Hartl's Hundred: The Best American Films Of All Time

The American Film Institute is currently in the process of choosing the 100 "best" American movies. The judges include critics, filmmakers, historians, movie executives, President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Results will be announced in the spring.

Some of us can't wait that long. And besides, putting together our own list gives us something to do while we're waiting for the next round of Hollywood blockbusters, which won't arrive until next Friday.

Naturally, a number of titles seem unavoidable. Does anyone not think that "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" and "The Wizard of Oz" belong among the top 100?

But we all have soft spots for movies that are rarely mentioned in their company and, darn it, should be. Isn't "It's a Gift" just about the funniest thing Hollywood turned out in the 1930s? Isn't "The Incredible Shrinking Man" an existential classic, if not the best science-fiction film of the 1950s?

Of course, every list is personal, and the one I've put together this week is no exception. You'll find no Marx Brothers here (I prefer W.C. Fields' steadier pace to their practiced chaos), no "Clockwork Orange," no "Last Tango in Paris," no "Raging Bull" or "Men in Black." I have friends who adore them, but these are enthusiasms I don't share.

You also won't find "The Conversation," "Trouble in Paradise," "King Kong," "On the Waterfront," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Apartment" or "Fargo," although I tried to make room for them. It seems as if 100 should be enough to cover all of your favorites, but it won't.

Alas, there are no slots for foreign-language films, because the A.F.I. list is restricted to U.S. productions. It pains me not to mention Fellini's "The Nights of Cabiria," Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy, Rene Clement's "Forbidden Games," Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist" and this year's "La Promesse" - but there, I just did anyway. Any list of favorites would be incomplete without them.

As for British movies: the A.F.I. will allow "Lawrence of Arabia," "Goldfinger" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" to be counted as American productions, but they won't go for Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" or Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night," even though Lester is an American director. The poll is plagued with other seemingly arbitrary rules.

For what it's worth, here are the 100 titles I came up with (in alphabetical order). Most are available on videotape:

"All About Eve" (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). Bette Davis is aging, Anne Baxter is raging to take her place and George Sanders is there to provide a blow-by-blow description of their backstage manipulations. This love-hate letter to the theater never fails to entertain.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" (Lewis Milestone, 1930). The occasional creakiness of Milestone's passionate pacifist war film adds to the sense of authenticity. It's a lot closer to World War I than we are to it.

"American Graffiti" (George Lucas, 1973). A dreamy, persuasively idyllic memoir of California teen life in the summer of 1962, when the rigidity of the 1950s was lessening and U.S. assassinations and war in Vietnam were still in the future.

"Anatomy of a Murder" (Otto Preminger, 1959). A courtroom drama that's never been surpassed for its ensemble performances, wit or rattling ambiguity.

"Apocalypse Now" (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). The Vietnam War, vividly depicted as a hallucinogenic delusion. The approach seems more valid with each new revelation about what Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson were really thinking.

"Atlantic City" (Louis Malle, 1981). Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon give the performances of their lives as loner-losers who find an unlikely second chance together when her husband gets involved in the cocaine business.

"Badlands" (Terrence Malick, 1974). The most unsettling and uncompromising entry in the Bonnie-and-Clyde genre, with wicked deadpan performances by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.

"Bambi" (Walt Disney, 1942). Disney's enchanted pre-"Lion King" vision of the circle of life, presented through the experiences of a young deer.

"Ben-Hur" (William Wyler, 1959). A Jewish director lends personality and conviction to a mammoth Christian epic about the danger of becoming the person you hate. Miklos Rozsa's score and Charlton Heston's title-role performance give it operatic resonance.

"The Best Years of Our Lives" (William Wyler, 1946). Still the best postwar-adjustment movie ever made, filled with small, provocative acknowledgments of how the survivors and their expectations have changed.

"The Big Sleep" (Howard Hawks, 1946). Dense almost to the point of being incomprehensible, this sexy detective story proves that you can be lost in a mystery and still have a wonderful time.

"Blade Runner" (Ridley Scott, 1982). An evocative futuristic detective movie about imitation humans who don't know why their creator has left them with so little time on Earth.

"Blow-Up" (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966). A seductive puzzle picture that turned out to be a surprise hit with U.S. audiences, paving the way for a more adult, ambiguous approach in movies that played beyond the art-house circuit.

