (Satyajit Ray), Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch), Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax), Fear City (Abel Ferrara), Starman (John Carpenter), Full Moon in Paris (Eric Rohmer), Secret Honor (Robert Altman), Ballad of the Little Soldier (Werner Herzog)

Blind Spots: Threads (Mick Jackson), Choose Me (Alan Rudolph), Carmen (Francesco Rosi), After the Rehearsal (Ingmar Bergman), The Funeral (Juzo Itami), A Soldier’s Story (Norman Jewison), All of Me (Carl Reiner), Eureka (Nicolas Roeg), A Sunday in the Country (Bertrand Tavernier), The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola), Micki & Maude (Blake Edwards), The Natural (Barry Levinson), Improper Conduct (Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal), Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros), Der Riese (Michael Klier), Class Relations (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub)

1985:

1. Come and See (Elem Klimov)
2. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
3. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton)
4. Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
5. The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Jiri Barta)
6. Day of the Dead (George A. Romero)
7. When Father Was Away on Business (Emir Kusturica)
8. Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard)
9. Caravaggio (Derek Jarman)
10. Ran (Akira Kurosawa)

Honorable Mention: Mala Noche (Gus Van Sant), The Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman), Lost in America (Albert Brooks), Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon), My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears), After Hours (Martin Scorsese), Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman), Phenomena (Dario Argento), Vagabond (Agnès Varda), Fool For Love (Robert Altman)

Blind Spots: Flesh & Blood (Paul Verhoeven), Boycott (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Police (Maurice Pialat), Hour of the Star (Suzana Amaral), Tokyo-Ga (Wim Wenders), Dreamchild (Gavin Millar), The Runner (Amir Naderi), Wuthering Heights (Jacques Rivette), Police Story (Jackie Chan), Real Genius (Martha Coolidge), Angel’s Egg (Mamoru Oshii), Sweet Dreams (Karel Reisz) Wetherby (David Hare), Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi), Taipei Story (Edward Yang), Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg)

1986:

1. Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
2. The Fly (David Cronenberg)
3. Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee)
4. Parting Glances (Bill Sherwood)
5. The Hitcher (Robert Harmon)
6. Matador (Pedro Almodóvar)
7. Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax)
8. Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Hayao Miyazaki)
9. Scene of the Crime (André Téchiné)
10. Something Wild (Jonathan Demme)

Honorable Mention: Shadows in Paradise (Aki Kaurismäki), Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen), Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter), Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan), Platoon (Oliver Stone), The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer), The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes), Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch), God’s Country (Louis Malle), Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox)

Blind Spots: Jean de Florette (Claude Berri), Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix), Angry Harvest (Agnieszka Holland), The Terrorizer (Edward Yang), Thérèse (Alain Cavalier), Rosa Luxemburg (Margarethe von Trotta), ’Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier), She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee), Landscape Suicide (James Benning), Salvador (Oliver Stone), Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri), A Better Tomorrow (John Woo), Ménage (Bertrand Blier), 2 Friends (Jane Campion)

1987:

1. Where Is the Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami)
2. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes)
3. Law of Desire (Pedro Almodóvar)
4. RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven)
5. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg)
6. Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow)
7. Opera (Dario Argento)
8. Yeelen (Souleymane Cisse)
9. Hope and Glory (John Boorman)
10. Au Revoir Les Enfants (Louis Malle)

Honorable Mention: The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara), The Stepfather (Joseph Ruben), Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Eric Rohmer), The Dead (John Huston), Good Morning, Babylon (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani), O.C. & Stiggs (Robert Altman), Maurice (James Ivory), Radio Days (Woody Allen), Raising Arizona (The Coen Brothers), Matewan (John Sayles)

