Greatest Black and White Movies of all time
by cinemabon | created - 30 Jul 2012 | updated - 10 Oct 2018 | PublicBefore there was color, filmmakers learned their craft using black and white film stocks and gave us some of cinema's finest moments on celluloid.
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1. Citizen Kane (1941)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Mystery
Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
Votes: 466,200 | Gross: $1.59M
With the help of the Mercury Theater cast, Gregg Toland, Bernard Herrmann, and Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles crafted one of the most unusual stories ever presented on the silver screen.
2. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Approved | 170 min | Drama, Romance, War
Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright
Votes: 70,600 | Gross: $23.65M
Director William Wyler and Producer Samuel Goldwyn made perhaps one of the greatest films about the repercussions of war on its participants - especially the wounded, both physicially and psychologically. No student of film history should miss the symbolism rampant throughout.
3. The Grand Illusion (1937)
Not Rated | 113 min | Drama, War
During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Votes: 38,873 | Gross: $0.17M
Jean Renoir's hauting look at the human condition during what was called the war to end all wars.
4. Schindler's List (1993)
R | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall
Votes: 1,451,969 | Gross: $96.90M
While war seems to be man's most profitable enterprise, it is also his most damaging - the human spirit and to life. World War II saw the most lives lost than nearly all the wars put together with this story at its core.
5. Paths of Glory (1957)
Approved | 88 min | Drama, War
After a failed attack on a German position, a general orders three soldiers, chosen at random, court-martialed for cowardice and their commanding officer must defend them.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready
Votes: 212,445
Patriotism was once defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel, a word that becomes more clearly defined in this incredible effort by director Stanley Kubrick.
6. Psycho (1960)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Votes: 718,820 | Gross: $32.00M
Clearly, Hitchcock made many valuable contributions to the art of cinema, but none stands out the way this small movie does with its close examination of the insane mass murderer.
7. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Approved | 129 min | Crime, Drama
Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer in Depression-era Alabama, defends a Black man against an undeserved rape charge, and tries to educate his young children against prejudice.
Director: Robert Mulligan | Stars: Gregory Peck, John Megna, Frank Overton, Rosemary Murphy
Votes: 333,055
Both book and film were poignant in their day and true today - there is no justice if your skin is dark. Director Robert Mulligan brought Harper Lee's words to the screen in stark realism.
8. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Passed | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
Two down-on-their-luck Americans searching for work in 1920s Mexico convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett
Votes: 132,494 | Gross: $5.01M
Human folly and greed is best expressed in man's pursuit of gold and riches, only to have most dreams dashed by a bit of realism. John Huston's powerful story is also a display of tour de force acting on every level.
9. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Passed | 110 min | Drama, Film-Noir
A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
Votes: 236,590
Human vanity and pride often blind people to the truth of reality. Billy Wilder looked in the soul of those who would cling to fame and fortune only to have it all end as ashes in their mouths.
10. The Road (1954)
Not Rated | 108 min | Drama
A care-free girl is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.
Director: Federico Fellini | Stars: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani
Votes: 66,616
Not all of humanity is made up of the famous, the rich, the powerful, or the most dynamic. Most people are quite ordinary but whose stories are nonetheless, still significant. Fellini saw power in the poor, the downtrodden, and the weak.
11. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 606,388 | Gross: $1.02M
Like it or not this film is probably the most watched and most loved black and white movie ever made - "Here's looking at you!"
12. Lost Horizon (1937)
Approved | 132 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
When a revered diplomat's plane is diverted and crashes in the peaks of Tibet, he and the other survivors are guided to an isolated monastery at Shangri-La, where they wrestle with the invitation to stay.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard
Votes: 14,462
Of all Frank Capra's efforts, this film has the largest most profound heart at its core with the best effort in his career by Ronald Coleman as the everyman in search of his Shangri-la.
13. All About Eve (1950)
Passed | 138 min | Drama
A seemingly timid but secretly ruthless ingénue insinuates herself into the lives of an aging Broadway star and her circle of theater friends.
