This is a list of the 120 highest-ranked films on Letterboxd made prior to 1900, within certain qualifications, updated as of 6 February 2025.
To avoid listing lots of films with relatively high scores on the basis of only a handful of ratings (and there are many of these, some of which turn out to be lost films!), I've set a threshold of at least 500 ratings before considering a film. The current threshold for the overall Letterboxd Top 250 is 15,000 ratings but that would exclude all the titles from this time period.
There are 120 titles because I figure that the world's film industry should be able to manage at least one really great film per month on…
This is a list of the 120 highest-ranked films on Letterboxd made prior to 1900, within certain qualifications, updated as of 6 February 2025.
To avoid listing lots of films with relatively high scores on the basis of only a handful of ratings (and there are many of these, some of which turn out to be lost films!), I've set a threshold of at least 500 ratings before considering a film. The current threshold for the overall Letterboxd Top 250 is 15,000 ratings but that would exclude all the titles from this time period.
There are 120 titles because I figure that the world's film industry should be able to manage at least one really great film per month on average. I've obviously not applied minimum running time nor content requirement as all films from this era are very short and most are non-narrative.
A few lost films which otherwise have sufficient views and ratings, usually on the basis of misattribution, have been ignored.
My personal recommendations of 150 pre-1920s films are here: boxd.it/1n3mU
This is one of a series of lists along similar lines: the remainder are decade by decade. See letterboxd.com/desdemoor/tag/highest-rated-by-decade/lists/
-> Forward to 1900-1910.
(list originally posted 21 March 2021)