Blind Spots: Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov), Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Eric Rohmer), Rouge (Stanley Kwan), The Cry of the Owl (Claude Chabrol), Under Satan’s Sun (Maurice Pialat), The Camp at Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow), Missile (Frederick Wiseman), The Belly of an Architect (Peter Greenaway), Barfly (Barbet Schroeder), Swimming to Cambodia (Jonathan Demme), Made in Heaven (Alan Rudolph), Winter Ade (Helke Misselwitz), The Cyclist (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), My Twentieth Century (Ildikó Enyedi), A Taxing Woman (Juzo Itami)

1988:

1. Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg)
2. Time of the Gypsies (Emir Kusturica)
3. Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
4. A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
5. Alice (Jan Svankmajer)
6. Story of Women (Claude Chabrol)
7. The Last of England (Derek Jarman)
8. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
9. A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
10. Medea (Lars von Trier)

Honorable Mention: Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears), Chocolat (Claire Denis), Landscape in the Mist (Theo Angelopoulos), The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar), A Cry in the Dark (Fred Schepisi), Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki), Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell), My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)

Blind Spots: Hôtel Terminus (Marcel Ophüls), Days of Eclipse (Aleksandr Sokurov), Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo), Hanussen (István Szabó), Candy Mountain (Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer), Talk Radio (Oliver Stone), Cannibal Tours (Dennis O’Rourke)

1989:

1. Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee)
2. The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieślowski)
3. Born on the 4th of July (Oliver Stone)
4. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
5. Casualties of War (Brian De Palma)
6. My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan)
7. sex, lies and videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
8. Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant)
9. Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
10. Tetsuo (Shinya Tsukamoto)

Honorable Mention: La Chiesa (Michele Soavi), The Killer (John Woo), Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman), Henry V (Kenneth Branagh), Batman (Tim Burton), Heathers (Michael Lehmann), How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson), Cat Chaser (Abel Ferrara), Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki), Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch)

Blind Spots: Sea of Love (Harold Becker), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover (Peter Greenway), Monsieur Hire (Patrice Leconte), The Icicle Thief (Maurizio Nichetti), Freeze, Die, Come to Life (Vitali Kanevsky), Black Rain (Shoei Imamura)

1990:

1. Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami)
2. Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton)
3. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
4. Jacob’s Ladder (Adrian Lyne)
5. The Garden (Derek Jarman)
6. Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismäki)
7. Wild at Heart (David Lynch)
8. La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson)
9. Trust (Hal Hartley)
10. Life Is Sweet (Mike Leigh)

Honorable Mention: Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai), Metropolitan (Whit Stillman), Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven), The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoevan), King of New York (Abel Ferrara), Miami Blues (George Armitage), Vincent & Theo (Robert Altman), Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston), Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs), To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett)

Blind Spots: The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer), Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich), Nouvelle Vague (Jean Luc Godard), Queen of Temple Street (Lawrence Ah Mon), Without You I’m Nothing (John Boskovich), The Little Gangster (Jacques Doillon), The Disenchanted (Benoît Jacquot), Bullet in the Head (John Woo), No, or the Vain Glory of Command (Manoel de Oliveira)

1991:

1. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
2. My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
3. Hangin’ With the Homeboys (Joseph P. Vasquez)
4. Central Park (Frederick Wiseman)
5. Life, and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami)
6. Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow)
7. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron)
8. Madonna: Truth or Dare (Alek Keshishian)
9. The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan)
10. The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax)

Honorable Mention: Flirting (John Duigan, 1991), The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski), JFK (Oliver Stone), The Rapture (Michael Tolkin), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme), La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette), Homicide (David Mamet), A Woman’s Tale (Paul Cox), Poison (Todd Haynes), City of Hope (John Sayles)

Blind Spots: The Stranger (Satyajit Ray), Paris S’Eveille (Olivier Assayas), Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley), Kasba (Kumar Shahani), The Other (Bernard Giraudeau), Swordsman II (Siu-Tung Ching and Stanley Tong), The Fall of Otar (Ardak Amirkulov), Antonia and Jane (Beeban Kidron), Billy Bathgate (Robert Benton)

