Saddest Movies List

These are 10 of the saddest movies I've ever seen.

In a Lonely Place (1950): Humphrey Bogart is a man suspected of murder who gets an alibi from a beautiful new neighbor. The sadness lies in his character. His charm and goodness are undermined by bursts of rage that horrify him and his friends.

My Dog Skip (2000): Willie is a shy boy until he gets a dog named Skip who enriches his life with new adventures and friends. The sad part is when Willie leaves for college and Skip's world shrinks to waiting in Willie's old room. I cried when the father lifts the aging Skip up onto the bed because he can no longer jump.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995): A man loses his family and goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death where he finds mutual support in a relationship with a prostitute. But the popularity of the movie made me feel good that people related to such deep suffering and didn't dismiss the characters because of their flaws.

Lilja 4-ever (2002): Lilja is a 16 year old girl in Estonia who is lured into prostitution and an early death after being abandoned by her mother who moves to the U.S. with her boyfriend. The saddest thing is that these real-life horrors are mostly invisible while gossip makes headlines.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004): Sam Bicke is obsessed with the injustices in life. The tragedy is that Bicke is angry and alienated because people are hostile to him and people are hostile to him because he's angry and alienated.

Betrayal (1983): This is a love affair told backwards from painful separation to the excitement of first attraction. It's a piercing look at how the things we think will make us happy become the things that give us pain.

The Bicycle Thief (1948): A father is delighted to finally get a job, then devastated at the theft of his bicycle, and then humiliated at being caught stealing a bicycle. The sadness is mostly in the faces of the father, his son and post War World II Rome.

Monster (2003): Prostitute and serial killer Aileen Wuornos is the epitome of misery. This is a movie so wise and sad it made me sympathize with both the killer and the victims.

Nosferatu (1922): This classic vampire movie evokes more sorrow than frights. Two haunting scenes are Nosferatu wearily dragging his coffin along because it's his only place of repose and clawing at a window towards the world he's isolated from.

Cabaret (1972): It's hard to say whether Sally Bowles can't or won't accept the happiness of a conventional life in this story of an entertainer in 1930 Berlin. Either way, her life is a cabaret that's merry but not happy.