Sara Freeman

Sara Freeman’s Top 100 - The Alternative List

Sara Freeman is a feminist film theorist/film lover based in Chicago. She never knew how much she liked ’50s cinema until she made this list. You can learn all about Sara and read her work on Cine Slayer.

Sara isn’t the biggest fan of ranking (or letter/star grades), so she has listed the following one hundred great films in chronological order.

• Le Cake-Walk Infernal (1903) .. Georges Méliès
• The Blue Bird (1918) .. Maurice Tournuer
• Way Down East (1920) .. D.W. Griffith
• Ballet Mécanique (1924) .. Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy
• The Red Kimona (1925) .. Walter Lang
• The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) .. Ernst Lubitsch
• The Struggle (1931) .. D.W. Griffith
• Blonde Venus (1932) .. Josef von Sternberg
• The Old Dark House (1932) .. James Whale
• Baby Face (1933) .. Alfred E. Green
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) .. Mervyn LeRoy
• Pilgrimage (1933) .. John Ford
• Stella Dallas (1937) .. King Vidor
• La Bête Humaine (1938) .. Jean Renoir
• Jezebel (1938) .. William Wyler
• Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) .. Dorothy Arzner
• Rebecca (1940) .. Alfred Hitchcock
• A Woman’s Face (1941) .. George Cukor
• Now, Voyager (1942) .. Irving Rapper
• Radio Dynamics (1942) .. Oskar Fischinger
• Heaven Can Wait (1943) .. Ernst Lubitsch
• I Walked with a Zombie (1943) .. Jacques Tourneur
• Farewell My Lovely (1944) .. Edward Dmytryk
• Leave Her to Heaven (1945) .. John M. Stahl
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947) .. Charles Chaplin
• Force of Evil (1948) .. Abraham Polonsky
• The Furies (1950) .. Anthony Mann
• Ace in the Hole (1951) .. Billy Wilder
• Repast (1951) .. Naruse Mikio
• The River (1951) .. Jean Renoir
• Le Plaisir (1952) .. Max Ophüls
• The Big Heat (1953) .. Fritz Lang
• The Bigamist (1953) .. Ida Lupino
• Duck Amuck (1953) .. Chuck Jones
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) .. Howard Hawks
• Pickup on South Street (1953) .. Samuel Fuller
• Magnificent Obsession (1954) .. Douglas Sirk
• Artists and Models (1955) .. Frank Tashlin
• Bigger Than Life (1956) .. Nicholas Ray
• The Girl Can't Help It (1956) .. Frank Tashlin
• Invitation to the Dance (1956) .. Gene Kelly
• Slightly Scarlet (1956) .. Allan Dwan
• Street of Shame (1956) .. Mizoguchi Kenji
• Tea and Sympathy (1956) .. Vincente Minnelli
• Written on the Wind (1956) .. Douglas Sirk
• Some Came Running (1958) .. Vincente Minnelli
• Day of the Outlaw (1959) .. André De Toth
• Bells Are Ringing (1960) .. Vincente Minnelli
• The Ladies Man (1961) .. Jerry Lewis
• An Autumn Afternoon (1962) .. Ozu Yasujiro
• The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (1962) .. Federico Fellini
• The Night of the Iguana (1964) .. John Huston
• Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) .. Kenneth Anger
• My Hustler (1965) .. Andy Warhol
• The Face of Another (1966) .. Teshigahara Hiroshi
• 7 Women (1966) .. John Ford
• The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) .. Jacques Demy
• La Région Centrale (1971) .. Michael Snow
• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) .. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Frenzy (1972) .. Alfred Hitchcock
• The Age of Cosimo de Medici (1973) .. Roberto Rossellini
• Edvard Munch (1974) .. Peter Watkins
• The Text of Light (1974) .. Stan Brakhage
• Switchblade Sisters (1975) .. Jack Hill
• The Tenant (1976) .. Roman Polanski
• News from Home (1977) .. Chantal Akerman
• Mongoloid (1978) .. Bruce Conner
• Pretty Baby (1978) .. Louis Malle
• White Dog (1982) .. Samuel Fuller
• Christine (1983) .. John Carpenter
• Eureka (1983) .. Nicolas Roeg
• Smorgasbord (The Movie) (1983) .. Jerry Lewis
• Day of the Dead (1985) .. George A. Romero
• Picturebook for Adults (1985) .. Lewis Klahr
• The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) .. Woody Allen
• Aliens (1986) .. James Cameron
• Predator (1987) .. John McTiernan
• An Angel at My Table (1990) .. Jane Campion
• Bullet in the Head (1990) .. John Woo
• Aristophanes on Broadway (1991) .. Zack Stiglicz
• The Man in the Moon (1991) .. Robert Mulligan
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) .. Francis Ford Coppola
• Orlando (1992) .. Sally Potter
• Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) .. John McTiernan
• Heat (1995) .. Michael Mann
• Hide and Seek (1996) .. Su Friedrich
• Face/Off (1997) .. John Woo
• Jackie Brown (1997) .. Quentin Tarantino
• Histoire(s) du Cinema (1989-1998) .. Jean-Luc Godard
• Punch-Drunk Love (2002) .. Paul Thomas Anderson
• Ten (2002) .. Abbas Kiarostami
• The Big Red One: The Reconstuction (1980/2004) .. Samuel Fuller
• Clean (2004) .. Olivier Assayas
• Star Spangled to Death (2004) .. Ken Jacobs
• Oliver Twist (2005) .. Roman Polanski
• Tideland (2005) .. Terry Gilliam
• Exiled (2006) .. Johnnie To
• Waitress (2007) .. Adrienne Shelly
• Bright Star (2009) .. Jane Campion
• Public Enemies (2009) .. Michael Mann