American Film Institute 100 Best Movies
by lukas-kilian-wildraut | created - 13 May 2020 | updated - 13 May 2020 | PublicIn 2007 and 1998 the American Film Institute (AFI) choose the best 100 American movies. This list contains the 100 best movies choose in 2007 and the 23 movies from the 1998 list which are not in the 2007 list.
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101. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
PG-13 | 111 min | Drama
A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.
Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus
Votes: 97,983
1998: 59.
102. Amadeus (1984)
R | 160 min | Biography, Drama, Music
The life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as told by Antonio Salieri, the contemporaneous composer who was deeply jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him.
Director: Milos Forman | Stars: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice
Votes: 428,194 | Gross: $51.97M
1998: 53.
103. An American in Paris (1951)
Passed | 114 min | Drama, Musical, Romance
Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman.
Director: Vincente Minnelli | Stars: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary
Votes: 36,894 | Gross: $4.50M
1998: 68.
104. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
PG-13 | 126 min | Drama, Thriller
An American POW in the Korean War is brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy.
Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
Votes: 79,838
1998: 67.
105. Dances with Wolves (1990)
PG-13 | 181 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
Lieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote western Civil War outpost, finds himself engaging with a neighbouring Sioux settlement, causing him to question his own purpose.
Director: Kevin Costner | Stars: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant
Votes: 290,757 | Gross: $184.21M
1998: 75.
106. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
PG-13 | 197 min | Drama, Romance, War
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger
Votes: 82,100 | Gross: $111.72M
1998: 39.
107. The Third Man (1949)
Approved | 93 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.
Director: Carol Reed | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard
Votes: 181,870 | Gross: $0.45M
1998: 57.
108. Fantasia (1940)
G | 124 min | Animation, Family, Fantasy
A series of eight famous pieces of classical music, conducted by Leopold Stokowski and interpreted in animation by Walt Disney's team of artists.
Directors: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe Jr., Norman Ferguson, David Hand, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen | Stars: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Corey Burton
Votes: 104,003 | Gross: $76.41M
1998: 58.
109. Fargo (1996)
R | 98 min | Crime, Thriller
Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.
Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen | Stars: William H. Macy, Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare
Votes: 726,917 | Gross: $24.61M
1998: 84.
110. Frankenstein (1931)
Passed | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles
Votes: 79,735
1998: 87.
111. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
TV-PG | 195 min | Drama, History, War
The Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper
Votes: 26,345 | Gross: $10.00M
1998: 44.
112. Giant (1956)
G | 201 min | Drama, Western
Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker
Votes: 42,257
1998: 82.
113. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Passed | 152 min | Drama, War
A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.
Director: Lewis Milestone | Stars: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy
Votes: 67,701 | Gross: $3.27M
1998: 54.
114. The Jazz Singer (1927)
Passed | 88 min | Drama, Music, Musical
The son of a Jewish Cantor must defy the traditions of his religious father in order to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer.
Director: Alan Crosland | Stars: Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer
Votes: 11,078 | Gross: $7.63M
1998: 90.
115. Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Not Rated | 178 min | Adventure, Drama, History
In 1787, British ship Bounty leaves Portsmouth to bring a cargo of bread-fruit from Tahiti but the savage on-board conditions imposed by Captain Bligh trigger a mutiny led by officer Fletcher Christian.
Directors: Lewis Milestone, Carol Reed, George Seaton | Stars: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith
Votes: 17,889 | Gross: $13.68M
1998: 86.
116. My Fair Lady (1964)
G | 170 min | Drama, Family, Musical
In 1910s London, snobbish phonetics professor Henry Higgins agrees to a wager that he can make crude flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, presentable in high society.
Director: George Cukor | Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White
Votes: 101,836 | Gross: $72.00M
1998: 91.
117. Patton (1970)
GP | 172 min | Biography, Drama, War
The World War II phase of the career of controversial American general George S. Patton.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young, Michael Strong
Votes: 107,977 | Gross: $61.70M
1998: 89.
118. A Place in the Sun (1951)
Passed | 122 min | Drama, Romance
A poor boy gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up falling in love with two women.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere
Votes: 24,793
1998: 92.
119. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Approved | 108 min | Comedy, Drama
A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African-American fiancé.
Director: Stanley Kramer | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton
Votes: 48,940 | Gross: $56.70M
1998: 99.
120. Stagecoach (1939)
Passed | 96 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process.
Director: John Ford | Stars: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine
Votes: 53,788
1998: 63.
121. Wuthering Heights (1939)
Passed | 104 min | Drama, Romance
A servant in the house of Wuthering Heights tells a traveler the unfortunate tale of lovers Cathy and Heathcliff.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson
Votes: 19,774 | Gross: $0.76M
1998: 73.
122. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
PG | 138 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
Roy Neary, an Indiana electric lineman, finds his quiet and ordinary daily life turned upside down after a close encounter with a UFO, spurring him to an obsessed cross-country quest for answers as a momentous event approaches.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon
Votes: 216,953 | Gross: $132.09M
1998: 64.
123. From Here to Eternity (1953)
Passed | 118 min | Drama, Romance, War
At a U.S. Army base in 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his commanding officer's wife and top aide begin a tentative affair.
Director: Fred Zinnemann | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed
Votes: 50,832 | Gross: $30.50M
1998: 52.
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