The Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable network has compiled their list of the 15 “Most Influential Classic Movies.” They don’t say who compiled the list but it’s not bad. I think in large part they limited themselves to films they have screened on their network.

Naturally everyone can probably think of 37 other titles that belong here, but these lists aren’t seriously meant to be definitive, they’re meant to be a starting point for debate.

1 – Birth of a Nation
D.W. Griffith invented much of the language of cinema. Birth of a Nation, his first great feature film, is marred by Griffith’s racism. Intolerance is a far better film but didn’t have the impact of this one.

2 – Battleship Potemkin
Countless directors have either copied or parodied the Odessa Steps sequence here (most notably Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables), a masterpiece of the editing room. The original is still the best.

3 – Metropolis
Haven’t watched this in so long I barely remember it now.

4 – 42nd Street
So many great Busby Berkeley musicals to pick from but this is the one usually cited as the favorite. The important thing here is that Berkeley was the first to “open up” the musical film, not merely staging numbers as filmed theatrical pieces, paving the way for Stanley Donen’s American in Paris, Richard Lester’s Hard Days Night and MTV.

5 – It Happened One Night
I’ve always thought this was a bit over-rated, but maybe that’s because I’m not the world’s biggest Frank Capra fan. You wanna talk screwball comedies from the 30s, there’s Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.

6 – Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs
Well, it’s the first feature length animated film. And it’s wonderful. But Disney did better later.

7 – Gone With the Wind
My mom’s favorite film and I believe still the top grossing film ever (in inflation-adjusted dollars). But to me, it’s just a very long soap opera.

8 – Stagecoach
John Wayne as the Ringo Kid. John Ford directs. But it’s creaky compared to what came later.

9 – Citizen Kane
To me, this never gets old, it never loses relevance, I never get tired of watching it.

10 – The Bicycle Thief
Rips your heart out no matter how many times you see it.

11 – Rashomon
How to choose just one Kurosawa film? But hard to argue with this choice.

12 – The Searchers
How does John Ford get on this list twice? Well, Searchers is an infinitely better film than Stagecoach and it’s the movie that should have won Wayne his Oscar.

13 – Breathless
Godard came in fast and furious. He didn’t invent the French New Wave but this film says it all and really influenced scores of American directors. Still, I prefer Truffaut, Jules & Jim and the Antoine Doinel cycle.

14 – Psycho
Does this still have the capacity to shock the way it once did?

15 – Star Wars
The film which invented modern science fiction films but also came close to killing off literary science fiction. Star Wars didn’t invent the modern blockbuster, that was Jaws.

So what else belongs on here? The first two to come to mind are Godfather (every organized crime film and TV show since owes a debt to the cliches invented here) and Pulp Fiction (Tarantino was not the first to tell a story out of sequence, and this wasn’t the first time he did it, but this is the one that registered with both audiences and filmmakers). Bergman. Fellini. Chaplin. Billy Wilder. Preston Sturges. Dozens more.

And the list omits the single greatest film ever made, Dude Where’s My Car.

Hongkie Town
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