The Essentials

The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies & Why They Matter, by Jeremy Arnold, is a guide to "fifty-two must-see movies from the silent era through the early 1980s." The fifty-two films, representing one per week for a year, were selected from TCM's The Essentials series.

Each director is represented by a single listed film, except Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, who deservedly have two and three films each, respectively. Whereas most film lists include recent titles, this has no films from the last thirty years. Also unusually for a list-based book, it features an extensive bibliography.

The Must-See Movies are as follows:

• Metropolis
  
• All Quiet On The Western Front
  
• City Lights
  
• Grand Hotel
  
• King Kong
  
• Duck Soup
  
• It Happened One Night
  
• The Thin Man
  
• Bride Of Frankenstein
  
• Swing Time
  
• Mr Smith Goes To Washington
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• The Lady Eve
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Now Voyager
  
• Casablanca
  
• Double Indemnity
  
• Meet Me In St. Louis
  
• Leave Her To Heaven
  
• The Best Years Of Our Lives
  
• Out Of The Past
  
• The Red Shoes
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Third Man
  
• White Heat
  
• Adam's Rib
  
• Winchester '73
  
• Sunset Boulevard
  
• Gun Crazy
  
• All About Eve
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• Roman Holiday
  
• Seven Samurai
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Rear Window
  
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
  
• The Searchers
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• North By Northwest
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Breathless
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• Bonnie & Clyde
  
• In The Heat Of The Night
  
• The Graduate
  
• Once Upon A Time In The West
  
• Jaws
  
• Rocky
  
• Annie Hall
  
• This Is Spinal Tap

[The films are listed chronologically. Note that Ben-Hur is the William Wyler version and Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder comedy.]