Most Critically Acclaimed Films by Country

Updated 6.04.09
[I pulled these from the excellent list compiled at the site They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? - they collated the top 1000 films from over 1800 other lists and critics lists, I have a link to the list on the sidebar, under "Film Sites", also added to the bottom of this post - Jose]

This list is about 140 films - how many have you seen? I highlighted my favorites of these in BLUE [40 of the 140]

Top Critically Ranked Films for Each Country
Shows title, rank in top 1000, director - I also show some higher-ranked joint country efforts, there are really too many combos of those to show them all.

Algiers-France: Battle of Algiers (95) - Gillo Pontecorvo
Argentina: The Hour of the Furnaces (519) - Octavio Getino & Fernando E. Solanas

Australia:
1. The Piano (261) - Jane Campion
2. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) (391) - George Miller
3. Picnic at Hanging Rock (526) - Peter Weir
4. Walkabout (648) - Nicholas Roeg
5. The Year of Living Dangerously (876) - Peter Weir

Belgium: Deanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxellse (141) - Chantal Akerman
Brazil: Black God, White Devil (323) - Glauber Rocha
Brazil-France: Black Orpheus (863) - Marcel Camus
Brazil-Ger-France: City of God (778) - Fernando Meirelles

Canada:
1. Wavelength (339) - Michael Snow
2. Dead Ringers (439) - David Cronenberg
3. Videodrome (505) - David Cronenberg
Canada-France: Atlantic City (749) - Louis Malle

China:
1. Spring in a Small Town (480) - Fei Mu
2. Yellow Earth (642) - Chen Kaige
3. Red Sorghum (702) - Zhang Yimou
China-Taiwan-U.S.: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (822) - Ang Lee

Cuba: Memories of Underdevelopment (376) - Tomas Gutierrez Alea
Czechoslavakia: Closely Watched Trains (351) - Jiri Menzel
Denmark: Ordet (34) - Carl Dreyer
Denmark-Swe-Fr-Neth-Norw: Breaking the Waves (383) - Lars von Trier

France:
1. Rules of the Game (3) - Jean Renoir
2. L'Atalante (16) - Jean Vigo
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (17) - Carl Dreyer
4. La Grande Illusion (25) - Jean Renoir
France-Germ: Vampyr (183) - Carl Dreyere
France-Germ-Italy: 1900 (267) - Bernardo Bertolucci
France-Iran-W.Germ: F for Fake (318) - Orson Welles
France-Italy: Contempt (56) - Jean-Luc Godard
France-Japan: Hiroshima mon amour (96) - Alain Resnais
France-Spain: Tristana (349) - Luis Bunuel
France-W Germ: Wings of Desire (247) - Wim Wenders

Germany:
1. M (53) - Fritz Lang
2. Metropolis (70) - Fritz Lang
3. Aguire: The Wrath of God (91) - Werner Herzog
4. Nosferatu (105) - F.W. Murnau
5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (144) - Robert Wiene

Hong Kong: Chungking Express (328) - Wong Kar-Wai
Hong Kong-China: Farewell, My Concubine (551) - Chen Kaige
Hong Kong-France: In the Mood for Love (344) - Wong Kar-Wai
Hungary: The Round-Up (673) - Miklos Jancso
Hungary-Germ-Switz: Satantango (343) - Bela Tarr

India:
1. Pather Panchali (59) - Satyajit Ray
2. The World of Apu (165)- Satyajit Ray
3. The Music Room (192)- Satyajit Ray
4. Aparajito (289)- Satyajit Ray
5. Charulata (324)- Satyajit Ray
[Where is Mira Nair? and others, they have lots of great films!]

