The Ultimate List of Penultimate Films

When I first came upon the word "penultimate" in a film book, it was in reference to Howard Hawks' El Dorado (1967), a film I love, but which has never been considered one of the director's seminal works. I liked the sound of it. I figured that maybe the author knew something I didn't. I headed to the dictionary to find out what "penultimate" meant, and, to my disappointment, it simply means "second-to-last," or "next-to-last." Oh well. Since then I have come to love the highfalutin sound of that word; it's a simple term dressed up in party clothes. So, here, for fun, is my list of 21 great penultimate films.

1. City Girl (1930, F.W. Murnau)
2. Zero for Conduct (1933, Jean Vigo) 
3. The Devil Doll (1936, Tod Browning)
4. Anatahan (1953, Josef von Sternberg)
5. The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
6. Ordet (1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
7. A King in New York (1957, Charles Chaplin)
8. The Tiger of Eschnapur/The Indian Tomb (1959, Fritz Lang)
9. The End of Summer (1961, Yasujiro Ozu)
10. El Dorado (1967, Howard Hawks)
11. Le Cercle Rouge (1970, Jean-Pierre Melville)
12. Duck, You Sucker (1971, Sergio Leone)
13. Traffic (1971, Jacques Tati)
14. Frenzy (1972, Alfred Hitchcock)
15. The Phantom of Liberty (1974, Luis Bunuel)
16. The Devil, Probably (1977, Robert Bresson)
17. Full Metal Jacket (1987, Stanley Kubrick)
18. Intervista (1987, Federico Fellini)
19. The Company (2003, Robert Altman)
20. Find Me Guilty (2005, Sidney Lumet)
21. A Girl Cut in Two (2007, Claude Chabrol)