I was quite honored, this spring, to receive an invitation to participate in the British Film Institute/Sight & Sound “Greatest Films Of All Time” poll. Now that the results of that poll are being unveiled online, I figure it would not be improper for me to put up my own ballot, along with the note I attached to it.
1) Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
2) Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
3) Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959)
4) Céline et Julie vent en bateau (Rivette, 1974)
5) Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
6) Belle de jour (Buñuel, 1967)
7) Boudu sauvé des eaux (Renoir, 1932)
8) Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Lang, 1922)
9) Singin’ in the Rain (Donen & Kelly, 1952)
10)The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Thanks so much for the invitation to participate in the poll. It’s true; the task is not an easy one at all. I arrived at this particular list, one out of perhaps dozens of other entirely different ones, by splitting he difference between honoring convention and saying to hell with it. As it happens, the four films on the list which might conceivably be seen as “consensus” picks—Kane, Psycho, Singin’ in the Rain, Searchers—are also ones close to “my heart” or at least the formation of my sensibility. The other six films came to me after a lot of debate with myself over whether I was being different for the sake of being different, or whether these were not in fact truly GREAT films that, when the time came for surveys along the lines of this one, did not get the proper recognition for being the imaginatively prodigious, paradigm-shifting, galvanic works that I believe they in fact are. OF COURSE I regret that my list cannot be longer, because surely Sansho Dayu, The General (not to mention Sherlock Jr.), The Last Temptation of Christ, and a lot more ought to have a place, and the more I think about the films and filmmakers I am leaving off (Yang! Naruse!…and, yep, Godard; what am I thinking?) the more I can twist a long knife inside both my guts and brain. And for all that this is a list that in its way satisfies me. If anybody asks me “What IS cinema,” yeah, I can show them any one of these pictures and say “This is.”
Hey, I’ve got PSYCHO at #3! Otherwise, no overlap whatsoever.
Vertigo toppling Citizen Kane made primetime BBC News here in the UK, capped with a clip of that moment when James Stewart awakens from his Technicolor nightmare all bolt-upright and wide-eyed.
It looks like Sight & Sound ceased the controversial 2002 practice of adding together the votes for ‘The Godfather’ and ‘The Godfather Part II’, and I’m sorry to see no Kurosawa in either the critics’ or directors’ top ten.
I have to say, I still can’t see the point of ‘greatest films of all time’ lists. They’re always full of political choices, and I dare say it’s unlikely that everyone who chose Citizen Kane as their No 1 would also say it’s their favourite.
It’s that whole ‘admire it rather than love it’ thing, which also translates as ‘THIS film is greater than THAT film, but I actually like THAT film more than THIS film’.
I understand the importance of the films in these lists and the precedents they set, but intellectualising films in this way is pretty depressing. It’s unlikely that Citizen Kane will ever be toppled, which makes the whole enterprise rather boring.
‘Favourites’ would make a much more honest, interesting list.
Actually Owain, Citizen Kane WAS toppled in the new poll. Vertigo is the new #1
Glenn, I’m curious whether seeing STALKER at the “Tarkovsky Interruptus” event this past March boosted your vote for that film. Or would STALKER have landed at roughly the same place on your list, regardless?
It’s a great film, of course, so this isn’t a challenge. I’m just wondering how the coincidences of what you were watching/reading/writing about during the spring may have influenced which films you ultimately chose to put on your ballot.
My co-worker just removed your blog from his feed reader.
Yes, Brian, but I was referring more to Citizen Kane topping most of these polls around the world year in year out.
I’m with Owain – I find lists of “favorites” generally more interesting and revealing than “greatest ever” lists. I don’t know if NIGHT MOVES is one of the 10 greatest films of all time, but it’s certainly one of my 10 favorites.
That said, it’s hard to get too worked up about these rankings – they serve as great fodder for barroom (and internet) debates and hopefully turn some people on to great films they might have missed up to now.
And Glenn, I love how high you have ANATOMY OF A MURDER.
Really bummed out that the new print of Céline & Julie didn’t arrive sooner (not to mention a region 1 digital release), but it’s nice to know someone voted for it. Instead, we get FOUR Godard films in the critics’ Top 50. [insert eye-roll]
Hopefully Rivette can gain in stature by the time 2022 rolls around.
