Top 5 films each decade

I knew you could do it!!

You have to be ruthless. And it makes you examine which ones you feel are really truly set apart.

More like which ones make me look less normie

Whatever, man. I didn't limit myself to one film by the director per list. The only limit was one film by the director per decade. This was hard—total annihilation! The 1960s and 1990s were particularly difficult - just too many masterworks. Needless to say, I ran out of space for dozens of total masterpieces that I dearly love. The list is quite boring/obvious, but I think some inclusions can come off as a little bit offbeat or intriguing to a cinephilic stranger's eye and most will be bewildering/weird/unknown to a normie. I didn't beat myself over some of the inclusions or the list order, although it's fairly thought over. Of course, I'm starting from the very birth of cinema moving my way up to our current decade. People who start from the 1920s or 1930s don't take Early Cinema seriously.

1860s:

1. Felix Nadar Spinning in His Chair (1865)

1870s:

1. Passage de Venus (1874)
2. Sallie Gardner at a Gallop [The Horse in Motion] (1878)

1880s:

1. The Kiss (1882)
2. Cat in Trot Changing to Gallop (1887)
3. Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)
4. Human Figure in Motion (1884)
5. Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1889)

1890s:

1. Duel au pistolet [Pistol Duel] (1896)
2. Luttes extravagantes [An Extraordinary Wrestling Match] (1899)
3. Irish Mail - L.& N.W. Railway - Taking Up Water at Full Speed (1898)
4. Das boxende Känguruh [The Boxing Kangaroo] (1895)
5. Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)

1900s:

1. Le voyage dans la Lune [A Trip to the Moon] (1902)
2. Pickpock ne craint pas les entraves [Slippery Jim] (1909)
3. The Airship Destroyer [The Battle in the Clouds] (1909)
4. Coney Island at Night (1905)
5. The Flying Train (1902)

1910s:

1. J'accuse [I Accuse] (1919)
2. Les vampires [The Vampires] (1915)
3. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
4. L' inferno [Dante's Inferno] (1911)
5. Сумерки женской души [Twilight of a Woman's Soul] (1913)

1920s:

1. La passion de Jeanne d'Arc [The Passion of Joan of Arc] (1928)
2. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
3. Человек с киноаппаратом [Man With a Movie Camera] (1929)
4. Körkarlen [The Phantom Carriage] (1921)
5. 狂った一頁 [A Page of Madness] (1926)

1930s:

1. 残菊物語 [The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum] (1939)
2. Земля [Earth] (1930)
3. M (1931)
4. Les misérables (1934)
5. Broken Lullaby (1932)

1940s:

1. Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)
2. 我が恋せし乙女 [The Girl I Loved] (1946)
3. 晩春 [Late Spring] (1949)
4. Les enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945)
5. 簪 [Ornamental Hairpin] (1941)

1950s:

1. 山椒大夫 [Sansho the Bailiff] (1954)
2. 人間の條件 第一部純愛篇/第二部激怒篇 [The Human Condition I: No Greater Love] (1959)
3. 東京暮色 [Tokyo Twilight] (1957)
4. ビルマの竪琴 [The Burmese Harp] (1956)
5. 野菊の如き君なりき [She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum] (1955)

1960s:

1. 赤ひげ [Red Beard] (1965)
2. Persona (1966)
3. Andrei Rublev (1966)
4. L' année derničre ŕ Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] (1961)
5. L' eclisse [The Eclipse] (1962)

1970s:

1. Зеркало [Mirror] (1975)
2. 忍ぶ川 [The Long Darkness] (1972)
3. Még kér a nép [Red Psalm] (1972)
4. 田園に死す [Pastoral: To Die in the Country] (1974)
5. Un homme qui dort [The Man Who Sleeps] (1974)

1980s:

1. Τοπίο στην ομίχλη [Landscape in the Mist] (1988)
2. Fanny och Alexander [Fanny and Alexander] (1982)
3. Sans soleil [Sunless] (1983)
4. Письма мёртвого человека [Dead Man's Letters] (1986)
5. 遙かなる山の呼び声 [A Distant Cry From Spring] (1980)

