Everything on John's list is on mine, but there are a few others that I think need to be added:

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (its director's somewhat bowdlerized masterpiece)
THE FOUR FEATHERS
FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO
MADAME BOVARY
SAHARA
THE KILLERS
BRUTE FORCE

I think it must be said that the word "best" is so subjective as to be all but meaningless.  My great passion for FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO exists in the shadow of my knowledge that Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder would go on to make considerably more ambitious films; FIVE GRAVES is, therefore, a nearly perfect movie only when examined in the context of its makers' ambitions at that moment, i.e. it achieves virtually 100% of what Brackett and Wilder set out to accomplish.  THE APARTMENT, to settle on what's perhaps Wilder's most honored film, is the work of a more mature talent for whom another FIVE GRAVES, had it been undertaken in 1960, would be considered several steps backward (the sort of career move not a few talented and accomplished filmmakers made to their everlasting regret).

It's with this in mind that I dithered about placing IVANHOE on the list.  Though it's a beautifully made movie whose heart is certainly in the right place, and Rozsa's score is certainly one of his finest, its ambitions are a little too unprepossessing, and that resulted in a film that never quite decides what it wants to be: costume epic, or swashbuckler (they're not the same thing) or indictment of anti-Semitism. 

Last Edited By: A Lee Hern Feb 21 10 11:11 PM. Edited 4 times.