Top 100 British Films

Although a UK citizen for my entire life (so far at least) I've never really felt "British", or English either for that matter. Much of the culture, customs, lifestyle and humour still seem bizarre to me. It may be one of the reasons that when I was growing up, films from Hollywood and parts of Europe, like France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Sweden held enormous appeal. In many ways they felt more relatable and closer to my own worldview than things I saw from the UK. More often than not I tend to avoid films made in the UK as their subjects, themes and style don't hold much interest for me as a viewer. A few years ago though I began to realise there was perhaps more of merit than I had been willing to grant these shores in the past.

The BFI and Time Out magazine put out their own top 100 lists years ago and, disagreeing with multiple titles that were featured, I took it as a kind of challenge to attempt an overview of my own. I've been compiling a list of noteworthy British films for quite a while now, with some sort of eventual list in mind and decided now was as good a time as any to put the list out there for others to see. I'm excluding titles that were essentially Hollywood studio productions that were made in the UK (e.g. the James Bond films, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove etc.). My own personal favourites from within the list are marked with an asterisk (*).

 The Abominable Snowman (Val Guest, 1957)
 Akenfield (Peter Hall, 1974)
 Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, 1966)
*Andrina (Bill Forsyth, 1981)
 Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980)
 The Birth of a Flower (F. Percy Smith, 1910)
*Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

 Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945)
 Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) 
 Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
 A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1944)
 Christine (Alan Clarke, 1987)
 Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur, 1951)
 A Colour Box (Len Lye, 1935)
 The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984)

 Congregation Leaving St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin (1901)
 Corridors of Blood (Robert Day, 1958)
*Cul-de-Sac (Roman Polanski, 1966)
 The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1957)
 Damage (Louis Malle, 1992)
 The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961)
*Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden & Charles Crichton, 1945)
 The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)
 A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, 1945)
 Drifters (John Grierson, 1929)
 Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
*Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1989)

 The Epic of Everest (J.B.L. Noel, 1924)
 Gallivant (Andrew Kötting, 1996)
 The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971)
*The Gorgon (Terence Fisher, 1964)
*Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
 The Great White Silence (Herbert Ponting, 1922)
*Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948)

 Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987)
 The Horse's Mouth (Ronald Neame, 1958)
 I Hired a Contract Killer (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990)
 I Start Counting (David Greene, 1969)
 if.... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)
 The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
*Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
 A King in New York (Charles Chaplin, 1957)
 The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938) 
 The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
 The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951) 
*The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Margaret Tait, 1955)
 The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
*London (Patrick Keiller, 1994)
 The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)
 A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966)
*The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
*Man of Aran (Robert J. Flaherty, 1934)
*The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)


 The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
*The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964)
 The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986)
 The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959)
 My Childhood, My Ain Folk & My Way Home (Bill Douglas, 1972, 1973 & 1978)
 Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
*Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
 Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers, 1962)
*Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)

*Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948)
 One of the Missing (Tony Scott, 1968)
 One Plus One (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)
 Paperhouse (Bernard Rose, 1988)
 The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling, 1966)
*Play Dirty (Andre de Toth, 1969)
*A Portrait of Ga (Margaret Tait, 1952)
 The Quatermass Experiment (Val Guest, 1955)
 Quatermass II (Val Guest, 1957)
*Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)
 The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, 1949)
 A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016)
 The Railway Children (Lionel Jeffries, 1970)
 The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
 Rembrandt (Alexander Korda, 1936)
*Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)


 The Return (Sture Rydman, 1973)
*Ryan's Daughter (David Lean, 1970)
 Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
 See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971) 
 The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978)
 The Sick Kitten (George Albert Smith, 1903)
 The Snow Goose (Patrick Garland, 1971)
 The Snowman (Dianne Jackson, 1982)
 Song of Summer (Ken Russell, 1968)
 The Sorcerers (Michael Reeves, 1967)
 Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
*The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1951)


 10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971) 
*The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan, Alexander Korda, Zoltan Korda & William Cameron Menzies, 1940)
 Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936) 
 The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) 
*The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
 This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944)
*The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964)
*Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
 Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
*Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960)
 The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1966)
 A Warning to the Curious (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972)
 Watership Down (Martin Rosen & John Hubley, 1978)
*Whistle and I'll Come to You (Jonathan Miller, 1968)

 The White Bus (Lindsay Anderson, 1967)

https://letterboxd.com/willowybeing/list/top-100-british-films/

Quotes:

"Southern English... entirely middle class... snobbish, anti-intelligent, emotionally inhibited, wilfully blind to the conditions and problems of the present, dedicated to an out-of-date, exhausted national ideal". - Lindsay Anderson on British cinema in "Get Out and Push!" for Declaration (1957)

"The film industry in its English language form is inherently American." - David Puttnam

"...what Britain has is not so much a film industry as a TV film industry." - Barry Norman 

“The British cinema is boring, and reflects a submissive way of life, where enthusiasm, zeal and impetus are quickly rooted out. The film is a born loser just for being English.” - François Truffaut

"Bollocks to Truffaut." - Stephen Frears