1992:

1. The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies)
2. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch)
3. Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen)
4. Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara)
5. The Player (Robert Altman)
6. Hard Boiled (John Woo)
7. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
8. Lesson of Darkness (Werner Herzog)
9. The Stolen Children (Gianni Amelio)
10. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)

Honorable Mention: Passion Fish (John Sayles), Raising Cain (Brian De Palma), Careful (Guy Maddin), The Living End (Gregg Araki), Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky), Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (Craig Baldwin), Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang), Dead Alive (Peter Jackson), Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Mark Rappaport), and The Bohemian Life (Aki Kaurismäki)

Blind Spots: The Second Heimat (Edgar Reitz), The Dream of Light (Víctor Erice), A Heart in Winter (Claude Sautet), Kairat (Darezhan Omirbayev), Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembène), Laws of Gravity (Nick Gomez), The Public Eye (Howard Franklin), Actress (Stanley Kwan)

1993:

1. Short Cuts (Robert Altman)
2. Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma)
3. A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood)
4. Naked (Mike Leigh)
5. Mercedes (Yousry Nasrallah)
6. The Piano (Jane Campion)
7. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis)
8. Latcho Drom (Tony Gatlif)
9. Totally F***ed Up (Gregg Araki)
10. Dangerous Game (Abel Ferrara)

Honorable Mention: Blue (Derek Jarman), The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese), Matinee (Joe Dante), Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano), Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg), The Snapper (Stephen Fears), Raining Stones (Ken Loach), My Favorite Season (André Téchiné), King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh), In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan)

Blind Spots: The War Room (Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker), 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard), Helas Pour Moi (Jean-Luc Godard)

1994:

1. Sátántangó (Béla Tarr)
2. Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami)
3. Ladybird, Ladybird (Ken Loach)
4. Wild Reeds (André Téchiné)
5. Time Indefinite (Ross McElwee)
6. Serial Mom (John Waters)
7. Speed (Jan de Bont)
8. Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang)
9. To Live (Zhang Yimou)
10. Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)

Honorable Mention: Before the Rain (Milcho Manchavski), I Can’t Sleep (Claire Denis), Crooklyn (Spike Lee), Faust (Jan Svankmajer), Hoop Dreams (Steve James), Ed Wood (Tim Burton), Fresh (Boaz Yakin), Exotica (Atom Egoyan), What Happened Was… (Tom Noonan), Amateur (Hal Hartley)

Blind Spots: Boy Meets Girl (Michael Brady), Wing Chun (Yuen Woo-Ping), Cold Water (Olivier Assayas), Unforgettable Summer (Lucian Pintilie)

1995:

1. Underground (Emir Kusturica)
2. Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven)
3. The Neon Bible (Terence Davies)
4. The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood)
5. Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
6. The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi)
7. The Addiction (Abel Ferrara)
8. Safe (Todd Haynes)
9. Welcome to the Dollhouse (Todd Solondz)
10. From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport)

Honorable Mention: Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Hate (Mathieu Kassovitz), La Ceremonie (Claude Chabrol), Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins), Clockers (Spike Lee), Rendezvous in Paris (Eric Rohmer), Persuasion (Roger Michell), Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai), Beyond Rangoon (John Boorman), Georgia (Ulu Grosbard)

Blind Spots: Waati (Souleymane Cissé), Love Letter (Shunji Iwai), Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (Claude Sautet), An Awfully Big Adventure (Mike Newell), Les Miserables (Claude Lelouch), Up Down Fragile (Jacques Rivette), The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira), Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi), L’Appat (Bertrand Tavernier), Getting Any? (Takeshi Kitano), Rangeela (Ram Gopal Varma), Le Garcu (Maurice Pialat)

1996:

1. A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
2. La Promesse (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
3. The Delta (Ira Sachs)
4. Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh)
5. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
6. Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
7. Goodbye, South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
8. Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer)
9. The Funeral (Abel Ferrara)
10. The Portrait of a Lady (Jane Campion)

