Lockdown led to an increase in movie watching in 2020, and our stats show that you all enjoyed exploring the wider canon of cinema, beyond 2020 releases.

So in response to a member question—“given the amount of time people spent indoors this year, it’d be interesting to see what the most popular older releases from each decade were in 2020”—we did the calculations. This is a list of the most popular film from almost* every year of cinema, according to your logging activity from 1 January to 31 December 2020.

The list is in chronological order, most recent year first.

Several directors appear multiple times: Alfred Hitchcock is the GOAT with seven films, including three consecutive years 1958–1960 (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho). Stanley Kubrick follows with six, then Charlie Chaplin and Hayao Miyazaki (four each), David Fincher, D.W. Griffith, Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino (three each).

From over 100 years of cinema, only seven female directors cracked the most popular for their year (based on your 2020 viewing): Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola, Mary Harron, Agnès Varda, Maya Deren, Lois Weber and Alice Guy-Blaché.

Non-UK/US nations represented: Japan (six films), Germany (five), France (four), South Korea (two), Italy, New Zealand, Russia and Sweden (one each).

There are eight Academy Award Best Picture winners: Parasite, The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather, Midnight Cowboy, The Sound of Music, Casablanca, Rebecca, It Happened One Night.

Also of interest: the years between 1973–1984 are heavy on horror, with eight out of twelve spooky movies.

*There are no films represented for 1914, 1912-1907, 1901-1899, 1897, 1894-1889, 1887-1879, 1877-1875.