The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In honor of the occasion, they’ve put together a list of The 100 Best-Photographed Films. Members submitted nominations, and then an overall list was created and voted on to pare it down to 100. They limited it to the 20th century, including the year 2000, as Arthur C. Clarke would remind us. That was probably to avoid having too many people vote for the work of themselves or their friends. Rather than having an invidious ranking of all of them, they just broke the list into the Top Ten, and the worthy 90. They’ll be updating the list with more information about the films throughout the year.
I’ve included the raw list at the bottom of this post, and added the directors for all the movies. Films in the top ten are in bold. Let’s also answer a few questions about it:
Q: Who has worked on the most of these films?
A: Here are all the cinematographers who have two or more films, or one in the top ten:
| Cinematographer | Number | Films |
| Vittorio Storaro | 5 | The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), Reds (1981), The Last Emperor (1987) |
| Gordon Willis | 5 | Klute (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), Manhattan (1979) |
| Conrad Hall | 5 | In Cold Blood (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993), American Beauty (1999) |
| John Alcott | 4 | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) |
| Caleb Deschanel | 4 | The Black Stallion (1979), Being There (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984) |
| Vilmos Zsigmond | 3 | McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978) |
| Freddie Young | 2 | Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) |
| Michael Chapman | 2 | Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) |
| Owen Roizman | 2 | The French Connection (1971), The Exorcist (1973) |
| Gregg Toland | 2 | The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Citizen Kane (1941) |
| Jack Cardiff | 2 | Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) |
| Robert Surtees | 2 | The Graduate (1967), The Last Picture Show (1971) |
| Haskell Wexler | 2 | Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) |
| Stanley Cortez | 2 | The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Night of the Hunter (1955) |
| Janusz Kaminski | 2 | Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998) |
| Robert Burks | 2 | Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) |
| Jordan Cronenweth | 1 | Blade Runner (1982) |
| Néstor Almendros | 1 | Days of Heaven (1978) |
| Geoffrey Unsworth | 1 | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) |
I should know more about Vittorio Storaro given that great list. Gordon Willis is much better known, and rightly so given what he has worked on. Note that Conrad Hall’s films span 32 years, from In Cold Blood in 1967 to American Beauty in 1999 – that’s a tremendous career.
Q: Directors also have great input to a film’s look – who among them shows up the most?
| Director | Number | Films |
| Stanley Kubrick | 5 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) |
| Steven Spielberg | 4 | Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Empire of the Sun (1987), Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998) |
| Francis Ford Coppola | 3 | The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979) |
| Bernardo Bertolucci | 3 | The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), The Last Emperor (1987) |
| David Lean | 3 | Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) |
| Orson Welles | 3 | Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) |
| Ridley Scott | 3 | The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) |
| John Ford | 3 | The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Searchers (1956) |
| Martin Scorsese | 2 | Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) |
| Terrence Malick | 2 | Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) |
| William Friedkin | 2 | The French Connection (1971), The Exorcist (1973) |
| Akira Kurosawa | 2 | Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) |
| Mike Nichols | 2 | Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967) |
| Wim Wenders | 2 | Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987) |
| Bob Fosse | 2 | Cabaret (1972), All that Jazz (1979) |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 2 | Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) |
| Alan J. Pakula | 2 | Klute (1971), All the President’s Men (1976) |
| Miloš Forman | 2 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984) |
| Michael Powell;Emeric Pressburger | 2 | Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) |
| Victor Fleming | 2 | The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939) |
Kubrick and Spielberg are no surprise, and all of the top few are known for the gorgeous look of their films. Note, though, that the big SF directors George Lucas and James Cameron don’t appear at all. They seem to be somewhat discounting effects-heavy movies, although Blade Runner, Alien , and 2001 still make the cut.
Q: When were these films made?
| Decade | Number |
| 1920s | 3 |
| 1930s | 2 |
| 1940s | 9 |
| 1950s | 10 |
| 1960s | 17 |
| 1970s | 26 |
| 1980s | 17 |
| 1990s | 15 |
| 2000s | 1 |
The 1970s were a good decade! As many have noted, it was a peak for Hollywood, before blockbusters conquered all.
Q: What does the full list look like?
