How Many of Woody Allen's Favorite Films Have You Seen?

How Many of Woody Allen’s Favorite Films Have You Seen?

June 7, 2011

By Brad Brevet

I stumbled upon a list of 41 of Woody Allen’s favorite films over at This Recording, which were actually pulled from Allen’s 2007 biography written by Eric Lax titled “Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking” which you can buy from Amazon for $16.47.

Allen comments on the lists, of which he breaks up into different categories, saying, “My tastes seem to me unremarkable except in the area of talking plot comedies where I seem to have little tolerance for anything and certainly not my own films.”

Unfortunately, he’s pretty much right as I would bet most avid movie watchers will have seen the majority of the films he lists and then when he does get to talking plot comedies he waves a white flag in fear of looking foolish saying, “[My] taste is eccentric and there are any number of comedies I love that would make me seem foolish or should I say, foolish in the eyes of the world.” I guess when you consider the kind of films Allen makes his fear of looking foolish sounds about right.

I’ve seen 29 of the 41 he lists below, most of which are from the first two lists. Of the first 30 films, those I have not yet seen are Shane, The Informer, The Hill, Cries and Whispers and Shoeshine. It’s when you get into the comedies that I come up a bit short. If anything, I would say the first 30 films are pretty much essential viewing. Of the five I have not seen, all of them have been in my Netflix queue for some time now and 23 of the other 25 I actually own.

Have a look and see what you think and how much your tastes align.

Fifteen of Woody Allen’s Favorite American Films In No Particular Order

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Double Indemnity
Shane
Paths of Glory
The Godfather: Part II
Goodfellas
Citizen Kane
White Heat
The Informer
The Hill
The Third Man
Notorious
Shadow of a Doubt
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Maltese Falcon

Twelve of My Favorite European Films And Three Favorite Japanese Films

One note Allen adds with regard to this list is he says, “If we take Citizen Kane from the top list and put it in the second list, this would be my list of the best films ever made.”