Honorable Mention: The Cable Guy (Ben Stiller), Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas), Bound (The Wachowski Brothers), Bitter Sugar (Leon Ichaso), Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki), Killer Condom (Martin Walz), Mahjong (Edward Yang), Jude (Michael Winterbottom), Lone Star (John Sayles), A Summer’s Tale (Eric Rohmer)

Blind Spots: Encore (Pascal Bonitzer), Perfect Love (Catherine Breillat), God of Cookery (Stephen Chow and Lik-Chi Lee), Non-Stop (Hiroyuki Tanaka), Nénette et Boni (Claire Denis), Lumiere and Company (Lots of People), Big Night (Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci), Hamsun (Jan Troell), Three Lives & Only One Death (Raúl Ruiz)

1997:

1. Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov)
2. Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano)
3. Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
4. Face/Off (John Woo)
5. The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan)
6. Career Girls (Mike Leigh)
7. The Eel (Shôhei Imamura)
8. Lost Highway (David Lynch)
9. Life of Jesus (Bruno Dumont)
10. Gadjo Dilo (Tony Gatlif)

Honorable Mention: Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar), The Mirror (Jafar Panahi), Men With Guns (John Sayles), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog), U-Turn (Oliver Stone), Nowhere (Gregg Araki), Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa), The Apostle (Robert Duvall), Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (David Mirkin), Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven), The River (Tsai Ming-liang)

Blind Spots: Regeneration (Gillies MacKinnon)

1998:

1. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
2. Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller)
3. Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer)
4. The Dreamlife of Angels (Erick Zonca)
5. Rushmore (Wes Anderson)
6. Late August, Early September (Olivier Assayas)
7. Buffalo ’66 (Vincent Gallo)
8. Besieged (Bernardo Bertolucci)
9. Blade (Stephen Norrington)
10. The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong Sang-soo)

Honorable Mention: A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory), Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem), Another Day in Paradise (Larry Clark), The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers), A Bug’s Life (John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton), Central Station (Walter Salles), The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang), The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf), The Silence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi)

Blind Spots: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie), The Legend of 1900 (Giuseppe Tornatore)

1999:

1. Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
2. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
3. L’Humanite (Bruno Dumont)
4. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)
5. The Straight Story (David Lynch)
6. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
7. Rosetta (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
8. Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese)
9. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)
10. The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan)

Honorable Mention: Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone), Election (Alexander Payne), Go (Doug Liman), Three Kings (David O. Russell), Felicia’s Journey (Atom Egoyan), The Iron Giant (Brad Bird), Limbo (John Sayles), Fight Club (David Fincher), Office Space (Mike Judge), My Neighbors the Yamadas (Isao Takahata)

2000:

1. Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
2. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
3. George Washington (David Gordon Green)
4. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky)
5. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier)
6. Platform (Jia Zhang-ke)
7. Eureka (Shinji Aoyama)
8. Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson)
9. Shadow of the Vampire (Elias E. Merhige)
10. Hamlet (Michael Almereyda)

Honorable Mention: Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta), Charlie’s Angels (McG), Common Wealth (Alex de la Iglesia), O Fantasma (Joao Pedro Rodrigues), Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven), Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis), The Captive (Chantal Akerman), Mission To Mars (Brian De Palma), Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul), The Big Animal (Jerzy Stuhr)

Blind Spots: Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong), Land of the Wandering Souls (Rithy Panh), Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin), The Ruination of Men (Arturo Ripstein)

2001:

1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
3. The Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr)
4. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
5. Litte Otik (Jan Svankmajer)
6. Children Underground (Edet Belzberg)
7. Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat)
8. Intimacy (Patrice Chéreau)
9. Under the Sand (François Ozon)
10. The Gleaners & I (Agnès Varda)