Also loving that both Preminger and Lang made your list, Glenn, even if my choices from those directors would have been different.
I mean, fuck it, I just like that mainstream media are talking about these movies at all. Doesn’t matter to me how they’re ranked. Personally, I’d swap Late Spring with Tokyo Story, move The Searchers into the #1 spot and, I dunno, maybe try to get The Best Years of Our Lives on there somehow? But again, as long as people are talking about these movies, then I’m good.
One of the first things that popped into my head when I saw the list of 50 was that it lacked a Buñuel.
Here’s the top 50:
http://insidepulse.com/2012/08/01/sight-and-sound-poll-the-top-50-films-of-all-time-citizen-kane-no-longer‑1/
It doesn’t contain even one surprise on the level of “Anatomy of a Murder”.
Ach, sorry–I didn’t see it was already linked.
I’d say that Tarkovsky cracking the top 20 with ‘Mirror’ was surprising to me (not unwelcome either). Or that ‘Jeanne Dielmann’ or ‘Histoire(s) du Cinema’ made it onto the list at all (again, not unwelcome).
Lots of little nitpicks and things that I would rank differently, of course, but like MarkVH pointed out above, I’m just happy that people are talking about these films. All of them are very worthwhile.
Lazarus, I admit to being woefully ignorant on Rivette’s stuff (I adore LA BELLE NOISEUSE, and liked PARIS BELONGS TO US, though the latter was an awful print, but that’s all I’ve seen), but I don’t think liking Rivette means you have to bash Godard (I might not have four films of his in the top 50 – and instead of CONTEMPT and HISTOIRE DU CINEMA, I’d have WEEKEND and MADE IN U.S.A.).
And I agree with Mark VH on some level – it is nice to see these movies get talked about, and as much as we pick on Dan Kois here, I know Tarkovsky movies got rented quite a few times at my store (as well as stolen, unfortunately), so it’s not just people who feel the need to eat “cultural vegetables” who like him. On the other hand, given GODFATHER PART II is my choice for #1 (and the only ones in my top 10 that made the top 50 besides that were BREATHLESS, the first GODFATHER, PERSONA, and THE SEVEN SAMURAI), it was a little disappointing it ranked so low.
Nice list, Glenn. Is Celine and Julie available on DVD or blu in the US? A little internet searching hasn’t turned up much info. What should I do? Find a videotape?
Hallelujah!
My long-time fervent desire to see Vertigo leapfrog Citizen Kane into the #1 spot has actually taken place. Now it just has to keep percolating through the canon.
My faith in humanity is restored.
“Nice list, Glenn. Is Celine and Julie available on DVD or blu in the US? A little internet searching hasn’t turned up much info. What should I do? Find a videotape?”
Nope. Just go boating. It’s summertime.
@Phil I don’t know where you live, but a new 35mm print of Celine and Julie Go Boating has been traveling around the U.S. lately. I was lucky enough to see it here in St. Louis when it came through for a night a fortnight ago. Check your local listings!
If you’re not so fortunate, there has been recent chatter about Criterion releasing it soon (perhaps some time this year even).
I’ve yet to see Anatomy of a Murder. I’ll put it on the list. Glad that Belle de jour made someone’s list. No Bunuel but all kinds of Godard and Tarkovsky made the top 52. [Not that there is anything wrong with those two].
Phil
Celine and Julie is available on Region 2 DVD if you have an all region player [they’re inexpensive]. I am guessing though with the new print it will be available soon enough in the US.
I’m kind of surprised there isn’t more love for the Americans of the 60s and 70s by now in the top 50 – no Peckinpah, Altman, Penn, Cassavetes.
Chaplin & Keaton have fallen down the list over the last couple of decades, too, I notice. No Lubitsch, either.
@Wolfmansrazor. Thank you very much. I’m in Detroit or, if there’s a bright center to the film culture universe, the point farthest from. I’ll keep my eye out.
I like seeing In the Mood for Love in the top 50. But I think Rosetta is the best film of the past 20 years. Happy to see that finally coming out on DVD and blu-ray.
