Spring in a Small Town a 1948 love story set in the ruins of the Japanese occupation, is ranked No. 1 on the list of the best 100 Chinese films, the Hong Kong Film Awards Association said Monday.

The second best film is the 1986 A Better Tomorrow, a Hong Kong movie about police battling gangsters. No. 3 is another Hong Kong film: Days of Being Wild, a 1990 movie about a man who searches for his mother, the association said.

Yellow Earth, a 1984 film from mainland China about a Communist guerrilla's visit to a poor village in western China, was ranked No. 4, the group said.

The Taiwanese historical drama A City of Sadness, about Taiwan's violent transition from Japanese rule to Chinese control in the late 1940s, was fifth on the list.

The other films - listed in order of rank - were Long Arm of the Law (Hong Kong, 1984), Dragon Inn (Taiwan, 1967), Boat People (Hong Kong, 1982), Hsia Nu (Taiwan, 1971) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan, Hong Kong, 2000).

(China Daily March 16, 2005)