Writer Rajan Zed’s new book on world cinema, 99 Remarkable Films of the World, lists Citizen Kane, created over sixty years ago, as number one among all the films of the world made so far.  Zed’s list of movie greats, published by Zyxum Publishing, ranks the musical Singin’ in the Rain -- my all-time favorite -- at number two, and Casablanca as number three. Completing the top ten spots are The Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia, Vertigo, La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game), Gone with the Wind, and Some Like It Hot.

“Compressing about 150,000 feature films into a list of 99 was a gigantic and agonizing exercise and cuts were torturous and painful. It broke my heart to see some great films vanish off the list. Ranking always generates argumentation but there is an eternal allurement to rank and rate,” Zed explains.

Director Steven Spielberg earns the highest number (five) of films listed, followed by Francis Ford Coppola, Billy Wilder, John Ford, Martin Scorsese, Charles Chaplin, and Frank Capra—with three movies each.

Robert De Niro tops the leading actor list with appearances in four of the movies listed. Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, and Charles Chaplin star in three films on the list, and among female leading actors, Katherine Hepburn lands at the top with two movies mentioned.

It’s interesting to note that no film from the 2000s made Zed’s list. Fargo (1996), at number 54, is the newest movie included, and the oldest one listed is Birth of a Nation (1915), at number 87.  Five films from 1939, considered the golden year for filmmaking, show up, and the consecutive years 1957, 1958, and 1959 brought three films each to the list.

Genre rankings are as follows: drama, 45 entries; comedy, 14 entries; thriller, 3 entries. Only one animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and one horror film, The Bride of Frankenstein, appear on the list.

Seventy-one of the movies making Zed’s list are from the USA. France ranks second with seven films while Great Britain earns third place with six entries.  Other countries represented are Japan, Italy, USSR, Sweden, India, Poland, and Germany. Three films listed were collaborations between two countries. Ingmar Bergman was the director of both Swedish movies listed, and Satyajit Ray helmed both movies from India on the list.

“No one will agree with this film list in totality and no such list is ideal, but my group and I strongly feel that we came closer to whatever can be accomplished within these constraints,” Zed says. “This is an inspiring selection of world cinema, films you need to be familiar with to be film literate.”

(For more information about 99 Remarkable Films of the World, send an e-mail to globalsoiree@gmail.com.)