Cult French film magazine Cahiers du cinema has published the list of the 100 most beautiful films in the world. Here they are:
Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (L’Aurore) – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
M – Fritz Lang
Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
The Searchers – John Ford
Greed – Erich von Stroheim
Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
 To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
 Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
 City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
 The General – Buster Keaton
 Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
 The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
 Freaks – Tod Browning
 Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
 The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
 The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
 The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
 Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
 The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
 North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
 Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
 Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
 The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
 Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
 Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
 Pleasure – Max Ophüls
 The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
 The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
 Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
 Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
 Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
 The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
 Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
 The Wind – Victor Sjöström
 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
 Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
 The Crowd – King Vidor
 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
 La Jetée – Chris Marker
 Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
 Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
 Amarcord – Federico Fellini
 Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
 Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
 Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
 Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
 King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
 Laura  – Otto Preminger
 The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
 The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
 La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
 The Dead – John Huston
Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
Playtime – Jacques Tati
Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
The Party – Blake Edwards
Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
A Star Is Born – George Cukor
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
America, America – Elia Kazan
El – Luis Buñuel
Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
Lola – Jacques Demy
Manhattan – Woody Allen
Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
Scarface – Howard Hawks
Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
Napoléon – Abel Gance
The original list (in French) with film trailers.
MORE:
American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies of All Times
BAFTA Award for Best Film 1948 –
British Film Institute – Top 100 British Films of the 20th Century
Cahiers du Cinema – Best Movies 1951 – 2006
FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Best Film of the Year