Cinema as we know it took shape around the late 19th century, starting with the iconic Lumière brothers in the 1890s. Some of the earliest films ever made include Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902), Alfred Clark's The Execution of Mary Stuart (1895), and William K.L. Dickson's Carmencita (1894).
Movies have come a long way since then, transforming from mere side-show attractions to a global entertainment industry. Every film has some effect on its viewers, although very few movies can claim to have influenced society in a culturally significant manner.
Updated on May 17, 2023 by Ajay Aravind: As a reflection of the world, the impact of cinema on popular consciousness cannot be understated. When people talk about subjectivity, they don't mean that everyone experiences art differently. On the contrary, it is our collective experience that defines how films change us in relation to each other and the world. Pauline Kael was right when she mocked the concept of critical neutrality as "saphead objectivity." Cinema deserves better than that.
20 La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc (1928)
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc is universally regarded as a cinematic milestone. Starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti as the titular saint, this movie received widespread acclaim from critics and film scholars alike.
The religious ideas in La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc were subject to early controversy and infuriated several French Catholics, including the Archbishop of Paris. That said, The New York Times praised this movie to the skies, claiming that "it makes worthy pictures of the past look like tinsel shams." La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc is unquestionably among the most impressive productions in film history.
19 Persona (1966)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman delves into psychological horror territory with Persona, which follows the increasingly unnerving relationship between a nurse and her patient. Critics have observed a range of underlying themes in the film, from Jungian theory and queerness to maternity and vampirism.
Persona is well-known for its experimental style, radical aesthetic, supersonic visuals, and subliminal imagery. Variety applauded "the perfection in direction, acting, editing, and lensing," the four most essential filmmaking factors. Persona involves so many intersecting metaphors and concepts that it basically defies interpretation.
18 The Jazz Singer (1927)
Director: Alan Crosland
Directed by Alan Crosland, The Jazz Singer pioneered the use of synchronized audio in Hollywood, spelling the end of the Silent Era. Movie-goers would never again have to deal with jarring, disjointed inter-title cards interrupting their cinematic experience. The Jazz Singer employed the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, a revolutionary development for the 1920s.
Actor/singer Al Jolson's first line, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!" has become a pop-cultural touchstone. The film went on to win an Honorary Oscar at the 1st Academy Awards in 1928. Unfortunately, The Jazz Singer is also remembered for its "racial comedy," which was popular at the time but contemporary critics and fans alike now recognize it as racist.
17 Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Director: George A. Romero
Nobody expected Night of the Living Dead to inspire a whole new genre of movies, but that's exactly what this low-budget George A. Romero classic wound up doing. The film has since diversified into a complex franchise, incorporating multiple sequels, remakes, and imitations.
The BBC declared Night of the Living Dead a "new dawn in horror film-making," particularly for its ingenious use of the zombie concept. Night of the Living Dead isn't just another horror movie. While Romero always said it wasn't political, the story doubles as a criticism of post-war America and the global political landscape of the era.
16 Pather Panchali (1955)
Director: Satyajit Ray
As the first film in the iconic Apu trilogy by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, Pather Panchali signified the coming of a new age in both Indian and international cinema. The story chronicles the early childhood and adolescence of two siblings facing poverty together.
Legendary musician Pandit Ravi Shankar was involved in Pather Panchali's soundtrack, further boosting its influence on the world stage. This movie was widely considered a turning point for Indian Parallel cinema, a tradition that focused heavily on socialist ideals rather than flimsy popcorn-worthy notions.
15 Some Like It Hot (1959)
Director: Billy Wilder
Despite the image created for her by Hollywood and pop culture, Marilyn Monroe proved that she could be just as funny as any comedian in Some Like It Hot. Although the movie has a fixed narrative, the story takes viewers on a quasi-hallucinatory trip that feels too delightfully campy to be real.
Then again, authenticity isn't really the point of a film like Some Like It Hot. With six Oscar nominations under its belt, Some Like It Hot garnered near-universal fame from the moment it was released. Critics today deem it among the greatest movies ever made, and certainly one of the best comedies since Charlie Chaplin openly mocked Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator.
