70 Best Classic Movies 2024
classic movies classic films old movies old films black and white movies black and white films
DeAnna Janes
From the Yellow Brick Road to Sunset Boulevard, here are the best classic movies of all time.
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Harper's BAZAAR
They just don’t make ’em like they used to. Sure, modern cinema has its draws—indie gems with purpose, endless franchise installments, Barbie!—but the classics will never die. From black-and-white pictures that flicker on the screen, to bold Technicolor beauties that transport you to another era, watching Old Hollywood movies is like slipping into the silkiest loungewear and asking your partner to pass you the remote while using your best Katharine Hepburn accent. Nothing else compares. Ahead, a collection of the most perfect rom-coms, moving dramas, and essential Disney favorites. It’s by no means a complete list, but it is comprehensive, and it will turn you into a classic movie fan.

Lorraine Hansberry penned the first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, with acting powerhouses Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, and Ruby Dee bringing her resonant tale to life onstage. Two years later, the trio, along with original cast members Diana Sands, Ivan Dixon, and others would take Hansberry’s story screen-bound, winning a bundle of hardware along the awards circuit. About a midcentury Chicago family whose hopes of a better future rely on a life-insurance check—and not being swindled out of it—A Raisin in the Sun is seminal civil rights viewing.

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Bolstered by the whip-smart dialogue firing from every single actor on the screen, His Girl Friday isn’t your average Cary Grant fare. Starring opposite a brilliant and magnetic Rosalind Russell (Auntie Mame), Grant plays a newspaper editor whose latest self-imposed assignment is to convince his ex-wife to marry him again. Of course, drama in the form of a new fiancé, a headlining prison breakout, and a strong woman’s sense of pride all get in the way, making for a jam-packed 90-minute watch that’s as hilarious with its comedy as it is genius with its discourse.

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Though it may not be heralded by Hitchcock loyalists as his greatest work (this writer not included), Rebecca is the only film on the director’s lengthy resume that scored the top Oscar prize (too bad it went to David O. Selznick for producing). Brimming with his signature Hitchcockian suspense, the film adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic novel unfurls via a woman who slowly learns the truth of her husband’s dead wife. And though several movie versions exist, we’re thinking Ben Wheatley’s upcoming remake starring Lily James is the only one with a chance of living up to Hitchcock’s.

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Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a film on every master director’s list of must-see films, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be on yours too. The gist: A village enlists seven samurai to help defend them against a gang of bandits. Their payment? Only rice. It all culminates in a battle offering Kurosawa and his cinematographer, Asakazu Nakai, an opportunity to flaunt their action skills, widely hailed as innovative and brilliant for the time. A blueprint for subsequent cinema, Kurosawa’s Japanese epic paved the way for iconic films such as John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

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