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Stars: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm
Votes: 138,832 | Gross: $0.01M
The backstabbing world of the theater only mimics life as this all-star cast gives outstanding performances in the most Oscar-nominated film of all time with a most profound and perfunctual ending.
14. Rashomon (1950)
Not Rated | 88 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura
Votes: 180,610 | Gross: $0.10M
By delivering a story so down to earth, Kurosowa comes to epitomize the true art of Japanese cinema in any age. This film represents his first great breakthrough of many to come.
15. Manhattan (1979)
R | 96 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The life of a divorced television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy
Votes: 147,343 | Gross: $45.70M
Thanks to the incredible photography of Gordon Willis, this Woody Allen comedy becomes elevated to cinema classic place as the most icon look at New York City ever photographed for the movies. The story isn't so bad either.
16. Hobson's Choice (1954)
Not Rated | 108 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Widower Henry Hobson refuses to let his three daughters get married because he doesn't want to pay settlements, so they'll just have to outsmart him.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Charles Laughton, John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Daphne Anderson
Votes: 8,816
A glimmer of what was to come from one of the greatest directors of all time, David Lean. This comedy has more profundity than most dramas with brilliant performances all around by a relatively unknown cast of supporting players. Of course, Laughton is at his best.
17. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
PG-13 | 126 min | Drama, Thriller
An American POW in the Korean War is brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy.
Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
Votes: 79,868
Complex and fantastic, this film shows a range to Frank Sinatra that only John Frankenheimer could bring out. The weird and the wonderful converge in some excellent acting styles that placed dear sweet Angela Lansbury in the crosshairs of a villain.
18. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Passed | 90 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Hollywood director John L. Sullivan sets out to experience life as a homeless person in order to gain relevant life experience for his next movie.
Director: Preston Sturges | Stars: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick, William Demarest
Votes: 28,531
Humorous but sad look at what makes us laugh at a time when America was in the middle of a depression. This is one of Preston Sturges greatest efforts at making black and white art... "with a little sex."
19. The Sea Hawk (1940)
Approved | 127 min | Action, Adventure, History
Geoffrey Thorpe, a buccaneer, is hired by Queen Elizabeth I to nag the Spanish Armada. The Armada is waiting for the attack on England and Thorpe surprises them with attacks on their galleons where he shows his skills on the sword.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp
Votes: 10,749
If you had to add a commercial film with a swashbuckling hero then it might as well be this one (or The Mark of Zorro). Errol Flynn is at the height of his prowess as he swings on ropes into the hearts of women all over America, before the scandal that ruined his life forever after.
20. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Passed | 129 min | Drama
An Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl, joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin
Votes: 100,020 | Gross: $0.06M
John Ford's poignant look at how serious the Great Depression was and how it effected an entire generation that grew up knowing the worth of a penny. Bitterly sad but beautifully told.
21. The Song of Bernadette (1943)
Approved | 156 min | Biography, Drama, Mystery
14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, living in a small town in the south of 1850s France, claims to have seen a divine vision, prompting extreme skepticism, concern from her family, and religious and political turmoil.
Director: Henry King | Stars: Jennifer Jones, Charles Bickford, William Eythe, Vincent Price
Votes: 7,645
"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation is possible." So goes the introduction to Franz Werfel's incredible novel based on the fact that he promised to tell her story after the village hid him from the Nazi's during their occupation. He did and it is all on screen with Jennifer Jones in the Oscar winning role.
22. The Miracle Worker (1962)
Approved | 106 min | Biography, Drama
The story of Anne Sullivan's struggle to teach the blind and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate.
Director: Arthur Penn | Stars: Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson
Votes: 20,516 | Gross: $5.45M
From the start of her life, Helen Keller had no chance to survive, no chance to succeed and definitely no chance to ever become known. Annie Sullivan changed all that. This is their beginning.
23. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Not Rated | 106 min | Comedy, Crime
A distant poor relative of the Duke D'Ascoyne plots to inherit the title by murdering the eight other heirs who stand ahead of him in the line of succession.
Director: Robert Hamer | Stars: Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood
Votes: 39,743
Alec Guiness, like his contemporary, Peter Sellers, was a master at performing different roles. This comedic film shows how many times he can go down as the numerous victims of this hillarious plot to gain riches by succession.
24. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
PG | 95 min | Comedy, War
An unhinged American general orders a bombing attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn
Votes: 518,578 | Gross: $0.28M
No film ever effected a generation that worried about atomic annihilation more than this one did. Kubrick took something as serious as mutually assured destruction and made us laugh at our own absurdities.
25. The Seventh Seal (1957)
Not Rated | 96 min | Drama, Fantasy
A knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe
Votes: 198,611
Ignmar Bergman gave us "Smiles of a summer night," "Wild Strawberries," and this iconic film that starred a man who has survived through the decades as the greatest character actor of all time - Max Von Sydow.
26. The Razor's Edge (1946)
Approved | 145 min | Drama, Romance
An adventuresome young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.
Director: Edmund Goulding | Stars: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter
Votes: 6,794 | Gross: $5.00M
He was a man in search of enlightenment and found human frailty all along the way. Perhaps the greatest role of his lifetime, Tyrone Power seeks what every man wants to know - "Is this all there is?"
27. I Remember Mama (1948)
Approved | 134 min | Drama, Family
A young writer recalls her ups and downs of growing up as one of four children to Norwegian immigrant parents in 1910s San Francisco.
Director: George Stevens | Stars: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka, Philip Dorn
Votes: 6,014
Fresh from the war, George Stevens wanted to make a simple film about family life and gave us a look at human nature in all its glory as kindness and generosity of spirit. Irene Dunne is the mama that we all wish we had - understanding to a fault.
28. Inherit the Wind (1960)
Passed | 128 min | Biography, Drama, History
Based on a real-life case in 1925; two great lawyers argue the case for, and against, a Tennessee science teacher accused of the crime of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
Director: Stanley Kramer | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Dick York
Votes: 32,790
For all of our intelligence, it is the fear in man that holds him back and pushes him ever closer to that abyss of ignorance. Religion versus science in a heads on battle that shows how much we can hate each other over the simplest of things.
29. Random Harvest (1942)
Passed | 126 min | Drama, Romance
An amnesiac World War I veteran falls in love with a music hall star, only to suffer an accident which restores his original memories but erases his post-war life.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy | Stars: Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, Susan Peters
Votes: 8,419 | Gross: $10.14M
What list would be complete without one good tear-jerking romance story about a man who forgets his past only to have it haunt him his entire life. Perhaps the greatest romance story of all time.
30. Modern Times (1936)
G | 87 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford
Votes: 259,662 | Gross: $0.16M
No one could make you laugh harder or cry with equal precision as Charles Chaplin. His genius at the art of cinema gave inspiration to every generation of comedic filmmaker who followed him.
31. 12 Angry Men (1957)
Approved | 96 min | Crime, Drama
The jury in a New York City murder trial is frustrated by a single member whose skeptical caution forces them to more carefully consider the evidence before jumping to a hasty verdict.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler
Votes: 865,998 | Gross: $4.36M
Sidney Lumet brings the teleplay to the big screen in an actor's tour de force with the era's finest talent. Not only will you want to see this film in the dead of winter (lots of sweating), but share with an adolescent in the family. The course of justice is often twisted to favor the wealthy and good looking while it unfairly punishes those with few resources.
32. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Passed | 116 min | Drama, Romance
In 15th-century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 12,286 | Gross: $3.27M
William Dieterle's masterpiece of a deformed man who falls in love with Maureen O'hara. But who wouldn't!? The film is a great mix of pathos, comedy, and murder mystery with an incredible cast. "Would that my heart be made of stone like these."
33. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
PG | 122 min | Drama
Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.
Director: Elia Kazan | Stars: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden
Votes: 114,413 | Gross: $8.00M
From Broadway to the silver screen comes an emotional masterpiece that gave us the greatest actor of the 20th Century - Marlon Brando. Vivian Leigh and Karl Malden help make this film an acting tour de force. "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..." Blanche DuBois.
34. It Happened One Night (1934)
Passed | 105 min | Comedy, Romance
A rogue reporter trailing a runaway heiress for a big story joins her on a bus heading from Florida to New York and they end up stuck with each other when the bus leaves them behind at one of the stops along the way.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns
Votes: 112,346 | Gross: $4.36M
Only two films in cinema history have taken the big five - actor, actress, director, writing, and picture. This and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" were the only ones. Frank Capra's film of the poor little rich girl who learns her lesson is one for the ages.
35. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
PG | 130 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 499,463
All but forgotten by the 1960's, revival houses in Los Angeles resurrected this film classic. Many called Capra's movies, Capra-corn; but the lessons in this Christmas tale are timeless ones. Bring the tissues.
36. The Apartment (1960)
Approved | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston
Votes: 197,003 | Gross: $18.60M
Billy Wilder's films, along with Hitchcock and Kubrick could dominate this category. Wilder penned some of the best black and white films of all time. This one of a junior executive who sells his soul to get ahead is one of Jack Lemmon's best performances.
37. A Christmas Carol (1951)
TV-PG | 86 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve, he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the error of his ways.
Director: Brian Desmond Hurst | Stars: Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns
Votes: 25,731
Christmas was declared dead by the London press. Upset over the lack of celebration, Dickens penned this fable that has stood the test of time. When Dicken's great niece visited the set in England, she said Alistair Sims is who her uncle had in mind for Scrooge. While not received well during its initial American run; this version has become the quintessential version of Christmas spirit.
38. Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Passed | 120 min | Action, Romance, Thriller
On the eve of World War II, a young American reporter tries to expose enemy agents in London.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
Votes: 23,735 | Gross: $3.48M
The films of Alfred Hitchcock could dominate this category - Rebecca, Suspicion, Strangers on a Train - were good movies. Having studied Hitch for over forty years, I confess to having my favorites. I will post the other fave below.
39. Sabotage (1936)
Not Rated | 76 min | Crime, Thriller
A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective's cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder
Votes: 18,757
Hitchcock so infuriated London filmgoers that they shouted at the screen during the premiere, trying to warn the girl about the bomb. This film gave him the title, "Master of Suspense" and for good reason.
40. Some Like It Hot (1959)
Passed | 121 min | Comedy, Music, Romance
After two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft
Votes: 283,714 | Gross: $25.00M
Thanks to the feedback on this list, I will correct a gross oversight on my part. This is pure genius on the part of Billy Wilder and one of the greatest comedic films of all time. The last line in the movie is one for the ages.
41. The Heiress (1949)
Not Rated | 115 min | Drama, Romance
A naive young woman falls for a handsome young man her emotionally abusive father suspects is only a fortune hunter.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins
Votes: 17,354
William Wyler demanded perfection from his actors and he almost always got it. His pictures have garnered more Academy Awards and award nominations than any director in the history of film. The vivacious Olivia de Havilland (still alive and living in Paris!) pours her heart out in this part and deserved the Oscar for Best Actress.
42. Now, Voyager (1942)
Passed | 117 min | Drama, Romance
A frumpy spinster blossoms under therapy and becomes an elegant, independent woman.
Director: Irving Rapper | Stars: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper
Votes: 19,026
Davis made the ultimate transition from mousy introvert into glamorous filmstar before our eyes. For that, she received one of her ten nominations for Best Actress. The film is a joy to watch for me and one of my guilty pleasures - if it's on, I stop what I'm doing and watch a master at work.
43. Blonde Venus (1932)
Passed | 93 min | Drama