| Rank | Title | Year | Director(s) | Overall Rank |
| 1 | The Best Years of Our Lives | 1946 | William Wyler | 114 |
| 2 | The Grapes of Wrath | 1940 | John Ford | 80 |
| 3 | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre | 1948 | John Huston | 74 |
| 4 | The Gold Rush | 1925 | Charles Chaplin | 85 |
| 5 | It Happened One Night | 1934 | Frank Capra | 58 |
| 6 | The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | D.W. Griffith | 145 |
| 7 | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | 1939 | Frank Capra | 136 |
| 8 | From Here to Eternity | 1953 | Fred Zinnemann | 173 |
| 9 | The African Queen | 1951 | John Huston | 92 |
| 10 | On the Waterfront | 1954 | Elia Kazan | 36 |
| 11 | Bonnie and Clyde | 1967 | Arthur Penn | 46 |
| 12 | Stagecoach | 1939 | John Ford | 97 |
| 13 | Bringing Up Baby | 1938 | Howard Hawks | 54 |
| 14 | City Lights | 1931 | Charles Chaplin | 65 |
| 15 | The Maltese Falcon | 1941 | John Huston | 39 |
| 16 | Double Indemnity | 1944 | Billy Wilder | 40 |
| 17 | Intolerance | 1916 | D.W. Griffith | 160 |
| 18 | All about Eve | 1950 | Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 35 |
| 19 | Greed | 1924 | Erich von Stroheim | 181 |
| 20 | Nashville | 1975 | Robert Altman | 75 |
| 21 | High Noon | 1952 | Fred Zinnemann | 53 |
| 22 | The Magnificent Ambersons | 1942 | Orson Welles | 167 |
| 23 | The General | 1926 | Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton | 44 |
| 24 | A Streetcar Named Desire | 1951 | Elia Kazan | 131 |
| 25 | All Quiet on the Western Front | 1930 | Lewis Milestone | 137 |
| 26 | Shane | 1953 | George Stevens | 162 |
| 27 | An American in Paris | 1951 | Vincente Minnelli | 226 |
| 28 | Modern Times | 1936 | Charles Chaplin | 90 |
| 29 | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | 1937 | David Hand | 81 |
| 30 | M*A*S*H | 1970 | Robert Altman | 122 |
| 31 | Midnight Cowboy | 1969 | John Schlesinger | 133 |
| 32 | Top Hat | 1935 | Mark Sandrich | 153 |
| 33 | Red River | 1948 | Howard Hawks | 194 |
| 34 | Mutiny on the Bounty | 1935 | Frank Lloyd | 371 |
| 35 | The Manchurian Candidate | 1962 | John Frankenheimer | 106 |
| 36 | The Lady Eve | 1941 | Preston Sturges | 140 |
| 37 | Sunrise | 1927 | F.W. Murnau | 104 |
| 38 | Sunset Blvd. | 1950 | Billy Wilder | 33 |
| 39 | Notorious | 1946 | Alfred Hitchcock | 109 |
| 40 | Ninotchka | 1939 | Ernst Lubitsch | 215 |
| 41 | Duck Soup | 1933 | Leo McCarey | 57 |
| 42 | Yankee Doodle Dandy | 1942 | Michael Curtiz | 317 |
| 43 | King Kong | 1933 | Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack | 45 |
| 44 | A Place in the Sun | 1951 | George Stevens | 324 |
| 45 | The Philadelphia Story | 1940 | George Cukor | 93 |
| 46 | Touch of Evil | 1958 | Orson Welles | 51 |
| 47 | How Green Was My Valley | 1941 | John Ford | 353 |
| 48 | Wuthering Heights | 1939 | William Wyler | 363 |
| 49 | My Darling Clementine | 1946 | John Ford | 247 |
| 50 | The Rules of the Game | 1939 | Jean Renoir | 68 |
