100 Films Recommended By Japanese Master Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa: If one is preparing a list of best films ever made, it is inevitable that a couple of Akira Kurosawa’s works are on that list; if one is listing the best filmmakers that ever lived, it is inevitable that Akira Kurosawa is on that list. Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of World Cinema who has had a significant impact on film craft and shaped storytelling techniques; he is credited with introducing Japanese cinema to the world. Known for his works like Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, and Ran, among others, Kurosawa directed 30 films in his career spanning over five decades.
Following his death at the age of 88, the posthumous book A Dream is a Genius (Japanese Original: Yume wa tensai de aru) was published in the year 1999. Kurosawa shared films that have impacted him, films he liked over the year and would recommend. Keeping the list to 100 films, he limited one film per director and those who love cinema and want to watch great films or even those who want a new year goal go for the eclectic list by none other than one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers.
Read more: 100 Films Recommended by Akira Kurosawa: 50 Best Japanese Films of the 21st Century
The list is diverse, covering over nine decades, hundred directors, various languages, and various film genres and movements. From German Expressionist cinema to Italian Neo-Realism, from French New Wave to classic Japanese cinema, and more recent Iranian Poetic Realism, the list has films from all the most significant movements: it is not a list but a crash course in film history.
If that sounds heavy, there are also classic Hollywood films that would entertain on the dreariest of days, and it is a list for all days recommended by none other than Akira Kurosawa.
1. Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl
Director: D. W. Griffith
Release: 1919
2. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (German Original: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari)
Director: Robert Wiene
Release: 1920
3. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (German Original: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler)
Director: Fritz Lang
Release: 1922
4. The Gold Rush
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Release: 1925
5. The Fall of the House of Usher
Director: Jean Epstein
Release: 1928
6. An Andalusian Dog (French Original: Un Chien Andalou)
Director: Luis Buñuel
Release: 1928
7. Morocco
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Release: 1930
8. The Congress Dances
Director: Erik Charell
Release: 1931
9. The Threepenny Opera
Director: G. W. Pabst
Release: 1931
10. Gentry My Songs Entreat (German Original: Leise Flehen Meine Lieder)
Director: Willi Forst
Release: 1933
11. The Thin Man
Director: W. S. Van Dyke
Release: 1934
12. My Little Neighbour, Yae
Director – Yasujiro Shimazu
Release: 1934
13. The Million Ryo Pot
Director: Sadao Yamanaka
Release: 1935
14. Capricious Young Men (Japanese Original: Akanishi Kakita)
Director: Mansaku Itami
Release: 1936
15. The Grand Illusion (French Original: La Grande Illusion)
Director: Jean Renoir
Release: 1937
16. Stella Dallas
Director: King Vidor
Release: 1937
17. Composition Class
Director: Kajirô Yamamoto
Release: 1938
18. Earth (Japanese Original: Tsuchi)
Director: Tomu Uchida
Release: 1939
19. Ninotchka
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Release: 1939
20. Ivan Groznyy
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Release: 1944
21. My Darling Clementine
Director: John Ford
Release: 1946
22. It’s a Wonderful Life
Director: Frank Capra
Release: 1946
23. The Big Sleep
Director: Howard Hawks
Release: 1946
24. Bicycle Thieves
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Release: 1948
25. Aoi sanmyaku
Director: Tadashi Imai
Release: 1949
26. The Third Man
Director: Carol Reed
Release: 1949
27. Late Spring (Japanese Original: Banshun)
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Release: 1949
28. Orpheus
Director: Jean Cocteau
Release: 1950
29. Carmen Comes Home
Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Release: 1951
30. A Streetcar Named Desire
Director: Elia Kazan
Release: 1951
31. The Adultress (French Original: Thérèse Raquin)
Director: Marcel Carné
Release: 1953
32. The Life of Oharu
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Release: 1952
33. Voyage to Italy
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Release: 1954
34. Godzilla
Director: Ishirô Honda
Release: 1954
35. La Strada
Director: Federico Fellini
Release: 1954
36. Floating Clouds (Japanese Original: Ukigumo)
Director: Mikio Naruse
Release: 1955
37. Pather Panchali
Director: Satyajit Ray
Release: 1955
38. Daddy Long Legs
