# The 48 Best British Films of All Time

> Ealing comedies, kitchen-sink realism and Technicolor fantasies line up against nineties swagger and modern crowd-pleasers. Decades of national cinema, and plenty of room to argue about what deserves the crown.

*By YPB Team · Published November 1, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-48-best-british-films-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Third Man** — score 1000/1000
   Carol Reed's 1949 noir in shadowy postwar Vienna, with Orson Welles as Harry Lime and a zither score, voted number one in the BFI's 1999 poll.
2. **A Hard Day's Night** — score 672/1000
   Richard Lester's 1964 Beatles comedy that invented the modern music-film style.
3. **Lawrence of Arabia** — score 605/1000
   Lean's 1962 desert epic starring Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence, winner of seven Oscars.
4. **Get Carter** — score 564/1000
   Mike Hodges' 1971 gangland revenge thriller with Michael Caine prowling Newcastle.
5. **Monty Python's Life of Brian** — score 564/1000
   The 1979 biblical satire about a man mistaken for the Messiah, bankrolled by George Harrison.
6. **The Wicker Man** — score 518/1000
   Robin Hardy's 1973 folk-horror tale of a devout policeman on a pagan Scottish island.
7. **The 39 Steps** — score 518/1000
   Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 wrong-man spy chase across the Scottish Highlands.
8. **Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels** — score 518/1000
   Guy Ritchie's 1998 debut, a fast-talking London crime caper.
9. **The Servant** — score 518/1000
   Joseph Losey's 1963 Harold Pinter-scripted power game between a rich young man and his manservant.
10. **A Matter of Life and Death** — score 518/1000
   Powell and Pressburger's 1946 fantasy of an RAF pilot pleading for his life before a celestial court.
11. **Distant Voices, Still Lives** — score 465/1000
   Terence Davies' 1988 memory piece about a working-class Liverpool family, told through pub songs.
12. **Passport to Pimlico** — score 465/1000
   Ealing's 1949 comedy in which a London district discovers it legally belongs to Burgundy.
13. **Kes** — score 465/1000
   Ken Loach's 1969 story of a Barnsley schoolboy who trains a kestrel, a landmark of social realism.
14. **The Lavender Hill Mob** — score 465/1000
   Ealing's 1951 caper in which a timid bank clerk plots to smuggle gold out as Eiffel Tower souvenirs.
15. **Peeping Tom** — score 403/1000
   Michael Powell's 1960 voyeur-killer thriller, reviled on release and later reclaimed as a masterpiece.
16. **Gandhi** — score 403/1000
   Richard Attenborough's 1982 biopic with Ben Kingsley, winner of eight Academy Awards.
17. **Local Hero** — score 403/1000
   Bill Forsyth's 1983 gentle comedy of an American oilman charmed by a Scottish fishing village.
18. **Paddington 2** — score 403/1000
   Paul King's 2017 family comedy in which the marmalade-loving bear is framed for theft.
19. **Four Weddings and a Funeral** — score 403/1000
   Mike Newell's 1994 Richard Curtis romantic comedy with Hugh Grant, a global hit.
20. **The Killing Fields** — score 403/1000
   Roland Joffe's 1984 drama about a journalist and his Cambodian interpreter under the Khmer Rouge.
21. **If....** — score 403/1000
   Lindsay Anderson's 1968 public-school rebellion with Malcolm McDowell, winner of the Palme d'Or.
22. **Don't Look Now** — score 403/1000
   Nicolas Roeg's 1973 grief-haunted thriller set in wintry Venice, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.
23. **Black Narcissus** — score 403/1000
   Powell and Pressburger's 1947 drama of Anglican nuns unravelling in a Himalayan convent, a peak of Technicolor photography.
24. **This Is England** — score 330/1000
   Shane Meadows' 1983-set 2006 drama about a boy drawn into a skinhead gang.
25. **Billy Elliot** — score 330/1000
   Stephen Daldry's 2000 drama about a miner's son who wants to dance ballet during the 1984 strike.
26. **Monty Python and the Holy Grail** — score 330/1000
   The Python team's 1975 Arthurian spoof of coconuts, killer rabbits and the Black Knight.
27. **Brief Encounter** — score 330/1000
   David Lean's 1945 railway-station romance between two married strangers, set to Rachmaninoff.
28. **Withnail and I** — score 330/1000
   Bruce Robinson's 1987 cult comedy about two out-of-work actors on a disastrous Lake District holiday.
29. **Goldfinger** — score 330/1000
   The 1964 James Bond adventure with Sean Connery, the Aston Martin DB5 and a plot to irradiate Fort Knox.
30. **The Italian Job** — score 330/1000
   The 1969 heist comedy with Michael Caine, three Minis and a cliffhanger ending.
31. **Trainspotting** — score 242/1000
   Danny Boyle's 1996 Edinburgh heroin comedy-drama that defined Cool Britannia cinema.
32. **Shaun of the Dead** — score 242/1000
   Edgar Wright's 2004 zombie romantic comedy about a slacker hiding out at the Winchester pub.
33. **Brazil** — score 242/1000
   Terry Gilliam's 1985 dystopian satire of a daydreaming clerk trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare.
34. **Secrets & Lies** — score 242/1000
   Mike Leigh's 1996 Palme d'Or winner about a woman tracing her birth mother.
35. **Zulu** — score 242/1000
   Cy Endfield's 1964 dramatisation of the defence of Rorke's Drift, Michael Caine's breakthrough.
36. **Chariots of Fire** — score 242/1000
   Hugh Hudson's 1981 Best Picture winner about two British runners at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
37. **The Full Monty** — score 242/1000
   Peter Cattaneo's 1997 comedy about laid-off Sheffield steelworkers who form a strip act.
38. **Saturday Night and Sunday Morning** — score 242/1000
   Karel Reisz's 1960 kitchen-sink drama with Albert Finney as a rebellious Nottingham factory worker.
39. **The Remains of the Day** — score 242/1000
   Merchant Ivory's 1993 drama with Anthony Hopkins as a butler who suppresses his feelings and his doubts about his master.
40. **The Bridge on the River Kwai** — score 242/1000
   Lean's 1957 prisoner-of-war epic about a British colonel's obsession with building a railway bridge for his captors.
41. **The Ladykillers** — score 242/1000
   Ealing's 1955 comedy about a gang of crooks outwitted by their sweet elderly landlady.
42. **The Long Good Friday** — score 242/1000
   John Mackenzie's 1980 London gangster thriller with Bob Hoskins as a crime boss whose empire collapses over one Easter weekend.
43. **The King's Speech** — score 242/1000
   Tom Hooper's 2010 Best Picture winner about George VI's struggle with a stammer.
44. **28 Days Later** — score 242/1000
   Danny Boyle's 2002 digital-video horror of a deserted London overrun by the rage-infected.
45. **Kind Hearts and Coronets** — score 0/1000
   Ealing's 1949 black comedy in which Alec Guinness plays eight doomed members of one aristocratic family.
46. **Odd Man Out** — score 0/1000
   Carol Reed's 1947 thriller following a wounded Irish gunman through one long night in Belfast.
47. **Great Expectations** — score 0/1000
   Lean's 1946 Dickens adaptation, famous for Pip's terrifying graveyard meeting with the convict Magwitch.
48. **The Red Shoes** — score 0/1000
   Powell and Pressburger's 1948 Technicolor ballet melodrama about a dancer torn between art and love.

Tags: movies, uk, classics, all time