AFI 100 Years 100 Movies: America's Greatest Movies

The most basic form of American heroism — the individual in lonely, dangerous situations, inspiring opposition to the oppressive, often deadly, system. All these guys are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Films include: MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, EASY RIDER, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, DANCES WITH WOLVES, SCHINDLER'S LIST.

Crime may be the subject closest to the melodramatic heart of the movies. Filmmakers have always loved to show us how organized crime gets itself organized to corrupt society. They have loved even more showing us the ways of disorganized crime — crimes of the dysfunctional heart and the disheveled spirit. Public enemies and private nightmares — they are equally the subjects of the show. Films include: THE MALTESE FALCON, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GODFATHER, GOODFELLAS, PULP FICTION, FARGO.

The family is our most treasured institution and our most vulnerable one. It is constantly threatened internally by generational fractiousness, externally by dislocating events. When it fails, people — especially young people — recreate it in surrogate forms. When it surmounts its challenges, it warms our hearts. Films include: THE JAZZ SINGER, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, GIANT, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, THE GODFATHER: PART TWO, AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

Buried treasure, of course. But, more importantly, of states of grace — spiritual, secular, sexual. Quests are another essential movie form. They are often the occasion for mighty spectacle, high-impact action. But as we'll show, the questing impulse is no less powerful when it comes to a man trapped in a room alone. Films include: THE GOLD RUSH, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, BEN-HUR, ROCKY, VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, FORREST GUMP.

It's sweetly sentimental sometimes. But it is also snappy, scrappy, and sappy. Occasionally it's gender-bending; often it is touched by poignancy, not to mention tragedy. How do we love one another? Let us chart the many forms this fever takes. Films include: CITY LIGHTS, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, BRINGING UP BABY, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, WEST SIDE STORY, THE GRADUATE, TOOTSIE.

Movies, we like to say, are the great art form of our time. But that ignores the claims of weaponry. In the age of mass destruction, war has inevitably been one of the movies' central preoccupations. And no medium has more powerfully, more vividly presented its horrors — and, yes, its occasional glories. Films include: THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, PATTON, APOCALYPSE NOW, THE DEER HUNTER, PLATOON.

Exotic times and places. Unlikely lovers swept up, swept away by the tidal force of grand, desperate, sometimes tragic, sometimes — thank heaven — giddy passions. This is our tribute to the movies that uplift us to the romantic heights, carry us down to its brooding depths, make us feel in our souls love's transformative power. Films include: WUTHERING HEIGHTS, GONE WITH THE WIND, CASABLANCA, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, MY FAIR LADY, MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

They are the outcasts. They make their own rules, they live outside the law, they have no need for our love, anybody's love. But we love them anyway — for the boldness of their transgressions, the way they express our ultimate fantasy — that once, just once, we might do what we want to do and not count the consequences. By including here the film that made John Wayne a star — playing, don't forget, an outcast — we mean to suggest how often what seems to be conventional American heroism partakes of the antiheroic. Films include: CITIZEN KANE, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE WILD BUNCH, M*A*S*H, TAXI DRIVER, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, RAGING BULL.

This is our monster rally — sports of nature and mistakes of science in jostling juxtaposition with self-made ogres. But whether they were born, made or accidentally discovered, these creatures all share one quality: they are on a rampage. Sometimes they make us laugh — nervously. Most of the time they scare the daylights out of us — until someone restores order to whatever universe they threaten. Films include: KING KONG, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ALL ABOUT EVE, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, JAWS, AMADEUS, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

Some are surreal — Chaplin trapped in the toils of a modern factory, the Marx Brothers in Freedonia. Some are completely unreal — Disney's animated creations. But most of the figures we'll be looking at here are, in one way or another, space voyagers. What they have in common is their capacity to lift us out of quotidian reality, into realms of pure imagination. What medium does this better than the movies? Or is likely to do so more often, more powerfully in the new millennium? How better to conclude our series than with this trip back to the future as the movies have imagined it. How better to suggest that there are always new worlds for filmmakers to imagine and to conquer in the millennium ahead. Films include: MODERN TIMES, DUCK SOUP, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, THE WIZARD OF OZ, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, STAR WARS.