AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies, Measured
The American Film Institute's hundred greatest American films — voted in 1998 and revised in 2007. Here is every film from either edition in our library, re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.
123 films from this list are in our library; the top 30 by composite score are shown — the ranking is ours, not the list's own order.
- 1The Godfather1972 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States / Italy · crime, drama, thriller9.75
Empire 500 (2008) #1 · Oscar Best Picture winner 1972 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #3
- 2Citizen Kane1941 · Orson Welles · United States · drama, biography, mystery9.21
AFI 100 (2007) #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #2 · AFI 100 (1998) #1
- 32001: A Space Odyssey1968 · Stanley Kubrick · United States / United Kingdom · adventure, mystery, sci-fi7.43
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #6 · AFI 100 (2007) #15
- 4Lawrence of Arabia1962 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · war, biography, drama7.40
Oscar Best Picture winner 1962 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1963 #1
- 5Apocalypse Now1979 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States · war, action, drama6.84
Palme d'Or winner 1979 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #18 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #19
- 6Goodfellas1990 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, crime, thriller6.33
BAFTA Best Film winner 1991 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #28 · Empire 500 (2008) #6
- 7Taxi Driver1976 · Martin Scorsese · United States · film-noir, drama, crime6.25
Palme d'Or winner 1976 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #12
- 8Schindler's List1993 · Steven Spielberg · United States · war, biography, drama6.12
Oscar Best Picture winner 1993 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1994 · AFI 100 (2007) #8
- 9The Third Man1949 · Carol Reed · United Kingdom · film-noir, mystery, drama6.08
BFI Top 100 British films #1 · Palme d'Or winner 1949 · Cannes Grand Prix winner 1949
- 10All About Eve1950 · Joseph L. Mankiewicz · United States · drama, comedy5.87
Oscar Best Picture winner 1950 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1951 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #1
- 11Pulp Fiction1994 · Quentin Tarantino · United States · crime, drama, thriller5.76
Palme d'Or winner 1994 · Empire 500 (2008) #9 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1994
- 12Raging Bull1980 · Martin Scorsese · United States · biography, drama, action5.71
AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22 · Siskel's annual top 10 1980 #1
- 13Annie Hall1977 · Woody Allen · United States · comedy, romance, drama5.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1977 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1978 · Siskel's annual top 10 1977 #1
- 14The Godfather Part II1974 · Francis Ford Coppola · United States · drama, crime, thriller5.37
Oscar Best Picture winner 1974 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #26 · Letterboxd Top 250 #8
- 15Casablanca1942 · Michael Curtiz · United States · romance, war, drama5.29
Oscar Best Picture winner 1943 · AFI 100 (2007) #3 · AFI 100 (1998) #2
- 1612 Angry Men1957 · Sidney Lumet · United States · drama5.25
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1957 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1959 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #3
- 17Vertigo1958 · Alfred Hitchcock · United States · mystery, thriller, drama5.16
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #6 · AFI 100 (2007) #9
- 18Unforgiven1992 · Clint Eastwood · United States · western, drama, crime4.96
Oscar Best Picture winner 1992 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1992 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #1
- 19Dr. Strangelove1964 · Stanley Kubrick · United States / United Kingdom · comedy, war4.66
BAFTA Best Film winner 1965 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #46 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1964
- 20One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest1975 · Miloš Forman · United States · comedy, drama4.63
Oscar Best Picture winner 1975 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1977 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #2
- 21Midnight Cowboy1969 · John Schlesinger · United States · drama4.62
Oscar Best Picture winner 1969 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1970 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #2
- 22The Bridge on the River Kwai1957 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · drama, war4.61
Oscar Best Picture winner 1957 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1958 · BFI Top 100 British films #11
- 23Sunset Boulevard1950 · Billy Wilder · United States · drama, film-noir4.54
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1951 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #62 · AFI 100 (2007) #16
- 24Do the Right Thing1989 · Spike Lee · United States · comedy, drama4.39
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1989 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #24 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #29
- 25The Apartment1960 · Billy Wilder · United States · comedy, romance, drama4.38
Oscar Best Picture winner 1960 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1961 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #54
- 26Chinatown1974 · Roman Polanski · United States · film-noir, mystery, thriller4.33
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1974 · AFI 100 (2007) #21
- 27Amadeus1984 · Miloš Forman · United States · biography, musical, drama4.33
Oscar Best Picture winner 1984 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #1 · Ebert's annual top 10 1984 #1
- 28The Best Years of Our Lives1946 · William Wyler · United States · war, drama4.31
Oscar Best Picture winner 1946 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1948 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1948 #2
- 29On the Waterfront1954 · Elia Kazan · United States · drama, crime, thriller4.31
Oscar Best Picture winner 1954 · AFI 100 (1998) #8 · AFI 100 (2007) #19
- 30Singin' in the Rain1952 · Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen · United States · comedy, romance, musical4.30
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #10 · AFI 100 (2007) #5 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #52
The AFI's hundred is the American film industry's official self-portrait, and like every self-portrait it flatters. More than 1,500 directors, actors, writers and executives were handed a shortlist of 400 titles and asked to name the greatest American movies ever made — a canon voted by the same trade that made the films. That circularity is the list's charm and its blind spot, and it is precisely what our composite score, drawn from more than twenty outside lists, awards and polls, exists to test.
The jury and its rules
The American Film Institute published the original ranking in 1998 and a revised tenth-anniversary edition in 2007, swapping twenty-three titles between the two. The eligibility bar is narrow and worth naming, because it shapes everything above it: entries had to be American feature-length narratives — English-language, at least sixty minutes long, with significant American creative or financial weight behind them. A foreign masterpiece, however towering, was never on the ballot. The AFI has never released its voters' names or the final tallies, so the jury stays a black box; its stated yardsticks were critical standing, major awards, inflation-adjusted box office, technical innovation and cultural reach — a deliberately broad net that lets popularity and prestige count as one.
How to read our list
Our page holds all 123 films that appeared in either edition, re-ranked from scratch — the order here is ours, never the AFI's. That rearrangement is the whole point. The Godfather (1972) leads our slice at #1 overall, and Citizen Kane (1941), the title most bound up with the list's own identity, sits close behind at #2. Below them the industry's affection for its own blockbusters looks shakier under a wider lens: Titanic (1997) lands at #72, Gone with the Wind (1939) at #75 and Forrest Gump (1994) all the way down at #100 — Best Picture winners and box-office monuments that the broader canon holds at arm's length. The films that keep their height are the ones the rest of the world also keeps voting for: Lawrence of Arabia (1962) at #4, then Apocalypse Now (1979) and Schindler's List (1993) close behind, with Vertigo (1958) at #19. Read top to bottom, our ranking becomes a quiet argument — that a canon voted from inside Hollywood over-weights the box office and under-weights the strange.