Here it is in date order. It’s here in spreadsheet form. Note that most of the cinematographers belong to the ASC, unsurprisingly. They have 66 out of the 105 people listed, followed by 19 from the BSC, the British Society of Cinematographers, and 8 from the AIC, the Italian Society of Cinematographers.
So have a look at all of these films, preferably on a big screen!
| Film | Cinematographer(s) | Director(s) |
| Sunrise (1927) | Charles Rosher Sr., ASC; Karl Struss, ASC | F. W. Murnau |
| Metropolis (1927) | Karl Freund, ASC; Günther Rittau | Fritz Lang |
| Napoleon (1927) | Leonce-Henri Burel; Jules Kruger; Joseph-Louis Mundwiller | Abel Gance |
| Gone with the Wind (1939) | Ernest Haller, ASC | Victor Fleming |
| The Wizard of Oz (1939) | Harold Rosson, ASC | Victor Fleming |
| The Grapes of Wrath (1940) | Gregg Toland, ASC | John Ford |
| How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Arthur C. Miller, ASC | John Ford |
| Citizen Kane (1941) | Gregg Toland, ASC | Orson Welles |
| Casablanca (1942) | Arthur Edeson, ASC | Michael Curtiz |
| The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) | Stanley Cortez, ASC | Orson Welles |
| Black Narcissus (1947) | Jack Cardiff, BSC | Michael Powell;Emeric Pressburger |
| The Bicycle Thief (1948) | Carlo Montuori, | Vittoria De Sica |
| The Red Shoes (1948) | Jack Cardiff, BSC | Michael Powell;Emeric Pressburger |
| The Third Man (1949) | Robert Krasker, BSC | Carol Reed |
| Sunset Boulevard (1950) | John Seitz, ASC | Billy Wilder |
| Rashomon (1950) | Hazuo Miyagawa | Akira Kurosawa |
| Seven Samurai (1954) | Asakazu Nakai | Akira Kurosawa |
| On the Waterfront (1954) | Boris Kaufman, ASC | Elia Kazan |
| The Night of the Hunter (1955) | Stanley Cortez, ASC | Charles Laughton |
| The Searchers (1956) | Winton C. Hoch, ASC | John Ford |
| Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Jack Hilyard, BSC | David Lean |
| Touch of Evil (1958) | Russell Metty, ASC | Orson Welles |
| Vertigo (1958) | Robert Burks, ASC | Alfred Hitchcock |
| North by Northwest (1959) | Robert Burks, ASC | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Breathless (1960) | Raoul Coutard | Jean-Luc Goddard |
| Last Year at Marienbad (1961) | Sacha Vierny | Alain Resnais |
| Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Freddie Young, BSC | David Lean |
| Hud (1963) | James Wong Howe, ASC | Martin Ritt |
| 8 ½ (1963) | Gianni Di Venanzo | Federico Fellini |
| I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) (1964) | Sergei Urusevsky | Mikhail Kalatozov |
| Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) | Gilbert Taylor, BSC | Stanley Kubrick |
| Doctor Zhivago (1965) | Freddie Young, BSC | David Lean |
| The Battle of Algiers (1966) | Marcello Gatti | Gillo Pontecorvo |
| Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) | Haskell Wexler, ASC | Mike Nichols |
| In Cold Blood (1967) | Conrad Hall, ASC | Richard Brooks |
| Cool Hand Luke (1967) | Conrad Hall, ASC | Stuart Rosenberg |
| The Graduate (1967) | Robert Surtees, ASC | Mike Nichols |
| Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) | Tonino Delli Colli, AIC | Sergio Leone |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC; John Alcott, BSC | Stanley Kubrick |
| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) | Conrad Hall, ASC | George Roy Hill |
| The Wild Bunch (1969) | Lucien Ballard, ASC | Sam Peckinpah |
| The Conformist (1970) | Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC | Bernardo Bertolucci |
| The Last Picture Show (1971) | Robert Surtees, ASC | Peter Bogdanovich |
| A Clockwork Orange (1971) | John Alcott, BSC | Stanley Kubrick |
| The French Connection (1971) | Owen Roizman, ASC | William Friedkin |
| Klute (1971) | Gordon Willis, ASC | Alan J. Pakula |
| McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) | Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC | Robert Altman |