Honorable Mention: Vengo (Tony Gatlif), Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (Peter Jackson), Gosford Park (Robert Altman), Baise-moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Tri), Audition (Takashi Miike), Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly), The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro), The Circle (Jafar Panahi), and Together (Lukas Moodysson)

2002:

1. Femme Fatale (Brian De Palma)
2. Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes)
3. Spider (David Cronenberg)
4. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
6. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis)
7. Late Marriage (Dover Kosashvili)
8. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
9. The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme)
10. Sunshine State (John Sayles)

Honorable Mention: Adaptation. (Spike Jonze), Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese), Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman), ’R Xmas (Abel Ferrara), Heaven (Tom Tykwer), All or Nothing (Mike Leigh), Cremaster 3 (Matthew Barney), Time Out (Laurent Cantet), I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira), and Merci Pour Le Chocolat (Claude Chabrol)

2003:

1. The Company (Robert Altman)
2. Balseros (Carlos Bosch and José María Doménech)
3. The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
4. Gerry (Gus Van Sant)
5. Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon)
6. Big Fish (Tim Burton)
7. Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
8. In America (Jim Sheridan)
9. Cabin Fever (Eli Roth)
10. Elephant (Gus Van Sant)

Honorable Mention: Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhang-ke), To Be and To Have (Nicolas Philibert), Friday Night (Claire Denis), Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako), Love and Diane (Jennifer Dworkin), Raising Victor Vargas (Peter Sollett), Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (Guy Maddin), The Fog of War (Errol Morris), Bus 174 (José Padilha), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)

2004:

1. Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar)
2. Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)
3. Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont)
4. Dogville (Lars von Trier)
5. Secret Things (Jean-Claude Brisseau)
6. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
7. Son Frère (Patrice Chéreau)
8. Oasis (Lee Chang-dong)
9. Raja (Jacques Doillon)
10. The Keys to the House (Gianni Amelio)

Honorable Mention: When Will I Be Loved (James Toback), Hero (Zhang Yimou), Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee), The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano), Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette), The Manchurian Candidate (Jonathan Demme), Cellular (David R. Ellis), Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill), Before Sunset (Richard Linklater), BAADASSSSS! (Mario Van Peebles)

2005:

1. The New World (Terrence Malick)
2. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
3. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
4. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
5. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
6. Wolf Creek (Greg McLean)
7. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki)
8. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
9. The White Diamond (Werner Herzog)
10. The Intruder (Claire Denis)

Honorable Mention: Last Days (Gus Van Sant), Machuca (Andrés Wood), Private (Saverio Costanzo), Schultze Gets the Blues (Michael Schorr), HellBent (Paul Etheredge-Ouzts), Fever Pitch (Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly), Crimen Ferpecto (Álex de la Iglesia), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Steve Box and Nick Park), Red Eye (Wes Craven), and Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper)

2006:

1. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
2. L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
3. Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas)
4. The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
6. Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)
7. Miami Vice (Michael Mann)
8. Romántico (Mark Becker)
9. Gabrielle (Patrice Chéreau)
10. Two Drifters (João Pedro Rodrigues)

Honorable Mention: Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (Lu Chuan), Mongolian Ping Pong (Ning Hao), Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Inside Man (Spike Lee), Fratricide (Yilmaz Arslan), Happy Feet (George Miller), Monster House (Gil Kenan), Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims (Kankurô Kudô), Don’t Come Knocking (Wim Wenders), and Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)

2007:

1. Offside (Jafar Panahi)
2. Into Great Silence (Philip Gröning)
3. Golden Door (Emanuele Crialese)
4. Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
5. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
6. Exiled (Johnnie To)
7. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
8. Forever (Heddy Honigmann)
9. The Life of Reilly (Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson)
10. Superbad (Greg Mottola)

Honorable Mention: The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman), Bug (William Friedkin), Beyond Hatred (Olivier Meyrou), Broken English (Zoe Cassavetes), Jimmy Carter Man from Plains (Jonathan Demme), Summer ’04 (Stefan Krohmer), Away from Her (Sarah Polley), The Decomposition of the Soul (Nina Toussaint and Massimo Iannetta), The Bubble (Eytan Fox), and Descent (Talia Lugacy)

