These are the greatest films ever made (that will not harm your soul), according to an overwhelming consensus of experts across time, including, I humbly submit, myself.
For more on the impetus of this list, see my previous article, “We Need a Great Films List” on Circe Institute.
For the article accompanying the original list on Circe Institute, click here.
Intolerance (1916); 17+
Sherlock, Jr. (1924); 7+
Greed (1924); 13+
The Gold Rush (1925); 7+
Battleship Potemkin (1925); 12+
The General (1926); 7+
Metropolis (1927); 15+
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927); 13+
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928); 14+
Man With a Movie Camera (1929); 18+
City Lights (1931); 12+
M (1931); 18+
King Kong (1933); 10+
Duck Soup (1933); 14+
Modern Times (1936); 15+
The Grand Illusion (1937); 13+
The Rules of the Game (1939); 16+
The Wizard of Oz (1939); 6+
Gone with the Wind (1939); 14+
His Girl Friday (1940); 14+
The Grapes of Wrath (1940); 12+
Citizen Kane (1941); 12+
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); 14+
Casablanca (1942); 10+
Double Indemnity (1944); 15+
Children of Paradise (1945); 17+
A Matter of Life and Death (1946); 12+
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); 13+
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946); 10+
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); 13+
Bicycle Thieves (1948); 13+
The Third Man (1949); 13+
Late Spring (1949); 13+
Sunset Blvd. (1950); 13+
Rashomon (1950); 15+
All About Eve (1950); 13+
Los Olvidados (1950); 16+
Singin’ in the Rain (1952); 6+
Ikiru (1952); 16+
Ugetsu (1953); 16+
Tokyo Story (1953); 13+
Sansho the Bailiff (1954); 13+
Seven Samurai (1954); 13+
On the Waterfront (1954); 13+
Journey to Italy (1954); 12+
Ordet (1955); 16+
The Night of the Hunter (1955); 14+
Pather Panchali (1955); 12+
The Searchers (1956); 11+
The Seventh Seal (1957); 16+
Touch of Evil (1958); 14+
Vertigo (1958); 16+
Rio Bravo (1959); 13+
Jules and Jim (1962); 17+
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); 13+
Lawrence of Arabia (1962); 13+
The Leopard (1963); 15+
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); 16+
Gertrud (1964); 16+
The Battle of Algiers (1966); 16+
Andrei Rublev (1966); 17+
Playtime (1967); 10+
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); 12+
The Godfather (1972); 16+
Chinatown (1974); 18+
The Godfather Part II (1974); 16+
Barry Lyndon (1975); 18+
Star Wars (1977); 8+
Apocalypse Now (1979); 18+
Stalker (1979); 16+
Blade Runner (1982); 18+
Shoah (1985); 15+
Ran (1985); 16+
Close-Up (1990); 12+
Schindler’s List (1993); 17+
Toy Story (1995); 6+
Beau Travail (1999); 18+
In the Mood for Love (2000); 12+
Spirited Away (2001); 9+
There Will Be Blood (2007); 16+
In the Mood for Love (2000) added 9/26/25
Videre Recte 
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