Tweet

According to TCM, a highly influential film has not been made since 1977. That’s right, TCM released their list of the Top 15 Most Influential Classic Films, the cut off being, apparently, 1977 (the last, of course, being Star Wars: A New Hope).

While I understand the logic behind the argument that the majority of the most influential films of all time were made during the first half of the twentieth century, when advances in transitions, lighting, effects, etc. were being made practically on a daily basis, it also seems odd not to include at least one film that could represent the 1980s on.

Check it out:

• The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• Metropolis (1927)
• 42nd Street (1933)
• It Happened One Night (1934)
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
• Gone With the Wind (1939)
• Stagecoach (1939)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Bicycle Thief (1947)
• Rashomon (1950)
• The Searchers (1956)
• Breathless (1959)
• Psycho (1960)
• Star Wars (1977)

Sadly, TCM’s list contains a number of influential films that the majority of people today have not been and probably will not ever be exposed to, including Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Metropolis (1927). Even many film studies majors go their entire college career without exposure to some of these films, a fact that saddens us, the Rejects, a great deal.

I highly recommend checking out the list and taking a few minutes not only to read through the list, but to read and contemplate the justifications provided for each film’s inclusion.

What do you think? Should the 15 Most Influential Films of All Time include one or more movies from the past 30 years? If so, which one(s)?