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Recommended Old Movies

For me, an old movie is anything made prior to the decade in which I was born (the 1970s), so this will be a running list of all the movies I would solidly Recommend (4 stars or better) that were made prior to 1970. I rate a film based on how enjoyable it is to me on my most recent viewing and how rewatchable it is on multiple viewings, not how important it was to film history or what it represents in the grand scheme of cinema appreciation. Thanks for viewing!
Note: this used to be a comprehensive ranking of every old movie I've watched, so there may be reviews linked here whose films are no longer on this list.

  • It's a Wonderful Life

    1

  • City Lights

    2

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey

    3

  • Singin' in the Rain

    4

  • Roman Holiday

    5

  • Sunset Boulevard

    6

  • Modern Times

    7

  • The Great Dictator

    8

  • The Gold Rush

    9

  • Rear Window

    10

  • The Apartment

    11

  • All About Eve

    12

  • The 400 Blows

    13

  • Dial M for Murder

    14

  • Rashomon

    15

  • North by Northwest

    16

  • The Circus

    17

  • The Best Years of Our Lives

    18

  • Now, Voyager

    19

  • The Young Girls of Rochefort

    20

  • Doctor Zhivago

    21

  • The Wizard of Oz

    22

  • Witness for the Prosecution

    23

  • Yojimbo

    24

  • Mrs. Miniver

    25

  • The Sound of Music

    26

  • The African Queen

    27

  • Citizen Kane

    28

  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

    29

  • Some Like It Hot

    30

  • Dr. No

    31

  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

    32

  • Harakiri

    33

  • Lawrence of Arabia

    34

  • The Cameraman

    35

  • The Big Country

    36

  • The Big City

    37

  • Casablanca

    38

  • Notorious

    39

  • West Side Story

    40

  • Vertigo

    41

  • To Kill a Mockingbird

    42

  • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

    43

  • Rope

    44

  • Psycho

    45

  • The Graduate

    46

  • Double Indemnity

    47

  • Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

    48

  • The Little Foxes

    49

  • The Producers

    50

  • Night of the Living Dead

    51

  • The Kid

    52

  • Seven Samurai

    53

  • 12 Angry Men

    54

  • From Russia with Love

    55

  • The Day the Earth Stood Still

    56

  • The Hidden Fortress

    57

  • Spellbound

    58

  • Brief Encounter

    59

  • Sherlock Jr.

    60

  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    61

  • The Lady Eve

    62

  • Red River

    63

  • Mary Poppins

    64

  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

    65

  • Rififi

    66

  • Lilies of the Field

    67

  • Rosemary's Baby

    68

  • La Strada

    69

  • In a Lonely Place

    70

  • Ikiru

    71

  • Strangers on a Train

    72

  • The Wild Bunch

    73

  • Shane

    74

  • Limelight

    75

  • The Virgin Spring

    76

  • Army of Shadows

    77

  • Gaslight

    78

  • Touch of Evil

    79

  • Tokyo Story

    80

  • The Bridge on the River Kwai

    81

  • Fantasia

    82

  • High and Low

    83

  • The Red Balloon

    84

  • The Rules of the Game

    85

  • My Man Godfrey

    86

  • L'Atalante

    87

  • Frankenstein

    88

  • The Man from Laramie

    89

  • The Misfits

    90

  • Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

    91

  • True Grit

    92

  • Hud

    93

  • Bend of the River

    94

  • Pather Panchali

    95

  • Charade

    96

  • The Gunfighter

    97

  • Niagara

    98

  • Man of the West

    99

  • The Magnificent Seven

    100