10 Best Movies That Are Mostly Flashbacks, Ranked

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Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane standing infront of a banner of himself in Citizen Kane

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Jeremy has more than 2200 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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It would be fun to put this introduction in the middle of the article, having some entries before flashing back to an introduction to explain what a flashback is, since that would demonstrate the idea of one in a fairly nice way. But it’s just not allowed. So imagine it happened, or picture it further down, and then you can kind of get the article equivalent of a flashback that way.

Flashbacks often just show up as one-off scenes, done to explain or emphasize part of a character’s history or worldview in some manner. Most movies aren’t made up entirely of flashbacks (and some make the choice to not have flashbacks at all), but the following films are all interesting because (much) more than half the runtime in each of them is spent on depicting flashbacks.

10 'Nymphomaniac' (2013)

Charlotte Gainsbourg lying in bed in Nymphomaniac with bruises on her face.

Things begin in a pretty grim way in Nymphomaniac, with a woman found beaten and alone in an alleyway, at which point a man finds her and takes her back to his house, seemingly to help her. While there, she tells him about her life, starting with when she was young and then building up to what happened before she was found in the alley, with her story focusing on her life as a self-confessed nymphomaniac.

The film was released in two parts, both in the same year, so Nymphomaniac is ultimately an endurance test and also very provocative for all of its incredibly long runtime. It’s got some alarming stuff in it, even by the standards of Lars von Trier’s filmography, and once the story’s been told throughout all the flashbacks, Von Trier finds other ways to keep things confronting, too.

9 'Moulin Rouge' (2001)

Nicole Kidman as Satine in 'Moulin Rouge!'

Since Moulin Rouge has the main character narrating, right at the start, the statement: “The woman I love is dead,” it’s not too surprising, then, that much of the film goes back in time to showcase that love and inevitable tragedy. And then it’s a bit disarming how lively and colorful the movie ends up being, even if you know it’s always going toward miserable territory, but that’s Baz Luhrmann for you.

Moulin Rouge is an impressively bombastic musical that you're not likely to mistake for the work of any other filmmaker out there.

He mostly makes it work, and Moulin Rouge is an impressively bombastic musical that you're not likely to mistake for the work of any other filmmaker out there. It’s one of the simpler movies that’s largely made up of flashbacks, sure, at least on a structural front, but it still counts, and isn't one of those movies that builds up to something shown right at the start, and then has a good deal of story left to tell after that point (maybe like Pulp Fiction, since if you re-edit that chronologically, everything with Bruce Willis takes place “after” the events of the final scene).

8 'Lolita' (1962)

The young Lolita on the grass looking up at someone off-camera in 1962's Lolita

It can be uncontroversially stated that Stanley Kubrick was one of the greatest directors of all time, to the point where something as good (and as daring) as Lolita is actually a comparatively weak film within Kubrick’s body of work. The fact that it was made at all is kind of the most impressive thing, considering what the original book dealt with, and while the movie’s milder, it’s still quite confronting for something that came out in the 1960s.

There’s a sense of violence and everyone’s lives having fallen apart introduced right at the start, and then things flash back to show how everyone got there. It’s a simple and reliable structure, and mirrors the way the novel is told, too, being one of many movies that demonstrated Kubrick was always pretty great at taking literature and adapting it to film.

7 'Forrest Gump' (1994)

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump in the '90s in 'Forrest Gump'

If you re-edited Forrest Gump to play out in chronological order, it wouldn’t be massively different (well, it would likely be much choppier, though you'd still be able to make sense of things). The titular character tells his life story to a bunch of people in a pretty straightforward way while waiting at a bus stop, and then there’s something of an epilogue after all the storytelling is over.

Turns out, he has quite an eventful life, to say the least, which involves meeting numerous historical figures, taking part in the Vietnam War, being an inspirational long-distance runner, and playing table tennis. There’s a lot that can be said and critiqued about Forrest Gump, but there are certainly things to like, as well, with all the time and different events covered ensuring that things never really feel too boring or repetitive throughout.

6 'American Beauty' (1999)

Mena Suvari and Thora Birch in American Beauty

A little like Lolita, American Beauty is a bit difficult to talk about, and both sort of explore comparably taboo themes. It’s certainly modernized in American Beauty, though, or at least modernized for its time, since the unease and some of the social commentary here is distinctly of the late 1990s, as is the style and, for lack of a better word, overall vibe.