Iran: Close-Up (191) - Abbas Kiarostami
Iran-Fr-Switz: A Moment of Innocence (412) Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Italy:
1. 8 1/2 (5) - Federico Fellini
2. The Bicycle Thief (14) - Vittorio De Sica (I prefer his Umberto D.)
3. La Dolce Vita (26) - Federico Fellini
4. La Strada (50) - Federico Fellini
5. The Leopard (66) - Luchino Visconti
Italy-France: L'avventura (38) - Michelangelo Antonioni
Italy-Fr-Germ: The Conformist (65) - Bernardo Bertolucci (Great Film!)
Italy-Spain: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (187) - Sergio Leone
Italy-UK: Blow-Up (197)- Michelangelo Antonioni
Italy-US: Once Upon a Time in the West (73) - Sergio Leone
Italy-W.Germ: Germany, Year Zero (236) - Luchino Visconti

Japan:
1. The Seven Samurai (9) - Akira Kurosawa
2. Tokyo Story (10) - Yasujiro Ozu
3. Rashomon (19) - Akira Kurosawa
4. Ugetsu monogatari (54) - Kenji Mizoguchi
5. Ikiru (81) - Akira Kurosawa
Japan-China: Ju Dou (735) - Zhang Yimou
Japan-Hong Kong: Princess Yang Kwei Fei (617) - Kenji Mizoguchi
Japan-Russia: Dersu Uzala (451) - Akira Kurosawa

Korea: Oldboy (816) - Chan-Wook Park
Mali: Yeelen (725) - Souleymane Cisse

Mexico:
1. Los Olvidados (109) - Luis Bunuel
2. The Exterminating Angel (120) - Luis Bunuel
3. El (315) - Luis Bunuel
[Hey, isn't Bunuel actually French? Do any native Mexicans make movies? Gregory Nava?]
Mexico-US: Que viva Mexico! (473) - Sergei Eisenstein

New Zealand: Angel at My Table (532) - Jane Campion

Poland: 1.Ashes and Diamonds (118) - Andrzej Wajda
2. Dekalog (132) - Krszystof Kieslowski
3. A Short Film About Killing (631) - Krszystof Kieslowski

Russia (see also 'USSR', for Soviet era films):
1. Battleship Potemkin (8) - Sergei Eisenstein
2. Andrei Rublev (41) - Andrei Tarkovsky
3. The Mirror (69) - Andrei Tarkovsky
4. Stalker (125) - Andrei Tarkovsky
5. Earth (134) - Alexander Dovzhenko
Russia-France: Burnt by the Sun (885) - Nikita Mikhalkov
Senegal: Xala (554) - Ousmane Sembene

Spain:
1. Viridiana (68) - Luis Bunuel
2. The Spirit of the Beehive (194) - Victor Erice
3. Land Without Bread (586) - Luis Bunuel
4. Law of Desire (672) - Pedro Almodovar
Spain-France: All About My Mother (635) - Pedro Almodovar
Spain-Italy: El Verdugo (277) - Luis Garcia Berlanga
Spain-Switz: Chimes At Midnight (124) - Orson Welles

Sweden:
1. Persona (40) - Ingmar Bergman
2. The Seventh Seal (52) - Ingmar Bergman
3. Wild Strawberries (57) - Ingmar Bergman
4. Fanny & Alexander (74) - Ingmar Bergman
[Well, Lasse Hallstrom's "My Life as a Dog" made the list, but seemingly after every mediocre film Bergman made, and there were many; most of them, in fact, although these four are his best.. Watch "Dog", far more enjoyable - Jman]

Taiwan: The Time to Live and the Time to Die (287) - Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Taiwan-Japan: Yi Yi (597) - Edward Yang

United Kingdom:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (4) - Stanley Kubrick
2. Lawrence of Arabia (13) - David Lean
3. The Third Man (24) - Carol Reed
4. Dr. Strangelove (39) - Stanley Kubrick
5. Barry Lyndon (92) - Stanley Kubrick
6. A Clockwork Orange (93) - Stanley Kubrick

United States (has 458 of the top 1000)
1. Citizen Kane (1) - Orson Welles
2. Vertigo (2) - Alfred Hitchcock
3. The Godfather (6) - Francis Coppola
4. The Searchers (7) - John Ford
5. Singin in the Rain (11) - Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
6. Sunrise (12) - F.W. Murnau (silent but great!)
7. Casablanca (15) - Michael Curtiz
8. Raging Bull (18) - Martin Scorsese
9. The Godfather Part II (20) - Francis Coppola
10. Touch of Evil (21) - Orson Welles
[I much prefer Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons to this, even Kane, and it's also high on this list, at #43 but falling annually. I also prefer Godfather II to the first - add DeNiro and Strasburg and time shifts to a young Don Corleone in Italian, much more artistic a film to me]

