The Film 100

Influential Role(s) Recommended Film Viewing



1 WK Laurie Dickson

(1860-1935)

Inventor of Kinetophonograph, True "Father" of Film

Monkeyshines (1890)

Empire State Express (1896)

2 Edwin S. Porter

(1869-1941)

Director, Film Pioneer The Life of an American Fireman (1903)

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

Tess of the Storm Country (1914)



3 Charlie Chaplin

(1889-1977)

Actor, Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Composer; "The Little Tramp" The Immigrant (1917)

Watch for the scene in the cafeteria, where Chaplin juggles three emotional plates; the love interest, the suspicious waiter, and a growling stomach. The elegant resolution of the scene shows thoughtful and painstaking story development that few directors have taken the time to work out.

The Gold Rush (1925)

To his sight gags, Chaplin adds camera tricks in this Yukon story; notably in the transformation of Chaplin into a chicken. The dream sequences of the Tramp show that pathos was not simply a byproduct of Charlie's subtle acting, it was deliberately built up through story points.

City Lights (1931)

The highest art of the lowly Tramp. This perfectly structured film puts Chaplin through the wringer, as he tries to collect enough money to restore the sight of a blind flower girl. The curbside gags are a model of economical editing. And the final scene is pure magic.

Modern Times (1936)

4 Mary Pickford

(1893-1979)

Silent Screen's Greatest "Star" Actress, "America's Sweetheart" Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)

Pollyanna (1920)

Coquette (1929)

5 Orson Welles

(1915-1985)

Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Actor Citizen Kane (1941)

Blink and you're bound to miss an innovation. Chock full of film firsts, this is the measuring stick of great films. Notice the absence of titles at the beginning. Listen for music that stops dead on a character's main line. Look at the details--because you can; deep focus lets you view scenes, like Susan's suicide attempt, from front to back rather than side to side.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Probably not the finished vision Welles hoped for. But there are still touches of visual beauty, fancy camerawork, and crisp dialogue in every scene. Much like KANE, this film benefits from the ensemble that Welles would never gather again.

Touch Of Evil (1958)

Considering Welles was handed a bad script, a shoestring budget, and 42 days to shoot, this is a masterstroke. Dennis Weaver puts in a surprisingly strange part, and the dingy locations upstage the actors. Don't just look at it, listen. Radio stations, intercoms, and buzzing neon lights are cleverly used to enhance the mood.



9 Will Hays

(1879-1954)

Executive, Head of the "Hays Office" or MPPDA (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc.)

10 Thomas Edison

(1847-1931)

Inventor, The "Wizard of Menlo Park" MGM Screen Biographies:

Young Tom Edison (1940)

Edison, The Man (1940)

12 J. R. Bray

(1879-1978)

Pioneer of American Film Animation, Inventor of Cel System Colonel Heeza Liar (1914)

The Debut of Thomas Cat (1920)

13 Billy Bitzer

(1872-1944)

Pioneering Director of Photography The Birth Of A Nation (1915)

Movies that ran nearly three hours were unheard of in silent days, and since Griffith was a safe shooter, tons of film was reeled into the making of BIRTH. Griffith kept the project a close secret, working only with Bitzer on most of the film. So see it with the notion that the cameraman had great influence over many of its scenes.

Intolerance (1916)

The famous spectacle gets most of its attention from the huge sets. But someone had to capture them. Master of the long shot, Bitzer often strapped the camera to the front of a car and rode along straddled over the hood through the gargantuan Babylon.

Broken Blossoms (1919)

Way Down East (1920)

14 Jesse Lasky

(1880-1958)

Executive, Producer, Impresario in Precursor of Paramount Studios Squaw Man (1914)

The Covered Wagon (1923)

The Ten Commandments (1923)

Sergeant York (1941)

15 George Eastman

(1854-1932)

Inventor, Photography Entrepreneur and Pioneer, Manufacturer

16 Sergei Eisenstein

(1898-1948)

Russian Director, Film Theoretician, Screenwriter Strike (1924)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Ivan the Terrible, Parts One and Two (1945, 1946)

17 Andre Bazin

(1918-1958)

French Post WWI Film Critic, Film Theorist

19 Thomas Ince

(1882-1924)

Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Actor; The "Founder" of the Studio System of Film-making

21 Louis B. Mayer

(1885-1957)

Early Film Studio Executive; Head of MGM Virtuous Wives (1918)

22. Greta Garbo

(1905-1990)

Legendary Actress Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Anna Christie (1930)

Grand Hotel (1932)

Queen Christina (1933)

Not her finest film, but to get a sense of Garbo's incredibly magnetic allure, it can't be topped. Despite walking around in pants, her femininity doesn't wane. The final shot of her staring into the sea is one of film's most enduring images.

Camille (1936)

Ninotchka (1939)

Leave it to director Ernst Lubitsch to strip away the old Garbo and create a sophisticated yet fussy performance that exposed her gifts for comic timing and delivery.

23 Robert Flaherty

(1884-1951)

Pioneering Film-maker, "Father" of the Documentary Nanook of the North (1922)

Moana (1925)

Tabu (1931)

Man of Aran (1934)

24 Lon Chaney

(1883-1930)

Actor, "The Man of a Thousand Faces" The Miracle Man (1919)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

By the 20s, Chaney pictures were made on his terms and he had script approval power. That's probably why HUNCHBACK is stripped of its politics and left with the relationships. This fundamental example of maid and monster is the origin for all other imitations, including Chaney's own later films.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Another Beast and Beauty story, but examine the stiff, slow movements of the title character that would later become standard horror characteristics of Lugosi's Dracula and Karloff's Frankenstein.

25 Anita Loos

(1893-1981)

Screenwriter, Playwright, Novelist The New York Hat (1912)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928)

Red-Headed Woman (1932)

San Francisco (1936)

The Women (1939)

26 Georges Melies

(1861-1938)

French Director, Producer, Cinematic Pioneer Cleopatra (1899)

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902 French)

Hamlet (1908)

27 Adolph Zukor

(1873-1976)

Executive, Early Studio "Mogul" Queen Elizabeth (1912)

28 John Gilbert

(1895-1936)

Actor, Screen Idol Monte Cristo (1922)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

The Big Parade (1925)

The Merry Widow (1925)

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

A Woman of Affairs (1928)

Queen Christina (1933)

29 Max Fleischer

(1883-1972)

Early Animator (Creator of Betty Boop and Popeye), Producer, Inventor of Rotoscope Out of the Inkwell (1915)

Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's 40 Thieves (1937)

Gulliver's Travels (1939)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

31 William Fox

(1879-1952)

Early Film Executive, Distributor Sunrise (1927)