14 The Searchers (1956)
Director: John Ford
One of the greatest films in the American Western genre, The Searchers is a fictionalized retelling of the Texas–Indian wars of the 18th century. Starring legendary fictional cowboy John Wayne, The Searchers influenced multiple generations of filmmakers and TV showrunners, like David Lean, Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, Vince Gilligan, and George Lucas.
The Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus states that The Searchers "introduces dark ambivalence to the genre that remains fashionable today," highlighting the movie's overwhelming impression on the global film industry. The United States Library of Congress has preserved The Searchers in the National Film Registry, citing the movie's cultural relevance.
13 L'Avventura (1960)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura takes a patently unorthodox approach to cinema, earning mixed reviews from contemporary reviewers. In the director's obituary, The Independent later described how his movie "systematically subverted the filmic codes, practices, and structures in currency at its time," an opinion shared by the vast majority of modern critics.
Plot takes a backseat in L'Avventura — character emotions are instead portrayed through mood, tone, and visual texture. Despite its languorous pace, L'Avventura inevitably shatters the syntactic rules of filmmaking before remaking them in its own image. Cinema today owes a lot to this black-and-white masterpiece.
12 Citizen Kane (1941)
Director: Orson Welles
Citizen Kane can only be described as a cinematic maverick — a movie that defies expectations on every scale, with Gregg Toland's mind-bending cinematography and Orson Welles' incredible writing, directing, and central performance. 1940s audiences were taken by complete surprise, as very few people could comprehend Welles' unprecedented vision.
Citizen Kane has since gone on to influence and inspire filmmakers all around the world, from John Huston and Kenneth Branagh to Miloš Forman and Paul Thomas Anderson. William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist has gone on record stating that Citizen Kane is a "veritable quarry for filmmakers, just as Joyce's Ulysses is a quarry for writers."
11 Alien (1979)
Director: Ridley Scott
There are very few movies where genres merge into each other with seamless precision. Alien — a nightmare-inducing mishmash of horror, suspense, action, and drama — clearly falls into this category. Ellen Ripley may be horror's greatest action heroine and the xenomorph still terrifies audiences today.
Critic Roger Ebert initially panned the movie, calling it "an intergalactic haunted house thriller set inside a spaceship," but later amended his negative appraisal by highlighting the monumental scope of Alien's imagination. This Ridley Scott movie will forever be a cinematic benchmark, no matter how many sequels, prequels, and reboots are made. Alien changed the world in ways that are still evident to this day.
10 The Seventh Seal (1957)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
The Seventh Seal tiptoes around magical realism before taking a rather deep plunge into abstract territory. Considered to be director Ingmar Bergman's magnum opus, this highly stylized film garnered enormous praise from reviewers, audiences, as well as academics.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times extolled Bergman's spartan yet hyperbolic vision, declaring that the "black-robed Death is as frank and insistent as a terrified girl being hustled to the stake." The cinematography has been likened to Neoclassical sculpture, albeit with a pungent postmodern twist, while the acting has distinctly Shakespearean overtones. Countless movies, TV shows, operas, and even heavy metal albums have paid tribute to The Seventh Seal.
9 The Birth Of A Nation (1915)
Director: D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation is based on The Clansman, a 1905 novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. This silent film went on to pioneer an array of technical achievements — close-up sequences, crosscutting, tracking shots, color tinting, and orchestral scores.
The Birth of a Nation is one of the most controversial movies ever made, particularly for its positive depiction of the Ku Klux Klan. The movie's release triggered riots in Philadelphia, Boston, and several other American cities. According to critic Roger Ebert, The Birth of a Nation "presents a challenge for modern audiences" because "it is a great film that argues for evil." Despite its groundbreaking innovations, this movie will always be deeply problematic. The Birth of a Nation changed the world by making things worse.
8 Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960)
Director: Ritwik Ghatak
Adapted from Shaktipada Rajguru's eponymous novel, Meghe Dhaka Tara is the first installment in director Ritwik Ghatak's Partition of Bengal trilogy. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, a movie reference glossary by Stephen Jay Schneider, notes "the grace of Ghatak's mise en scène, his expressionist sound design, and the enormous sense of loss."