| 51 | Sullivan's Travels | 1941 | Preston Sturges | 130 |
| 52 | American Graffiti | 1973 | George Lucas | 177 |
| 53 | The Lost Weekend | 1945 | Billy Wilder | 381 |
| 54 | A Star Is Born | 1954 | George Cukor | 245 |
| 55 | Trouble in Paradise | 1932 | Ernst Lubitsch | 286 |
| 56 | Marty | 1955 | Delbert Mann | 521 |
| 57 | The Battleship Potemkin | 1925 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 77 |
| 58 | The Searchers | 1956 | John Ford | 25 |
| 59 | His Girl Friday | 1940 | Howard Hawks | 78 |
| 60 | Laura | 1944 | Otto Preminger | 230 |
| 61 | Swing Time | 1936 | George Stevens | 350 |
| 62 | Tootsie | 1982 | Sydney Pollack | 175 |
| 63 | Meet Me in St. Louis | 1944 | Vincente Minnelli | 211 |
| 64 | Fantasia | 1940 | James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe, Norman Ferguson, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, and Paul Satterfield | 180 |
| 65 | The Crowd | 1928 | King Vidor | 297 |
| 66 | Rebel without a Cause | 1955 | Nicholas Ray | 101 |
| 67 | Out of the Past | 1947 | Jacques Tourneur | 232 |
| 68 | The Passion of Joan of Arc | 1928 | Carl Theodor Dreyer | 142 |
| 69 | Patton | 1970 | Franklin J. Schaffner | 200 |
| 70 | To Be or Not to Be | 1942 | Ernst Lubitsch | 225 |
| 71 | The Bank Dick | 1940 | Edward F. Cline | 418 |
| 72 | The Grand Illusion | 1937 | Jean Renoir | 105 |
| 73 | East of Eden | 1955 | Elia Kazan | 465 |
| 74 | A Night at the Opera | 1935 | Sam Wood | 250 |
| 75 | Adam's Rib | 1949 | George Cukor | 348 |
| 76 | The Ox-Bow Incident | 1943 | William A. Wellman | 442 |
| 77 | White Heat | 1949 | Raoul Walsh | 266 |
| 78 | Frankenstein | 1931 | James Whale | 126 |
| 79 | The Bicycle Thief | 1948 | Vittorio De Sica | 71 |
| 80 | The Palm Beach Story | 1942 | Preston Sturges | 416 |
| 81 | Gigi | 1958 | Vincente Minnelli | 508 |
| 82 | 42nd Street | 1933 | Lloyd Bacon | 355 |
| 83 | West Side Story | 1961 | Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise | 82 |
| 84 | Sweet Smell of Success | 1957 | Alexander Mackendrick | 174 |
| 85 | The Thin Man | 1934 | W.S. Van Dyke | 405 |
| 86 | Giant | 1956 | George Stevens | 485 |
| 87 | Paths of Glory | 1957 | Stanley Kubrick | 154 |
| 88 | Pather Panchali | 1955 | Satyajit Ray | 163 |
| 89 | The Blue Angel | 1930 | Josef von Sternberg | 296 |
| 90 | The Bridge on the River Kwai | 1957 | David Lean | 52 |
| 91 | The Last Picture Show | 1971 | Peter Bogdanovich | 271 |
| 92 | The Conformist | 1970 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 179 |
| 93 | The Big Sleep | 1946 | Howard Hawks | 150 |
| 94 | Dodsworth | 1936 | William Wyler | 643 |
| 95 | Sherlock, Jr. | 1924 | Buster Keaton | 257 |
| 96 | The Band Wagon | 1953 | Vincente Minnelli | 347 |
| 97 | The Miracle of Morgan's Creek | 1944 | Preston Sturges | 437 |
| 98 | The Big Parade | 1925 | King Vidor | 461 |
| 99 | Great Expectations | 1946 | David Lean | 249 |
| 100 | It's a Gift | 1934 | Norman Z. McLeod | 498 |