| Last Tango in Paris (1972) | Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC | Bernardo Bertolucci |
| The Godfather (1972) | Gordon Willis, ASC | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Cabaret (1972) | Geoffery Unsworth, BSC | Bob Fosse |
| The Exorcist (1973) | Owen Roizman, ASC | William Friedkin |
| Chinatown (1974) | John Alonzo, ASC | Roman Polanski |
| The Godfather: Part II (1974) | Gordon Willis, ASC | Francis Ford Coppola |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Haskell Wexler, ASC | Miloš Forman |
| Barry Lyndon (1975) | John Alcott, BSC | Stanley Kubrick |
| All the President’s Men (1976) | Gordon Willis, ASC | Alan J. Pakula |
| Taxi Driver (1976) | Michael Chapman, ASC | Martin Scorsese |
| The Duellists (1977) | Frank Tidy, BSC | Ridley Scott |
| Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) | Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC | Steven Spielberg |
| The Deer Hunter (1978) | Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC | Michael Cimino |
| Days of Heaven (1978) | Néstor Almendros, ASC | Terrence Malick |
| Manhattan (1979) | Gordon Willis, ASC | Woody Allen |
| The Black Stallion (1979) | Caleb Deschanel, ASC | Carroll Ballard |
| Apocalypse Now (1979) | Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Being There (1979) | Caleb Deschanel, ASC | Hal Ashby |
| Alien (1979) | Derek Vanlint, CSC | Ridley Scott |
| All that Jazz (1979) | Giuseppe Rotunno, ASC, AIC | Bob Fosse |
| The Shining (1980) | John Alcott, BSC | Stanley Kubrick |
| Raging Bull (1980) | Michael Chapman, ASC | Martin Scorsese |
| Das Boot (1981) | Jost Vacano, ASC | Wolfgang Petersen |
| Chariots of Fire (1981) | David Watkin, BSC | Hugh Hudson |
| Reds (1981) | Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC | Warren Beatty |
| Blade Runner (1982) | Jordan Cronenweth, ASC | Ridley Scott |
| Fanny and Alexander (1982) | Sven Nykvist, ASC | Ingmar Bergman |
| The Right Stuff (1983) | Caleb Deschanel, ASC | Philip Kaufman |
| Paris, Texas (1984) | Robby Müller, NSC, BVK | Wim Wenders |
| The Natural (1984) | Caleb Deschanel, ASC | Barry Levinson |
| Amadeus (1984) | Miroslav Ondricek, ASC, ACK | Miloš Forman |
| Brazil (1985) | Roger Pratt, BSC | Terry Gilliam |
| The Mission (1986) | Chris Menges, ASC, BSC | Roland Joffé |
| Empire of the Sun (1987) | Allen Daviau, ASC | Steven Spielberg |
| The Last Emperor (1987) | Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC | Bernardo Bertolucci |
| Wings of Desire (1987) | Henri Alekan | Wim Wenders |
| Mississippi Burning (1988) | Peter Biziou, BSC | Alan Parker |
| Raise the Red Lantern (1991) | Fei Zhao | Zhang Yimou |
| JFK (1991) | Robert Richardson, ASC | Oliver Stone |
| Baraka (1992) | Ron Fricke | Ron Fricke |
| Unforgiven (1992) | Jack Green, ASC | Clint Eastwood |
| Schindler’s List (1993) | Janusz Kaminski | Steven Spielberg |
| Trois Coulieurs: Bleu (1993) | Slawomir Idziak, PSC | Krzysztof Kieślowski |
| Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993) | Conrad Hall, ASC | Steven Zaillian |
| The Shawshank Redemption (1994) | Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC | Frank Darabont |
| Seven (1995) | Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC | David Fincher |
| The English Patient (1996) | John Seale, ASC, ACS | Anthony Minghella |
| L. A. Confidential (1997) | Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC | Curtis Hanson |
| Saving Private Ryan (1998) | Janusz Kaminski | Steven Spielberg |
| The Thin Red Line (1998) | John Toll, ASC | Terrence Malick |
| American Beauty (1999) | Conrad Hall, ASC | Sam Mendes |
| The Matrix (1999) | Bill Pope, ASC | The Wachowski Brothers |
| In the Mood for Love (2000) | Christopher Doyle, HKSC | Wong Kar-wai |
A Niche in the Library of Babel 