26 Best Classic Movies on HBO Max (April 2024)

With the launch of Max, the new site has a hub devoted to just movies under the Turner Classic Movies banner. The number of acclaimed films can be pretty overwhelming, and shy of Criterion Channel, you won’t find a better collection of classic Hollywood, indie, and foreign films available for streaming. But it can be a little tough to know where to start when there’s so much good stuff available, so we’ve narrowed it down a bit by providing a list of the best classics available on Max. We’ll keep updating this list as new classics are added to Max‘s massive selection, but in the meantime, take a look at these giants of cinematic history.

Disclaimer: These titles are available on US Max.

For more recommendations, check out our list of the best movies on Max, Netflix, Prime Video, or Hulu.

‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% | IMDb: 8.2/10

Starring Marilyn Monroe in one of her most iconic roles, Some Like It Hot follows Joe and Jerry, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, respectively, who flee, dressed as women, after they witness Spats Colombo (George Raft) and his mafia commit the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Somewhat ahead of its time, the movie was nominated for six Academy Awards and won one, with its tight, comedic script and excellent performances showcasing how deserving it is of such accolades. Irresistibly funny, the story has tender moments, too, with Joe and Jerry’s friendship leaping in all its unconfined joy from the screen. Charming and cheeky, legendary director Billy Wilder brings a twinkle to the eye of all on screen, especially Monroe, who unsurprisingly dazzles. – Jake HodgesWatch on Max

‘I Married a Witch’ (1942)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% | IMDb: 7.1/10

In the romantic comedyI Married a Witch, Veronica Lake stars as Jennifer, a mischievous witch from the 17th century who’s accidentally released into the modern world. When she crosses paths with Wallace (Fredric March), a descendant of her old enemy, the two quickly fall in love, sparking a delightful blend of romance and supernatural chaos. As Jennifer attempts to win Wallace’s heart, her magical antics cause hilarious mayhem and unforeseen consequences. The film showcases Lake’s enchanting charm and March’s charismatic performance, creating a perfect chemistry between the leads. Renowned for her signature hairstyle, Veronica Lake shines in her role as the spirited and captivating witch. I Married a Witch is a timeless classic that has delighted audiences for generations, one of whom, Sol Saks, drew inspiration in creating the show Bewitched. The film is a lighthearted escape that appeals to all who appreciate love’s enchanting journey through time.Watch on Max

‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ (1934)

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% | IMDb: 7.3/10

Based on the play and subsequent adventure novel of the same name, director Harold Young (The Storm) pumps life into the 18th-century French Revolution vigilante. The Scarlet Pimpernel has many tenets of what we now consider staples of the superhero genre: secret identities, damsels, and daring escapes. The story follows Leslie Howard (Pygmalion) as Sir Percy Blakeney, who presents as a weak, ineffective aristocrat but secretly takes on the role of the Scarlet Pimpernel to lead a band of men to rescue his fellow upper-class citizens from the guillotines of the Reign of Terror. Though the premise of the film feels like a stark contrast to our modern “Eat the Rich” sensibilities, it is still a classic worth enjoying. Between Howard’s performance of the Pimpernel, which is considered the definitive mold of the character, and the jaunty swashbuckling, it’s a good time all around. – Tauri MillerWatch on Max

‘Gone with the Wind’ (1938)

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% | IMDb: 8.2/10

Adapted from the novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind is a classic romance epic that takes place during the American Civil War. Though a product of its time, with all the views on slavery and plantations that come with that, the film has a wonderful love story between Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), who play a game of cat and mouse as they grapple with their feelings for one another despite their marital and familial obligations. This ten-time Academy Award winner is a fascinating view into classic cinema — the costumes, the filming techniques, and the storytelling sensibilities that would pave a path for filmmakers for years to come.Watch on Max

‘Pygmalion’ (1938)