As for the flashback stuff, American Beauty does begin with the main character narrating: “I am 42 years old; in less than a year, I'll be dead.” That doesn’t make the timeframe nor the ultimate ending surprising on its own, but there is quite a bit of mystery involved, as a result, and the circumstances of the eventual death are more interesting than the fact that the death occurred at all. So, it works.

5 'Sinners' (2025)

Sinners - 2025 - Michael B. Jordan and a few others ready themselves for an attack

You don’t have to go far back in time yourself to remember Sinners coming out, since it is, at the time of writing, still a fairly recent release. It’s a vampire movie that’s also quite a bit more than just a vampire movie, since it’s also a period drama, something of an action film, one centered on music, and a few other things all at once; all in a way that does work to keep you, as a viewer, on your toes.

That Sinners can be so surprising when its opening scene implies quite a lot is all the more impressive, and once the flashbacks are over, there is still another climax of sorts to go. And then further, Sinners jumps forward in time a great deal for its very last scene, but in a way that works, and ends the film on a high note (even though, given all the climactic stuff that happened before, regarding action and emotional stuff, it could’ve arguably ended on an earlier high note or two).

4 'Double Indemnity' (1944)

A woman in sunglasses and a man in a hat hide behind a bar in Double Indemnity, 1944.

Right at the start of Double Indemnity, a man confesses involvement in some fairly serious criminal activity, and then his confession becomes the film’s narration as things flash back to show how his life fell apart. It’s not the question of whether or not he makes it that drives the tension here, but more just wondering to how great an extent things will go wrong, and how exactly they’ll fall apart.

It could be the definitive film noir movie overall, or it would be, if not for another movie by the same director that came out in 1950, and also had a similar structure. But more on that one in a bit. Double Indemnity holds up well for something that’s now more than eight decades old, and it manages to feel of its time in some ways, sure, but entirely timeless in other ways at the same time.

3 'Memento' (2000)

Guy Pearce looks at some polaroid photographs while sitting inside a car in Memento.

Standing out from all these other movies, Memento has one of the most inventive structures of all time, done to simulate the feeling of having short-term memory loss. Some might consider it not worthy of being included here, but then, on the other hand, there’s a pretty dramatic death that happens right at the start of the film, and then things go back in time (in that interesting/strange ordering) to show the events that led up to that murder.

Kind of. There’s a lot going on in Memento, and it’s tempting to call it all chaotic, but there’s a method and purpose to it all, and it makes sense, to a surprising extent, once it all comes to a conclusion. Or once the two timelines meet, and the flashes have stopped backing up. Anyway, it’s Christopher Nolan pretty much at his best and most inventive, and at such an early point in his filmmaking career, too.

2 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

Hey, another film noir movie directed by Billy Wilder! Sunset Boulevard, like Double Indemnity, has a doomed protagonist reflecting on/narrating what led to things going so badly for them. With Sunset Boulevard, it went up a degree, though, since the protagonist here is introduced lying dead in a pool, and so he’s narrating from the dead, which also makes it in line with the aforementioned American Beauty.

After that opening scene that introduces the framing device, the series of flashbacks does play out in a linear fashion, and it’s not really the kind of thing where it cuts back and forth between the flashbacks and the “present” day, but still. You do get the build-up to the opening sequence, and it’s done well, and then Sunset Boulevard obviously ends in an absolutely incredible fashion, too.

1 'Citizen Kane' (1941)

Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in 'Citizen Kane'

Citizen Kane’s structure is one of the best things about it, but also, it’s obviously legendary for so many reasons, and there are countless other great things about something so definitive within cinema history and all. But the flashbacks here are really creative, and add immensely to the whole mystery angle of Citizen Kane, with the whole movie being about trying to unpack just who Charles Foster Kane might've been.

Different people who knew him are interviewed about various parts of his life, and it’s through the recollections of other people that something of a portrait of the man (though not a complete one) is painted. Citizen Kane’s smaller story takes place in the “present,” and things move steadily through the whole process of trying to discover who he was, and what his final words might've meant, but the bulk of the film’s runtime is inevitably spent on flashbacks that flesh Kane out.