Meghe Dhaka Tara is a seminal example of Indian Parallel Cinema, a movement that inspired a global network of filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami and Wes Anderson to Elia Kazan and François Truffaut. Meghe Dhaka Tara's visceral commentary is as compelling today as it was in 1960.
7 Borat (2006)
Director: Larry Charles
The unabridged title, Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan summarizes the film's overall tone perfectly. In fact, it can be argued that making a movie as profoundly asinine as Borat requires both a prodigious comedic talent and a complete lack of shame.
Borat didn't just change cinema, it altered the very meaning of satire. This mockumentary was heavily censored in numerous countries, lawsuits were filed against its creators, and the Kazakh government responded by inaugurating an expensive tourism campaign. The dust has long since settled, but Borat is still here and shined an important light on how the world treated 'foreigners" in post-9/11 America.
6 The Gold Rush (1925)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Few people have influenced the art of cinema as much as Charlie Chaplin. The Gold Rush, arguably his most recognizable work, infuses surrealism and sentimentality into a masterfully designed genre hybrid. The New York Times called it "a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, tenderness," claiming that the film "has more thought and originality" than Chaplin's earlier offerings.
The Gold Rush contains some of the most famous Chaplin comedy scenes, seamlessly integrated into a character-focused storyline. More importantly, Chaplin himself stated that "this is the picture [he wanted] to be remembered by." Numerous filmmakers, including Akira Kurosawa, have cited The Gold Rush as one of their favorite movies.
5 The Leopard (1963)
Director: Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, an epic historical drama set during Italy's Risorgimento period, obtained lukewarm reviews upon release, with several critics ridiculing Burt Lancaster's overblown performance. However, the film eventually won the prestigious Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival.
The Leopard is currently considered one of the best examples of modern Italian cinema. The New York Times referred to the third act's ballroom scene as "one of the most famous set pieces in cinema," while New York Magazine called it "almost unbearably moving." The Leopard may have its detractors, but there's no doubt about its impact.
4 Gone With The Wind (1939)
Director: Victor Fleming
Gone with the Wind, starring the combustible combination of Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel, and Olivie de Havilland, still remains the highest-grossing motion picture of all time (adjusted for inflation). As of 2021, the movie has earned more than $3.9 billion at the box office.
Gone with the Wind was as much a critical hit as a financial one, picking up ten nominations and five wins at the 1940 Oscars. Rhett Butler's devastating and vitriolic final line — "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" — has been voted the greatest movie quote of all time by the American Film Institute. Despite the way it whitewashed the Confederacy and its crimes, Gone with the Wind will always have a permanent place in the history of cinema as well as global pop culture.
3 Ikiru (1952)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru may not be as famous as Seven Samurai (1954) or Yojimbo (1961), but this tenderly crafted character study is just as profound and poignant as his action-oriented movies. Ikiru provides an intricate blend of humanist philosophy, familial intimacy, and musings about the inevitability of death.
Critic Bosley Crowther praised Kurosawa's emblematic "style of sharp reportage and introspection," affirming Ikiru's bleakly incisive take on aging. Meanwhile, Roger Ebert compared the movie to Dylan Thomas' iconic poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night," which is frequently interpreted as a rebellion against mortality. Ikiru is an emotional tour de force, and it changed the way many filmmakers think about movies.
2 Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Director: Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar is an agonizing tale of grief and loss, as seen through the eyes of the eponymous donkey. Although Balthazar obtains a few moments of joy over the course of his short life, they're far too sporadic to counterbalance all the abuse he suffers.
Critic Andrew Sarris claimed that Au Hasard Balzathar "stands by itself as one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realized emotional experience." This movie includes a host of overlapping analogies and allegories, making it a film academic's dream. That said, Au Hasard Balthazar works because its message is heartbreakingly clear.
1 Olympia (1938)
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl's intimate relationship with the Nazi Reich is well known. She spent significant time in close quarters with Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking party members, whose repellant philosophies may have influenced her filmmaking process.
Riefenstahl's Olympia was supposed to be an impartial documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but the movie turned out to be an obscene piece of political propaganda from start to finish. At the same time, Olympia is nothing less than a cinematic trailblazer on multiple levels. In an article for The Guardian, Nicholas Barber explained how this movie "revolutionised the way sport was depicted on screen."