US-Australia: The Matrix (733) - Andy & Larry Wachowski
US-Germany: Dead Man (445) - Jim Jarmusch
US-India: The River (219) - Jean Renoir
US-New Zealand: Lord of the Rings I (860) - Peter Jackson
[Not sure why Rings III isn't here actually, instead of part I]

USSR
1. The Man with a Movie Camera (97) - Dziga Vertov
2. Alexander Nevsky (217) - Sergei Eisenstein
3. Strike (284) - Sergei Eisenstein
4. October (292) - Sergei Eisenstein
5. The Colour of Pomegranate (382) - Sergei Parajanov

USSR-Cuba: I Am Cuba (446) - Alexander Dovzhenko
[Must've been made before the psychotic 'trade embargo'! can we be more petty?]
US-UK: The Big Lebowski (777) - Ethan and Joel Coen
[Argh - one of their worst! give me Raising Arizona anytime]

West Germany:
1. In a Year with 13 Moons (335) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
2. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (484) - Werner Herzog
3. Fitzcarraldo (575) - Werner Herzog
[Even the documentary about this, Burden of Dreams, is a great film as well; but the best German film to me is now The Lives of Others, 2006, with the comedy Goodbye, Lenin! close behind]

Yugoslavia: Time of the Gypsies (561) - Emir Kusturica

Irony: Alfred Hitchcock, a British director, is usually listed hightest for Vertigo (or sometimes Psycho), made in the U.S after he came to Hollywood. Stanley Kubrick, an American director, made his best films (2001, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange) in the U.K. Of all the films that get listed in the top 10, I'd put 2001 above them all. In spite of a lack of pace, it had more influence on the entire industry than Kane or Vertigo; none of the others was authored by Arthur C. Clarke either, the most visionary author of the century. He co-created radar for the British, and predicted (in the 40's) telecom satellites circling the globe.

For the full list of 1000 critically ranked films:
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Director Film Counts in the Critics 1000

Directors with the most films in the critics top 1000.


Top Ten:
1. John Ford (18)
2. Fritz Lang (16)
3. Luis Bunuel (15)
4. Alfred Hitchcock (14)
5-6. Ingmar Bergman (13), Jean-Luc Godard (13)
7. Federico Fellini (12)
8-10. Howard Hawks (11), Stanley Kubrick (11), Akira Kurosawa (11)

10 each: Chaplin, Mizoguchi, J.Renoir
9 each: Scorsese, Visconti, Powell (9 total, 7 w Pressburger)
8 each: Allen, Altman, Bresson, Huston, Rossellini, von Sternberg, Welles, Wilder
7 each: Bertolucci, Cassavetes, Kieslowski, Lubitsch, Lynch, Ophuls, Ozu, Peckinpah, Rohmer, Powell & Pressburger, Spielberg, Tarkovsky, Trauffaut

Alphabetical List, four or more films
Total films in the top 1000, those 86 with 4+, represents 561 films. Followed by total in the top 200, then the [highest ranked film]

