The American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California in 1998 commemorated the extraordinary first 100 years of American movies by selecting 400 candidate films for voting consideration, in preparation for 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."

See the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time
See also AFI's 100 Greatest American Films - 10th Anniversary Edition

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.

Facts About the 400 Nominees for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies:

• All chosen 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." Write-in votes for unlisted films were also permitted.
  
  
• The 1950s was the most represented decade on the list, with 20 films in the top 100.
  
  
• And 70 of the films on the top 100 list were from 1950 and after.
  
  
• 14 films on the top 100 list were made after 1980.
  
  
• More than half of the films (56) in the top 100 list were made between 1950 and 1979 (a three decade period), thereby ignoring cinema's early years and some of the modern era.
  
  
• Each decade's Summary: (nominees and winners)
  
  
  • Silent era (1912-1929): 22 nominated films, only 3 films in the top 100, including The Birth Of A Nation (1915), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Jazz Singer (1927).
    Other notable nominees included: Intolerance (1916), The Big Parade (1925), Greed (1925), Sunrise (1927), and The Crowd (1928).
    The earliest nominee was Richard III (1912) and the last nominee was The Broadway Melody (1929).
    
    
  • 1930s (1930-1939): 56 nominated films, with 15 films in the top 100, including: All Quiet On The Western Front (1930), City Lights (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Duck Soup (1933), King Kong (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Modern Times (1936), Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gone With The Wind (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Stagecoach (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Wuthering Heights (1939).
    Other notable nominees included: Trouble in Paradise (1932), 42nd Street (1933), A Night At The Opera (1935), Top Hat (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and Ninotchka (1939).
    The earliest nominees were All Quiet On The Western Front (1930), Little Caesar (1930), and Morocco (1930), and there were 13 nominees for the year 1939.
    
    
  • 1940s (1940-1949): 61 nominated films, with 12 films in the top 100, including: Fantasia (1940), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The Third Man (1949).
    Other notable nominees included: His Girl Friday (1940), Rebecca (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Meet Me In St. Louis (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), My Darling Clementine (1946), Notorious (1946), Out Of The Past (1947), and Red River (1948).
    
    
  • 1950s (1950-1959): 61 nominated films, with 20 films in the top 100, including: All About Eve (1950), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The African Queen (1951), An American In Paris (1951), A Place in the Sun (1951), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), High Noon (1952), Singin' In The Rain (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Shane (1953), On The Waterfront (1954), Rear Window (1954), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), The Searchers (1956), The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957), Vertigo (1958), Ben-Hur (1959), North By Northwest (1959), and Some Like It Hot (1959).
    Other notable nominees included: Gun Crazy (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), A Star Is Born (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Paths of Glory (1957), and Touch Of Evil (1958).
    
    
  • 1960s (1960-1969): 58 nominated films, with 18 films in the top 100, including: The Apartment (1960), Psycho (1960), West Side Story (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I ... (1964), My Fair Lady (1964), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Sound of Music (1965), Bonnie And Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Easy Rider (1969), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and The Wild Bunch (1969).
    Other notable nominees included: The Hustler (1961), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and In The Heat Of The Night (1967).
    
    
  • 1970s (1970-1979): 54 nominated films, with 18 films in the top 100, including: M*A*S*H (1970), Patton (1970), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), American Graffiti (1973), Chinatown (1974), The Godfather, Part II (1974), Jaws (1975), One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Network (1976), Rocky (1976), Taxi Driver (1976), Annie Hall (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Wars (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979).
    Other notable nominees included: Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), Deliverance (1972), Badlands (1973), The Exorcist (1973), The Conversation (1974), Nashville (1975), Days Of Heaven (1978), and Manhattan (1979).
    
    
  • 1980s (1980-1989): 58 nominated films, with 6 films in the top 100, including: Raging Bull (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Tootsie (1982), Amadeus (1984), and Platoon (1986).
    Other notable nominees included: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Reds (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Terms Of Endearment (1983), The Killing Fields (1984), Brazil (1985), Blue Velvet (1986), Field Of Dreams (1989), and sex, lies and videotape (1989).
    
    
  • 1990s (1990-1996): 30 nominated films, with 8 films in the top 100, including: Dances With Wolves (1990), GoodFellas (1990), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Schindler's List (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Fargo (1996).
    Other notable nominees included: Beauty And The Beast (1991), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), The Player (1992), Philadelphia (1993), The Lion King (1994), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Babe (1995), Braveheart (1995), Toy Story (1995), and The English Patient (1996).

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