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Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Films

A list created by sleestakk

Before his death in 1998, famed Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa discussed his top 100 films with his daughter, Kazuo. Kurosawa limited himself to one title per director, giving a unique perspective on the best world directors and his personal favorites.

This list and discussion was published in Chapter 3 of A DREAM IS A GENIUS, ISBN 4-16-355570. Edited by Bungeishunju. © 1999 Translated by Noriyo Hoozawa-Arkenau, “Please excuse any errors, English is not Mr Hoozawa-Arkenau’s native tongue. [...] I hope that readers will still enjoy Kurosawa’s comments.”
www.douban.com/note/92760897/

Note: Ivan the Terrible I & II are listed as separate entries but only as one entry on the original list, which is why 101 titles are present.

Movies on Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Films List
Title	Director(s)	Year Released
Broken Blossoms	D.W. Griffith	1919
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The	Robert Wiene	1920
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler	Fritz Lang	1922
Gold Rush, The	Charlie Chaplin	1925
Fall of the House of Usher, The	Jean Epstein	1928
Un Chien Andalou	Luis Buñuel	1929
Morocco	Josef von Sternberg	1930
Congress Dances, The	Erik Charell	1931
3 Penny Opera, The	G.W. Pabst	1931
Lover Divine	Willi Forst	1933
Thin Man, The	W.S. Van Dyke	1934
Our Neighbor, Miss Yae	Yasujirô Shimazu	1934
Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo	Sadao Yamanaka	1935
Akanishi Kakita	Mansaku Itami	1936
Grand Illusion	Jean Renoir	1937
Stella Dallas	King Vidor	1937
Composition Class	Kajirô Yamamoto	1938
Earth	Tomu Uchida	1939
Ninotchka	Ernst Lubitsch	1939
Ivan the Terrible, Part I	Sergei Eisenstein	1944
Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot	Sergei Eisenstein	1958
My Darling Clementine	John Ford	1946
It's a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra	1946
Big Sleep, The	Howard Hawks	1946
Bicycle Thieves	Vittorio De Sica	1948
Blue Mountains: Part I, The	Tadashi Imai	1949
Third Man, The	Carol Reed	1949
Late Spring	Yasujirō Ozu	1949
Orpheus	Jean Cocteau	1950
Carmen Comes Home	Keisuke Kinoshita	1951
Streetcar Named Desire, A	Elia Kazan	1951
Thérèse Raquin	Marcel Carné	1953
Life of Oharu, The	Kenji Mizoguchi	1952
Journey to Italy	Roberto Rossellini	1954
Godzilla	Ishirō Honda	1954
La Strada	Federico Fellini	1954
Floating Clouds	Mikio Naruse	1955
Pather Panchali	Satyajit Ray	1955
Daddy Long Legs	Jean Negulesco	1955
Proud Ones, The	Robert D. Webb	1956
Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era, A	Yuzo Kawashima	1957
Young Lions, The	Edward Dmytryk	1958
Cousins, The	Claude Chabrol	1959
400 Blows, The	François Truffaut	1959
Breathless	Jean-Luc Godard	1960
Ben-Hur	William Wyler	1959
Her Brother	Kon Ichikawa	1960
Long Absence, The	Henri Colpi	1961
Stowaway in the Sky	Albert Lamorisse	1960
Purple Noon	René Clément	1960
Zazie dans le Métro	Louis Malle	1960
Last Year at Marienbad	Alain Resnais	1961
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?	Robert Aldrich	1962
Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	1962
Any Number Can Win	Henri Verneuil	1963
Birds, The	Alfred Hitchcock	1963
Red Desert	Michelangelo Antonioni	1964
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	Mike Nichols	1966
Bonnie and Clyde	Arthur Penn	1967
In the Heat of the Night	Norman Jewison	1967
Charge of the Light Brigade, The	Tony Richardson	1968
Midnight Cowboy	John Schlesinger	1969
MAS*H	Robert Altman	1970
Johnny Got His Gun	Dalton Trumbo	1971
French Connection, The	William Friedkin	1971
Spirit of the Beehive, The	Víctor Erice	1973
Solaris	Andrei Tarkovsky	1972
Day of the Jackal, The	Fred Zinnemann	1973
Conversation Piece	Luchino Visconti	1974
Godfather Part II, The	Francis Ford Coppola	1974
Sandakan No. 8	Kei Kumai	1974
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Miloš Forman	1975
Travelling Players, The	Theo Angelopoulos	1975
Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick	1975
Lullaby of the Earth	Yasuzô Masumura	1976
Annie Hall	Woody Allen	1977
Unfinished Piece for Player Piano, An	Nikita Mikhalkov	1977
Padre Padrone	Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani	1977
Gloria	John Cassavetes	1980
Distant Cry from Spring, A	Yôji Yamada	1980
La traviata	Franco Zeffirelli	1982
Fanny and Alexander	Ingmar Bergman	1982
Fitzcarraldo	Werner Herzog	1982
King of Comedy, The	Martin Scorsese	1982
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence	Nagisa Ōshima	1983
Killing Fields, The	Roland Joffé	1984

Summer at Grandpa's, A	Hou Hsiao-hsien	1984
Paris, Texas	Wim Wenders	1984
Witness	Peter Weir	1985
Trip to Bountiful, The	Peter Masterson	1985
When Father Was Away on Business	Emir Kusturica	1985
Dead, The	John Huston	1987
Where Is The Friend's House?	Abbas Kiarostami	1987
Bagdad Cafe	Percy Adlon	1987
Whales of August, The	Lindsay Anderson	1987
Running on Empty	Sidney Lumet	1988
My Neighbor Totoro	Hayao Miyazaki	1988
Buddies	Yasuo Furuhata	1989
La Belle Noiseuse	Jacques Rivette	1991
Fireworks	Takeshi Kitano	1997