2007 AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE'S
100 YEARS 100 MOVIES (10th Anniversary Edition)
1. CITIZEN KANE (1997 Rank: 1)
RKO, 1941
PRINCIPAL CAST Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
DIRECTOR Orson Welles
PRODUCER Orson Welles
SCREENWRITERS Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
Welles broke all the rules and invented some new ones with his searing story of a newspaper publisher with an uncanny resemblance to William Randolph Hearst.
2. THE GODFATHER (1997 Rank: 3)
Paramount, 1972
PRINCIPAL CAST Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
DIRECTOR Francis Ford Coppola
PRODUCER Albert S. Ruddy
SCREENWRITERS Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo
Brando is Don Vito Corleone, the sympathetic head of a New York crime family, whose business it is to make offers people can’t refuse. His son Michael’s true nature is revealed at the end, when a christening is intercut with a bloodbath that cements his new position within the family.
3. CASABLANCA (1997 Rank: 2)
Warner Bros., 1942
PRINCIPAL CAST Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid
DIRECTOR Michael Curtiz
PRODUCER Hal B. Wallis
SCREENWRITERS Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Bogart is jaded idealist Rick Blaine, an American nightclub owner in French Morocco who sacrifices the love of a lifetime to join the world’s fight against the Nazis. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
4. RAGING BULL (1997 Rank: 24)
United Artists, 1980
PRINCIPAL CAST
Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci
DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese
PRODUCER Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler
SCREENWRITERS Mardik Martin, Paul Schrader
De Niro is Jake LaMotta, the middleweight boxing champ whose opponents in the ring are no match for the demons he fights in his personal life. The film is often noted for Thelma Schoonmaker’s achievement in editing.
5. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1997 Rank: 10)
MGM, 1952
PRINCIPAL CAST Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Jean Hagen
DIRECTOR Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
PRODUCER Arthur Freed
SCREENWRITERS Adolph Green, Betty Comden
This musical set in Hollywood during the conversion from silent to sound films has Kelly singing, dancing and splashing in puddles. Reynolds and O’Connor lend support in some of the most delightful song and dance numbers ever filmed.
6. GONE WITH THE WIND (1997 Rank: 4)
MGM, 1939
PRINCIPAL CAST Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland
DIRECTOR Victor Fleming and Others
PRODUCER David O. Selznick
SCREENWRITER Sidney Howard
Selznick poured his heart and soul into the filming of Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller about the Old South, the Civil War and Reconstruction. The burning of Atlanta was a high-water mark for screen excitement, as well as Rhett Butler’s delivery of Hollywood’s first four-letter word, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
7. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1997 Rank: 5)
Columbia, 1962
PRINCIPAL CAST Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif
DIRECTOR David Lean
PRODUCERS Sam Spiegel, David Lean
SCREENWRITER Robert Bolt
During World War I, young English officer T. E. Lawrence comes to believe he can give Arabia back to the Arabs. The movie made O’Toole a star and introduced Sharif to an international audience.
8. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1997 Rank: 9)
Universal, 1993
PRINCIPAL CAST Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes
DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg
PRODUCERS Steven Spielberg, Branko Lustig, Gerald R. Molen
SCREENWRITER Steven Zaillian
The film is based on the true, complex, and often puzzling story of Oskar Schindler, the Czech industrialist who saved hundreds of Jews from the gas chambers during the Holocaust. “This list is an absolute good. The list is life.”
9. VERTIGO (1997 Rank: 61)
Paramount, 1958
PRINCIPAL CAST
James Stewart, Kim Novak
DIRECTOR Alfred Hitchcock
PRODUCER Alfred Hitchcock
SCREENWRITERS Alec Coppel, Samuel A. Taylor Stewart’s fear of heights, Novak’s woman of mystery, Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score, and the city of San Francisco provide Hitchcock with a great love story and sexual obsession on a grand psychological level.
10. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1997 Rank: 6)
MGM, 1939
PRINCIPAL CAST Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, Frank Morgan
DIRECTOR Victor Fleming
PRODUCER Mervyn LeRoy
SCREENWRITERS Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf
Garland’s Dorothy Gale is transported from her black-and-white Kansas home to the colorful land of Oz via tornado. From here she journeys down the Yellow Brick Road and is helped by a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion on their way to see the Wizard. The Harold Arlen/E.Y. Harburg score is highlighted by Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