"Blue Velvet" (David Lynch, 1986). Lynch's masterpiece of macabre, surreal small-town humor, with Dennis Hopper playing a villain who's as pathetic as he is dangerous.

"Bonnie and Clyde" (Arthur Penn, 1967). The influence of the early 1960s European filmmaking revolution became most visible with the release of this gangster saga. While the violence no longer shocks in the same way it did, the folksy bluegrass touches and the spot-on characterizations are still sensational.

"Cabaret" (Bob Fosse, 1972). A flawed stage musical becomes a movie classic, transformed by Fosse into one of the most vivid cinematic portraits of Germany in the midst of the Nazi takeover.

"Casablanca" (Michael Curtiz, 1942). Much of the dialogue has become part of our language, though it's still a treat to see how smoothly Curtiz, his actors and writers weave it into a World War II love story.

"Chinatown" (Roman Polanski, 1974). Polanski's expressive European pessimism blends brilliantly with screenwriter Robert Towne's complex tale of corruption and doomed romance in 1930s Los Angeles.

"Citizen Kane" (Orson Welles, 1941). The story of a man who thought it might be fun to run a newspaper. It's a perfect match for Welles, who was just learning how much fun this electric train set called the movies could be.

"City Lights" (Charles Chaplin, 1931). Well into the talkie years, Chaplin stubbornly persevered with the techniques he developed in silent pictures, creating a comedy of balletic grace and rare poignancy.

"Days of Heaven" (Terrence Malick, 1978). The central characters, caught up in a doomed romantic triangle, can't compete with the ethereal beauty of the landscapes, the dramatic spectacle of a locust plague or the yearning persistence of growing wheat. The backdrop is the story here, and that shift in narrative priorities alters everything.

"Deliverance" (John Boorman, 1972). A splendid visualization of James Dickey's novel about a nightmarish weekend canoe trip that never quite ends - especially in the mind of the resourceful family-man hero (Jon Voight).

"Do the Right Thing" (Spike Lee, 1989). An explosive, often explosively funny demonstration that racism and prejudice are alive and thriving in the U.S. long after the civil-rights triumphs of the 1960s.

"Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (Stanley Kubrick, 1964). The movie that made nuclear war unthinkable, mostly by demonstrating that any arguments in its favor are laughable.

"Drugstore Cowboy" (Gus Van Sant, 1989). The appeal of drugs and the apparent freedom of life on the road are never downplayed in Northwest filmmaker Van Sant's best film. Neither are their consequences.

"East of Eden" (Elia Kazan, 1955). The setting is California during World War I, yet this John Steinbeck story of father-son relations turned out to be the ideal showcase for 1950s icon James Dean.

"E.T. - The Extraterrestrial" (Steven Spielberg, 1982). A magical science-fiction fable about an alien who's part Yoda, part Peter Pan.

"The Fatal Glass of Beer" (Clyde Bruckman, 1932). W.C. Fields' daringly absurd comedy about a snowbound family that develops its own approach to defying the elements.

"The Freshman" (Fred Newmayer and Sam Taylor, 1925). Harold Lloyd's giddiest comedy, about a college freshman who is determined to become a football hero.

"Gilda" (Charles Vidor, 1946). An enticingly perverse and witty Hollywood film noir, with Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth and George Macready forming a romantic triangle that feeds on its own self-destructive energy.

"The Godfather, Parts I and II" (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972-74). A rich Mafia saga, told with a wealth of novelistic detail and a nonstop parade of extraordinary performances.

"The Gold Rush" (Charles Chaplin, 1925). A great comedy about loneliness, starvation and gold fever.

"Gone With the Wind" (Victor Fleming, 1939). Four hours of soap opera on the grandest scale, held together by a pragmatic heroine (Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara) who refuses to go down in defeat when she ends up on the losing side of the Civil War.

"The Graduate" (Mike Nichols, 1967). The essential late-1960s generation-gap comedy, with Dustin Hoffman as the college graduate who is a little worried about his future.

"The Grapes of Wrath" (John Ford, 1940). In the minds of many who didn't experience the Depression, this powerful fictionalization of 1930s America has all but replaced documentary accounts of the era.

"The Heiress" (William Wyler, 1949). An adaptation of Henry James' "Washington Square" that looks better and better with the arrival of each new James-based movie. Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift and Ralph Richardson own these roles.

