The Best Ensemble Casts of All Time?

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Police Court (1932)
His Girl Friday (1940)
Ziegfeld Follies (1946)
Seven Samurai (1954)
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
The Big Country (1958)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Ocean's Eleven or The Magnificent Seven (1960)
The Misfits(1961)
The Longest Day or Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The V.I.P.s or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or The Great Escape(1963)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
The Bible: In The Beginning (1966)
Casino Royale or Enter Laughing (1967)
Oh! What a Lovely War or Carry On Camping (1969)
Airport (1970)
The Godfather (1972)
The Towering Inferno or Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or Airport & Towering Inferno (1974)
A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Cannonball Run (1981)
The Godfather: Part III (1990)
JFK (1991)
A Few Good Men or Glengarry Glen Ross or Reservoir Dogs (1992)
True Romance (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Heat or The Usual Suspects (1995)
Sleepers (1996)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Runaway Jury (2003)
Sin City (2005)
The Departed(2006)
What Just Happened (2008)

This is a real quick list I put together to get the thread started. Any I should add or remove?

I would have to add The Departed (2006) to the list.

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Also add Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
Ford+Connery=amazing

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The greatest ensemble acting team of all time is easily JFK for me.

Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland were all so INCREDIBLE in that movie.

Shame they couldn't find a decent lead actor...

Lawrence Of Arabia




Peter O'Toole
Alec Guinness
Anthony Quinn
Jack Hawkins
Edmund Allenby
Omar Sharif
José Ferrer
Anthony Quayle
Claude Rains
Arthur Kennedy

Great movie, great cast

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I second Lawrence of Arabia.

I also like the ensemble casts in Clue, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Usual Suspects, Murder by Death, LotR:The Fellowship of the Ring, Short Cuts, Pulp Fiction, The Cannonball Run, The Departed, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Godfather... and many more!

Also, I am editing the thread title, because there is no such word as casted.

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Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) gets my vote as the film with the largest percentage of past and future Oscar winners, who made up 50% of the 10 main roles. Included were: Walter Brennan, 3 Oscars; Spencer Tracy, 2 Oscars; along with Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, and Dean Jagger, with 1 Oscar each. Plus Robert Ryan, who deserved an Oscar for many of his roles.

Thanks ruffy for this one, I thought it was a cowboy movie, so looked it up I have seen it many, many, years ago, I can't remember it all, wouldn't mind seeing it again maybe on some cable chanel late at night

Yeah, I've found it stuck in the Westerns category in some film rental stores, and it is set in the West but post 1945 and is one of the best dramas I've ever seen. There is one scene in which Robert Ryan delivers this long piece of dialogue to Tracy; Tracy just stands there, looking down at the dirt road, but it's the silent Tracy you're watching throughout the scene, not Ryan. Borgnine himself cited it in talking about what a great actor Tracy was; said Tracy just stands there, but then gives Ryan a quick look "at precisely the right moment."

What's funny is that director John Sturges was known for directing big budget action films like The Big Country and The Great Escape, yet he was nominated for the Best Director Oscar for Bad Day with its small but highly talented cast. Sturges lost that year to the director of Marty, the film for which Borgnine won his Best Actor Oscar.

Thanks for the info I am a big fan of Spencer

Maybe the second most-talented movie cast was in Sleuth (1972) with past or future Oscar winners accounting for 40% of the five primary roles in that film. That comes down to just 2 people but what a pair: Sir Lawrence Olivier with 14 Oscar nominations, 2 wins for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet, and 2 honorary awards; and Sir Michael Caine (not his proper knighted title, but you know who I mean), nominated 6 times for Oscars and winner of 2 for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and The Cider House Rules (1999). What’s really odd is that about 90% of the film is just Caine and Olivier, alone or together, on screen; the rest of the cast is so rarely seen that it’s an almost 2-man show. Furthermore, both Caine and Olivier were nominated for Best Actor Oscar for their roles in this one film. The movie also was nominated for Best Director and Best Music-Original Dramatic Score. Olivier won the New York Film Critics award for Best Actor for this film.

And as in Bad Day at Black Rock, there's a scene in Sleuth that is a great example of real acting ability. The scene occurs as Olivier's character tries to make a room appear to have been burglarized and with one hand sweeps several pictures and knicknacks off a fireplace mantle. I heard Caine talk about this scene on the Johnny Carson show back then, describing how Olivier knocks the items off the mantle and then delivers a long speech to Caine. It was all filmed in one long scene, and when the director finally said "Cut," Olivier turned to the crew and asked, "May I have a doctor, please?" According to Caine, some glass figurines broke as Olivier swept them from the mantle and cut a large gash across the palm of his hand. Olivier immediately stuck that hand in the side pocket of his jacket and finished the scene, by which time the hand and pocket were a bloody mess. No one on the set even knew that Olivier had been injured until he finished the scene.

What's more, Caine said, that was the shot that appeared in the final film--they showed a clip and he described the action step by step. And sure enough, if you watch closely in the movie, you can spot a small jerk of Olivier's arm as he knocks the items from the mantle but he completes the motion and immediately thrusts his hand in the jacket pocket. He goes on with his dialogue for a long while until the scene changes, and although his palm is sliced open and bleeding, there's not the slightest change in his tone of voice, his facial expression, his body movements, nothing. Olivier plays it out like nothing at all is wrong, and that my friends is real acting.

You might add to your list two John Sturges films I mentioned earlier--The Big Country and The Great Escape. Also, look at the number of stars in The Magnificient Seven--Brynner, McQueen, Colburn, Bronson, Eli Wallach. And The Misfits--Gable, Monroe, Wallach, Thema Ritter.

I just watched, The Magnificent Seven, again last week, I am a big Cowboy movie fan Love The Misfits, very powerful sad movie

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
I loved the cast in this movie, Bridges and Eastwood were perfect, and G. Lewis was wonderful.



And I hated and loved the ending to this film as much as any other.

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FTW...

I can't believe a thread like this even exists without mention of Carry On Camping.



Oh, and maybe Nashville.

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You jest?

Sid James, Kenny Williams, Babs Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw, Terry Scott, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jaques at their collective peak?

I'm no huge fan of the Carry On films (though watched Carry On Teacher on TV the other week and it was perfectly charming) but I defy anyone not to watch Camping without pursing their lips, widening their eyes and exclaiming "Oooohhhh" at every given opportunity!

Ok sweetie, sorry for I used to be a big fan of Carry On movies, not sure if they age that well, but if you say they are great, then they are great

Heck no! 90% of them were absolute nonsense but I've always had a soft spot for ...Camping. Carry On Screaming is a perfectly valid addition to any list of Horror movie spoofs, too, no worse than The Fearless Vampire Killers to my mind.