I think ten years from now you’re going to see even less Hollywood stuff, either from the Golden Age or the Peckinpah/Altman/Penn/Cassavetes era. It just ain’t the American century anymore. Weirdly enough, the title I’m regretting not finding room for on the list is, in fact, Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day.”
@Phil Hopefully the print will find its way to Detroit after the rest of the Midwest has had our way with it.
@Glenn I wonder how many votes “Yi Yi” received. If any film from the 2000s other than “In the Mood for Love” and “Mulholland Dr.” had a chance to crack the top 50, it would almost certainly be that one. It ranks third (after “Mood for Love” and “Mulholland Dr.”) on both the Film Comment and TSPDT best-of-the-2000s lists.
lipranzer, while I’m not a big Godard fan (I’ve enjoyed about half of the 10 or so films I’ve seen), my point wasn’t that he doesn’t belong on the list, but that he’s over-mentioned. Consider this list of filmmakers who weren’t mentioned at ALL in the Top 50, or only after Godard’s four entries:
– Max Ophuls
– Kenji Mizoguchi
– Charles Chaplin
– Luis Buñuel
– Ernst Lubitsch
– Luchino Visconti
– Howard Hawks
– Powell & Pressburger
– Victor Sjostrom
– King Vidor
– Erich Von Stroheim
– Nicholas Ray
– Alain Resnais
– Ritwik Ghatak
– Woody Allen
– Preston Sturges
– Chris Marker
– Vincente Minnelli
– John Cassavettes
– David Lean
– D.W. Griffith
– Terrence Malick
– G.W. Pabst
– Mikio Naruse
– Jacques Rivette
– Eric Rohmer
– Otto Preminger
You see a problem with the Cult Of Godard now?
So nice to see a comedy/musical in Mr Kenny’s list. As the old actor said on his deathbed, ‘Dying is hard, so hard.… but comedy’s harder.’
By the way, excellent blog, much appreciated here in Scotland.
Comedy in the Top Ten? Personally I’d be tempted to put Ozu’s ‘An Autumn Afternoon’ (or even ‘Good Morning’) in place of ‘Tokyo Story’.
How do you suppose jizz on a DVD would degrade the image quality during playback, Lex? We may have provided Bill Morrison with a idea for a ‘Decasia’ sequel!
Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Patrice Chéreau, 1998)
Out 1 (Jacques Rivette, 1971)
8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000)
Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, 2010)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967),
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1949)
Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu, 1947)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
Good News (Charles Walters, 1947)
“lipranzer, while I’m not a big Godard fan (I’ve enjoyed about half of the 10 or so films I’ve seen), my point wasn’t that he doesn’t belong on the list, but that he’s over-mentioned”
I think that has to do with the era weighting of the list. Half of the 50 are made between 1953 and 1968. And if you are going to so heavily weight the list toward that particular era, then Godard deserves at least that many mentions, considering just how dominant he was during the ‘60’s.
Also, three Coppolas is more indefensible than four Godards.
(The real problem isn’t the number of Godard flicks, it’s that they don’t pick the CORRECT four Godard movies…)
New Yorker Films is the distributor behind the new theatrical run of CELINE AND JULIE, and they also have the DVD/Blu-Ray rights. They haven’t set a release date for the Blu-Ray yet, but hopefully they’ll get it out this year.
I could live with losing APOCALYPSE NOW from the list (surprised to see it there honestly) but the two Godfathers belong there.
Re. Jacques Rivette’s “Out 1” – SEE IT NOW!
http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2012/07/back-again-this-time-in-working-order.html
Whenever I try to formulate a personal favorites list, I find top slots occupied by pairs of movies, rather than single choices—either of the two could take the spot, but which of the two keeps shifting. Like, a personal favorites list would be:
1. Stalker / The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
2. Nashville / McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
3. Citizen Kane / The Trial (Welles)
4. Dead Ringers / Videodrome (Cronenberg) (hey, I said favorites, not best ever!)
5. Repo Man / Walker (Cox)
6. Cat People / The Seventh Victim (Lewton/Tourneru/Robson)
7. Full Frontal / The Limey (Soderbergh)
and so on. Some day, I’ll get caught up on Asian cinema…
Wow, TFB, I’m gonna put in a call to Soderbergh’s office to tell ’em I found the person who likes “Full Frontal,” ar ar ar.
