(I got this list from Jesse Walker, who explains, "From his old email list. Looks like it was originally put together in 1998 after the AFI picked its top 100 American movies; the note at the top about Mystic River was added in 2004, which is when I received this.
A few of the films are attributed to the wrong director. And while the headline says 'American Movies,' there are some foreign pictures in the mix."
In cases where I was able to determine that a movie was in the public domain, I have included a link to a place to view it. -- The Mgt.)
RAW's personal and eccentric list of the 100 Best
American Movies
[I wd now add MYSTIC RIVER to the top 10
and dump out maybe THE PROFESSIONALS
--bob
1. Intolerance (Griffith)
2. Chimes at Midnight (Welles)
3. High Plains Drifter (Eastwood)
4. Fargo (Coen)
5. Titanic (Cameron)
6. Wind (Lilian Gish)
7. Broken Blossoms (Griffith)
8. F For Fake (Welles)
9. 2001 (Kubrick)
10. Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton)
11. Macbeth (Welles)
12. Silence of the Lambs (Demme)
13. Touch of Evil (Welles)
14. The Devil and Daniel Webster (Dieterle)
15. Cheyenne Autumn (Ford)
16. Othello (Welles)
17. Bird (Eastwood)
18. Kansas City (Altman)
19. Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
20. All That Jazz (Fosse)
21. The Eiger Sanction (Eastwood)
22. The Trial (Welles)
23. And Then There Were None (Clair)
24. Citizen Kane (Welles)
25. Legends of the Fall (Zwick)
26. The Circus (Chaplin)
27. Arsenic and Old Lace (Capra)
28. Repo Man (Cox)
29. The Killing (Kubrick)
30. Peter's Friends (Branagh)
31. Charley Varrick (Siegel)
32. Miller's Crossing (Coen)
33. Cabaret (Fosse)
34. Little Big Man (Penn)
35. Saboteur (Hitchcock)
36. The Fortune Cookie (Wilder)
37. The List of Adrian Messenger (Houston)
38. White Hunter, Black Heart (Eastwood)
39. And Justice For All (Jewison)
40. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Capra)
41. The Pirate (Minelli)
42. Frankenstein (Whale)
43. The Big Chill (Kasdan)
44. The Happy Ending (Brooks)
45. The Abyss (Cameron)
46. Mickey One (Penn)
47. Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet)
48. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
49. Double Indemnity (Wilder)
50. I Walked With a Zombie (Tourneur)
51. Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock)
52. A Perfect World (Eastwood)
53. Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
54. It Happened Tomorrow (Clair)
55. Mr Smith Goes to Washington (Capra)
56. Ed Wood (Burton)
57. Stardust Memories (Allen)
58. Honky Tonk Man (Eastwood)
59. The Old Dark House (Whale)
60. Philadelphia (Demme)
61. King Kong (Cooper)
62. Sid and Nancy (Cox)
63. Short Cuts (Altman)
64. Kismet (Dieterle)
65. House of Strangers (Mankiewitz)
66. The Lost Weekend (Wilder)
67. Picture of Dorian Gray (Lewin)
68. Gunga Din (Stevens)
69. The Informer (Ford)
70. Dances With Wolves (Costner)
71. The Asphalt Jungle (Houston)
72. Nashville (Altman)
73. Bedlam (Tourneur)
74. Blue Thunder (Badham)
75. Batman (Burton)
76. The Long Voyage Home (Ford)
77. The Big Sleep (Hawks)
78. Giant (Stevens)
79. Barton Fink (Coen)
80. The Barefoot Contessa (Mankiewitz)
81. Singing in the Rain (Minelli)
82. North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
83. Some Like It Hot (Wilder)
84. The Verdict (Lumet)
85. The Maltese Falcon (Houston)
86. Grand Canyon (Kasdan)
87. Jaws (Speilberg)
88. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Houston )
89. The Big Knife (Aldrich)
90. The Professionals (Brooks)
91. Targets (Bogdonovitch)
92. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
93. Fever Pitch (Brooks)
94. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
95. The Man Who Would Be King (Houston)
96. Strangers On A Train (Hitchcock)
97. On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (Minelli)
98. War Games (Badham)
99. Behind the Green Door (Mitchell)
100. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
7 comments:
Cool list. I'll give it a go :)
The only film I don't understand is Titanic. He puts it higher than both 2001 and nearly all of Welles, which seems to me to be a very misplaced title. Did he ever speak about it or review it? it would be good to know what he thought about it.
I have watched it a couple of times and it would not be anywhere on my 100 list, not even close, and 2001 is basically my favourite film of all time, well it is a toss up between that Mulholland drive and Magnolia.
Some good titles here though and some that people ought to see if they have not already, like "...and then there were none" and "Short Cuts", at least I have got some ideas of films to watch for the next couple of weeks.
I've seen 51 of the movies on his list. 52, if you count his Mystic River substitution.
He has my very favorite film Ed Wood on his list.
Other films on his list that I really enjoyed:
Chimes at Midnight
2001
Touch of Evil
Night of the Hunter
The Killing
Dog Day Afternoon
Paths of Glory
Clockwork Orange
King Kong
The Lost Weekend
Singing in the Rain
The Maltese Falcon
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Man Who Would Be King
I've seen 83, counting Mystic River.
I've seen most (I used to be a film critic) but don't see any foreign language, as opposed to "foreign" (British), films listed. Nice though to see four silent movies in the top ten. Intolerance was also Pauline Kael's
favorite movie.
One of my fav things about RAW is that he owned a VHS copy of the Charlie Sheen/Kristy Swanson movie "THE CHASE." Not that VHS ownership is necessarily evidence of enjoyment or endorsement, but it does speak to the exquisite complexity of his artistic palate ! (There's a partial pic of his movie collection on his website: http://www.rawilson.com/auction.html)
His high ranking of TITANIC makes sense to me in terms of the medium as message, it probably seemed like an amazing benchmark in terms of visual storytelling/movie magic, much like how KING KONG seemed to him as a kid.
I enjoyed watching all 101 of these films. It surprised me at the time that Bob mentioned Titanic as one of his favorite films near the end of his
life. Three reasons occur to me:
1. He really enjoyed it. (I did too. I've seen it many times.)
2. It now seems prescient. The iceberg can symbolize the economic crisis of 2008. The rich survive and prosper, the poor suffer. Jack and Kate's relationship represents the Occupy forces.
3. The love which survives the death of a partner probably resonated for Bob after Arlen's passing.
I love the dream sequence in "Sherlock Jr."
I remember how happy I felt when Netflix got "The Happy Ending" and I had finally seen all the films on the list.
"House of Strangers" seemed like a precursor to "The Godfather" with its four brothers.
I loved "The Big Knife."
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