"How Green Was My Valley" (John Ford, 1941). This story of labor troubles in a Welsh coal-mining village may seem sentimental and idyllic. Not far beneath the surface, however, it's seething with anger about the destruction of a family and a way of life.

"Hud" (Martin Ritt, 1963). "Horseman, Pass By," the first of Larry McMurtry's novels to be filmed, became an uncompromising portrait of charismatic selfishness in the hands of Ritt, his writers and Paul Newman, who took some big chances with this part.

"The Hustler" (Robert Rossen, 1961). Rossen's one great film came near the end of his career. It has a lived-in, hung-over quality that suits the moody character study of a pool hustler (Paul Newman) and his girlfriend (Piper Laurie).

"The Incredible Shrinking Man" (Jack Arnold, 1957). The director wrote his own philosophical ending for this story of an ordinary man who is physically reduced to "nothing" yet still exists. It's not what the studio wanted, it shocked audiences at the time, yet everything in the hero's transformed nature points in this direction.

"The Innocents" (Jack Clayton, 1961). A perfectly balanced adaptation of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," with Deborah Kerr in her greatest performance, as a governess who senses either ghosts or "bad memories" haunting and corrupting her young charges.

"Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916). Still the most astonishing large-scale experiment in the history of cinema: Four stories set in separate periods of history, intercut to emphasize their similarities, come together in a fugue-like climax that's never been surpassed. It's my favorite film.

"It's a Gift" (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934). W.C. Fields' funniest feature, about a curmudgeonly family man who finds reasons for profound irritation wherever he goes.

"It's a Wonderful Life" (Frank Capra, 1946). Stereotyped for too long as a sentimental Christmas favorite, Capra's masterpiece has recently been reinterpreted as the most deeply felt film noir of its era. The description fits. This is, at heart, a story of lifelong frustration and suicidal despair; even the fantasy elements take the nightmare surprisingly far.

"The King of Comedy" (Martin Scorsese, 1983). Celebrity culture and its hangers-on have never recovered from this full-frontal satirical assault, starring Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard as talk-show fans who kidnap a late-night host.

"The Lady Eve" (Preston Sturges, 1941). Writer-director Sturges' smoothest romantic comedy, starring Henry Fonda as a naive millionaire who gets fleeced by a pair of shipboard cardsharps (Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Coburn).

"The Last Picture Show" (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971). A moving, stunningly well-cast adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel about high-school kids and a few still-conscious adults trying to survive in a dying Texas town in the early 1950s.

"Lawrence of Arabia" (David Lean, 1962). Lean makes the desert the central character, but Peter O'Toole's flamboyant, enigmatic Lawrence grows in fascination with each passing year.

"Lone Star" (John Sayles, 1996). Sayles' careful dissection of a border town's twisty history, with Chris Cooper as a sheriff who can't escape the past.

"Long Day's Journey Into Night" (Sidney Lumet, 1962). Lumet turns Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play into an ensemble showcase for four actors who create the illusion of a functioning family.

"Love and Death" (Woody Allen, 1975). A series of more serious relationship comedies followed, but for me Allen reached his pure-comedy peak with this affectionate sendup of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Eisenstein and all things Russian.

"Jaws" (Steven Spielberg, 1975). The blockbuster that changed the way movies are marketed and sold. You can still see why it had that impact. Spielberg's later action pictures can't match it for suspense, characterizations and storytelling momentum.

"The Magnificent Ambersons" (Orson Welles, 1942). It's often been described as Welles' "mutilated masterpiece" because of studio interference. Why, then, does it feel more coherent than most of the movies that opened this year?

"The Maltese Falcon" (John Huston, 1941). The classic remake of the oft-told Dashiell Hammett detective story, which just didn't click the first two times around.

"The Manchurian Candidate" (John Frankenheimer, 1962). John Frankenheimer's prophetic 1962 Cold War satire, in which right-wing and left-wing extremists become hilariously interchangeable.

"Meet Me in St. Louis" (Vincente Minnelli, 1944). Artful musical nostalgia about a family growing up contentedly in the Midwest - and unwilling to give up what it has for a move to New York.

"Midnight" (Mitchell Leisen, 1939). Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote the sparkling script for this Claudette Colbert vehicle, perhaps the most durable and sophisticated screwball comedy of the 1930s.