Director: Jean Negulesco
Release: 1955
39. The Proud Ones
Director: Robert D. Webb
Release: 1956
40. Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (Japanese Original: Bakumatsu taiyōden)
Director: Yūzō Kawashima
Release: 1957
41. The Young Lions
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Release: 1958
42. The Cousins (French Original: Les Cousins)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Release: 1959
43. The 400 Blows
Director: François Truffaut
Release: 1959
44. Breathless
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Release: 1960
45. Ben-Hur
Director: William Wyler
Release: 1959
46. Her Brother
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Release: 1960
47. The Long Absence (French Original: Une Aussi Longue Absence )
Director: Henri Colpi
Release: 1961
48. Stowaway in the Sky
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Release: 1960
49. Plein Soleil
Director: René Clément
Release: 1960
50. Zazie on the Subway (French Original: Zazie Dans le Metro)
Director: Louis Malle
Release: 1960
51. Last Year in Marienbad
Director: Alain Resnais
Release: 1961
52. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Director: Robert Aldrich
Release: 1962
53. Lawrence of Arabia
Director: David Lean
Release: 1962
54. The Big Snatch
Director: Henri Verneuil
Release: 1963
55. The Birds
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Release: 1963
56. The Red Desert
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Release: 1964
57. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Director: Mike Nichols
Release: 1966
58. Bonnie and Clyde – Penn,
Director: Arthur Penn
Release: 1967
59. In the Heat of the Night
Director: Norman Jewison
Release: 1967
60. The Charge of the Light Brigade
Director: Tony Richardson
Release: 1968
61. Midnight Cowboy
Director: John Schlesinger
Release: 1969
62. MASH
Director: Robert Altman
Release: 1970
63. Johnny Got His Gun
Director: Dalton Trumbo
Release: 1971
64. The French Connection
Director: William Friedkin
Release: 1971
65. Spirit of the Beehive
Director: Víctor Erice
Release: 1973
66. Solaris
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Release: 1972
67. The Day of the Jackal
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Release: 1973
68. Conversation Piece
Director: Luchino Visconti
Release: 1974
69. The Godfather Part II
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Release: 1974
70. Sandakan No. 8
Director: Kei Kumai
Release: 1974
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Director: Milos Forman
Release: 1975
72. The Travelling Players
Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Release: 1975
73. Barry Lyndon
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Release: 1975
74. Lullaby of the Earth
Director: Yasuzô Masumura
Release: 1976
75. Annie Hall
Director: Woody Allen
Release: 1977
76. An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Release: 1977
77. Padre Padrone
Director: Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani
Release: 1977
78. Gloria
Director: John Cassavetes
Release: 1980
79. A Distant Cry from Spring
Director: Yôji Yamada
Release: 1980
80. La Traviata
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Release: 1982
81. Fanny and Alexander
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Release: 1982
82. Fitzcarraldo
Director: Werner Herzog
Release: 1982
83. The King of Comedy
Director: Martin Scorsese
Release: 1982
84. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Director: Nagisa Ôshima
Release: 1983
85. The Killing Fields
Director: Roland Joffé
Release: 1984
86. Stranger than Paradise
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Release: 1984
87. A Summer at Grandpa’s
Director: Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Release: 1984
88. Paris, Texas
Director: Wim Wenders
Release: 1984
89. Witness
Director: Peter Weir
Release: 1985
90. The Trip to Bountiful
Director: Peter Masterson
Release: 1985
91. When Father was Away on Business
Director: Emir Kusturica
Release: 1985
92. The Dead
Director: John Huston
Release: 1987
93. Where is the Friend’s Home (Persian Original: Khane-ye doust kodjast?)
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Release: 1987
94. Baghdad Cafe
Director: Percy Adlon
Release: 1987
95. The Whales of August
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Release: 1987
96. Running on Empty
Director: Sidney Lumet
Release: 1988
97. My Neighbour Totoro (Japanese Original: Tonari no Totoro)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Release: 1988
98. Yakuza Ladies 3
Director: Yasuo Furuhata
Release: 1989
99. The Beautiful Troublemaker (French Original: La Belle Noiseuse)
Director: Jacques Rivette
Release: 1991
100. Fireworks (Japanese Original: Hana-bi)
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Release: 1997