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% | IMDb: 7.7/10

A true classic that has been retold, reimagined, and redesigned, Pygmalion is an original story first told on stage by theater icon George Bernard Shaw. Adapted by directors Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, with assistance from Shaw on the screenplay, Pygmalion stars Howard as Professor Henry Higgins, a dictation expert determined to transform a low-class cockney girl (Wendy Hiller) into a proper English lady. Cleverly written, Pygmalion plays with language and classism through a lively romp. An ideal revisitation is suggested for fans of My Fair Lady, She’s All That, or Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. – Yael TygielWatch on Max

‘Blithe Spirit’ (1945)

Rotten Tomatoes: 77% | IMDb: 7.0/10

Blithe Spirit, based on the hit play, is a delightful comedy starring Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) and Constance Cummings, along with a spooky performance by Kay Hammond. The charming picture follows a man and his new wife as they find themselves haunted by the ghost of his first wife, whom only he can hear. Blithe Spirit is such an endearing story that it ran successfully in theaters in London, as well as spending two years gracing the stages of Broadway. Blithe Spirit was even remade, starring Dan Stevens (Legion), Isla Fisher (Wolf Like Me), and Judi Dench (Belfast) and directed by Edward Hall. – Yael TygielWatch on Max

‘The Lady Vanishes’ (1938)

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | IMDb: 7.7/10

The Lady Vanishes is an underappreciated Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Margaret Lockwood as Iris Henderson, a wealthy young woman traveling by train through Europe and the only rider to have noticed the disappearance of Miss Froy (May Whitty). Hitchcock, the king of suspense, brings to life a riveting mystery based on the story by Ethel Lina White, adapted by writers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (who also directed The Blue Lagoon). The Lady Vanishes is a precursor to modern missing woman mysteries yet an often forgotten gem in Hitchcock’s catalog. – Yael TygielWatch on Max

‘Casablanca’ (1942)

Rotten Tomatoes: 99% | IMDb: 8.5/10

The 1942 winner for Best Picture, Casablanca has lost none of its impact over the decades. It really is a movie that has it all—action, adventure, intrigue, romance, patriotism, sacrifice—it’s more than just “Here’s looking at you, kid.” The story follows jaded nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) who just wants to be left alone until the love of his life, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), comes to him looking for help for her husband, a Czech Resistance leader. Don’t be daunted by the film’s prestige; you can still enjoy it for how damned entertaining and surprisingly funny it can be. Casablanca still hits with all the immediacy of its original release as it embraces universal themes about love and self-sacrifice. It’s a beautiful movie, and one worth revisiting. – Matt GoldbergWatch on Max

‘North by Northwest’ (1959)

Rotten Tomatoes: 97% | IMDb: 8.3/10

Obviously, Alfred Hitchcock was “The Master of Suspense”, but a film like North by Northwest shows how he could use that suspense in so many different ways. Sometimes it would be horror; other times it could be drama, but here it’s used for one of the best thrillers ever made. The film follows Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), who is mistaken by some goons for special agent George Kaplan. Kidnapped, drugged, and framed for murder just for a start, poor Roger goes on the run for his life and to find some answers about his predicament. Hitchock puts his action chops on display with some exhilarating set pieces, but never loses sight of the breakneck pacing and exciting narrative of mistaken identity. – Matt GoldbergWatch on Max

‘Blood Simple’ (1984)

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% | IMDb: 7.5/10

Few filmmakers make a debut as confident or stunning as Blood Simple, but the Coen Brothers has no problem making their voices heard with their first feature. Dan Hedaya plays a dive bar owner who suspects that his wife (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him with an employee (John Getz). His suspicions confirmed, he asks a P.I. (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill the lovers, but this plot soon spirals out of control and leads to unexpected bloodshed. The Coens made a masterpiece of neo noir and while they would go on to a series of classics like Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men, their first film still ranks among their best.Watch on Max

‘Ikiru’ (1952)