2008:

1. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
2. In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
3. The Witnesses (André Téchiné)
4. Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris)
5. Summer Palace (Ye Lou)
6. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
7. Mukhsin (Yasmin Ahmed)
8. My Father My Lord (David Volach)
9. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
10. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)

Honorable Mention: The Secret of the Grain (Abdellatif Kechiche), Man on Wire (James Marsh), Chris & Don: A Love Story (Tina Mascara and Guido Santi), Reprise (Joachim Trier), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Patricia Rozema), The Strangers (Bryan Bertino), Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke), Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood), Trouble the Water (Tia Lessin and Carl Deal), and Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang)

2009:

1. Two Lovers (James Gray)
2. Up (Pete Docter)
3. Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
4. Julia (Erick Zonca)
5. Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
6. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
7. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
8. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
9. Halloween 2 (Rob Zombie)
10. That Evening Sun (Scott Teems)

Honorable Mention: The Window (Carlos Sorin), Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie), Oblivion (Heddy Honigmann), Bright Star (Jane Campion), California Dreamin’ (Cristian Nemescu), Great Speeches from a Dying World (Linas Phillips), Fados (Carlos Saura), Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola), Taxidermia (György Pálfi), Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo), and The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov)

2010:

1. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
2. Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
3. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
4. October Country (Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri)
5. Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed)
6. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
7. Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
8. 45365 (Bill Ross and Turner Ross)
9. The Social Network (David Fincher)
10. Ondine (Neil Jordan)

Honorable Mention: Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette), Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat), The Crazies (Breck Eisner), Easier with Practice (Kyle Patrick Alvarez), The Human Centipede (The First Sequence) (Tom Six), Let Me In (Matt Reeves), The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa), Piranha 3D (Alexandre Aja), Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton), and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright)

2011:

1. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
2. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán)
3. Margaret (Kenneth Longergan)
4. Tomboy (Céline Sciamma)
5. Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve)
6. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
7. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
8. Leap Year (Michael Rowe)
9. In the Family (Patrick Wang)
10. Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)

Honorable Mention: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish), Beginners (Mike Mills), Bridesmaids (Paul Feig), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog), Final Destination 5 (Steven Quale), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz), Poetry (Lee Chang-dong), Tuesday, After Christmas (Radu Muntean), and Carnage (Roman Polanski)

2012:

1. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
2. The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
3. Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
4. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
5. Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli)
6. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb)
7. Girl Walk // All Day (Jacob Krupnick)
8. Oslo, August 31 (Joachim Trier)
9. 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi)
10. Sleepless Night (Frédéric Jardin)

Honorable Mention: The Comedy, Lincoln, Killer Joe, Keep the Lights On, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Color Wheel, The Five-Year Engagement, The Queen of Versailles, Sister, This Must Be the Place

2013:

1. Her (Spike Jonze)
2. Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
3. The We and the I (Michel Gondry)
4. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
5. Drug War (Johnnie Toi)
6. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
7. Bastards (Claire Denis)
8. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
9. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)
10. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)

Honorable Mention: At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman), Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche), Lee Daniels’ The Butler (Lee Daniels), The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear (Tinatin Gurchiani), Maniac (Franck Khalfoun), Museum Hours (Jem Cohen), Sightseers (Ben Wheatley), Three Sisters (Wang Bing), The World’s End (Edgar Wright), and Yossi (Eytan Fox)

2014:

1. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
2. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
3. The Immigrant (James Gray)
4. Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
5. The Naked Room (Nuria Ibáñez)
6. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
7. We Are the Best! (Lukas Moodysson)
8. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers and Ben Russell)
9. Land Ho! (Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens)
10. Lucy (Luc Besson)

