Tati built a whole glass city to get lost in; a comedy with no close-ups and no plot.
Alain Delon as a hitman in a trench coat and fedora; Melville's cool influenced every hitman film since.
Three sisters and a maid in a red house while one of them dies.
The Algerian uprising filmed like a newsreel; the Pentagon screened it in 2003.
Belmondo and Karina drive south in primary colours; Godard at his most alive.
Peckinpah's ageing outlaws in 1913 Mexico and a shootout cut like a ballet.
Altman's 24 characters over five days of country music and a political rally.
Sissy Spacek narrates a killing spree across the Dakota plains; Malick's debut.
Pacino robs a Brooklyn bank to pay for his lover's surgery; "Attica!"
A wife and a mistress murder the headmaster, then the body vanishes; the twist Hitchcock envied.
Melville's French Resistance as a grey, unglamorous business of betrayals.
Bertolucci and Storaro's fascist Italy in tilted frames and autumn light.
Robert Mitchum as a preacher with LOVE and HATE on his knuckles hunting two children downriver.
Brooks' western parody with a Black sheriff and a campfire scene of beans.
Zombies in a shopping mall; Romero's consumerism satire with the gore of Tom Savini.
Michael Myers, Haddonfield and a piano theme in 5/4; Carpenter made it for $300,000.
Two bikers ride to New Orleans with Jack Nicholson in tow; the counterculture on film.
James Dean in a red jacket, the knife fight at the observatory and the chickie run.
James Stewart with a broken leg and binoculars watches a murder across the courtyard.
Clint Eastwood with a poncho and a cigar; the spaghetti western begins.
Romero's farmhouse siege invents the zombie film for $114,000.
Newman and Redford, the cliff jump and the Bolivian freeze frame.
An entomologist trapped in a sand pit with a widow, digging forever; Teshigahara and sand as texture.
Jack Nicholson as an oil-rig worker who was once a concert pianist; the chicken salad scene.
Birds attack Bodega Bay for no reason; the school playground scene.
A possessed girl in Georgetown, a spinning head and the most profitable horror film ever.
Two hours in the life of a singer waiting for a cancer diagnosis, in near real time through Paris.
Jack Nicholson with a slit nose, the water wars of Los Angeles and "forget it, Jake".
Mia Farrow, a Manhattan apartment building and very helpful neighbours.
A man, a woman and a baroque hotel where nothing can be pinned down; the most argued-over puzzle film.
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