The list of top films has been culled and vetted by classic film network TCM.
Following big-budget productions like North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock found inspiration in a low-budget, black-and-white horror. Psycho re-defined the genre with major surprises, like killing star Janet Leigh a third of the way into the movie. The crazed-killer character became a horror film staple, leading to slasher flicks like Halloween and Friday the 13th.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has released a list of the 15 most influential classic films of all time, the latest element in the network’s 15th anniversary celebration and the launching point for an exciting new feature on tcm.com.
The titles range from D.W. Griffith’s pioneering The Birth of a Nation to George Lucas’ landmark blockbuster Star Wars.
The films selected include important foreign films, plus groundbreaking movies in comedy, Westerns and science fiction.
TCM’s list of influential films marks the debut of a new online initiative. Each day, the network will post a fresh list of movie favorites at tcm.com. TCM Dailies usually will highlight five films, with a constantly changing theme. The lists will run from serious to silly, such as TCM’s favorite car-chase movies, best slap scenes and top sequels.
“TCM is the leader in classic film, so we thought it would be fun to give our fans a new list to debate every day,” said Charlie Tabesh, senior vice president of programming for TCM. “We’re starting off with the most influential films of all time, but we’ll look at a huge array of other topics in the future.”
TCM’s list of most influential films was assembled with the guidance of many experts, including TCM’s longtime host, Robert Osborne. The goal was to highlight movies that shaped the future of cinema.
“There were some great debates over which movies to include,” Osborne said. “It’s tough to agree on only 15 titles, but the ones we selected cover a range of great work.”
TCM looked at everything from silent pictures to modern movies. “There was only a little shouting involved in our debates,” Tabesh said. “For example, we talked about including Pulp Fiction, a hugely influential independent film.” TCM also considered surprising choices like Goldfinger, a 1964 movie that helped cement James Bond as film franchise that has endured for nearly 50 years.
Here are TCM’s 15 most influential classic films, listed in chronological order:
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
During a time when Europe seemed to have a monopoly on feature films, D.W. Griffith struck out to make an epic that would help define American cinema. The Birth of a Nation also became one of the greatest outrages in film history, introducing destructive stereotypes of black men and women and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
The “Odessa Steps” sequence in Battleship Potemkin may be the most influential scene in film history. Drawing on montages in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, Sergei Eisenstein used mini-stories and repeated shots of specific characters and groups to humanize his story.
Metropolis (1927 )
Arguably the most influential science fiction film ever made, Metropolis has inspired everything from video games to rock videos to comic books. The film’s futuristic sets helped spread the popularity of art deco, while the gadget-filled lab of mad scientist Rotwang became a sci-fi staple.
42nd Street (1933)
Although musicals helped launch talkies, the genre was box office poison by 1933. Visionary producer Darryl F. Zanuck had the idea for a backstage story that would capture the effect of the Depression on hard-working chorus girls. He was smart enough to put Busby Berkeley in charge of the dance routines, and his geometric patterns and dazzling camera movements both revitalized musicals and saved Warner Bros. from bankruptcy.
It Happened One Night (1934)
The surprise success of It Happened One Night made Frank Capra one of the screen’s top directors and provided the prototype for a decade of screwball comedies. Romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally and The Sure Thing draw on the rapid banter, outrageous comic situations and sexy road trip of It Happened One Night. The movie even provided inspiration for one of the screen’s most enduring characters, Bugs Bunny.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
“Disney’s Folly” was the name most Hollywood insiders gave to the dream of producing the nation’s first animated feature. But Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs didn’t just look better than any previous Disney film. It looked better than most major studio productions. For better or worse, Snow White set U.S. animation in pursuit of a more realistic look for decades to come.
Gone with the Wind (1939)
If one film epitomizes the Hollywood blockbuster, it is Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O’Hara has inspired a legion fiery females caught in the sweep of history, most notably Kate Winslet in Titanic. For decades, filmmakers have drawn on David O. Selznick’s work to create and sell romantic dreams writ large on the screen.
Stagecoach (1939)
John Ford’s mixture of character depth and hard-riding action reminded audiences that the winning of the West was more than just popcorn fodder. Ford’s work inspired Orson Welles, who screened the film 40 times while shooting Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane (1941)
Working with a level of control rare in Hollywood, Orson Welles paved the way for director-centric cinema that has produced some of the screen’s greatest achievements and worst excesses. By combining deep-focus photography, directional sound, overlapping dialogue and a fragmented narrative assembled from several different viewpoints, he created a film audiences experienced as they did the real world.
Bicycle Thieves (1947)
Director Vittorio De Sica was part of a movement to take cinema back to the streets. Shot on real locations with a factory worker in the leading role, Bicycle Thieves (also widely known as The Bicycle Thief) was among several post-war Italian films that provided an alternative to Hollywood’s big-budget studio productions.
Rashomon (1950)
Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking film put Japanese cinema on the international map. His editing techniques gave it a sensual power that attracted audiences to the emotionally charged story. Kurosawa transcended the challenges of a low budget and censorship to create a new cinematic world that would inspire filmmakers like George Lucas and Martin Scorsese.
The Searchers (1956)
Almost 20 years after revitalizing Westerns with Stagecoach, director John Ford pointed the genre in a new direction. The Searchers offers one of the screen’s first attempts to depict racism underlying U.S.-native relations. Ford views the problem from both sides, showing how John Wayne’s obsessed Indian hunter Ethan Edwards and the equally obsessed Comanche chief, Scar, have been shaped by violent acts of the past.
Breathless (1959)
With jarring cuts between scenes, jump cuts within them and long takes filled with dizzying camera movements, Breathless made the movies move as never before. Director Jean-Luc Godard created a cinema of reinvention, shooting as if the medium had only just popped into existence.
Psycho (1960)
Following big-budget productions like North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock found inspiration in a low-budget, black-and-white horror. Psycho re-defined the genre with major surprises, like killing star Janet Leigh a third of the way into the movie. The crazed-killer character became a horror film staple, leading to slasher flicks like Halloween and Friday the 13th.
Star Wars (1977 )
With Star Wars, Hollywood discovered new markets for merchandising – not just toys, but novels, comics, television series and eventually video games. These constituted the “Star Wars Expanded Universe,” which included a series of sequels unlike any ever seen. Lucas later re-titled the film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Turner Classic Movies is a Peabody Award-winning network celebrating 15 years of presenting great films, uncut and commercial-free, from the largest film libraries in the world.
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