“Wow, TFB, I’m gonna put in a call to Soderbergh’s office to tell ’em I found the person who likes “Full Frontal,” ar ar ar.”
It’s no Schizopolis, but I thought Full Frontal was good fun too. The Limey, OTOH, I thought to be among his weakest.
(And I like the rime of TFB’s method.)
Schizopolis / Che (Soderbergh)
Bringing Up Baby / The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Breaking the Waves / Melancholia (Von Trier)
Wagon Master / The Searchers (Ford)
Nashville / McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
The Devil is a Woman / Morocco (Von Sternberg)
Weekend / Le mepris (Godard)
That’s kinda fun.
ALL ABOUT EVE/SLEUTH
THE BANDWAGON/HOME FROM THE HILL
TWO RODE TOGETHER/THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
ADVISE & CONSENT/THE CARDINAL
HATARI!/RIO LOBO
MARNIE/FRENZY
AVANTI!/KISS ME, STUPID
LUDWIG/CONVERSATION PIECE
THE GAUNTLET/LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
IN A YEAR WITH 13 MOONS/FOX AND HIS FRIENDS/CHINESE ROULETTE
@ GK: Oh man, my love of Full Frontal goes way, way beyond the reasonable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixAxaiQJ2f0 (this may be the most actually useful thing I’ve ever done)
http://thatfuzzybastard.blogspot.com/2008/12/full-frontal.html (bonus DFW quote)
I actually mentioned my crazed worship of this flick to Mr. S when he introduced Schizopolis at IFC Center, and he seemed equal parts pleased and taken aback. Not sure if he ever stumbled across the video essay, though I like to hope someone will some day mention it to him, and he will know his lonely baby is beloved.
Am in general agreement with the swap at the top, if based on nothing more than which film induces me to drop what I’m doing and watch for, oh, the three-dozenth time.
On the flip side, the absence of any Rohmer anywhere boggles mind, body and soul. (Here’s nominating THE GREEN RAY for best film of the ’80s.) Same goes for my “New Hollywood” triumvirate of CHINATOWN, DAYS OF HEAVEN and MANHATTAN.
And I’d probably take BARRY LYNDON over 2001, and LIBERTY VALANCE instead of THE SEARCHERS. Can’t wait to burrow into the individual lists once they’re posted – sounds like they nearly doubled their sample size.
Here was the one I submitted today to an online copycat poll. My taste tends to skew older and definitely Euro-centric. YI YI, TOUKI BOUKI, and SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY were the only non-Western titles that nearly placed. If I could’ve included shorter works, THE RED BALLOON and LAS HURDES might have placed.
1. Night of the Hunter
2. Ordet
3. Rules of the Game
4. Touch of Evil
5. A Man Escaped
6. The Night of the Demon
7. The Red Shoes
8. Stagecoach
9. Shadow of a Doubt
10. Fanny and Alexander
Oddly, there is not a single work in the Top 50 which could be classified as film noir proper. Does nobody care enough for the scruffy, cheaply produced atmospherics of 40’s and 50’s Hollywood anymore- (as opposed to its glossy pastiches)?
Apart from lazarus’ list of omissions, I would also point out the absence of-
Alain Resnais
Jacques Tourneur
Douglas Sirk
Jia Zhangke
Roman Polanski
Sam Fuller
Frank Borzage (nobody ever votes for Borzage…)
Leo McCarey
Anthony Mann
Joseph H. Lewis
Mitchell Leisen
Edgar Ulmer
Raoul Walsh
I know people always like to gripe about these types of institutionalized lists (and I see why, don’t get me wrong – it hurts a little when movies we’re fond of don’t make the cut), but to me they perform a valuable service. They’re not designed for people who have a far reaching knowledge of films. They’re designed for people who aren’t familiar with the artistic giants of the form, and to serve as a sort of springboard into a deeper appreciation of the medium. That may not be their actual intent, but that’s certainly the result, or at least it has been in my experience.