Allen (8) – 2 [#113: Manhattan]
Almodovar (4) [#635: All About My Mother]
Altman (8) – 2 [#67: Nashville]
Antonioni (6) – 3 [#38: L’avventura]
Bergman (13) – 5 [#40: Persona]
Bertolucci (7) – 1 [#65: The Conformist, photo right]
Bresson (8) – 3 [#61: Au hasard Balthazar]
Buñuel (15) – 7 [#68: Viridiana]
Capra (6) – 2 [#45: It’s a Wonderful Life]
Cassavetes (7) – 1 [#156: A Woman Under the Influence]
Chaplin (10) – 4 [#23: City Lights]
Clair (4) [#275: Le Million]
Cocteau, Jean (4) [#196: La Belle et la bête]
Coen Bros (5) [#288: Fargo]
Coppola (5) – 4 [#6: The Godfather]
Cukor (5) – 1 [#142: The Philadelphia Story]
De Sica (4) – 2 [#14: The Bicycle Thief]
Demy, Jacques (4) [#248: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg]
Donen (4) w Kelly (2:] – 1 [#11: Singin’ in the Rain]
Dreyer (5) – 4 [#17: The Passion of Joan d’Arc]
Eisenstein (6) – 3 [#8: Battleship Potemkin]
Fassbinder (6) – 1 [#186: Ali-Fear Grips the Soul]
Fellini (12) – 5 [#5: 8 ½]
Flaherty, Rob't (4) [#210: Nanook of the North]
Ford (18) – 6 [#7: The Searchers]
Forman (4) – 1 [#131: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, photo rt]
Godard (13) – 4 [#33: Breathless]
Griffith (5) – 3 [#51: Intolerance]
Hawks (11) – 4 [#63: Rio Bravo]
Herzog (5) – 1 [#91: Aguirre-The Wrath of God]
Hitchcock (14) – 5 [#2: Vertigo]
Hou Hsiao-Hsien (4) [#287: The Time to Live and the Time to Die]
Huston, J (8) – 2 [#111: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre]
Kazan (6) – 1 [#104: On the Waterfront]
Keaton (7) – 2 [#30: The General]
Kiarostami (6) – 1 [#191: Close-Up]
Kieslowski (7) – 1 [#132: Dekalog]
Kubrick (11) – 6 [#4: 2001-A Space Odyssey]
Kurosawa (11) – 4 [#9: Seven Samurai, photo right]
Lang, F (16) – 2 [#53: M]
Lean (6) – 2 [#13: Lawrence of Arabia]
Lubitsch (7) – 2 [#71: To Be or Not To Be]
Lumet (4) [#283: Network]
Lynch (7) – 1 [#107: Blue Velvet]
Mankiewicz (4) – 1 [#72: All About Eve]
Mann, A (4) [#589: Man of the West]
McCarey (4) – 1 [#103: Duck Soup]
Melville, Jean-P (6) [#280: Le Samourai]
Minnelli (5) – 1 [#157: The Band Wagon]
Mizoguchi (10) – 2 [#54: Ugetsu Monogatari]
Murnau, F.W. (6) – 3 [#12: Sunrise]
Ophüls, Max (7) – 2 [#77: Letter From an Unknown Woman]
Ozu, Yasujiro (7) – 2 [#10: Tokyo Story]
Pabst (4) – 1 [#189: Pandora’s Box]
Pasolini (5) – 1 [#159: Gospel According to St. Matthew, photo rt]
Peckinpah (7) – 1 [#158: The Wild Bunch]
Polanski (5) – 1 [#36: Chinatown]
Powell & Pressburger (7) – 4 [#126: A Matter of Life and Death]
Ray, Nicholas (6) [#241: Johnny Guitar]
Ray, Satyajit (6) – 3 [#59: Pather Panchali]
Renoir, Jean (10) – 3 [#3: The Rules of the Game]
Resnais (6) – 2 [#89: Last Year at Marienbad]
Rivette, Jacques (4) – 1 [#181: Celine and Julie Go Boating]
Roeg, Nicolas (4) – 2 [#136: Don’t Look Now]
Rohmer, Eric (7) [#278: My Night at Maud’s]
Rossellini (8) – 3 [#86: Voyage in Italy]
Scorsese (9) – 4 [#18: Raging Bull]
Scott, Ridley (4) – 1 [#46: Blade Runner]
Sirk (6) – 1 [#199: Written on the Wind]
Spielberg (7) – 3 [#106: Jaws]
Sturges, Preston (5) – 3 [#114: The Lady Eve]
Tarkovsky (7) – 3 [#41: Andrei Rublev]
Tourneur, Jacques (4) [#117: Out of the Past, photo right]
Truffaut (7) – 2 [#42: Jules et Jim]
Vidor, King (6) – 1 [#178: The Crowd]
Visconti (9) – 3 [#66: The Leopard]
von Sternberg, Josef (8) [#255: Blue Angel]
von Stroheim, Erich (4) – 1 [#64: Greed]
Weir (4) [#526: Picnic at Hanging Rock]
Welles (8) – 4 [#1: Citizen Kane]
Wenders (4) [#247: Wings of Desire]
Wilder (8) – 4 [#22: Some Like it Hot]
Wong Kar-Wai (5) [#328: Chungking Express]
Wyler (5) – 1 [#122: The Best Years of Our Lives]

