Your big screen classics

To reopen BFI Southbank we asked you to help us choose the films you’d like to see to welcome you back to the cinema. The results were a collection of the best the big screen has to offer.

Tickets for these screenings are only £8

October / November

Man Hunt

A loose adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s classic ‘Rogue Male’, distinguished by Lang’s taut direction and fine expressionist camerawork.
The Killers

Siodmak’s classic film noir about amour fou and inevitable betrayal, with Lan-caster and Gardner on top form.
Sweet Smell of Success

Lancaster and Curtis locked together in Mackendrick’s masterly tale of toxic corruption in the media in 50s New York.
Touch of Evil

Welles’ brilliant, baroque noir mystery about a murder investigation in a nightmarish border town.
Le Doulos

Questions of friendship and loyalty, deceit and betrayal lie at the dark heart of Melville’s labyrinthine thriller.
Alice in the Cities

Wenders’ touching, lyrical and witty odd-couple road-movie, lovingly shot by the late, great Robby Müller.
Bitter Victory

Richard Burton is at his very best in Ray’s superb, stunningly shot war-movie set in the Libyan desert.
The Man Who Wasn’t There

Billy Bob Thornton is terrific in the Coens’ canny combination of crime movie and psychological study of extreme alienation.
Cleo from 5 to 7

Varda’s classic almost-real-time character study of a young woman wandering Paris as she awaits the results of a medical test.
The Big City

Ray’s meticulously observed, gently satirical tale of a wife deciding to go out to work despite her family’s disapproval in ’50s Calcutta.
Citizen Kane

Welles’ ageless gem about the life and times of a media tycoon reveals further riches with each repeat viewing.
Persona

Bergman’s modernist masterpiece about a traumatised actress and a chatty nurse undergoing strange changes during an isolated convalescence.
The Tango Lesson

Part troubled love story, part terrific dance movie, Potter’s tale of a filmmaker fighting creative block is screened too rarely.
L’eclisse

Vitti and Delon shine in Antonioni’s cool, subtly stylised account of a relationship floundering amid the distractions of modern life.
The Last Picture Show

Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd star in Peter Bogdanovich’s beautiful evocation of a lost era.
The Gospel According to Matthew

Pasolini’s classic account of the life of Christ foregoes pomp and piety to present him as a political animal fighting social injustice.
Raging Bull

A highpoint in Scorsese and De Niro’s careers, this portrait of boxing champion Jake La Motta is a corrosive study of flailing, deeply flawed masculinity.
Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Keaton’s brilliantly inventive comedy is set in a painstakingly created Southern riverside town, famously wrecked in the film’s extraordinary finale.
The Night of the Hunter

In Laughton’s masterpiece, Mitchum excels as a psychopathic preacher hunting down two children in a vividly recreated Depression America.
The Innocents

A supremely atmospheric adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, unsettling as a psychological study, haunting as a supernatural chiller.
The White Ribbon

Haneke’s masterly portrait of life in a quiet north German village just before WW1 examines the education of a troubled and troubling generation.
Eraserhead

Lynch’s debut is a deeply eccentric, darkly comic, nightmarish fable about the perils of parenthood, desire and urban existence.