As my love of movies was really burgeoning, it was lists like Sight and Sound and the AFI that I turned to as a sort of starting point. Trust me, there is a 13 year old somewhere who’s going to see Vertigo at the top of this list, and their interest in it will be piqued. And they’ll seek it out, and perhaps it will change their lives like it changed mine. And that’s a good thing.
I’m pleased to see you’re a Mabuse fan Glenn. Hardly anyone else ever mentions it.
@Ryan Kelly: I think you’re totally right. Seeing the Sight and Sound polls in “Roger Ebert’s Book of Film” (I think) when I was 14 opened me to a number of movies I had never heard of, and in a manner that was easy to digest. It’s by no means perfect, but speaking personally, those polls had definite utility as an educational tool, and were a notable step in introducing me to vast riches.
Kind of disappointed to hear the Sight & Sound list is out now because it inevitably means I sm going to spend countless hours exploring the various lists when I had hoped to focus on other things in the coming days! Oh well, could be worse I suppose…
Good list – while Belle, Boudu and Mabuse would not come remotely close to making my own list, I enjoy and respect the first 2 movies and figure I must have missed something with the third, which bored me immensely yet is beloved by numerous Lang acolytes, so they must be on to whatever I’m not getting. As for Anatomy, that one I really don’t get either – at all. An excellent Stewart performance, and fairly engaging, but when I saw it a few years ago it seemed a damn sight short of great, between the obnoxious winky-winky rape jokes and the general shagginess of the storytelling. Minority opinion I guess but I don’t see that one changing on repeat viewings. As for Celine and Julie and Stalker, awesome to see them on there. Those are the types of films that I suspect, if not now then in the next few decades, will make their presence felt on the S&S lists. Although as the pool (both of selectors and selected films) becomes more pluralistic, it will probably be harder and harder to find consensus picks. Now over to the site to see how 2012 panned out…
For such an ‘important’ list, how come it seems that none of you who participated put any thought into it?
Here’s my list of the top ten greates baseball players of all time:
1. Babe Ruth
2. Ty Cobb
3. Ted Williams
4. Joe DiMaggio
5. Honus Wagner
6. Walter Johnson
7. Willie Mays
8. Mickey Mantle
9. Sandy Koufax
10. Lou Gehrig
That’s what these movie lists look like to me. Making a list seems to turn people into old men.
Galit, rather than a sarcastic baseball list (whose point is kinda obscure – are you suggesting we shun ‘obvious’ picks, however deserving, for the sake of novelty? Sorry, Babe, you were great and all, but Derek Jeter’s a lot, you know, YOUNGER’??) why not post your own film top 10 and make the case for why your picks are more deserving than ‘old man’ films, whatever that means…
My list was this:
The Godfather Part II
Casablanca
The Godfather
The Seven Samurai
Intolerance
Dr. Strangelove
Persona
The Tree of Life
Stage Door
(tie) Breathless, Le Cercle Rouge
I take it that everyone posting lists of “essential” directors who didn’t make the top 50 realizes that such a list is finite, and that if, say, DETOUR or SHOCK CORRIDOR had bumped CLOSE-UP out of it, someone would post a similar list with Abbas Kiarostami’s name on it instead.
Great list – though I’m not a huge Tree booster, I love the fact that you found room for Stage Door. But why the barb at Glenn & co. when your list is similarly classics-heavy? I dunno, it just seems to me that having Gehrig, Ruth, Mays, etc dominate an ‘all time greats’ list isn’t so bad, since the point is less unpredictability than some valiant if vain attempt to sketch in broad terms those who have defined and improved (either effectively or potentially, if tht makes sense) the ‘game.’ Ironically though, even while defending a predictable canon in theory, I think my own top 10 might actually a bit more left-field than both I yours’ haha. I’ll try to finalize one today though I already have some ideas.
Oh, well… what the hell…
L’avventura / L’eclisse (ANTONIONI)
Last year at Marienbad (RESNAIS)
Second breath (MELVILLE)
The mirror (TARKOVSKY)
Deep end (SKOLIMOWSKI)
Bad blood (CARAX)
Made in Britain (CLARKE)
A man escaped / L’argent / Au hasard Balthazar (BRESSON)
The docks of New York (VON STERNBERG)
The heart of the world (MADDIN) / Performance (first thirty minutes or so, and ‘Memo from Turner’) (ROEG)
No particular order. For multiple choices, juggle at will. I’m a juggler.
