Movie Auditor › Rankings › 1959
Best Movies of 1959, Ranked by IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB
91 films from 1959 are in our catalog; the 50 best are ranked below. Top of the list is North by Northwest ('1959), at 8.2 on IMDb. The average IMDb score across this list is 7.6. Biggest split between audiences and critics: Suddenly, Last Summer, 7.4 on IMDb against 54 on Metacritic.
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| # | Movie | Genre | IMDb | Tomato | Meta | TMDB | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North by Northwest '1959 | Thriller | 8.2 | 97% | 98 | 8.0 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| 2 | Some Like It Hot '1959 | Comedy / Romance / Crime | 8.2 | 95% | 98 | 8.1 | Billy Wilder |
| 3 | The World of Apu '1959 | Drama | 8.4 | 97% | - | 8.1 | Satyajit Ray |
| 4 | Ben-Hur '1959 | Drama | 8.1 | 87% | 90 | 7.9 | William Wyler |
| 5 | The Human Condition I: No Greater Love '1959 | War / Drama | 8.5 | 73% | - | 8.1 | Masaki Kobayashi |
| 6 | The 400 Blows '1959 | Drama | 8.0 | 99% | - | 8.0 | François Truffaut |
| 7 | Anatomy of a Murder '1959 | Crime / Drama / Mystery | 8.0 | 100% | 95 | 7.8 | Otto Preminger |
| 8 | The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity '1959 | War / Drama | 8.5 | - | - | 8.2 | Masaki Kobayashi |
| 9 | Rio Bravo '1959 | Western / Drama | 7.9 | 96% | 93 | 7.8 | Howard Hawks |
| 10 | Ballad of a Soldier '1959 | Drama / Romance / War | 8.2 | 94% | - | 8.0 | Grigoriy Chukhray |
| 11 | Hiroshima Mon Amour '1959 | Drama / Romance | 7.8 | 96% | - | 7.7 | Alain Resnais |
| 12 | Imitation of Life '1959 | Drama / Romance | 7.8 | 82% | 87 | 7.4 | Douglas Sirk |
| 13 | The Bridge '1959 | Drama / War | 8.0 | 100% | - | 7.6 | Bernhard Wicki |
| 14 | Floating Weeds '1959 | Drama | 7.9 | 96% | - | 7.5 | Yasujirō Ozu |
| 15 | Good Morning '1959 | Comedy / Drama | 7.8 | 94% | 87 | 7.7 | Yasujirō Ozu |
| 16 | The Great War '1959 | Comedy / War / Drama | 8.1 | 40% | - | 8.1 | Mario Monicelli |
| 17 | Pickpocket '1959 | Crime / Drama | 7.5 | 93% | - | 7.3 | Robert Bresson |
| 18 | Fires on the Plain '1959 | Drama / War | 7.9 | 100% | - | 7.6 | Kon Ichikawa |
| 19 | Nazarín '1959 | Drama | 7.7 | 86% | - | 7.6 | Luis Buñuel |
| 20 | Fate of a Man '1959 | Drama / War | 7.9 | - | - | 7.5 | Sergei Bondarchuk |
| 21 | The Nun's Story '1959 | Drama | 7.5 | 85% | 78 | 7.2 | Fred Zinnemann |
| 22 | Pillow Talk '1959 | Comedy / Romance | 7.4 | 93% | 73 | 7.1 | Michael Gordon |
| 23 | Suddenly, Last Summer '1959 | Thriller / Drama / Mystery | 7.4 | 68% | 54 | 7.3 | Joseph L. Mankiewicz |
| 24 | The Diary of Anne Frank '1959 | Drama | 7.4 | 81% | 59 | 7.2 | George Stevens |
| 25 | Black Orpheus '1959 | Drama / Romance | 7.4 | 88% | 81 | 7.0 | Marcel Camus |
| 26 | General Della Rovere '1959 | Drama / War | 7.7 | 90% | - | 7.5 | Roberto Rossellini |
| 27 | Night Train '1959 | Drama | 7.7 | - | - | 7.6 | Jerzy Kawalerowicz |
| 28 | Donald in Mathmagic Land '1959 | Animation / Fantasy / Comedy | 7.8 | - | - | 7.3 | Les Clark |
| 29 | Compulsion '1959 | Crime / Drama / Thriller | 7.4 | 100% | - | 7.1 | Richard Fleischer |
| 30 | Sleeping Beauty '1959 | Fantasy / Animation / Romance | 7.2 | 90% | 85 | 6.9 | Clyde Geronimi |
| 31 | Odds Against Tomorrow '1959 | Crime / Drama / Thriller | 7.4 | 88% | - | 6.9 | Robert Wise |
| 32 | Last Train from Gun Hill '1959 | Western | 7.3 | 91% | - | 7.1 | John Sturges |
| 33 | Operation Petticoat '1959 | Comedy / War / Romance | 7.2 | 81% | - | 7.2 | Blake Edwards |
| 34 | Window Water Baby Moving '1959 | Documentary | 7.5 | - | - | 6.9 | Stan Brakhage |
| 35 | Day of the Outlaw '1959 | Western | 7.3 | 100% | - | 6.8 | André de Toth |
| 36 | On the Beach '1959 | Sci-Fi / Drama / Romance | 7.1 | 77% | 55 | 6.7 | Stanley Kramer |
| 37 | Marie-Octobre '1959 | Drama / Mystery | 7.5 | - | - | 7.3 | Julien Duvivier |
| 38 | The Horse Soldiers '1959 | Western / War | 7.1 | 81% | - | 6.9 | John Ford |
| 39 | The Facts of Murder '1959 | Mystery / Crime | 7.5 | - | - | 7.2 | Pietro Germi |
| 40 | Darby O'Gill and the Little People '1959 | Fantasy / Romance | 7.1 | 100% | 80 | 6.7 | Robert Stevenson |
| 41 | Warlock '1959 | Western | 7.1 | - | - | 6.8 | Edward Dmytryk |
| 42 | Ride Lonesome '1959 | Western | 7.1 | 90% | - | 6.7 | Budd Boetticher |
| 43 | The Cousins '1959 | Drama | 7.2 | 94% | - | 6.8 | Claude Chabrol |
| 44 | No Name on the Bullet '1959 | Action / Thriller / Western | 7.2 | - | - | 6.6 | Jack Arnold |
| 45 | Violent Summer '1959 | Drama / Romance / War | 7.3 | - | - | 7.2 | Valerio Zurlini |
| 46 | The Hanging Tree '1959 | Western | 7.1 | 89% | - | 6.7 | Delmer Daves |
| 47 | I'm All Right Jack '1959 | Comedy | 7.1 | 85% | - | 6.6 | John Boulting |
| 48 | Le Beau Serge '1959 | Drama | 7.1 | 100% | - | 6.9 | Claude Chabrol |
| 49 | Journey to the Center of the Earth '1959 | Fantasy | 7.0 | 84% | - | 6.9 | Henry Levin |
| 50 | The Widower '1959 | Comedy | 7.2 | - | - | 7.4 | Dino Risi |
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.
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