Category: lists

>Film lists are inherently (maybe by design intentionally so) controversial. Who can really rank aesthetic objects? Well… I think there is more to doing good criticism than mere opinion, and therefore maybe it is possible to legitimately rank films, up to a point. Regardless, I find lists to be like suggestions for viewing – even so-called film cannons. The better the list the more closely the viewing suggestions are to the ideal list of “the best films.” If I go to a well-round film scholar/historian/critic and ask the question: “If I wanted to teach myself the history of film, what are the best 100 films I should see so that I may begin my quest?” I would then expect that scholar/historian/critic to produce a rather good list that approximates that ideal “best” films of all time list. But of course the list would still be highly debatable and, if honest, constantly being revised. The question could also be for the best films of the decade, or from Hong Kong, or Film Noir, etc.

This post, however, is not about cannons but about making a concerted effort on my part to see more great films. So I took a look at the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s top 100 films list to see what I have missed. I don’t think the list adequately answers the question I posed above, but it is a good list. I’ve put their list below and highlighted the ones I have either not seen or have not fully finished and should. My goal is to work my way through these remaining films and write about them in some fashion. I don’t expect to say anything new or profound, but I do hope to grow in my understanding and convey something of that understanding. Fortunately the number of films I haven’t seen from the list are only 14, so I’ll still be able to work on other things (like grad school and my thesis!).

So, here’s the list:

1 Citizen Kane (Welles, Orson; 1941; US)
2 Rules of the Game, The/La Regle du jeu (Renoir, Jean; 1939; France)
3 Vertigo (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1958; US)
4 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, Stanley; 1968; UK)
5 8½ (Fellini, Federico; 1963; Italy)
6 Seven Samurai, The (Kurosawa, Akira; 1954; Japan)
7 Godfather, The (Coppola, Francis; 1972; US)
8 Tokyo Story/Tokyo monogatari (Ozu, Yasujiro; 1953; Japan)
9 Searchers, The (Ford, John; 1956; US)
10 Singin’ in the Rain (Donen, Stanley/Gene Kelly; 1952; US)
11 Sunrise (Murnau, F.W.; 1927; US)
12 Battleship Potemkin/Potemkin (Eisenstein, Sergei; 1925; Russia)
13 Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, David; 1962; UK)
14 Passion of Joan of Arc, The (Dreyer, Carl; 1928; France)
15 Rashomon (Kurosawa, Akira; 1950; Japan)
16 L’Atalante (Vigo, Jean; 1934; France)
17 Bicycle Thieves/The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, Vittorio; 1948; Italy)
18 Godfather Part II, The (Coppola, Francis; 1974; US)
19 Raging Bull (Scorsese, Martin; 1980; US)
20 Third Man, The (Reed, Carol; 1949; UK)
21 City Lights (Chaplin, Charles; 1931; US)
22 Touch of Evil (Welles, Orson; 1958; US)
23 La Dolce Vita (Fellini, Federico; 1960; Italy)
24 Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (Carne, Marcel; 1945; France)
25 Casablanca (Curtiz, Michael; 1942; US)
26 La Grande Illusion/Grand Illusion (Renoir, Jean; 1937; France)
27 General, The [1926] (Keaton, Buster/Clyde Bruckman; 1926; US)
28 Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, Billy; 1950; US)
29 Psycho [1960] (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1960; US)
30 Breathless/A Bout de Souffle (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1959; France)
31 L’Avventura (Antonioni, Michelangelo; 1960; Italy-France)
32 Some Like it Hot (Wilder, Billy; 1959; US)
33 Jules et Jim (Truffaut, Francois; 1961; France)
34 Persona (Bergman, Ingmar; 1966; Sweden)
35 Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, Stanley; 1964; UK)
36 Seventh Seal, The (Bergman, Ingmar; 1957; Sweden)
37 Gold Rush, The (Chaplin, Charles; 1925; US)
38 Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1966; Russia)
39 Taxi Driver (Scorsese, Martin; 1976; US)
40 Chinatown (Polanski, Roman; 1974; US)
41 Ordet (Dreyer, Carl; 1955; Denmark)
42 Pather Panchali (Ray, Satyajit; 1955; India)
43 It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, Frank; 1946; US)
44 Apocalypse Now (Coppola, Francis; 1979; US)
45 Rear Window (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1954; US)
46 Intolerance (Griffith, D.W.; 1916; US)
47 Ugetsu Monogatari/Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, Kenji; 1953; Japan)
48 400 Blows, The/Les Quatre Cents Coups (Truffaut, Francois; 1959; France)
49 Contempt/Le Mepris (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1963; France-Italy)
50 Au Hasard, Balthazar/Balthazar (Bresson, Robert; 1966; France)
51 Magnificent Ambersons, The (Welles, Orson; 1942; US)
52 Night of the Hunter, The (Laughton, Charles; 1955; US)
53 M (Lang, Fritz; 1931; Germany)
54 Wild Strawberries/Smultronsället (Bergman, Ingmar; 1957; Sweden)
55 Wild Bunch, The (Peckinpah, Sam; 1969; US)
56 Modern Times (Chaplin, Charles; 1936; US)
57 Wizard of Oz, The (Fleming, Victor; 1939; US)
58 Conformist, The (Bertolucci, Bernardo; 1969; Italy-France-Germany)
59 La Strada (Fellini, Federico; 1954; Italy)
60 Mirror, The/Zerkalo (Tarkovsky, Andrei; 1976; Russia)
61 Nashville (Altman, Robert; 1975; US)
62 Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, Ingmar; 1982; Sweden)
63 North by Northwest (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1959; US)
64 Greed (von Stroheim, Erich; 1924; US)
65 Metropolis (Lang, Fritz; 1926; Germany)
66 Blade Runner (Scott, Ridley; 1982; US)
67 Rio Bravo (Hawks, Howard; 1959; US)
68 Earrings of Madame de…/Madame de… (Ophuls, Max; 1953; France-Italy)
69 Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, Buster; 1924; US)
70 Pickpocket (Bresson, Robert; 1959; France)
71 Playtime (Tati, Jacques; 1967; France)
72 L’Age d’Or (Bunuel, Luis; 1930; France)
73 Ikiru/To Live/Doomed/Living (Kurosawa, Akira; 1952; Japan)
74 All About Eve (Mankiewicz, Joseph L.; 1950; US)
75 Voyage in Italy/Viaggio in Italia/Journey to Italy (Rossellini, Roberto; 1953; Italy)
76 Apartment, The (Wilder, Billy; 1960; US)
77 Viridiana (Bunuel, Luis; 1961; Spain)
78 Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, Werner; 1972; Germany)
79 Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, Stanley; 1975; UK)
80 On the Waterfront (Kazan, Elia; 1954; US)
81 Pierrot le fou (Godard, Jean-Luc; 1965; France-Italy)
82 Man with a Movie Camera, The (Vertov, Dziga; 1929; USSR)
83 Blue Velvet (Lynch, David; 1986; US)
84 Nosferatu (Murnau, F.W.; 1922; Germany)
85 Leopard, The (Visconti, Luchino; 1963; Italy)
86 Notorious (Hitchcock, Alfred; 1946; US)
87 Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, Sergio; 1968; Italy-US)
88 Gone with the Wind (Fleming, Victor; 1939; US)
89 Sansho the Bailiff/Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi, Kenji; 1954; Japan)
90 His Girl Friday (Hawks, Howard; 1940; US)
91 Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, Alain; 1961; France-Italy)
92 My Darling Clementine (Ford, John; 1946; US)
93 Clockwork Orange, A (Kubrick, Stanley; 1971; UK)
94 Dekalog/Decalogue (Kieslowski, Krszystof; 1988; Poland)
95 Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, Max; 1948; US)
96 King Kong [1933] (Cooper, Merian C./Ernest B. Schoedsack; 1933; US)
97 Amarcord (Fellini, Federico; 1973; Italy)
98 Duck Soup (McCarey, Leo; 1933; US)
99 Stagecoach (Ford, John; 1939; US)
100 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (Ford, John; 1962; US)

One last thing: working through a list like this reminds me a book I’ve been wanting to read – Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. In other words, I would love to take this list, or any other similar list, and concertedly work my way through, maybe from the back to the front. Two a week would only take a year. What a year. I know you understand.

>Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directed Little Miss Sunshine. Recently they were interview on NPR Radio here. They were asked to list some of their fave DVDs. Here they are (shamelessly copied directly from the NPR web site):

This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006): A Sundance favorite, this film shines light on the secretive Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system. Dayton describes it as a dramatic and funny detective story that is both entertaining and troubling.

Visions of Light (1992): A film for film lovers, this documentary about the art of cinematography features clips from more than 100 movies. The film helps viewers appreciate cinematography. “It makes anyone who loves film a better viewer,” Dayton says.

Coming Home (1978): Hal Ashby’s 1978 film stars Jane Fonda as a nurse in a veterans’ hospital and Jon Voight as a wounded Vietnam vet. Dayton and Faris are both fans of Hal Ashby and consider this to be one of his best works. This film about the after-effects of war resonates as truthfully today as it did 25 years ago, Dayton says.

Gates of Heaven (1980): This comical documentary about the pet cemetery business helped launch Errol Morris’ career as a director. “It’s a film that keeps unfolding and becoming richer and funnier and sadder,” Dayton says. Faris adds that this rich character study is her favorite film. “Everyone should see this movie,” she says.

A Touch of Greatness (2005): This Independent Lens documentary profiles Albert Cullum, a maverick public school teacher who encouraged creativity in the classroom. Faris appreciated the beautiful archival footage shot by Robert Downy Sr. and describes the film as an incredible portrait of an amazing teacher. “If we had more teachers in the country like him,” she says, “we’d have a great country.”

Half Nelson (2006): Academy-Award nominee Ryan Gosling plays an idealistic public school teacher who develops a friendship with a student after she finds that he has a drug problem. Faris and Dayton praise Gosling and Shareeka Epps for incredible performances in a film that did not shy away from moral ambiguity.

The Five Obstructions (2004): This 2004 documentary about the creative process profiles a filmmaker charged with the task of remaking his favorite film five times — each time with a different obstacle. Dayton recommends this film for anyone involved in the creative process. Faris describes it as “creative hazing” and appreciates its illustration of the struggle and the joy of the artistic process.

ALSO RECOMMENDED
The Science of Sleep (2006)
The Office, U.S. Version, First Two Seasons
Mr. Show, The Complete Fourth Season

Unfortunately, I have to admit that the only film on this list that I’ve seen is Visions of Light, which I, in fact, mentioned in my previous post.

>I don’t have any particular reason for posting these lists, other than curiosity. Personally I find these kinds of list interesting, even though they may not mean a lot. If they say anything, it is about the different reasons people vote for their top films. Although we cannot delve into the psychology of the voters, I believe directors pick films they wish they had directed, critics pick films they wish they had had the chance to write about when they first appeared, and the IMDb highlights the tendency to pick audience favorites and recent films. It would be interesting to have some demographics to go with these lists.

Assuming there is any level of objectivity in such lists, a question I have is, who might the better person be to create a top-ten list: the professional filmmaker, the professional critic, or the avid fan? Is this even a fair question?

Internet Movie Database top ten film – based on users’ votes
1. The Godfather
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. The Godfather: Part II
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
5. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
6. Casablanca
7. Schindler’s List
8. Pulp Fiction
9. Seven samurai
10. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

Sight & Sound Critics Top Ten List
1. Citizen Kane
2. Vertigo
3. Rules of the Game
4. The Godfather & Godfather part 2
5. Tokyo Story
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. Battleship Potemkin
8. Sunrise
9. 8 ½
10. Singing in the Rain

Sight & Sound Director’s Top Ten List
1. Citizen Kane
2. The Godfather & Godfather part 2
3. 8 ½
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Dr. Strangelove
6. Bicycle Thieves
7. Raging Bull
8. Vertigo
9. Rashomon
10. Rules of the Game
11. Seven Samurai