Compiled in two minutes. Five minutes, or a day, or a month, a different list, but no less worthy. And why ten, only.
Steve, my original point in posting that long list was that FOUR Godard films appeared before anything by these other directors. And as far as I’m concerned, Buñuel, Ophüls, P&P, Resnais, Allen, Rivette (to name a handful) are more deserving of such love.
And since we’re all doing this:
(alphabetically)
Apocalypse Now
Céline and Julie Go Boating/Duelle
Citizen Kane/Touch of Evil
City Lights
The Conformist/Last Tango in Paris
Days of Heaven
The Red Shoes/Colonel Blimp
The Rules of the Game/French Cancan
Ugetsu
Vertigo
Joel, I think you have me confused with someone else (Galit, maybe?). I didn’t slag Glenn and others for having classic-heavy lists (or at least I don’t think I did; if so, I apologize, as I certainly don’t feel that way).
Lazarus, I understand your point, and agree there were directors and periods that were unfairly neglected. I guess I love his 60’s stuff so much – in my top 10 lists for the 60’s, he and Kurosawa have more films in them than any other director – that I don’t mind as much. Also, I’m admittedly not as much of a fan of Resnais and (to a lesser extent) Bunuel as you are (I agree about the lack of love for Ophuls and P&P).
Yeah, I have no idea how that happened. Your names aren’t even similar! Sorry about that – chalk it up to my eternal confusion trying to use the Internet on a smart phone. At any rate, enjoyed your list. My own is still forthcoming.
Let’s hope that some of these “oversights” will be rectified when we get the full critics’ list of 100.
Happy to see Psycho in there. Nothing against Vertigo, it is indeed a great film and does make my all-time top 20, but Psycho, the first Hitchcock I ever truly “saw”, is always closest to whatever kind of cinephiliac heart I may have inside me.
Ok, here’s a top 10 I could live with. These are ‘greats’, films that somehow stand for something – an artistic breakthrough, summit, or archetype that makes them significant. Not necessarily ‘favorites’ though there’s substantial overlap.
Alphabetical because limiting to 10 is hard enough:
Citizen Kane
L’Eclisse
The Godfather Part II
The House is Black
The Man with the Movie Camera
The Mirror
Out 1
Red Hot Riding Hood
2001: A Space Odyssey
Vertigo
Gimme Shelter was on there too but I eliminated it to make room for animation as it just felt wrong to craft a ‘best of cinema’ list that made no allusion to a whole huge field of filmmaking (though this doesn’t seem to have stopped most S&S contributors!)
I’m also leaving out probably my 2 favorite movies of all time, Masculin Feminin and Lawrence of Arabia. Three of the above are in my top 10 favorites list but as noted, I consider that a different criterion.
For the curious I listed a hundred favorites last year: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2011/12/100-of-my-favorite-movies.html
Ok damn, I forgot Dreyer. This IS tricky…
From the list of movies, I like Anatomy of a Murderer most and it has impressed me that others. Anatomy of a Murder is noteworthy for being one of the first films to extensively feature jazz in the musical score .
Fine then, without including a director on the S&S 50:
24 City / The World (Jia)
Wichita / I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur)
The Lady Eve / Christmas in July (Sturges)
Strange Case of Angelica / Inquietude (Oliveira)
Fallen Angel / Where the Sidewalk Ends (Preminger)
Moonrise / Street Angel (Borzage)
La Ronde / Reckless Moment (Ophuls)
One Hour with You / Love Parade (Lubitsch)
Providence / All the World’s Memory (Resnais)
Raw Deal / Tall Target (Anthony Mann)
Joel, I love that you include Tex Avery on the list: totally forgot about him. I really like Anatomy of a Murder, too, but Advise and Consent and The Cardinal are quite unbearable: from Preminger’s elephantine and self-important adaptation period rather than the magical abstraction of his Fox period.
