100 Essential Films About Espionage

Significant, not best, though certainly some of these films will be on anyone's best "spy" film rankings. Unfortunately, those rankings are most often done by critics with zero background in actual espionage who wouldn't know a CPU  - no, not a central processing unit, or steganography  - think Matryoshka Dolls (see what I mean?) from traffic analysis - here think The Imitation Game.

Most rankers have seen maybe twenty espionage films in their lives, or have copied them from other ranking lists to make up an article with a click-bait headline. Notice that North by Northwest is usually on all the Top 10s, and usually a couple of Bond films. On this list Northwest is ranked No. 069 and the first Bond, Dr.No comes in at No. 020. Of course Dr. No is not the best Bond film, but it was the first, and gave the world 007, M, Q, Moneypenny, and the Walther PPK. That makes it the most significant Bond film.

Many of the films will be unknown to most readers except for espionage enthusuasts. That's good. How boring to have a list of films that everyone has seen. This list will give you, depending on your  enthusiasm, a few months to a couple years of exciting movie-going.

Last thing... We're happy here at Spy Guys Lifestyles for you to comment and we'll answer the really interesting ones. However, "How could you rank so-and-so ahead of so-and-so? will always go unacknowledged.

Really last thing! If you have some films you think have an espionage thread that you don't see here, please, by all means, comment so I can watch them. And I will. There are no films on this list that I haven't seen at least three times, some as many as ten.

See below for a printable PDF of the 100 Essential Espionage Films. And below that are links to in-depth analyses of some of these great films.

#1 Spione

#2 The Third Man

#3 The Manchurian Candidate

#4 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

#5 Tenet

#6 Zero Dark Thirty

#7 The Day of the Jackal (1973)

#8 The IPCRESS File

***#9 The 39 Steps (1935)

#10 Inception

#11 Three Days of the Condor

#12 The Lives of Others

#13 The Conformist

#14 The English Patient

#15 Munich

#16 Apocalypse Now

#17 Foreign Correspondent

#18 The Age of Shadows

#19 Army of Shadows

#20 Dr. No

#21 Notorious

#22 The Scarlet Pimpernell

#23 The Lady Vanishes (1938)

#24 The Good Shepherd

#25 Goldfinger

#26 The Kremlin Letter

#27 Ministry of Fear

#28 Black Book

#29 The Spy Gone North

#30 The Bourne Ultimatum

#31 The Secret Agent (1936)

#32 Lust, Caution

#33 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

#34 Barry Lyndon

#35 Bridge of Spies

#36 Rear Window

#37 The Constant Gardener

#38 Bourne Identity

#39 Casino Royale (2006)

#40 Kingsman: The Secret Service

#41 Les Vampires

#42 The Bourne Supremacy

#43 Atomic Blonde

#44 Ronin

#45 The Stranger

#46 Source Code

#47 Deja Vu

#48 Alphaville

#49 Sabotage

#50 Night Train to Munich

#51 Cold War

#52 The Man from Nowhere

#53 The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

#54 State of Siege

#55 Our Man in Havana

#56 JFK

#57 April and the Extraordinary World

#58 Ghost in the Shell (1996)

#59 Ivan's Childhood

#60 I Saw the Devil

#61 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

#62 Europa Europa

#63 The Imitation Game

#64 The Hunt for Red October

#65 L'Affaire Farewell

#66 Man Hunt

#67 To Live and Die in L.A.

#68 The Quiller Memorandum

#69 North by Northwest

#70 Enter the Dragon

#71 Duck Soup

#72 The Long Voyage Home

#73 The Front Line

#74 Seven Days in May

#75 The German Doctor

#76 All the President's Men

#77 Pickup on South Street

#78 Two Lives

#79 Stalag 17

#80 Skyfall

#81 The Narrow Margin

#82 To Be or Not to Be (1942)

#83 The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

#84 Villainess

#85 Lobos Sucios

#86 The Woman in the Moon

#87 Inglorious Basterds

#88 Mission: Impossible

#89 The Ghost Writer

#90 Where Eagles Dare

#91 Gorky Park

#92 Saboteur

#93 Colossus: The Forbin Project

#94 Black Test Car

#95 La Femme Nikita

#96 Il Generale Della Rovere

#97 Spy Game

#98 Charade

#99 The Emperor and the Assassin

#100 Flame and Citron

Print and use this checklist to see how many of Spy Guy’s 100 Essential Spy Films you’ve seen. Then comment below about your favorite espionage movie.

Click on the checklist to open a printable .pdf.

Click on the Lady Vanishes Poster to go to a Spy Guys’ Analysis by Hayden Parker.