Tom Moran's 100 Greatest American Films

Man, they say, is a list-making animal, and it would appear that the only thing he enjoys doing more than making his own lists is criticizing those of other people. I know that's certainly true of me.

Ten years ago the American Film Institute put out their list of the 100 Greatest American Films, and their list really sucked. So, to show them up, I came up with my own list. It's on my old website, part of which is still online -- you can find it on Google without too much difficulty if you wanted to.

Now, a decade later, the AFI has made a new list, taking into account a lot of the criticisms that I (and a lot of other people) made of the original list. This "new and improved" list is in fact a big improvement over their original list.

Is it as good as it could be? You've got to be kidding.

So I decided to make my own rejoinder list again. I did not look at my original list from the 1990s, preferring to start from scratch. I didn't line up the film alphabetically or chronologically -- this time I decided to lay them out in order from 1 to 100.

This, briefly, is how I did it:

• I cut about 40% of the AFI's 2007 list.
• Then I went to their 400-film ballot that voters were given to choose from and picked films from there.
• Then I chose some films from the ones that the AFI dropped from its 400-film list of a decade ago.
• Then I chose some films that were never on any AFI list.

That gave me a large number of films to work from, and I wrote the titles down on index cards. I divided the list into two categories: upper fifty and lower fifty. Then just cut and moved around from there. Tough choices were called for and made.

I'm relatively satisfied with my list, which is unconventional in several respects. I won't break it down and/or analyze it in any way, but I'll be interested in hearing what if anything you guys think of it.

Here's the list:

1) Intolerance
2) City Lights
3) The General
4) Citizen Kane
5) The Godfather
6) Casablanca
7) Raging Bull
8) Gone With The Wind
9) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
10) The Godfather Part II
11) The Searchers
12) On The Waterfront
13) Greed
14) Double Indemnity
15) Nashville
16) The Wizard of Oz
17) Sunrise
18) Singin’ in the Rain
19) The Birth of a Nation
20) The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
21) A Face in the Crowd
22) His Girl Friday
23) All That Jazz
24) The Kid Brother
25) The Shop Around the Corner
26) Ace in the Hole
27) Meet Me in St. Louis
28) Sunset Blvd.
29) The Adventures of Robin Hood
30) Scarface (1932)
31) The Crowd
32) Young Mr. Lincoln
33) Sweet Smell of Success
34) Trouble in Paradise
35) The Wind
36) Chinatown
37) Top Hat
38) The Magnificent Ambersons
39) The Conversation
40) The Apartment
41) Notorious
42) Rear Window
43) The Maltese Falcon
44) All The President’s Men
45) Sullivan’s Travels
46) Annie Hall
47) Jaws
48) Crimes and Misdemeanors
49) Avalon
50) Taxi Driver
51) The Circus
52) A Streetcar Named Desire
53) Gunga Din
54) Pinocchio
55) Out of the Past
56) Some Like It Hot
57) Mean Streets
58) The Big Sleep
59) American Graffiti
60) Wings
61) The Bride of Frankenstein
62) A Night at the Opera
63) Fury
64) Fantasia
65) I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
66) The Lady Eve
67) My Man Godfrey
68) GoodFellas
69) The Philadelphia Story
70) The Last Picture Show
71) The Gold Rush
72) All About Eve
73) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
74) Shadow of a Doubt
75) The French Connection
76) The Night of the Hunter
77) Duck Soup
78) Touch of Evil
79) Days of Heaven
80) Golddiggers of 1933
81) Safety Last
82) Husbands and Wives
83) East of Eden
84) Footlight Parade
85) The Day The Earth Stood Still
86) Vertigo
87) Ninotchka
88) Stagecoach
89) The Big Parade
90) The Thing From Another World
91) Ben-Hur (1925)
92) The Awful Truth
93) The Exorcist
94) Hail the Conquering Hero
95) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
96) Frankenstein
97) Queen Christina
98) The Strong Man
99) They All Laughed
100) The Women

Tom Moran