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | IMDb: 8.3/10

While director Akira Kurosawa is associated with movies featuring samurai and ronin like Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Red Beard, and Rashomon, one of his most powerful features centered on a humble government bureaucrat. Kenji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is that bureaucrat, and when he discovers he has stomach cancer with less than a year to live, he goes on a search to give his life meaning by trying to build a playground. The film is a powerful meditation on what we want our legacies to mean, what it means to live your life to the fullest in service of others, and the ability to find the courage to make a difference. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking masterpiece from a filmmaker whose filmography is filled with masterpieces. – Matt GoldbergWatch on Max

‘M’ (1931)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% | IMDb: 8.3/10

This 1931 Fritz Lang thriller is incredibly dark yet absolutely captivating. The plot follows a serial child murderer (Peter Lorre) whose activities raises police presence in a German city. The criminal underworld, unable to conduct business as usual, also begins hunting for the murderer. This was Lang’s first film to use sound, and he employs it like a master, weaving in whistling, music, and more into the plot. The overall movie is a fascinating look at how societies function when there’s a predator in their midst and how the cause of justice can be twisted and excused given the right set of circumstances. But more than anything, M will haunt you as it has haunted audiences for decades. – Matt GoldbergWatch on Max

‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ (1928)

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | IMDb: 8.1/10

You’ve probably never seen a silent era movie quite like The Passion of Joan of Arc. The way the film is shot, composed, and crafted stands apart from most silent movies of the film and leaves an unforgettable impact. Carl Theodore Dreyer tells the haunting final days of Joan of Arc (Renée Jeanne Falconetti) and enters a fascinating and haunting intersection of faith and power with Joan’s interrogators refusing to believe the young woman in front of them. What’s so striking about The Passion of Joan of Arc is how modern it feels despite its technological limitations. If you think silent movies are just Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, take some time to watch this haunting vision.Watch on Max

‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (1952)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100% | IMDb: 8.3/10

One of the best musicals in the history of Hollywood, Singin’ in the Rain is an ode to the industry during its time of transition. The story follows the industry moving from silent films to talkies, and caught in the middle is star Donald Lockwood (Gene Kelly), who knows he can make the jump, but barely tolerates his vain leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen). Donald then plots to re-record Lina’s dialogue with chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), and the two start to fall for each other. Packed with terrific songs like “Make ‘Em Laugh” and “Moses Supposes” as well as the stunning choreography and dreamlike dance numbers crafted by Kelly, Singin’ in the Rain is movie you just get lost in and it reminds us why we love movies in the first place. – Matt GoldbergWatch on HBO

‘Yojimbo’ (1961)

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% | IMDb: 8.2/10

If you’ve seen A Fistful of Dollars or read Red Harvest, you probably already know the story of Yojimbo. Toshiro Mifune plays a ronin who comes to a small town to turn two competing crime lords against each other for his own profit. It’s kind of a nasty, cynical little plot that gives Yojimbo its own energy and tone compared to Kurosawa’s other samurai movies. Still, it’s an entertaining action movie that shows that Kurosawa didn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time he made a film; sometimes he could just make yet another great movie and then move on to the next one. – Matt GoldbergWatch on Max

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% | IMDb: 8.3/10

2001: A Space Odyssey is the kind of groundbreaking classic that we seem to take for granted these days even while scores of modern filmmakers are still regularly cribbing from it. (Ad Astra, we love you, but you owe 2001 a lot.) It helps that there’s still so much to unpack in Stanley Kubrick’s magnum opus – from the meaning of the monoliths to the true nature of the star child (and, to be honest, everything in between). It’s also the rare movie that has become totally engrained in the cultural consciousness (a local museum did a highly Instagrammable photo ops where you could stand inside the mysterious white room), while still maintaining its enigmatic, thought-provoking essence. The boundary-pushing visual effects also remain as impressive as ever, as well, clearing the path for Star Wars, Alien, and Avatar in one go. Much like those obsidian monoliths, 2001 was the movie that, when the rest of cinema touched it, dramatically pushed the medium forward. – Drew TaylorWatch on Max

‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% | IMDb: 8.1/10

This Palme d’Or-winning gem is an odd, beautiful mishmash. Paris, Texas is a celebration of the American southwest made by a distinctly German auteur (Wim Wenders); it’s a road trip movie that never hits any of the expected notes; and a story about a father (Harry Dean Stanton) attempting to reconnect with his son (Hunter Carson, son of Karen Black and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson) that is remarkably free of treacly sentimentality. Dreamy and ethereal, with a distinctive score by the great Ry Cooder, Paris, Texas casts a singular spell, one that is remarkably hard to shake. Stanton plays a mute man who walks out of the desert and collapses. After he recovers, he makes an attempt to reconnect with his brother (Dean Stockwell) and later his son (Carson) and wife (Nastassja Kinski). It’s a rambling, sometimes downright cosmic, trip through the American southwest, with a superb, idiosyncratic script by Carson and the legendary Sam Shepard that is rightly regarded as one of the very best films of the 1980s. Just watch it. – Drew TaylorWatch on Max

‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (1964)

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% | IMDb: 7.5/10

The Fab Four ain’t just fab at music. They’re also pretty fab at gonzo, surreal, silly screen comedy. The Beatles released A Hard Day’s Night in 1964 at the peak of Beatlemania, where literally nothing they did wasn’t accompanied by a bunch of adoring fans literally screaming their praises. They could’ve phoned it in and still made a bunch of bucks. Instead, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr hired veteran British comedy director Richard Lester and pushed the limits of film comedy to their brinks, while still maintaining the accessible pleasures of its genre (hey, kinda like their music!). Is there a plot? It’s something like: The Beatles get through a day in the life (haw-haw) while dealing with crazy fans and Paul’s crazier grandpa (Wilfrid Brambell, perfection). As they run around London from fans, to photoshoots and press conferences, and eventually to a climactic concert, Lester has tons of fun with the cinematic form. The Beatles themselves might be startlingly deadpan comics (Harrison’s answer to “What’s your haircut called?” in a press conference is a line reading of the century), but the film is smart enough to contrast that energy with wild, raucous, and endearingly silly energy. The musical sequences, with their innovative editing and hyperkinetic camerawork, also managed to help invent and innovate what we now know as “music videos,” too. A Hard Day’s Night makes for an easy day’s watch. – Greg SmithWatch on Max

‘The 400 Blows’ (1959)

Rotten Tomatoes: 99% | IMDb: 8.1/10

Widely considered one of the first movies of the French New Wave — and a definitive entry, at that — director and co-writer François Truffaut brings to us the story of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a mischievious young boy living in Paris in the 1950s in The 400 Blows. Antoine frequently acts out, resorting to petty crimes and making up lies in order to get out of going to school and seek the attention and love he craves from his mother and step-father. The 400 Blows is a semi-autobiographical work drawing on Truffaut’s youth and the exploits of himself and his friends growing up in Paris. It also serves as a harsh indictment of the legal system dedicated to handling juvenile offenders in France at the time, criticizing the handling of Antoine’s petty crimes as much as Antoine’s behavior. Overall, The 400 Blows lays the thematic groundwork for the French New Wave, itself a pivotal film movement dedicated to showing the world, grit and all, in a way which eschewed traditional filmmaking in favor of more surreal techniques. – Allie GemmillWatch on Max

‘8 1/2’ (1963)

Rotten Tomatoes: 97% | IMDb: 8.0/10

Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is a pivotal piece of Italian cinema. A semi-autobiographical work drawing from Fellini’s own life as a creative and passionate figure, 8 1/2 follows Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), a director grappling with his life, the people who populate it, the women who vy for his attention, and the massive amount of creative blockage preventing him from crafting his next big project. Fellini’s 1963 deploys dreamlike, near operatic cinematography and long setpieces to detail Guido’s search for some truth about himself and his world, taking the viewer into what we can only imagine was also Fellini’s own creative back-and-forth at some point in his own life. Overall, 8 1/2 is a standout Fellini feature and one which should not be skipped as you make your way through classic movies. – Allie GemmillWatch on Max