1990s:

1. 息子 [My Sons] (1991)
2. Eternity and a Day (1998)
3. Satantango (1994)
4. 水の中の八月 [August in the Water] (1995)
5. はがね [Fe] (1994)

2000s:

1. Werckmeister harmóniák [Werckmeister Harmonies] (2000)
2. Η σκόνη του χρόνου [The Dust of Time] (2008)
3. 式日 [Ritual] (2000)
4. Le pont des Arts [The Bridge of Arts] (2004)
5. 카페 느와르 [Café Noir] (2009)

2010s:

1. あなたにゐてほしい~SOAR~ [SOAR: I Wish You Were Here] (2015)
2. ひそひそ星 [The Whispering Star] (2015)
3. 花筐 [Hanagatami] (2017)
4. 高海拔之戀II [Romancing in Thin Air] (2012)
5. ハッピーアワー [Happy Hour] (2015)

2020s:

1. ドライブ・マイ・カー [Drive My Car] (2021)
2. こんにちは、母さん [Mom, Is That You?!] (2023)
3. Bęn trong vỏ kén vŕng [Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell] (2023)
4. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (2020)
5. Lúa vermella [Red Moon Tide] (2020)

Tremendous effort!!!

The Flying Train is astonishing.

J'Accuse also very impressive. Gance seems to have been ahead of or at least competing with Griffith technically. The view looking down the barrel of the shotgun's fantastic.

I am just staggered by The Flying Train. 1902. I can't think of anything that might compare with that until probably the 1960s?? wtf??????????

If I had taken early cinema more seriously and had watched enough to make a proper top-5, J'accuse would have been at the top of my 1910s.

__________________

This was some Sophie's Choice shite right here....

1920:

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
Greed
Metropolis
Sherlock, Jr

1930:

Island of Lost Souls
Lost Horizon
My Man Godfrey
The Scarlet Empress
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

1940:

Casablanca
Day of Wrath
Double Indemnity
The Grapes of Wrath
The Lady from Shanghai
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Maltese Falcon
The Ox-Bow Incident
The Set-Up
The Third Man

1950:

The Asphalt Jungle
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Paths of Glory
The Searchers
Shane

1960:

Andrei Rublev
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Last Year at Marienbad
Lawrence of Arabia
Once Upon a Time in the West

1970:

Alien
Apocalypse Now
Chinatown
The Conversation
Superman

1980:

Blue Velvet
Do the Right Thing
Evil Dead II
Heaven's Gate
RoboCop

1990:

Demolition Man
Forrest Gump
GoodFellas
Heat
Pulp Fiction

2000:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Synecdoche, New York
Watchmen
Zodiac

2010:

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Drive
Her
The Master
The Tree of Life

20/20:

Aftersun
Blonde
Drive My Car
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
TÁR

I need more experience in 1910's so I'll hold off on that.


20's: Metropolis, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Dr. Caligari, Sunrise
30's: Wizard of Oz, Modern Times, All Quiet on the Western Front,M, Grand Illusion
40's: Citizen Kane, Rebecca, It's a Wonderful Life, White Heat, Casablanca
50's: Vertigo, Seventh Seal, Sunset Blvd., Rear Window, Nights of Cabiria
60's: 8 1/2, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, The Sound of Music, Cleo from 5 to 7
70's: The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Godfather Pt. II, Nashville, The Mirror
80's: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Do the Right Thing, Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens
90's: Terminator 2, Magnolia, Toy Story, 12 Monkeys, Scream
00's: LOTR1, Oldboy, Adaptation, Sin City, Spirited Away
10's: The Avengers, It, The Lighthouse, Endgame, Won't You Be My Neighbor

Very interesting list, as I expected. I'm always happy to see Dead Man's Letters get some love.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

