AFI's 100 years ... 100 Movies
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AFI's 100 years ... 100 Movies

 Here's the American Film institute's list of the 100 greatest American movies, selected by a blue-ribbon panel of entertainment industry leaders. All were produced during the first 100 years of American filmmaking. The AFI list was announced on a three-hour CBS special that aired June 16, 1998. All of the films are or will shortly be available (each identified with a gold AFI sticker) for sale and rental at your local video outlet -- or through many of the online sources listed in the OnVideo Resource Guide to Online Video Sales.

PS: Don't confuse the birth of American movies with the birth of film: the first moving picture made for the purpose of projection was created by the Lumiere brothers in France in 1895. Check out OnVideo's Film Chronology for a timeline of the birth of film.

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. Casablanca (1942)
3. The Godfather (1972)
4. Gone With the Wind (1939)
5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
6. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
7. The Graduate (1967)
8. On the Waterfront (1954)
9. Schindler's List (1993)
10. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
11. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
14. Some Like It Hot (1959)
15. Star Wars (1977)
16. All About Eve (1950)
17. The African Queen (1951)
18. Psycho (1960)
19. Chinatown (1974)
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
21. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
23. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
24. Raging Bull (1980)
25. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
26. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
27. Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
28. Apocalypse Now (1979)
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
31. Annie Hall (1977)
32. The Godfather, Part II (1974)
33. High Noon (1952)
34. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
35. It Happened One Night (1934)
36. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38. Double indemnity (1944)
39. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
40. North by Northwest (1959)
41. West Side Story (1961)
42. Rear Window (1954)
43. King Kong (1933)
44. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
45. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
46. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
47. Taxi Driver (1976)
48. Jaws (1975)
49. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
50. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
51. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
52. From Here to Eternity (1953)
53. Amadeus (1984)
54. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
55. The Sound of Music (1965)
56. MASH (1970)
57. The Third Man (1949)
58. Fantasia (1940)
59. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
61. Vertigo (1958)
62. Tootsie (1982)
63. Stagecoach (1939)
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
65. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
66. Network (1976)
67. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
68. An American in Paris (1951)
69. Shane (1953)
70. The French Connection (1971)
71. Forrest Gump (1994)
72. Ben-Hur (1959)
73. Wuthering Heights (1939)
74. The Gold Rush (1925)
75. Dances With Wolves (1990)
76. City Lights (1931)
77. American Graffiti (1973)
78. Rocky (1976)
79. The Deer Hunter (1978)
80. The Wild Bunch (1969)
81. Modern Times (1936)
82. Giant (1956)
83. Platoon (1986)
84. Fargo (1996)
85. Duck Soup (1933)
86. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
87. Frankenstein (1931)
88. Easy Rider (1969)
89. Patton (1970)
90. The Jazz Singer (1927)
91. My Fair Lady (1964)
92. A Place in the Sun (1951)
93. The Apartment (1960)
94. Goodfellas (1990)
95. Pulp Fiction (1994)
96. The Searchers (1956)
97. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
98. Unforgiven (1992)
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)


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Film Chronology

1888: George Eastman mass produces and markets celluloid roll film.

1889: W.K.L. Dickson devises a film projection system for Thomas Edison.

1891: Earliest whole film on record: W.K.L. Dickson's "Fred Ott's Sneeze."

1891: Edison files patents for the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope (patents granted in 1893).

1893: Kinetograph/Kinetoscope displayed at Chicago World's Fair.

1894: First Kinetoscope parlour (peep-show) opened by Canadian Andrew Holland at 1155 Broadway, NYC, April 14.

1895: First moving picture made for the purpose of projection: Lumiere brothers' "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory."

1895: Lumiere brothers project first films to private audiences of scientists and friends, March.

1895: Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins demonstrate their Phantoscope projector at the Cotton States Expo in Atlanta, September.

1895: First movies projected to a paying public: Lumiere brothers introduce their Cinematographe with 10 short films, shown in the basement of the Grand Cafe, Paris, December 28.

1896: Armat applies for a patent for his improved projector; licenses it to Edison as the Vitascope.

1896: World's first public movie theater opens: George Melies' Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris.

1896: First official public showing of a movie in the United States for a paying audience, at Koster & Bial's Music Hall, 34th St. and Broadway, NYC (present site of Macy's), April 23.

1902: First permanent movie theater designed specifically for the exhibition of films, Thomas L. Tally's Electric Theatre, opens in Los Angeles.

1905: First nickelodeon opens in Pittsburgh, Pa.

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June 30, 1998