35. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
It's A Wonderful Life is the ultimate Christmas movie - a staple in households across the world every single Christmas - in fact, it's not really Christmas until you've seen it on television. James Stewart's iconic George Bailey is one of the greatest screen heroes - eternally selfless and caring and his line "I want to live again" has been quoted by pretty much everybody. George's downward spiral into despair and subsequent sentimental resurrection warms the heart like nothing else. By the time it's finished, there's never a dry eye in the house. Even to those who have no relation to Christianity resonate with the character and movie - it has a universal meaning and those who call it "too sentimental" are completely missing the point. Just like Frank Capra's earlier film, It Happened One Night, it is brilliantly written and realistically directed - maintaining the human emotion of the film that makes it so powerful. You can watch It's A Wonderful Life over and over again and never get bored, it always finds a new way to touch you and it just makes you feel so happy by the conclusion - not many truly great movies do that. Everybody has a story about watching It's A Wonderful Life and the way it has affected the world so universally is extraordinary - a film has to be truly special for it to resonate that widely.
34. Rashomon (1950)
Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece is the movie that brought Japanese cinema to the US. It won the Venice Film Festival's prestigious Golden Lion and an Oscar and marked the start of Kurosawa's remarkable run of classics throughout the 50's and early 60's. Its dark story is told innovatively from four different points of view and takes the unique path of getting darker and more mysterious as the viewpoints are told. Toshiro Mifune's performance is one of his very best - bubbling with force and power. Rashomon is famous for being the first film to shoot directly into the sun and Kurosawa's symbolic use of light in the movie has been analysed numerous times. It's one of the most gorgeous black and white films, shot by Kazuo Miyagawa who also worked with Yasujiro Ozu. The idea of the film - a crime told through conflicting flashbacks - has been ripped off numerous times since 1950 but nobody has come close to executing it with the power and emotion like Kurosawa.
33. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Billy Wilder's classic noir has been one of the most durable of the genre with its dark tale about Hollywood and phenomenal performance by William Holden. Wilder savaged Hollywood in his classic film, leading to mixed reactions from critics and studio bosses at its time of release, but the brilliance of the film meant it survived the times and has increased in acclaim as time goes by. For me, it is Wilder's true masterpiece - superior to Some Like it Hot and The Lost Weekend. It was Wilder's seventeenth and final collaboration with screenwriter Charles Brackett and they produced their biggest, most brilliant and daring film. William Holden was a lost star when Wilder decided to cast him in the movie and he has become a lost star again, now, but those who have seen Sunset Boulevard know he is up there with some of the very best. Sunset Boulevard still stands tall side by side next to some of the great American classics and it is one of the finest movies about the making of movies.