99 Must-See Movies for Ambitious Women

Bookmark this page for easy reference the next time you update your rental queue.

By Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

In the otherwise dull-minded and embarrassing First Wives Club, Goldie Hawn’s character, an aging actress, makes a singularly shrewd observation: “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood — Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy.” But she doesn’t know how lucky she is. A generation earlier the breakdown was limited to ingénue, wife and mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with these roles. Wouldn’t you rather be Shirley MacLaine’s character (a mom) in Terms of Endearment than Diane Keaton’s (a playwright who spends half the film in tears) in Something’s Gotta Give? But these old-fashioned roles do reflect a societal view in which a woman’s identity is totally tied to who she is for someone else.

Virginia Woolf put it this way: “Suppose … that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers. We might perhaps have most of Othello and a good deal of Anthony, but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear.” For women, in movie terms, that translates into Jerry Maguire, but not Jenny Maguire. No distaff Tom Hanks washed ashore in Cast Away. In fact, pictures as diverse as Rain Man, The Graduate and (wince) Saturday Night Fever would never have been made with female leads. Of course, there are the icons — the Dietrichs, Hepburns and Garbos who are beyond definition, more goddesses than mere mortals. But divinity is, as yet, beyond us working stiffs.

PINK lists 99 must-see movies for any cinematically literate professional woman. Of course, as with all lists, it’s intended as neither an end-all nor be-all. Finish these and there are at least 200 more waiting for you.

1. 9 to 5
2. The Accused
3. The African Queen
4. Alien
5. All About Eve
6. Annie Hall
7. Babette’s Feast
8. The Black Stallion
9. Blue (also White and Red; a trilogy)
10. The Bold One
11. Bonnie and Clyde
12. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
13. Bringing Up Baby
14. Broadcast News
15. Casablanca
16. Children of Men
17. Children of Paradise
18. Chinatown
19. Coal Miner’s Daughter
20. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
21. Daughters of the Dust
22. Day for Night
23. Days of Heaven
24. The Devil Wears Prada
25. Diabolique (1955)
26. La Dolce Vita
27. Do the Right Thing
28. Double Indemnity
29. Elizabeth
30. Entre Nous
31. Erin Brockovich
32. Eve’s Bayou
33. Fanny and Alexander
34. La Femme Nikita
35. Frida
36. Gone with the Wind
37. The Graduate
38. The Great Dictator
39. Halloween
40. Hannah and Her Sisters
41. Harold and Maude
42. The Haunting
43. The Heiress
44. His Girl Friday
45. House of Flying Daggers
46. The Inn of the 6th Happiness
47. The Jane Austen Book Club
48. Kandahar
49. Klute
50. Little Women (1933)
51. The Lion in Winter
52. The Magdalene Sisters
53. The Maltese Falcon
54. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
55. Manhattan
56. Mary Poppins
57. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
58. Mulholland Drive
59. My Brilliant Career
60. National Velvet
61. Network
62. Norma Rae
63. Notes on a Scandal
64. Osama
65. Persuasion
66. The Philadelphia Story
67. The Piano
68. Pieces of April
69. Places in the Heart
70. The Queen
71. The Quiet Man
72. Raise the Red Lantern
73. Ran
74. Read My Lips
75. Rear Window
76. Rosemary’s Baby
77. Ruby in Paradise
78. Sense and Sensibility
79. Shakespeare in Love
80. The Silence of the Lambs
81. Silkwood
82. Spirited Away
83. The Story of Adele H
84. Sunset Boulevard
85. Terms of Endearment
86. Thelma & Louise
87. The Thin Man
88. To Kill a Mockingbird
89. Tootsie
90. Two for the Road
91. Vagabond
92. Vera Drake
93. Vertigo
94. Violette
95. Waiting to Exhale
96. Water
97. Whale Rider
98. The Wizard of Oz
99. Working Girl

Additional reporting by Taylor Mallory.

This article originally appeared in the January.February 2008 issue of PINK Magazine.