70 Classic Movies You Need to Watch in Your Lifetime (2024)

Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs. The greatest rom-com couples of all time have Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert to thank for launching the blended genre. The two classic actors star in what is regarded as cinema’s very first romantic comedy, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. A black-and-white gem about a socialite who becomes just the story her reporter love interest is after, it won all five top Oscar Awards back in 1935.

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Lorraine Hansberry penned the first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, with acting powerhouses Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, and Ruby Dee bringing her resonant tale to life onstage. Two years later, the trio, along with original cast members Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon, and others would take Hansberry’s story screen-bound, winning a bundle of hardware along the awards circuit. About a midcentury Chicago family whose hopes of a better future rely on a life-insurance check—and not being swindled out of it—A Raisin in the Sun is seminal civil rights viewing.

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A weird and wonderful odyssey that takes its sundry characters from a sepia-toned Kansas farm to a candy-colored Emerald City somewhere over the rainbow, Wizard flips that nostalgia switch, and thanks to its various airings on network TV around the holidays, its popularity shows no signs of fading.

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A hit on Broadway, also starring Katherine Hepburn, before it graced the big screen, George Cukor’s sophisticated rom-com about reporters who crash a society wedding was the cure to Hepburn’s “box office poison” reputation. Guess we should also credit one part Cary Grant and one part James Stewart.

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Bolstered by the whip-smart dialogue firing from every single actor on the screen, His Girl Friday isn’t your average Cary Grant fare. Starring opposite a brilliant and magnetic Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame), Grant plays a newspaper editor whose latest self-imposed assignment is to convince his ex-wife to marry him again. Of course, drama in the form of a new fiancé, a headlining prison breakout, and a strong woman’s sense of pride all get in the way, making for a jam-packed 90-minute watch that’s as hilarious with its comedy as it is genius with its discourse.

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Though it may not be heralded by Hitchcock loyalists as his greatest work (this writer not included), Rebecca is the only film on the director’s lengthy resume that scored the top Oscar prize (too bad it went to David O. Selznick for producing). Brimming with his signature Hitchcockian suspense, the film adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic novel unfurls via a woman who slowly learns the truth of her husband’s dead wife. And though several movie versions exist, we’re thinking Ben Wheatley’s upcoming remake starring Lily James is the only one with a chance of living up to Hitchcock’s.

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Orson Welles’s nonlinear, mold-breaking mystery about a journalist’s quest to interpret a media mogul’s dying words has taken up permanent residence as the pinnacle of every best-film list. Though dethroned periodically, the film, more than 75 years later, remains a masterpiece. In other words: Kane reigns.

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Heralded by many as the first entry into American noir, The Maltese Falcon laid the foundation for the visualized genre formula that is villain plus hero plus dame, and John Huston’s hardboiled detective mystery is a perfect combination of Peter Lorre plus Humphry Bogart plus Mary Astor.

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Here’s looking at the wartime tale about doomed lovers as a film that checks off all the cinematic boxes. A rare feat for a story put to celluloid, the film draws out peak romantic sentiment and narrative tension in critical balance, threading resolution through the narrowest of dramatic needles. It truly is a work of art.

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As sure as Aunt Edna is lampooned on vacation, you can bet Frank Capra’s Yuletide fable is at the top of everyone’s queue come the most wonderful time of the year. Thanks to a career-defining performance from James Stewart as George Bailey, this one earns its wings as a perennial staple.

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This British noir's zither-picked score is as on point as its central mystery: how did Harry Lime die? A hardboiled whodunit against a backdrop of a devastated Vienna, Carol Reed’s landmark postwar film unfolds as pulp writer Holly Martins wades through secrets to unearth what happened to his friend.

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Industry ageism, though a hot topic for today’s water cooler, is nothing new, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-happy classic revealed the dirty little prejudice back in 1950. The gist: A brilliant Bette Davis stars as a 40-year-old stage actress whose glory days are threatened by an ingénue named Eve.

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Such endurance. It’s what you’ll be thinking when you watch Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron cover every inch of your screen singing, dancing, and looking magnificent—see: the vanilla-colored jockey costume Kelly wears near the end of the film; it really brings out his legs. With a lively, jazz-influenced score composed by George Gershwin and seriously one of the grandest finales to ever elicit a bravo, don’t be surprised if you feel the urge to give Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-winning love-triangle film a standing ovation.

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Hollywood loves making movies about movies, and Sunset Boulevard—often labeled with that elusive descriptor critics hate to use, perfect—just might be the best meta motion picture in existence. Following an aging silent film star who’s ready for her comeback, it’s satire shrouded in madness and murder.

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The standard bearer of classic musicals, this love letter to Hollywood about transitioning from silent films to talkies has inspired nearly every musical to come after it. The exuberant grace of Gene Kelly, the overwhelming charm of Debbie Reynolds, and the irreplaceable comedy of Donald O’Connor—just thinking of it, and we’re happppyy again.

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Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn drunk in love in Rome? Doesn’t get more fairy tale than that. William Wyler’s romantic daydream introduced the world to Hepburn and her iconic charm while cleaning up at the Oscars (nominated for 10, won three).

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You probably remember the morality tale of the Starretts and their gun-slinging hero from summer reading assignments in grade school, but if you haven’t seen George Stevens’s adaptation, then you haven’t seen a true western. Authentic right down to its tumbleweeds and ambigous finale, Shane is ace-high.

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Simple. Moving. Enlightening. All ways to desribe Yasujiro Ozu’s art-house family drama about an elderly couple whose urbanite offspring have no time for them. Another? A favorite among esteemed filmmakers, Scorsese and Coppola included, as Tokyo Story sits atop Sight&Sound;’s directors’ poll.

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Featuring an all-Black cast, Otto Preminger’s screen adaptation of the Bizet opera stars Dorothy Dandridge opposite Harry Belafonte. And though its synopsis seems PG on the surface—new girl in town drives the boys wild—its through line couldn’t be more saturated in sexual innuendo (train, see tunnel). Not to mention there’s skin, love scenes, and female sexuality dripping off the leading lady. Whether he intended it not, Preminger’s winning musical of modest eroticisms is decades ahead of its time.

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Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a film on every master director’s list of must-see films, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be on yours too. The gist: A village enlists seven samurai to help defend them against a gang of bandits. Their payment? Only rice. It all culminates in a battle offering Kurosawa and his cinematographer, Asakazu Nakai, an opportunity to flaunt their action skills, widely hailed as innovative and brilliant for the time. A blueprint for subsequent cinema, Kurosawa’s Japanese epic paved the way for iconic films such as John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

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