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Michael Caine’s 10 favourite movies of all time: “a revelation”

Tue 1 April 2025 16:15, UK

Michael Caine might have appeared in some of your favourite films of all time, but none of his movies feature in his own top 10. After more than five decades in front of the camera, the actor turned in some remarkable performances and earned two Oscars. His films ranged from Swinging Sixties hits like The Ipcress File and Alfie, and a slew of Christopher Nolan films, including The Dark Knight and Inception. Those four films alone probably appear in a significant number of cinephile’s top 10 lists, let alone films like The Italian Job, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Children of Men.

Caine grew up in a working-class family in London during World War II and fell in love with movies from an early age. His idol was Humphrey Bogart, whose performance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre resonated with him as a teenager. He would eventually change his name from Maurice Micklewhite to Michael Caine as a tribute to Bogart, who happened to be starring in The Caine Mutiny just when he was looking to reinvent himself.

Long before he made his screen debut in the mid-1950s, Caine was a devoted cinema-goer basking in the glamour, intensity, and larger-than-life personalities he saw on-screen. Decades later, after spending most of his life as a movie star and with two Oscars to his name, Caine sat down to write his memoir, An Elephant to Hollywood, and included a detailed list of his 10 favourite movies of all time.

Given how formative that early period of cinema attendance had been for him, it’s no surprise that many of the films he listed were released before he’d earned his first screen credit. In fact, eight of them were released before 1964, the year that he landed his first major role in the movie Zulu. It is also not surprising that three of the films star Bogart, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

There are, however, a couple of unexpected entries. For example, the film that lands in tenth place is the 2006 French thriller Tell No One. Directed by Guillaume Canet, who is most famous as an actor, it’s a twisty mystery about a seemingly decent doctor who becomes a key suspect in a murder case eight years after his wife was brutally killed. Caine called the film “stunning” and “one of the best thrillers [he’d] ever seen,” remarking that no US distributors had picked it up.

Another surprise is the 1979 musical All That Jazz. It is a semi-autobiographical story written and directed by the great choreographer, theatre director, and filmmaker Bob Fosse. Centred on an exacting theatre director (Roy Scheider) whose obsessive dedication to his work and disregard for his health puts him at death’s door, the movie is a soul-searching meditation on life, the creative process, and personal fulfilment. “This is my favourite musical and Bob Fosse… is my favourite choreographer,” Caine wrote.

His more predictable entries include perennial favourites like Gone with the Wind, Some Like it Hot, and On the Waterfront, which he called “a revelation.” The one that nabbed the top spot was Casablanca. “What else was it going to be?” He quipped, concluding, “For me, Casablanca will always be number one.”