1. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)
2. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925)
3. METROPOLIS (1927)
4. 42ND STREET (1933)
5. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
6. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
7. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
8. STAGECOACH (1939)
9. CITIZEN KANE (1941)
10. THE BICYCLE THIEF (1947)
11. RASHOMON (1950)
12. THE SEARCHERS (1956)
13. BREATHLESS (1959)
14. PSYCHO (1960)
15. STAR WARS (1977)
I\’ve seen 10 of the 15. I\’d argue that Seven Samurai is more influential than Roshomon, of all the Akira Kurosawa films.
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I’ve seen all but 2. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925). I guess they’re not including porn (Deep Throat. They’re all good movies, but most influential? Not convinced of that. For some reason I can’t click through to the article.
@nyokki: FIXED
TCM gives great reasons why they are all influential on that link. All of them are copied to the extreme degree by Hollywood of past and present. For instance Stagecoast has been referenced by everyone from Sergio Leone to Steven Spielberg.
After reading the article I broadly agree w/ TCM’s choices. I’d like to see what other movies were in the running.
I first saw The Searchers on one of those Sunday Movie Specials that they used to show on the weekends, before cable TV, and didn’t think much of it. I then watched it ears later, in a film class and absolutely loved it. It’s amazing how much age an experience can change your views and understanding of the world. That along w/ the context of the movie being discussed in class transformed the movie to a masterpiece for me.
@nyokki: I had similar experiences in the script, animation and world cinema classes I took. Academic classes about understanding film are quite fun too with a teacher as excited about it as you are. I took an animation class and we went on a field trip to see Persepolis. Was fantastic!
Wait just a freakin’ minute. Snow White is on this list? WHY?
@Annarchy: 6. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
Without Snow White, there would be no Pixar. No Snow White, no anime, no Shrek, no Cartoon Network. It’s as simple as that. “Disney’s Folly” was the name most Hollywood insiders gave Walt Disney’s dream of producing the U.S.’ first animated feature. Of course, nobody in Hollywood could have realized what a perfectionist Disney was. With convincing human animation, creative character design for the seven dwarfs, Technicolor and the use of a multiplane camera to create the illusion of depth, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs didn’t just look better than any previous Disney film. It looked better than most major studio productions. Little wonder it would become the U.S.’ top grossing film until Gone With the Wind supplanted it two years later. But there was a price for success. For better or worse, Snow White set U.S. animation in pursuit of a more realistic look for decades to come. For Walt Disney, that meant a string of triumphs, as he personally produced 18 more animated features, including such classics as Dumbo and Bambi. For more surrealistic animators like Max Fleischer and Ub Iwerks, it meant adapting to the new style. Iwerks, who had created Mickey Mouse, eventually returned to Disney to work on integrating animation with live-action footage on Song of the South and other films.
@nyokki: Coming to DVD/Blu-Ray October 6th. lol
@nyokki: I don’t buy it. I think the whole world would be a much nicer place without Disney and US animation studios would have come to be in any alternate universe. Except one where Germany won WWII, of course.
@Annarchy: Tht may be true, but in this universe it was Disney and for good or ill, it influenced American full length animated features and still does.
Not only are they in order of most influential, but they’re also chronological!