The Film Canon
The Film Canon (launched in November 2012) is a series of articles and reviews of older movies that have entered, well, the film canon, for being creatively or culturally important. We plan to cover everything from Citizen Kane to The Breakfast Club and Fargo to Fight Club. We want to create a diverse list of essential movies for young cinephiles to watch, enjoy and discuss.
1900s & Earlier
The Collected Works of Alice Guy-Blaché
1910s
1915 – The Cheat (dir. Cecil B. DeMille)
1915-16 – Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade)
1920s
1922 – Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (dir. Benjamin Christensen)
1930s
1931 – City Lights (dir. Charlie Chaplin)
1931 – Frankenstein (dir. James Whale)
1934 – It Happened One Night (dir. Frank Capra)
1936 – Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
1937 – Pépé le Moko (dir. Julien Duvivier)
1939 – The Wizard of Oz (dir. Victor Fleming)
1940s
1941 – Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Harks)
1942 – Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz)
1942 – The Magnificent Ambersons (dir. Orson Welles)
1943- Jane Eyre (dir. Robert Stevenson)
1945 – Rome, Open City (dir. Roberto Rossellini)
1947 – Black Narcissus (dir. Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell)
1948 –Bicycle Thieves (dir. Vittorio de Sicca)
1950s
1950 – Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
1952 – Singin’ in the Rain (dir. Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
1953 – The Hitch-Hiker (dir. Ida Lupino)
1954 – Godzilla (dir. Ishirō Honda)
1954 – On the Waterfront (dir. Elia Kazan)
1955 –Les Diaboliques (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot)
1957 – The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman)
1960s
1960 – Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
1961 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (dir. Blake Edwards)
1961 – Pigs and Battleships (dir. Shohei Imamura)
1962 – Jules and Jim (dir. François Truffaut)
1963 – High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
1964 – A Hard Day’s Night (dir. Richard Lester)
1964 – Black God, White Devil (dir. Glauber Rocha)
1965 – Pierrot le Fou (dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
1967 – Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn)
1967 – The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols)
1968 – The Producers (dir. Mel Brooks)
1970s
1970 – El Topo (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky)
1972 – Aguirre, the Wrath of God (dir. Werner Herzog)
1975 – Dog Day Afternoon (dir. Sidney Lumet)
1975 – Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg)
1976 – All the President’s Men (dir. Alan J. Pakula)
1976 – Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese)
1977 – Star Wars (dir. George Lucas)
1977 – The Ascent (dir. Larisa Shepitko)
1977 – Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento)
1978 – Dawn of the Dead (dir. George A. Romero)
1980s
1986 – Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch)
1988 – Alice (dir. Jan Svankmajer)
1988 – Working Girl (dir. Mike Nichols)
1989 – Do The Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee)
1989 – The Killer (dir. John Woo)
1990s
1990 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (dir. Steve Barron)
1990 – Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
1992 – My Cousin Vinny (dir. Jonathan Lynn)
1991 – Armour of God II: Operation Condor (dir. Jackie Chan)
1991 – Barton Fink (dir. Ethan & Joen Coen)
1991 – The Silence of the Lambs (dir. Jonathan Demme)
1992 – Batman Returns (dir. Tim Burton)
1993 – Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg)
1994 – Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
1995 – Batman Forever (dir. Joel Schumacher)
1995 – Clueless (dir. Amy Heckerling)
1995 – Sense and Sensibility (dir. Ang Lee)
1995 – Welcome to the Dollhouse (dir. Todd Solondz)
1995 – While You Were Sleeping (dir. Jon Turteltaub)
1997 – Princess Mononoke (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
1998 – Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot)
1998 – The Following (dir. Christopher Nolan)
1999 – American Beauty (dir. Sam Mendes)
1999 – The Insider (dir. Michael Mann)
2000 – 2005
2000 – American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron)