In movies like Seven Samurai and High and Low, director Akira Kurosawa took the cinematic language of Hollywood and improved on it, creating a vigorous, muscular method of visual storytelling that became a stylistic playbook for the likes of Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. In movies like Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well and The Lower Depths, Kurosawa relentlessly struggled to find the rays of light among the shadows of the human soul. This philosophical urgency combined with his visual brilliance is what gives his work, especially his early films, such vitality.

“One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa is that he didn’t just make a masterpiece or two masterpieces,” Coppola said during an interview. “He made eight masterpieces.”









So when Kurosawa comes out with a recommended viewing list, movie mavens everywhere should take note. Such a list was published in his posthumously published book Yume wa tensai de aru (A Dream is a Genius). His daughter Kazuko Kurosawa described the list’s selection process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you cannot find in this list many of the titles of the films he regarded as wonderful. The principle of the choice is: one film for one director, entry of the unforgettable films about which I and my father had a lovely talk, and of some ideas on cinema that he had cherished but did not express in public. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

Organized chronologically, the list starts with D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms and ends with Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi. In between is a remarkably thorough and diverse collection of films, mixing in equal parts Hollywood, art house and Japanese classics. Many of the movies are exactly the ones you would see on any Film Studies 101 syllabus -- Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Carol Reed’s The Third Man and DeSica’s Bicycle Thieves. Other films are less expected. Hayao Miyazaki’s utterly wonderful My Neighbor Totoro makes the cut, as does Ishiro Honda's Gojira and Peter Weir’s Witness. His policy of one film per director yields some surprising, almost willfully perverse results. The Godfather, Part 2 over The Godfather? The King of Comedy over Goodfellas? Ivan the Terrible over Battleship Potemkin? The Birds over Vertigo? Barry Lyndon over pretty much anything else that Stanley Kubrick did? And while I am pleased that Mikio Naruse gets a nod for Ukigumo – in a just world, Naruse would be as readily praised and celebrated as his contemporaries Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi – I am also struck by the list’s most glaring, and curious, omission. There’s no Orson Welles.

You can see his 100 essential movies below. Above we have the second film on the list, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which you can otherwise find in our collection, 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc..

1. Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (Griffith, 1919) USA

2. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] (Wiene, 1920) Germany

3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 - Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler] (Lang, 1922) Germany

4. The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925) USA

5. La Chute de la Maison Usher [The Fall of the House of Usher] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France

6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalusian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France

7. Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930) USA

8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Germany

9. Die 3groschenoper [The Threepenny Opera] (Pabst, 1931) Germany

10. Leise Flehen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany

11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA

12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Little Neighbour, Yae] (Shimazu, 1934) Japan

13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyakuman ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo] (Yamanaka, 1935) Japan

14. Akanishi Kakita [Capricious Young Men] (Itami, 1936) Japan

15. La Grande Illusion [The Grand Illusion] (Renoir, 1937) France

16. Stella Dallas (Vidor, 1937) USA

17. Tsuzurikata Kyoshitsu [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamoto, 1938) Japan

18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchida, 1939) Japan

19. Ninotchka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA

20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagovor [Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II] (Eisenstein, 1944-46) Soviet Union

21. My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) USA

22. It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) USA

23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA

24. Ladri di Biciclette [The Bicycle Thief] [Bicycle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy

25. Aoi sanmyaku [The Green Mountains] (Imai, 1949) Japan

26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK

27. Banshun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan

28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France

29. Karumen kokyo ni kaeru [Carmen Comes Home] (Kinoshita, 1951) Japan

30. A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA

31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adultress] (Carne 1953) France

32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan

33. Viaggio in Italia [Journey to Italy] (Rossellini, 1953) Italy

34. Gojira [Godzilla] (Honda, 1954) Japan

35. La Strada (Fellini, 1954) Italy

36. Ukigumo [Floating Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan

37. Pather Panchali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India

38. Daddy Long Legs (Negulesco, 1955) USA

39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA

40. Bakumatsu taiyoden [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan

41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA

42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France

43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truffaut, 1959) France

44. A bout de Souffle [Breathless] (Godard, 1959) France

45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA

46. Ototo [Her Brother] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan

47. Une aussi longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy 48. Le Voyage en Ballon [Stowaway in the Sky] (Lamorisse, 1960) France

49. Plein Soleil [Purple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy

50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy

51. L’Annee derniere a Marienbad [Last Year in Marienbad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy

52. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA

53. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962) UK

54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Number Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy

55. The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) USA

56. Il Deserto Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France

57. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA

58. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA

59. In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967) USA

60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richardson, 1968) UK

61. Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA

62. MASH (Altman, 1970) USA

63. Johnny Got His Gun (Trumbo, 1971) USA

64. The French Connection (Friedkin, 1971) USA

65. El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] (Erice, 1973) Spain

66. Solyaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Soviet Union

67. The Day of the Jackal (Zinneman, 1973) UK/France

68. Gruppo di famiglia in un interno [Conversation Piece] (Visconti, 1974) Italy/France

69. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974) USA

70. Sandakan hachibanshokan bohkyo [Sandakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan

71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975) USA

72. O, Thiassos [The Travelling Players] (Angelopoulos, 1975) Greece

73. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975) UK

74. Daichi no komoriuta [Lullaby of the Earth] (Masumura, 1976) Japan

75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA 76. Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino [Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Soviet Union

77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Master] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy

78. Gloria (Cassavetes, 1980) USA

79. Harukanaru yama no yobigoe [A Distant Cry From Spring] (Yamada, 1980) Japan

80. La Traviata (Zeffirelli, 1982) Italy

81. Fanny och Alexander [Fanny and Alexander] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Germany

82. Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, 1982) Peru/West Germany

83. The King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1983) USA

84. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Oshima, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand

85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK

86. Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984) USA/ West Germany

87. Dongdong de Jiaqi [A Summer at Grandpa's] (Hou, 1984) Taiwan

88. Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) France/ West Germany

89. Witness (Weir, 1985) USA

90. The Trip to Bountiful (Masterson, 1985) USA

91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Business] (Kusturica, 1985) Yugoslavia

92. The Dead (Huston, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA

93. Khane-ye doust kodjast? [Where is the Friend's Home] (Kiarostami, 1987) Iran

94. Baghdad Cafe [Out of Rosenheim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA

95. The Whales of August (Anderson, 1987) USA

96. Running on Empty (Lumet, 1988) USA

97. Tonari no totoro [My Neighbour Totoro] (Miyazaki, 1988) Japan

98. A un [Buddies] (Furuhata, 1989) Japan

99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beautiful Troublemaker] (Rivette, 1991) France/Switzerland

100. Hana-bi [Fireworks] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in January 2015.

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Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring lots of pictures of badgers and even more pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads. The Veeptopus store is here.