America's Best Movies by the AFI (Top 100), Part 2 [26.-50.]

A list by Fix

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."

Tags

: arts movies AFI top 100 movies of all time

• 26. Dr. Strangelove or: How I ... (1964) Director: Stanley Kubrick; Stars: Peter Sellers; George C. Scott; Sterling Hayden Kubrick's black comedy focuses on an American president, played by Sellers in one of his three roles, who m
• 27. Bonnie And Clyde (1967) Director: Arthur Penn; Stars: Warren Beatty; Faye Dunaway; Michael J. Pollard Dunaway and Beatty star in the story of real-life 1930s bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, which mixed romance, ad
• 28. Apocalypse Now (1979) Director: Francis Ford Coppola; Stars: Marlon Brando; Robert Duvall; Martin Sheen Based loosely on Joseph Conrad's
• The Heart of Darkness, Coppola's Vietnam epic follows Sheen up the Mekong River into Cambodia to find Brando, an officer who has gone mad in the jungle and is running his own empire.
• 29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Director: Frank Capra; Stars: James Stewart; Claude Rains; Jean Arthur Stewart's idealistic young Senator Jefferson Smith locks horns with a powerful political machine in Capra's often bitin
• 30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) Director: John Huston; Stars: Humphrey Bogart; Walter Huston; Tim Holt A scraggly Bogart leads a trio of gold prospectors destroyed by greed in this taut psychological drama. John Huston
• 31. Annie Hall (1977) Director: Woody Allen; Stars: Woody Allen; Diane Keaton; Tony Roberts Allen's Alvy Singer is trying to find love in the Big Apple, despite his neurosis, and falls in love with Keaton's aspiring singer. This c
• 32. The Godfather, Part II (1974) Director: Francis Ford Coppola; Stars: Al Pacino; Robert De Niro; Robert Duvall; Diane Keaton The sequel to
• The Godfather shows us the world of Don Vito Corleone before and after the story in the original film. Pacino is his son Michael, who struggles to bring the family into the modern age. In the film's extended flashback sequences, De Niro is the young Vito
• 33. High Noon (1952) Director: Fred Zinnemann; Stars: Gary Cooper; Lloyd Bridges; Thomas Mitchell; Grace Kelly On his wedding day, Cooper is forced to face an old enemy alone as the people of his town turn their backs on him. His
• 34. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) Director: Robert Mulligan; Stars: Gregory Peck; Mary Badham; Philip Alford; Robert Duvall Peck's Atticus Finch is a widowed Southern lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. At
• 35. It Happened One Night (1934) Director: Frank Capra; Stars: Clark Gable; Claudette Colbert; Walter Connolly This battle of the sexes love story between a runaway heiress who shows her legs to hitch a ride and an unemployed news
• 36. Midnight Cowboy (1969) Director: John Schlesinger; Stars: Jon Voight; Dustin Hoffman Voight is Joe Buck, a country boy who arrives in New York City to make his fortune as a hustler. As he struggles to maintain a living, he mee
• 37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Director: William Wyler; Stars: Myrna Loy; Fredric March; Dana Andrews; Teresa Wright World War II veterans from different strata of society face difficult readjustments to everyday civilian
• 38. Double Indemnity (1944) Director: Billy Wilder; Stars: Fred MacMurray; Edward G. Robinson; Barbara Stanwyck This crackling adaptation of James Cain's shady tale of an insurance man lured into murder was brilliantly cast with t
• 39. Doctor Zhivago (1965) Director: David Lean; Stars: Omar Sharif; Julie Christie Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's sweeping novel stars Sharif as the married Dr. Zhivago, whose feelings for Lara, played by Christie, ins
• 40. North By Northwest (1959) Director: Alfred Hitchcock; Stars: Cary Grant; Eva Marie Saint; James Mason Grant is the Hitchcockian man caught up in something he doesn't understand as he travels from New York to Mount Rushmore in
• 41. West Side Story (1961) Director: Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins; Stars: Natalie Wood; George Chakiris; Rita Moreno The Sharks and the Jets square off in this film adaptation of the landmark Broadway musical. It's the Romeo and J
• 42. Rear Window (1954) Director: Alfred Hitchcock; Stars: James Stewart; Grace Kelly; Wendell Corey; Thelma Ritter When a broken leg forces photographer Stewart to become wheelchair-bound in his New York City apartment, he amuses
• 43. King Kong (1933) Director: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack; Stars: Fay Wray; Robert Armstrong; Bruce Cabot With a mixture of live action, animation and special effects, this film follows the plight of a giant ape whose
• 44. The Birth Of A Nation (1915) Director: D.W. Griffith; Stars: Lillian Gish; Mae Marsh; Henry B. Walthall; Miriam Cooper This now-controversial film about the Civil War and its aftermath was the first of the great American epic
• 45. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Director: Elia Kazan; Stars: Marlon Brando; Vivien Leigh; Kim Hunter; Karl Malden Williams' play is brought to the big screen with Brando as Stanley Kowalski, the blue-collared brute married to
• 46. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Director: Stanley Kubrick; Stars: Malcolm McDowell; Patrick Magee; Adrienne Corri McDowell and his "droogs" terrorize their way through London in this dark social satire with an eye on the c
• 47. Taxi Driver (1976) Director: Martin Scorsese; Stars: Robert De Niro; Jodie Foster; Cybill Shepherd; Harvey Keitel De Niro is Travis Bickle, a New York City cab driver whose rage builds in a lonely, dark world, until his attem
• 48. Jaws (1975) Director: Steven Spielberg; Stars: Roy Scheider; Robert Shaw; Richard Dreyfuss Spielberg pits three men against a Great White Shark that has been attacking swimmers at an island resort in New England. The film rede
• 49. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937) Director: Ben Sharpsteen, William Cottrell, Walt Disney, and others; Stars: Adriana Caselotti; Harry Stockwell; Lucille LaVerne (voices) The first feature-length animated film charmed aud
• 50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Director: George Roy Hill; Stars: Paul Newman; Robert Redford; Katharine Ross Newman and Redford are two offbeat outlaws who run (and jump) from the law, then flee to Bolivia where the