I've not watched any of them start to finish, but some other strong options for the 1910s:
Birth of a Nation (1915) (yes, I know)
Easy Street (1917)
Poor Little Rich Girl (1915)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1915)
The Blue Bird (1918)
Broken Blossoms (1919)

There are good GW Griffith movies in both 1909 and 1920 that obviously just miss out

For the 1920s, new ones since I did my list, which would be strong candidates:
Way Down East (1920)
Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Don’t worry about looking like a normie. If you have to consider which films to exclude, even if they might be your favorite, for fear of looking like one, you’re A) doing this whole cinema thing wrong and B) trying too hard to look different, which we all know shouldn’t require too much thought do so.

I'm counting only features because, particularly on the earlier decades, short filmmaking is quite another beast.

1910s
L'inferno / Dante's Inferno (Giuseppe de Liguoro, Francesco Bertolini & Adolfo Padovan, 1911)
Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjöström, 1913)
Les vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur, 1915)
Hearts of the world (D.W. Griffith, 1918)

A very interesting decade in that it still has the impulse of the earlier ones and almost every film feels like a significant step in the medium; certain trends, like Griffith's historical melodramas or Feuillade's crime serials, will pave the way for future defining genres in the history of cinema. Since we are still in the middle of a learning curve however, filmmaking still looks stiff and underwhelming comparing to what will come immediately later, apart from a few great and notorious exceptions.

1920s
Das cabinet des Dr. Caligari / The cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
Kurutta ippęji / A page of madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
La chute de la maison Usher / The fall of the house of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)
La passion de Jeanne d'Arc / The passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)

On your list:
Sherlock Jr 1924 Keaton - Very high in my list, I think it is my favorite Keaton overall.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927 Murnau - My very slight preference for Faust aside, a really solid pick.
The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928 Dreyer - May be my number 1 of the decade.
Pandora's Box 1929 Pabst - Pabst is one of my biggest misses.
Blackmail 1929 Hitchcock - Love it! The best of Hitchcock's 20s output, which I find quite underrated in general (and better than his following decade).

I think the 20s are one of the medium's expressive peaks, when they truly managed to perfect silent filmmaking. I still think I prefer overall sound films, but silent got the best it could in this decade. Also a very interesting decade for the advent of artistic movements from other disciplines, like the first surreal, dadaist or impressionist films.

1930s
City lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932)
Sonnenstrahl / Ray of sunshine (Pál Fejös, 1933)
Fury (Fritz Lang, 1936)
Make way for tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)

On your list:
The Blue Angel 1930 von Sternberg - A very great one, just a step below my favorites.
Scarface 1932 Hawks - On my list!
The Roaring Twenties 1938 Walsh - Another great one, one of the best gangster films of the 30s I've seen.
The Adventures of Robin Hood 1939 Curtiz - In my watchlist for very long
The Wizard of Oz 1939 Fleming - A classic, but I am not much into it. I liked it more as a kid than when I rewatched it as an adult.

Overall, it may be my weakest decade? Not necessarily for the amount watched (which is still less than other decades), but because I have the constant feeling that I'm missing out a lot. I don't think I'm entirely into its mood and in a way I feel the cinema of that decade is in a sort of learning curve again on how to mix visuals and sound, which makes actually some strong visual poems with a consistently jarring sound mix; or, on the contrary, stuff with a lot of witty dialogue and great use of sound that looks plain forgettable.

1940s
The Ox-Bow incident (William A. Wellman, 1942)
I walked with a zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
A matter of life and death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
The ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
The treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)

On your list:
Day of Wrath 1943 Dreyer - My biggest miss in Dreyer's biography. I will probably love it when I see it.
Laura 1944 Preminger - Probably in my top10 or 15 of the decade, definitely one of my favorite and most unique noirs. Also a big inspiration for David Lynch.
Rome Open City 1945 Rossellini - I'm not that big on Rossellini's war trilogy (oddly enough I think I prefer his later neorealist films), but this is definitely his best to me and also the one that put Anna Magnani -one of my favorite actresses- on the map.
Panique 1946 Duvivier - Not yet seen, sounds quite interesting.
The Third Man 1949 Reed - Definitely a visual feast and very iconic film, a little step below my favorites but still a great one.

