Welcome to the "Radio Times 100 Greatest Films" series, a set of books to collect and treasure that provides a lively, colourful and informative guide to the 100 movies in key genres. In this case, it's comedy, from silent cinema ("The General") through to the latest critical or commercial successes ("Little Miss Sunshine"). We invite you to join us in our love of cinema, as we celebrate the best films of their kind throughout the history of the moving image, with detailed entries for each film in the 100 as well as expert analyses at the back of the book on the key influences - director, studio - in each genre. You can use these books to enhance your knowledge of film, to have fun testing your friends and family, as a starting point for your own list, or even to build a comprehensive DVD or Blu-ray library. And how did we come up with the 100? As "Radio Times" Film Editor Andrew Collins has already mentioned in his Foreword, fierce debate and noisy deliberation played a major part. But the nuts and bolts of the process were that all contributors voted for their top 50, each top ten was allocated points (from 12 down to 3), with the remaining 40 getting 1 point apiece. The total was then weighted according to how many times a film had been voted for, ensuring that no one person's tastes would outweigh the majority. Honourable mention must go to the films that almost made the 100 - but not quite. The Contributors' Top Tens section at the back of the book is marked with asterisks against titles that are not in the 100, to give you a flavour of the films that were considered but didn't make the list. Every entry includes a plot synopsis and a review providing critical insights from our expert writing team. The most memorable line from each film is quoted, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the film and its stars. Other details include major cast and director/writing credits. Some actors/directors are occasionally credited in different ways on different films. In these cases, we have printed the name as credited on that film, followed in square brackets by the name under which that person is more commonly known.