Honorable Mention: Actress (Robert Greene), Cheap Thrills (E.L. Katz), Fifi Howls from Happiness (Mitra Farahani), The Guest (Adam Wingard), Memphis (Tim Sutton), Northern Light (Nick Bentgen), The Rover (David Michôd), The Raid 2 (Gareth Evans), Tales of the Grim Sleeper (Nick Broomfield), and Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté)

2015:

1. Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson)
2. In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman)
3. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
4. Salvation Army (Abdellah Taïa)
5. Creed (Ryan Coogler)
6. Of Men and War (Laurent Bécue-Renard)
7. About Elly (Asghar Farhadi)
8. Eastern Boys (Robin Campillo)
9. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
10. The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer)

Honorable Mention: The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Chi-Raq (Spike Lee), Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs), Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry), Mistress America (Noah Baumbach), The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzmán), Tangerine (Sean Baker), Taxi (Jafar Panahi), Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan), and The Walk (Robert Zemeckis)

2016:

1. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman)
2. Happy Hour (Hamaguchi Ryûsuke)
3. Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)
4. The Treasure (Corneliu Porumboiu)
5. Midnight Special (Jeff Nichols)
6. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
7. Do Not Resist (Craig Atkinson)
8. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
9. The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn)
10. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)

Honorable Mention: Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (Werner Herzog), Fort Buchanan (Benjamin Crotty), The Measure of a Man (Stéphane Brizé), In a Valley of Violence (Ti West),, Little Men (Ira Sachs), Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan), Paterson (Jim Jarmusch), Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro), Being 17 (André Téchiné), Miss Hokusai (Keiichi Hara)

2017:

1. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
2. The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)
3. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
4. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)
5. I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)
6. The Lost City of Z (James Gray)
7. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
8. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
9. The Florida Project (Sean Baker)
10. Ex Libris: New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)

Honorable Mention: 4 Days in France (Jérôme Reybaud), Behemoth (Zhao Liang), BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo), Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino), The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani), God’s Own Country (Francis Lee), Harmonium (Kôji Fukada), In Transit (Albert Maysles, Lynn True, David Usui, Nelson Walker III, Benjamin Wu), The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues), Tempestad (Tatiana Huezo)

2018:

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
2. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)
3. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Travis Wilkerson)
4. Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene)
5. Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman)
6. Paddington 2 (Paul King)
7. Bodied (Joseph Kahn)
8. The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)
9. The Green Fog (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson)
10. Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)

Honorable Mention: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen), Before I Wake (Mike Flanagan), Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo), Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson), Leave No Trace (Debra Granik), The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles), Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen Susco), Unsane (Steven Soderbergh), Western (Valeska Grisebach), The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico)

2019:

1. Transit (Christian Petzold)
2. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)
3. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller)
4. Black Mother (Khalik Allah)
5. Ad Astra (James Gray)
6. Peterloo (Mike Leigh)
7. The Competition (Claire Simon)
8. Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham)
9. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
10. Climax (Gaspar Noé)

Honorable Mention: Asako I & II (Hamaguchi Ryûsuke), The Beach Bum (Harmoney Korine), Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler), An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo), End of the Century (Lucio Castro), The Gospel of Eureka (Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri), Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach), Parasite (Bong Joon-ho), The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow), The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)

2020:

1. City Hall (Frederick Wiseman)
2. To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
3. Tommaso (Abel Ferrara)
4. The Cordillera of Dreams (Patricio Guzmán)
5. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
6. Welcome to Chechnya (David France)
7. Space Dogs (Elsa Kremer and Levin Peter)
8. Ghost Tropic (Bas Devos)
9. Time (Garrett Bradley)
10. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill and Turner Ross)

Honorable Mention: Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg), First Cow (Kelly Reichardt), Fourteen (Dan Sallitt), I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman), Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen), Pahokee (Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas), Possessor (Brandon Cronenberg), Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen), This Is Not a Movie (Yung Chang), Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello)

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.