Shamus, to return the compliment I love that you included Jia on there. If I had films from the past 10 years on there they would probably be from him or Achitpong Werasethakul (yeah I know I missed or added a few letters in there somewhere. 21st century films that would make a best AND favorites list would be Platform, Syndromes and a Century, and Mulholland Dr. Haven’t seen 24 City yet though. I’m also totally unfamiliar with Wichita but before even looking it up on imdb I’m intrigued. Something about the director/evocative title combo grabs me: not sure if it’s a Lewton horror thriller or a later noir (or something else) but I already kinda want to see it.
Ok, a western…not quite what I was expecting but it’s on my Netflix now. Along with 24 City and, while I’m at it, Unknown Pleasures which I also haven’t seen. Apropos the Joy Division discussion I suppose (hypothetical question: would someone wearing a Zhangke Jia shirt have answered my inquiry? Do they even make Zhanfke Jia shirts?)
Joel, maybe a better phrased either / or Jacques Tourneur double bill might be Wichita and Stars in my Crown, which also stars Joel McCrea. And your guess wasn’t that far off: Wichita, may be a western, but you still have a sense of something eerily supernatural about its images (like most Tourneur, I suppose).
What about Jia Zhangke-Tex Avery-Jacques Tourneur shirts? Where do you get those?
Sadly, neither Tourneur/McCrea is on Netflix, at least not in the DVD catalog, which is what I’m limited to right now. 🙁 as for that shirt, man I’m trying to think of the possibilities. I can actually see aimed similarities between Avery and Jia now that I think about it: both love stark, ironic juxtapositions of tradition and modernity, stasis and movement. Not sure how to throw Tourneur into the mix though! He’s an interesting case because his something like Out of the past shows what immense style he had, yet it seems like the early horrors are typically attribute to Lewton above all (perhaps that’s changing?).
The Tourneur Lewtons are generally scarier / more sublimely beautiful than the Robson and the Wise Lewtons, but that may just me be my opinion. Of course, Tourneur later made Canyon Passage, Night of the Demon, Out of the Past and the aforementioned two films with McCrea. By any standards that is a remarkable career.
Also, The Flame and the Arrow looks way less campy than the Curtiz-Dieterle Robin Hood, and also has the advantage of being more exciting than anything else in that genre. I’m yet to see Anne of the Indies, Berlin Express, Appointment in the Honduras but I’m still expecting great things from them.
Incidentally, Jia includes a lot of cartoons interludes in The World and some Tex Avery-like flirtation with meta-narrative and fourth-wall nudging in 24 City (I won’t spoil it for you). Otherwise, Jia’s general philosophy of unyielding realism couldn’t be more far from Tourneur’s quasi-mystical approach or Avery’s relentlessly priapic visuals.
Kind of funny, then, how eclectic taste can be- if we love of three of them, I mean.
True, though what I love about Jia’s realism is how inexplicably magical it feels: he discovers the fantastical in the everyday (and of course there are the occasional outright flights of fancy like the aforementioned animated interludes in The World or the building rocketing off Ito the night sky in Still Life). In The World especially he manages to fuse a childlike sense of wonder at the strange world around us with a mature, sad adult wisdom about the failures, disappointments, and even horrors (think the – Russian? – immigrant forced into prostitution) of that same world. I can’t think of a western filmmaker who really compares right now; only, say, Wes Anderson seems to be going for the same thing and his approach is way more skewed to the childlike/playful. There’s a ton I still need to explore but from what I’ve seen of 00s-10s films it’s the Asians and maybe Latin Americans who have been pushing cinematic boundaries whereas the West seems to be stuck in a mode of repetition and narrowness. Probably reflecting larger cultural, societal trends.
Joel, I agree completely. One more point of congruence between Jia and Tourneur might be their modest craftmanship, almost to the point of invisibility. Although you may be moved by many moments in their films- Jia slowly tracking through the empty streets of Beijing at nighttime and his filming of the performances, especially- but it is very hard to say what it is that is so emotionally affecting. I mean, there are no close-ups or POV shots or that sort of thing that would bring you closer to the characters. How Jia achieves his effects is as mysterious as it is marvelous. So, you may be right in tracing this to his sensibility- his sympathy (which is obvious) held at an ironic distance.
I remember Jia being declared the most important filmmaker in the world by Film Comment: so there you have a consensus.
