100 Greatest American Films By Decade

The Best Films of All Time - A Primer of Cinematic History
www.filmsite.org & www.greatestfilms.org

100 YEARS...100 MOVIES

(America's Greatest Movies
Ranked by Decade by AFI)

The American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California, in mid-June 1998 commemorated the extraordinary first 100 years of American movies by making a "definitive selection of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time, as determined by more than 1,500 leaders from the American film community." The 400 Nominated Films were feature-length fictional movies produced between 1912 and 1996 "with the goal of amassing a capsule of the first 100 years of American cinema, across decades and across genres."

Read this site's Commentary on AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies.

See AFI's 100 Greatest American Films - 10th Anniversary Edition

A few of the more interesting facts about the selected 100 films:

The films spanned from 1915 ( The Birth of a Nation at #44) to 1996 (Fargo at #84).
The 1950s was the most represented decade on the list, with 20 films. And 70 of the films on the list were from 1950 on. 14 films were made after 1980. More than half of the films (56) were made between 1950 and 1979, thereby ignoring cinema's early years and some of the modern era. Each decade's summary: Silent era: 3 films, 1930s: 15 films, 1940s: 12 films, 1950s: 20 films, 1960s: 18 films, 1970s: 18 films, 1980s: 6 films, and 1990s: 8 films.
The top ten included movies from every decade, from the 1930s to the 1990s, with the exception of the 1980s. The first film on the 100 list from the 1980s was Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), at #24.
The year 1939, which remains the most celebrated year in the history of film, had five films in the top 100: Gone With the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Stagecoach (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Both 1951 and 1969 had four films each.
Thirty-three of the films (one-third) were Academy Awards' Best Picture Winners. Seventy-five of the films (three-fourths) were Academy Awards' Best Picture Nominees. (Forty-two of the seventy-five nominated films lost the Best Picture race.)
Six of the top 10 films on the AFI list won a Best Picture Oscar: Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), Gone With The Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), On The Waterfront (1954), and Schindler's List (1993).
The highest ranking film that won no Oscars was #10, Singin' In The Rain (1952).

Also see this listing organized in ranked-winning order: America's 100 Greatest Movies.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films.

AMERICA's 100
GREATEST MOVIES

(RANKED BY DECADE)


Silent Era: 1915-1927 3 Films	Oscar Winner or Nominee for Best Picture

#44. The Birth Of A Nation (1915)	N/A
#74. The Gold Rush (1925)	N/A
#90. The Jazz Singer (1927)	N/A

1930s: 1930-1939 15 Films

#4. Gone With The Wind (1939)	Winner
#6. The Wizard of Oz (1939)	Nominee
#29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)	Nominee
#35. It Happened One Night (1934)	Winner
#43. King Kong (1933)
#49. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
#54. All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)	Winner
#63. Stagecoach (1939)	Nominee
#73. Wuthering Heights (1939)	Nominee
#76. City Lights (1931)
#81. Modern Times (1936)
#85. Duck Soup (1933)
#86. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)	Winner
#87. Frankenstein (1931)
#97. Bringing Up Baby (1938)	Nominee

1940s: 1940-1949 12 Films

#1. Citizen Kane (1941)	Nominee
#2. Casablanca (1942)	Winner
#11. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)	Nominee
#21. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)	Nominee
#23. The Maltese Falcon (1941)	Nominee
#30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)	Nominee
#37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)	Winner
#38. Double Indemnity (1944)	Nominee
#51. The Philadelphia Story (1940)	Nominee
#57. The Third Man (1949)
#58. Fantasia (1940)
#100. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)	Nominee

1950s: 1950-1959 20 Films

#8. On The Waterfront (1954)	Winner
#10. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
#12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)	Nominee
#13. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)	Winner
#14. Some Like It Hot (1959)
#16. All About Eve (1950)	Winner
#17. The African Queen (1951)
#33. High Noon (1952)	Nominee
#40. North By Northwest (1959)
#42. Rear Window (1954)
#45. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)	Nominee
#52. From Here to Eternity (1953)	Winner
#59. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
#61. Vertigo (1958)
#68. An American In Paris (1951)	Winner
#69. Shane (1953)	Nominee
#72. Ben-Hur (1959)	Winner
#82. Giant (1956)	Nominee
#92. A Place in the Sun (1951)	Nominee
#96. The Searchers (1956)

1960s: 1960-1969 18 Films

#5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)	Winner
#7. The Graduate (1967)	Nominee
#18. Psycho (1960)
#22. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
#26. Dr. Strangelove or: How I ... (1964)	Nominee
#27. Bonnie And Clyde (1967)	Nominee
#34. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)	Nominee
#36. Midnight Cowboy (1969)	Winner
#39. Doctor Zhivago (1965)	Nominee
#41. West Side Story (1961)	Winner
#50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)	Nominee
#55. The Sound of Music (1965)	Winner
#67. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
#80. The Wild Bunch (1969)
#88. Easy Rider (1969)
#91. My Fair Lady (1964)	Winner
#93. The Apartment (1960)	Winner
#99. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)	Nominee

1970s: 1970-1979 18 Films

#3. The Godfather (1972)	Winner
#15. Star Wars (1977)	Nominee
#19. Chinatown (1974)	Nominee
#20. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	Winner
#28. Apocalypse Now (1979)	Nominee
#31. Annie Hall (1977)	Winner
#32. The Godfather, Part II (1974)	Winner
#46. A Clockwork Orange (1971)	Nominee
#47. Taxi Driver (1976)	Nominee
#48. Jaws (1975)	Nominee
#56. MASH (1970)*	Nominee
#64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
#66. Network (1976)	Nominee
#70. The French Connection (1971)	Winner
#77. American Graffiti (1973)	Nominee
#78. Rocky (1976)	Winner
#79. The Deer Hunter (1978)	Winner
#89. Patton (1970)	Winner

1980s: 1980-1989 6 Films

#24. Raging Bull (1980)	Nominee
#25. E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)	Nominee
#53. Amadeus (1984)	Winner
#60. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	Nominee
#62. Tootsie (1982)	Nominee
#83. Platoon (1986)	Winner

1990s: 1990-1996 8 Films

#9. Schindler's List (1993)	Winner
#65. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)	Winner
#71. Forrest Gump (1994)	Winner
#75. Dances With Wolves (1990)	Winner
#84. Fargo (1996)	Nominee
#94. GoodFellas (1990)	Nominee
#95. Pulp Fiction (1994)	Nominee
#98. Unforgiven (1992)	Winner

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