The 36th All-Time Best Film

(14th Pre-1998)
The Birds (1963) 

An unsettling tone-poem of a film. The attacks of the birds are ultimately unexplained, and probably not an allegory for environmental concerns. The real point of the story is the interaction of the women, and the potential love story. The ever-present birds and their attacks are just the context—the unpredictable things that life throws at us as we try to live and focus on the important things.