The BFI Top 100 British Films, Ranked

In 1999 the British Film Institute polled a thousand people from across the UK film industry to name the hundred best British films of the century. Here is the BFI 100 measured against the wider canon — re-ranked by our composite score across 20+ lists, awards and polls.

100 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.

1
Lawrence of Arabia1962 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · war, biography, drama
7.40
Oscar Best Picture winner 1962 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1963 #1
2
The Third Man1949 · Carol Reed · United Kingdom · film-noir, mystery, drama
6.08
BFI Top 100 British films #1 · Palme d'Or winner 1949 · Cannes Grand Prix winner 1949
3
The Bridge on the River Kwai1957 · David Lean · United Kingdom / United States · drama, war
4.61
Oscar Best Picture winner 1957 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1958 · BFI Top 100 British films #11
4
Secrets & Lies1996 · Mike Leigh · United Kingdom · drama
4.58
Palme d'Or winner 1996 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1997 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1996
5
Brief Encounter1945 · David Lean · United Kingdom · romance, drama
4.30
Palme d'Or winner 1946 · BFI Top 100 British films #2 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1948 #3
6
Blowup1966 · Michelangelo Antonioni · United Kingdom / Italy · mystery, thriller, drama
3.93
Palme d'Or winner 1967 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #2 · Sarris's annual top 10 1966 #1
7
Shakespeare in Love1998 · John Madden · United Kingdom / United States · comedy, romance, drama
3.77
Oscar Best Picture winner 1998 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1999 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1999 #1
8
Chariots of Fire1981 · Hugh Hudson · United Kingdom / Australia · biography, drama
3.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1981 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1982 · TIFF People's Choice winner 1981
9
A Man for All Seasons1966 · Fred Zinnemann · United Kingdom · biography, drama
3.51
Oscar Best Picture winner 1966 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1968 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1967 #4
10
The Red Shoes1948 · Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell · United Kingdom · romance, drama, musical
3.41
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #67 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · BFI Top 100 British films #9
11
The English Patient1996 · Anthony Minghella · United Kingdom / United States · romance, war, drama
3.38
Oscar Best Picture winner 1996 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1997 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1997 #5
12
Gandhi1982 · Richard Attenborough · United Kingdom / India · biography, drama
3.37
Oscar Best Picture winner 1982 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1983 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1983 #3
13
If....1968 · Lindsay Anderson · United Kingdom · drama
3.22
Palme d'Or winner 1969 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1969 #3 · BFI Top 100 British films #12
14
Sense and Sensibility1995 · Ang Lee · United Kingdom / United States · drama, romance, comedy
3.08
BAFTA Best Film winner 1996 · Berlin Golden Bear winner 1996 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1995
15
A Clockwork Orange1971 · Stanley Kubrick · United Kingdom / United States · drama, crime, thriller
3.06
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1971 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1972 #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #243
16
Hamlet1948 · Laurence Olivier · United Kingdom · drama
3.00
Oscar Best Picture winner 1948 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1949 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1949 #4
17
Tom Jones1963 · Tony Richardson · United Kingdom · comedy, adventure, drama
2.91
Oscar Best Picture winner 1963 · BAFTA Best Film winner 1964 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1964 #8
18
A Room with a View1986 · James Ivory · United Kingdom · comedy, romance, drama
2.81
BAFTA Best Film winner 1987 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1986 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1987 #6
19
The Killing Fields1984 · Roland Joffé · United Kingdom · biography, drama
2.70
BAFTA Best Film winner 1985 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1984 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #7
20
The Full Monty1997 · Peter Cattaneo · United Kingdom / United States · comedy, drama
2.62
BAFTA Best Film winner 1998 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1997 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1998 #5
21
Room at the Top1959 · Jack Clayton · United Kingdom · drama
2.38
BAFTA Best Film winner 1959 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1959 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1959 #9
22
Distant Voices, Still Lives1988 · Terence Davies · United Kingdom · drama
2.17
Locarno Golden Leopard winner 1988 · Kehr's annual top 10 1989 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #243
23
Sunday, Bloody Sunday1971 · John Schlesinger · United Kingdom · drama
2.14
BAFTA Best Film winner 1972 · BFI Top 100 British films #65 · Ebert's annual top 10 1971 #5
24
Henry V1944 · Laurence Olivier · United Kingdom · drama
2.13
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1948 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1946 · BFI Top 100 British films #18
25
Four Weddings and a Funeral1994 · Mike Newell · United Kingdom · comedy, romance, drama
2.10
BAFTA Best Film winner 1995 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1994 · BFI Top 100 British films #23
26
The Crying Game1992 · Neil Jordan · United Kingdom / Japan / Ireland · drama, romance, thriller
2.10
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1992 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #4 · BFI Top 100 British films #26
27
Don't Look Now1973 · Nicolas Roeg · United Kingdom / Italy · horror, drama
2.06
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #46 · BFI Top 100 British films #8 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #114
28
A Matter of Life and Death1946 · Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger · United Kingdom · fantasy, drama, comedy
1.99
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #78 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1950 #6 · BFI Top 100 British films #20
29
The Go-Between1971 · Joseph Losey · United Kingdom · romance, drama
1.92
Palme d'Or winner 1971 · BFI Top 100 British films #57 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
30
Oliver!1968 · Carol Reed · United Kingdom · musical, drama, crime
1.91
Oscar Best Picture winner 1968 · BFI Top 100 British films #77 · Ebert's annual top 10 1968 #7

The BFI 100 is the British film industry looking into a mirror in 1999, and its most revealing word is "British." The British Film Institute asked roughly a thousand people from UK film and television to name the movies they judged culturally British — a wide, slippery test that let a poll about a national cinema take in work directed by an Italian, an American and a Taiwanese émigré. What actually counts as British is a question the list never quite settles, and that unsettled quality is exactly what our composite score, drawn from more than twenty outside lists, awards and polls, exists to probe.

The poll and its wide net

The ballot went to industry insiders rather than to critics or the public, which tilts the roster toward craft and prestige and away from difficulty. The 1960s supplied more titles than any other decade — twenty-six of the hundred — while the earliest pick reached back only as far as 1935. David Lean drew the most nominations of any director, and the partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was close behind. The "culturally British" phrasing is the interesting loophole: it waved through films whose directors were nothing of the sort, so Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966), Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons (1966) sit on a list of the national canon by virtue of their production and subject rather than their authorship.

How to read our list

Every film here earned its place on the BFI ballot; the order, though, is ours alone, re-ranked from scratch by composite score, and the BFI's own sequence appears nowhere on this page. That gap is the point. Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) tops our slice at #4 overall with a score of 7.40, and Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) follows close behind at #9. Chariots of Fire (1981), the film most bound up with the list's patriotic self-image, holds only #89. Drop further and the industry's affection for its own comforts thins under a wider lens: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) lands at #147, and Educating Rita (1983) — modest, intimate, with none of the epic sweep the list rewards up top — settles at #843, a long way beneath the leaders. Read top to bottom, our ranking turns into a quiet argument: that a canon voted from inside one industry over-rewards the sweeping and the prestigious, and holds the strange, the small and the wicked at arm's length.