- Those with 2+ in the top 200 that didn't make the list above -
Leone (3)– 3 [#73: Once Upon a Time in the West] - only 3 but all in top 200
Malick (2)– 2 [#164: Days of Heaven]

Those with 3: Paul Thomas Anderson, Theo Angelopoulos, Luis García Berlanga, John Boorman, James Cameron, Marcel Carné, Chen Kaige, David Cronenberg, Michael Curtiz, Brian De Palma, Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Humphrey Jennings, Jerry Lewis, Joseph Losey, Terrence Malick, Louis Malle, Albert & David Maysles, Nikita Mikhalkov, Arthur Penn, Otto Preminger, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Carol Reed, Rob Reiner, Glauber Rocha, George Stevens, Jean-Marie Straub, Jacques Tati, Andrzej Wajda, Raoul Walsh, Robert Wise, Zhang Yimou, Fred Zinnemann

The Critics 1000 list can be seen and downloaded at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Surprises
John Cassavetes with 7, has more films in the top 1000 than Kazan (6), Lean (6). Coppola (5), Wyler (5), Dreyer (5), Wong Kar-Wai (5), Preston Sturges (5), Polanski (5), Pasolini (5), Herzog (5), Minnelli (5), Jacques Tourneur (4). He doesn’t have that many great films does he, aren’t most about average at best?

William Wyler, with 13 best director and 12 best picture nominations only has 5 in the top 1000, and his greatest (Best Years of Our Lives) is only #122. This should be an all-time top 10 film, perhaps the finest anti-war film ever made.

Billy Wilder, with such original classics as Sunset Boulevard (photo right), Stalag 17, Double Indemnity, and The Apartment, has his light gender-bending comedy Some Like It Hot at #22 just outplace Boulevard (#29) as his highest ranked film; for me it’s about 4th of his.

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner at #46. Not bad SciFi but ahead of E.T., Close Encounters, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, even another and better Philip K. Dick story in Minority Report? It has about 5 minutes of actual futuristic footage, then reverts into a typical detective action film: let’s hunt down and kill the androids/killers one at a time. Well done but hardly a top 50 all-time.

Woody Allen’s admittedly good Manhattan (photo left) outranking best picture winner Annie Hall, and the more complex and rewarding Hannah and Her Sisters. Together, a formidable trilogy, but the seamless weaving together of multiple family stories in Hannah directly inspired Ron Howard’s Parenthood, and a host of copycats.

Where are Coppola’s Tucker: A Man and His Dream and Peggie Sue Got Married? To include Godfather III over these takes an offer someone couldn’t refuse, or perhaps listing the Godfathers together as a trilogy.

Elia Kazan’s top film, On the Waterfront, is only 104th, when imitator Sergio Leone has one higher (73rd, the overblown Once Upon a Time in the West)? ..what are people looking at?

Surrealist Luis Bunuel has 15 in the top 1000, but 7 (and most) in the top 200? He admits to not shooting with a script, and just letting the cameras capture the film that he creates later with editing. Gee, how could you ever tell, as many of his films seem entertaining but pointless overall, especially Un Chien Andelou, perhaps ranked due to Dali’s participation? (it must be art if the guy who once set a stuffed giraffe on fire in a museum was involved.)


My Favorite Ten:
1-Kubrick, 2-Coppola, 3-Wilder, 4-Wyler, 5-Spielberg, 6-Scorsese, 7-Yimou, 8-Lean, 9-Kazan, 10-Bertolucci, John Huston(tie)
Just out: Coen Bros., John Ford, Woody Allen, Herzog, Lang, Antonioni, Tornatore, Wong Kar-Wai, Carol Reed, Weir, Welles, Wertmuller
Stanley Kubrick for sheer number of top 20 caliber films, same as Coppola, who had more mistakes having done more films. Wilder and Wyler are perhaps the most consistant. Doing just 10 is tough. For me, Welles didn't do enough great films, just a couple, Kane and Ambersons. Same with Ford - Informer and Mister Roberts are my faves. [*Subject to change at a moment's notice]