"Midnight Cowboy" (John Schlesinger, 1969). A sardonic foreigner's view of New York in the late 1960s, with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as a couple of losers who only have each other.

"Nashville" (Robert Altman, 1975). A brilliant modern epic about tunnel vision, featuring two dozen characters whose private agendas keep colliding.

"The Night of the Hunter" (Charles Laughton, 1955). Laughton's only film as a director is a darkly poetic children's fable, set in the Depression and featuring Lillian Gish and Robert Mitchum as adult representatives of good and evil.

"North by Northwest" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). Hitchcock's immensely entertaining compendium of most of the tricks of his trade. It may not be his greatest film, but is there one that has greater replay value?

"The Nun's Story" (Fred Zinnemann, 1959). A meticulous portrait of a quiet rebel (Audrey Hepburn) who volunteers to be part of an institution designed to suppress pride and promote humility.

"The Palm Beach Story" (Preston Sturges, 1942). Sturges' zaniest comedy, starring Claudette Colbert as a gold digger who blithely abandons penniless Joel McCrea for millionaire Rudy Vallee.

"The Passenger" (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975). Jack Nicholson in his most underrated performance, as a dissatisfied reporter who wants to be someone else and succeeds all too well.

"Paths of Glory" (Stanley Kubrick, 1957). A wrenching dramatization of the extremes of military justice, based on an appalling World War I incident.

"Pinocchio" (Walt Disney, 1940). The studio's masterpiece may also be its least appropriate cartoon for small children. The episode in which young boys are turned into donkeys still gives some adults nightmares.

"Psycho" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). The shower murder got all the attention when it first came out, but the lasting impact of Anthony Perkins' eerie performance as Norman Bates proves that "Psycho" is considerably more than a display of directorial technique.

"Rear Window" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). This Hitchcock thriller has deservedly acquired a reputation as an example of "pure cinema" - the story of a man who can't stop watching, like most of us poor voyeurs in the dark.

"The Right Stuff" (Philip Kaufman, 1983). An account of the adventures of the first American astronauts, told with imagination, humor and a touch of mystery.

"Rosemary's Baby" (Roman Polanski, 1968). A potentially silly story of witches operating out of modern New York becomes, in Polanski's hands, an astonishingly creepy account of marital betrayal.

"Safe" (Todd Haynes, 1995). The versatile Julianne Moore gives a great performance as a wife, mother and suburban nonentity who can't sweat, makes frequent visits to the doctor and believes she suffers from "environmental illness."

"Schindler's List" (Steven Spielberg, 1993). To date, the best American film about the Holocaust, with Liam Neeson giving a complex, enigmatic performance as a compromised businessman who saved many lives.

"The Searchers" (John Ford, 1956). John Wayne in his finest performance, as an embittered Civil War survivor who is in love with his brother's wife and glories in his own racism as he sets out to avenge her murder by Native Americans.

"Seconds" (John Frankenheimer, 1966). A modern Faustian nightmare, starring John Randolph as a bored businessman who is reborn as Rock Hudson - who turns out to be just as unhappy.

"Shane" (George Stevens, 1953). A mythic, justly famous Western about a gunfighter and a hero-worshipping child. More than 40 years after its release, New Yorker cartoons still make reference to the ending.

"Sherlock Jr." (Buster Keaton, 1924). Keaton's most influential achievement: the story of a projectionist who dreams his way into the films he's showing.

"The Shop Around the Corner" (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940). Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart are pen pals who don't realize they're also working together in the same shop. The story was later musicalized, to less effect; the famous "Lubitsch touch" proved inimitable.

"Singin' in the Rain" (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952). Inept storytelling is so often tolerated in musicals that it's amazing how good this script is. Take away the songs and this would still be a great comedy about the transition from silents to talkies.

"Some Like It Hot" (Billy Wilder, 1959). Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play fugitives in drag in Marilyn Monroe's best comedy. A once-daring gender-bender that still surprises.

"Spartacus" (Stanley Kubrick, 1960). Only 31 when he took over the reins of this Roman epic, Kubrick brought contemporary humor, pacing and civil-rights fervor to the genre. He also got a performance out of Laurence Olivier that rivals the actor's Shakespearean classics.

"A Star Is Born" (George Cukor, 1954). The best doomed love story Hollywood has created. No wonder they keep remaking it.

"Strangers on a Train" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951). Patricia Highsmith's story of an "exchange of murders" still shocks because the director cunningly draws us into the amoral logic that drives the plot.

