Movie Auditor › Rankings › 1956
Best Movies of 1956, Ranked by IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB
86 films from 1956 are in our catalog; the 50 best are ranked below. Top of the list is Night and Fog ('1956), at 8.6 on IMDb. The average IMDb score across this list is 7.5. Biggest split between audiences and critics: The Bad Seed, 7.4 on IMDb against 51 on Metacritic.
Filter, sort and search this list live
| # | Movie | Genre | IMDb | Tomato | Meta | TMDB | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Night and Fog '1956 | Documentary | 8.6 | - | - | 8.3 | Alain Resnais |
| 2 | A Man Escaped '1956 | Drama / Thriller | 8.1 | 100% | - | 8.0 | Robert Bresson |
| 3 | Aparajito '1956 | Drama | 8.2 | 96% | - | 7.8 | Satyajit Ray |
| 4 | The Red Balloon '1956 | Comedy / Drama / Fantasy | 8.1 | 96% | - | 7.7 | Albert Lamorisse |
| 5 | The Killing '1956 | Crime / Thriller / Drama | 7.9 | 96% | 91 | 7.6 | Stanley Kubrick |
| 6 | The Ten Commandments '1956 | Drama | 7.9 | 82% | - | 7.8 | Cecil B. DeMille |
| 7 | The Searchers '1956 | Western | 7.8 | 87% | 94 | 7.7 | John Ford |
| 8 | Invasion of the Body Snatchers '1956 | Sci-Fi / Horror / Thriller | 7.7 | 97% | 92 | 7.5 | Don Siegel |
| 9 | The Burmese Harp '1956 | Drama / War | 8.0 | 90% | 73 | 7.8 | Kon Ichikawa |
| 10 | Giant '1956 | Drama / Western | 7.6 | 86% | 84 | 7.6 | George Stevens |
| 11 | Forbidden Planet '1956 | Sci-Fi | 7.5 | 96% | 80 | 7.3 | Fred M. Wilcox |
| 12 | Street of Shame '1956 | Drama | 7.8 | 80% | - | 7.7 | Kenji Mizoguchi |
| 13 | The Man Who Knew Too Much '1956 | Thriller / Mystery / Drama | 7.4 | 89% | 76 | 7.4 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| 14 | Bob le Flambeur '1956 | Drama / Action / Crime | 7.5 | 97% | 80 | 7.3 | Jean-Pierre Melville |
| 15 | The Wrong Man '1956 | Crime / Drama | 7.4 | 93% | 83 | 7.1 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| 16 | The King and I '1956 | Romance / Drama | 7.4 | 93% | 72 | 7.1 | Walter Lang |
| 17 | The Harder They Fall '1956 | Drama | 7.5 | 100% | 78 | 7.2 | Mark Robson |
| 18 | Somebody Up There Likes Me '1956 | Drama | 7.5 | 86% | - | 7.2 | Robert Wise |
| 19 | Early Spring '1956 | Drama / Romance | 7.7 | 100% | 84 | 7.5 | Yasujirō Ozu |
| 20 | The Bad Seed '1956 | Drama / Horror / Thriller | 7.4 | 64% | 51 | 7.1 | Mervyn LeRoy |
| 21 | Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island '1956 | Action / Drama / Romance | 7.5 | - | - | 7.2 | Hiroshi Inagaki |
| 22 | Moby Dick '1956 | Drama | 7.3 | 81% | 78 | 7.1 | John Huston |
| 23 | Bigger Than Life '1956 | Drama | 7.4 | 91% | - | 7.2 | Nicholas Ray |
| 24 | Written on the Wind '1956 | Drama / Romance | 7.3 | 88% | 86 | 7.0 | Douglas Sirk |
| 25 | The Man Who Never Was '1956 | Thriller / War / Drama | 7.4 | 88% | - | 7.0 | Ronald Neame |
| 26 | 7 Men from Now '1956 | Western | 7.4 | 100% | - | 6.8 | Budd Boetticher |
| 27 | Lust for Life '1956 | Drama | 7.3 | 79% | 68 | 7.2 | Vincente Minnelli |
| 28 | Attack '1956 | Drama / War | 7.4 | 100% | - | 6.8 | Robert Aldrich |
| 29 | Toto, Peppino, and the Hussy '1956 | Comedy / Romance | 7.7 | - | - | 8.0 | Camillo Mastrocinque |
| 30 | Friendly Persuasion '1956 | Drama / War | 7.3 | 73% | - | 6.6 | William Wyler |
| 31 | Broom-Stick Bunny '1956 | Animation / Comedy / Fantasy | 7.7 | - | - | 6.8 | Chuck Jones |
| 32 | There's Always Tomorrow '1956 | Drama / Romance | 7.4 | 88% | 70 | 7.2 | Douglas Sirk |
| 33 | Main Street '1956 | Drama | 7.7 | - | - | 6.3 | Juan Antonio Bardem |
| 34 | Carnival Night '1956 | Musical / Comedy / Romance | 7.4 | - | - | 7.0 | Eldar Ryazanov |
| 35 | The Railroad Man '1956 | Drama | 7.7 | - | - | 7.8 | Pietro Germi |
| 36 | La Traversée de Paris '1956 | Comedy / Drama | 7.3 | - | - | 7.3 | Claude Autant-Lara |
| 37 | Baby Doll '1956 | Drama | 7.2 | 83% | 83 | 7.0 | Elia Kazan |
| 38 | Deadlier Than the Male '1956 | Drama / Thriller | 7.5 | - | - | 7.3 | Julien Duvivier |
| 39 | The Band of Honest Men '1956 | Comedy | 7.5 | - | - | 7.7 | Camillo Mastrocinque |
| 40 | Tea and Sympathy '1956 | Drama | 7.3 | 80% | - | 7.0 | Vincente Minnelli |
| 41 | The Twelve Months '1956 | Fantasy / Animation | 7.4 | - | - | 6.3 | Ivan Ivanov-Vano |
| 42 | Gervaise '1956 | Romance / Drama | 7.3 | 80% | - | 6.7 | René Clément |
| 43 | Jubal '1956 | Western / Drama | 7.1 | 100% | - | 6.9 | Delmer Daves |
| 44 | Nightfall '1956 | Crime / Thriller | 7.1 | 100% | - | 6.9 | Jacques Tourneur |
| 45 | The Fastest Gun Alive '1956 | Drama / Western | 7.1 | - | - | 6.9 | Russell Rouse |
| 46 | Totò, Peppino e i fuorilegge '1956 | Comedy | 7.3 | - | - | 7.6 | Camillo Mastrocinque |
| 47 | Anastasia '1956 | Drama / Romance | 7.0 | 92% | - | 6.8 | Anatole Litvak |
| 48 | La Pointe Courte '1956 | Drama / Romance | 7.0 | - | - | 6.9 | Agnès Varda |
| 49 | The Last Wagon '1956 | Western | 7.0 | - | - | 6.5 | Delmer Daves |
| 50 | Up and Down '1956 | Comedy | 7.0 | - | - | 8.1 | Miguel M. Delgado |
Our catalog covers roughly the 8,800 most-rated films on TMDB, so lesser-known titles may be missing. Order uses a confidence-weighted IMDb score so a perfect score from a handful of votes does not beat a well-established classic; the scores shown are the raw ones.
More years
This decade
By genre
Action Animation Comedy Crime Documentary Drama Fantasy Horror Musical Mystery Romance Sci-Fi Thriller War Western