Nayana, over at the Center Seat, has been playing with lists lately, and recently Pat has joined her, so I thought, why not . . .

First up, here’s the AFI top hundred American Films that Nayana referenced here. Note that the AFI lists only American movies and the ones I’ve seen are in bold:

  1. Citizen Kane (1941)
  2. The Godfather (1972)
  3. Casablanca (1942)
  4. Raging Bull (1980)
  5. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
  6. Gone With the Wind (1939)
  7. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
  8. Schindler’s List (1993)
  9. Vertigo (1958)
  10. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
  11. City Lights (1931)
  12. The Searchers (1956)
  13. Star Wars (1977)
  14. Psycho (1960)
  15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
  16. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
  17. The Graduate (1967)
  18. The General (1927)
  19. On the Waterfront (1954)
  20. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
  21. Chinatown (1974)
  22. Some Like It Hot (1959)
  23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
  24. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
  25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
  26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
  27. High Noon (1952)
  28. All About Eve (1950)
  29. Double Indemnity (1944)
  30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
  31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
  33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
  34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
  35. Annie Hall (1977)
  36. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
  37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
  38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
  39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
  40. The Sound of Music (1965)
  41. King Kong (1933)
  42. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
  43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
  44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
  45. Shane (1953)
  46. It Happened One Night (1934)
  47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
  48. Rear Window (1954)
  49. Intolerance (1916)
  50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
  1. West Side Story (1961)
  2. Taxi Driver (1976)
  3. The Deer Hunter (1978)
  4. M*A*S*H (1970)
  5. North by Northwest (1959)
  6. Jaws (1975)
  7. Rocky (1976)
  8. The Gold Rush (1925)
  9. Nashville (1975)
  10. Duck Soup (1933)
  11. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
  12. American Graffiti (1973)
  13. Cabaret (1972)
  14. Network (1976)
  15. The African Queen (1951)
  16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
  17. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
  18. Unforgiven (1992)
  19. Tootsie (1982)
  20. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
  21. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
  22. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
  23. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
  24. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
  25. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
  26. Forrest Gump (1994)
  27. All the President’s Men (1976)
  28. Modern Times (1936)
  29. The Wild Bunch (1969)
  30. The Apartment (1960)
  31. Spartacus (1960)
  32. Sunrise (1927)
  33. Titanic (1997)
  34. Easy Rider (1969)
  35. A Night at the Opera (1935)
  36. Platoon (1986)
  37. 12 Angry Men (1957)
  38. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
  39. The Sixth Sense (1999)
  40. Swing Time (1936)
  41. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
  42. Goodfellas (1990)
  43. The French Connection (1971)
  44. Pulp Fiction (1994)
  45. The Last Picture Show (1971)
  46. Do the Right Thing (1989)
  47. Blade Runner (1982)
  48. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
  49. Toy Story (1995)
  50. Ben-Hur (1959)

The AFI has discovered, of course, that people like lists, and that promoting the lists is a good way to ensure a funding stream. So, in addition to the top list above (revised in 2007), there are genre lists for comedy, musical, thriller, etc.

So what good are these lists? Well, for starters, they can help you identify where your movie-viewing weaknesses are. Looking at the fourteen I’ve missed on the above Top 100 list, I’d say I’m woefully in need of a Chaplin tune-up, that my early silent viewing isn’t what it should be, and that my melodrama education needs a little work.

What’s really fun — and, I hear, remarkably hard to do — is come up with your own, competing lists (as Nayana has done here.) That’s something I’ve never tried . . . maybe I ought to, soon.

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