My take on the 40s is quite positive, but incomplete. Hollywood studio cinema was quite in shape, but in other countries the production was struggling for years. Still, as said, it's quite an incomplete take, because this is perhaps the decade I have watched less films outside of Hollywood.

In the next decades I think I can confidently pick a top10 or even 20 (will post just 10 anyway), so I'll leave them for a later post because the post would get too long.

The only way for me to do this is to not take it too seriously, since I'll already disagree with it by the time I hit "Post".


Avoided repeats from any franchise. Used my bonus slot on the 1950s and double list on the 1990s.


1920s:
The Kid (1921)
Safety Last! (1923)
The General (1926)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Wings (1927)

1930s:
Grand Illusion (1937)
A Star Is Born (1937)
Holiday (1938)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Ninotchka (1939)

1940s:
The Talk of the Town (1942)
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
The More the Merrier (1943)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

1950s:
Peter Pan (1953)
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Giant (1956)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Rio Bravo (1959)

1960s:
The Hustler (1961)
Mary Poppins (1964)
A Thousand Clowns (1965)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

1970s:
Jaws (1975)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Rocky (1976)
Annie Hall (1977)
Apocalypse Now (1979)

1980s:
The Shining (1980)
The Thing (1982)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Die Hard (1988)
Indiand Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

1990s:
Tremors (1990)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
The Remains of the Day (1993)
The Lion King (1994)
Little Big League (1994)
Speed (1994)
Rush Hour (1998)
Dogma (1999)
The Mummy (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)

2000s:
Shanghai Knights (2003)
King Kong (2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Sahara (2005)
Serenity (2005)

2010s:
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
About Time (2013)
Interstellar (2014)
Room (2015)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

2020s:
Tenet (2020)
Babylon (2022)
The Fabelmans (2022)
Tár (2022)
The Wonder (2022)

My deliberate criterion centers upon the inclusion of films that remain inaccessible to the mainstream or provoke aversion among those adhering to conventional tastes. This endeavor requires minimal effort, as it naturally follows that most cinematic masterpieces transcend the normative threshold—too profound, too avant-garde, or too experimental for the average viewer.

The normie, devoid of genuine artistic curiosity, approaches film merely as a transient diversion—a hedonistic indulgence to be consumed without intellectual strain. Their choices, predictably, veer astray. Lacking discernment or aesthetic sensibility, they form opinions driven by primal, instinctual urges, rather than informed judgment.

The normie phenomenon manifests gradually, encompassing the majority of individuals. However, within this spectrum, a distinction emerges: the MoFo normies, while still conforming, ascend above the lowest echelon—the Sunday movie-watcher normies.

You only get points for the drawing at the bottom. I like his mustache

You don't get any points. You don't have a mustache.

I must confront that spirit. Look at your 60s output. Kurosawa? Bergman? Tarkovsky? Resnais? Antonioni? Did Cahiers or the Sight and Sound aggregate make that list? I suppose this is not surprising for a beginner, a newcomer in auteur du cinéma, but I was told that Mr Minio was built different, with a much more sophisticated appreciation for the Kuraharas, the Sjöbergs, the Parajanovs, the Roziers, the Cottafavis.

Enlightening as it is for the masses, this is stepping too low-brow for the Minios, and I demand an immediate repair as my fair expectations were tragically not met.

I have a beard. Sometimes. Before I shave it. Does that count?

You thought I was a girl?

Jokes aside, it's the OP's fault. Limiting oneself to 5 per decade must bear a boring/obvious result.

Wait, you're not a girl?

What do you mean you are not?


You need to break the canon! Post at least a top10 (actually this is what I am planning to do because I got to the 50s as I was writing the post and it's a mess).

The only films I haven't seen but like to pretend I did are Swan's short films.