Two musicians in drag flee the mob with Marilyn Monroe; "nobody's perfect".
The three-minute opening crane shot across the Mexican border and Welles as a corrupt cop.
Hitchcock's obsession film in San Francisco, the dolly zoom and the green light.
A press agent and a gossip columnist in the meanest New York ever filmed.
One juror against eleven in a hot room; Lumet made a whole film out of a single table.
Pod people replace a Californian town; the Cold War paranoia film that still works.
John Wayne's five-year hunt for his kidnapped niece through Monument Valley, and the doorway shot.
James Dean in a red jacket, the knife fight at the observatory and the chickie run.
Robert Mitchum as a preacher with LOVE and HATE on his knuckles hunting two children downriver.
Satyajit Ray's first film: a boy and his sister in a Bengal village, and a train through the kash field.
A noble family sold into slavery in medieval Japan; the saddest film Mizoguchi made.
James Stewart with a broken leg and binoculars watches a murder across the courtyard.
A wife and a mistress murder the headmaster, then the body vanishes; the twist Hitchcock envied.
Four men drive nitroglycerine over mountain roads; the most tense two hours of the 1950s.
Audrey Hepburn as a princess on the run and Gregory Peck on a Vespa through Rome.
A potter leaves his family for a ghost in war-torn Japan; Mizoguchi at his most beautiful.
Gary Cooper waits for the noon train alone, in real time, with a town that will not help.
Gene Kelly in the rain, Donald O'Connor up the walls, and Hollywood's own switch to sound.
A dead screenwriter narrates from a pool; Gloria Swanson is ready for her close-up.
Ozu's widowed father persuading his daughter to marry, told in tatami-level stillness.
Robert Mitchum cannot escape a woman or a past; the noir with the best cigarette lighting.
Three prospectors in Mexico and what gold does to them; "we don't need no stinking badges".
Ingrid Bergman spies on Nazis in Rio for Cary Grant; the key, the wine cellar and the longest kiss.
Cocteau's fairy tale with living candelabra arms and a Beast more moving than the prince.
Three hours of the Paris theatre world of the 1830s, made in secret under the Occupation.
An RAF pilot argues for his life on a staircase to heaven; Earth in colour, heaven in black and white.
Nuns in a Himalayan palace, and Kathleen Byron in red lipstick; shot entirely in a Surrey studio.
A ballerina torn between art and love, with a 17-minute ballet in Technicolor.
Harry Lime in the sewers of occupied Vienna, the zither theme and the Ferris wheel speech.
A father and son search Rome for a stolen bicycle he needs to keep his job.
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