"A Streetcar Named Desire" (Elia Kazan, 1951). A filmed play that clicks, partly because it doesn't betray the claustrophobic essence of Tennessee Williams' story, partly because the central performances are so unnervingly direct.

"Star Wars" (George Lucas, 1977). A witty tribute to Westerns and Arthurian legends, disguised as a special-effects extravaganza.

"The Sundowners" (Fred Zinnemann, 1960). Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr head a family of Australian drifters who consider settling down, then move on. The most ambivalent road movie ever made, it makes a strong case for both staying and leaving.

"Sunrise" (F.W. Murnau, 1927). Imported from Germany to lend class to Hollywood's new Fox studio, Murnau did exactly that with this affecting, visually intoxicating tale of a troubled young country couple (George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor) whose marital bonds are renewed during a day in the city.

"Sunset Boulevard" (Billy Wilder, 1950). Billy Wilder's wicked 1950 show-biz satire about the comeback delusions of an aging, forgotten movie queen - bravely played by aging, almost-forgotten movie queen Gloria Swanson.

"Tabu" (F.W. Murnau, 1931). Murnau's German expressionism meets South Seas fatalism in this silent wonder about a pearl diver and his forbidden love for a native woman.

"Taxi Driver" (Martin Scorsese, 1976). Scorsese's 1976 classic starring Robert De Niro as an isolated Vietnam War veteran with a twisted view of street heroics.

"Their First Mistake" (George Marshall, 1932). Laurel and Hardy adopt a baby while Hardy's wife is suing Laurel for alienation of affections. Gender-bender lunacy with a deadpan beat.

"To Be or Not to Be" (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942). A Polish theater troupe makes mincemeat of the Nazis. American black comedy at its most dazzling, it was regarded as a tasteless sick joke at the time.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" (Robert Mulligan, 1962). This could have been a preachy courtroom drama about an unfashionably liberal Southern lawyer trying to achieve racial justice during the Depression. The fresh perspective of his children, who haven't yet learned what to expect from the situation, transforms it.

"Toy Story" (John Lasseter, 1995). A whimsical, surprisingly sophisticated delight, about a rivalry between two toys for first place in a child's affections. The best thing to happen to feature-length cartoons since Disney's early-1940s golden age.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). A deliberately mystifying cinematic experience that suggests what it might feel like to be contacted by a higher intelligence. If you're interested in more narrative clarity, check out the novel by the script's co-author, Arthur C. Clarke.

"Unforgiven" (Clint Eastwood, 1992). Nothing that Eastwood directed before or since has touched the flinty perfection of this Western about a gunfighter trying and failing to live down his violent past.

"Vertigo" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). The recent restoration has underlined the fact that some masterpieces will inevitably be ignored in their time. No one thought much of this tale of romantic obsession 40 years ago; now it's almost universally acknowledged as Hitchcock's greatest achievement.

"West Side Story" (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961). A dynamic dance film that rolls right over its dated script and delivers on its promise of updating "Romeo and Juliet" to the New York slums. It remains Robbins' only film; the loss is ours.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (Mike Nichols, 1966). An exciting adaptation of a timeless play about a marriage that seems to be over but clearly feeds on conflict. Funny, appalling and honest, with career-peak performances by its cast.

"The Wild Bunch" (Sam Peckinpah, 1969). Although this epic Western is famous for its violence, which is disturbingly enthralling, most of the 145-minute running time is devoted to demonstrating the shattered humanity of its anachronistic outlaw anti-heroes.

"The Wizard of Oz" (Victor Fleming, 1939). This MGM fantasy musical has probably been seen by more people than any other movie. In a sense everything is anti-climactic after the sublime opening song, "Over the Rainbow," but what a way to go downhill.

Many of these films are not acknowledged on the American Film Institute's official ballot, which is made of 400 "classics," among them such questionable entries as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Babes in Arms," "Casino," "Lethal Weapon," "Pretty Woman," "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "Run Silent, Run Deep," "The Little Colonel" and "The Broadway Melody."

The AFI's list of eligible silent films is particularly skimpy. It includes only one Buster Keaton movie ("The General"), one Valentino film ("Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse") and one Cecil B. DeMille production ("The Cheat"). Of course, you're invited to write in a film of your own choosing. But only one.