I never quite understand complaints that a Best of All Time poll is heavy on older titles. I can only assume that such complaints come from those in whom the arrogance of youth has instilled an unshakeable faith in their critical faculties. “By God, I saw (insert recent title here) last week, and it is unquestionably one of the greatest films of all time, and I will undoubtedly still think so ten, twenty, fifty years from now. And so should you, you old bastard.”
Most of us like to live with a film for a while to consider its place in film history (which, though still comparatively young for the arts, nonetheless encompasses over 100 years). If you’ve got a few miles on ya, you’ve had the experience of seeing a favorite of your youth diminish as your opinions become more informed. You’re also probably pulling from a much larger field of choices. I’d wager that most gripes about the lack of recent films on the list come from folks who haven’t seen a large number of the titles that did make it. (I’m generalizing, so please don’t feel you have to weigh in with “Nope, I’ve seen all those films, and none is the equal of UNCLE BOONMEE,” or MALIBU’S MOST WANTED or whatever your pet film is.)
‘If you’ve got a few miles on ya, you’ve had the experience of seeing a favorite of your youth diminish as your opinions become more informed.’
Not only that but films which once underwhelmed, grow on repeat viewings as experience shifts your perspective. (He says at the ripe old age of 28…)
Around the time of the last such poll (whose results I preferred to this year’s), I was perhaps more even interested in Sight & Sound’s *2003* survey, unfortunately announced with much less fanfare, which was deliberately limited to films from the last quarter-century.
So with that in mind, and in alphabetical order:
The Big Lebowski (Coen Bros, 1998)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Flags of Our Fathers (Eastwood, 2006)
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1991)
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)
Yi Yi (Yang, 2000)
Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)
“I’m generalizing, so please don’t feel you have to weigh in with “Nope, I’ve seen all those films, and none is the equal of UNCLE BOONMEE,” or MALIBU’S MOST WANTED or whatever your pet film is.”
Nope, I’ve seen all those films, and none is the equal of The Artist.
1) It’s in black and white and silent, so it’s not really recent. “Timeless” is the word I’d use.
2) It uses the Vertigo soundtrack, so by simple logic, it’s better than Vertigo.
3) It won an Oscar™ for Best Picture, which is more than can be said for most of those sorry 50.
(Alternately, Nope, I’ve all of those films, and none is the equal of The Clock. Simple running time should seal the deal. Longer trumps shorter. Not to mention that it incorporates snippets of many of the so-callled 50 best, thus making it superior.)
It’s hard to determine if 21 Grams or Paul Haggis’s Crash should take the #3 spot. Synchronicity, man. Synchronicity. I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together. I am the walrus, goo goo goo joob goo goo goo joob.
This is the ballot I submitted. I decided not to include comments, but wrote a few, anyway, for Dave Kehr’s blog – comments that qualified my own ballot for What It Is, but also reflected on the results, the process, canon-forming in general, etc.. Anywho, for your approval:
1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
3. Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
4. Judex (Louis Feuillade, 1916)
5. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
6. The Patsy (Jerry Lewis, 1964)
7. Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
8. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
9. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
10. Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 1944)
Jaime: Maybe this will get me off my butt to watch FLOATING CLOUDS (well, I’ll actually be ON my butt, but you know what I mean). I’ve had that and several other Naruses in my hot little hands for a few months now, courtesy of a friend, but have had trouble setting aside the kind of time and concentration I’d like to devote to them.
Haven’t seen JUDEX or RUSSIAN ARK either, but I can support your other choices, even though only one or two would be likely to make my own list.
I went the way of Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and randomized a list of 100. I think it is an amazingly good list for being computer generated (it was technically the second list, because I forgot to not alphabetize all the movies starting with “The” and “L‘”):
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
L’Age D’or (Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)
The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)
Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)
Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)
Michael Mann’s list was a bit interesting:
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Avatar (Cameron)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
Biutiful (Inarritu)
My Darling Clementine (Ford)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
“Michael Mann’s list was a bit interesting”
They all are.
David O. Russell
“It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946, dir. Frank Capra)
“Chinatown” (1974, dir. Roman Polanski)
“Goodfellas” (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese)
“Vertigo” (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
“Pulp Fiction” (1994, dir. Quentin Tarantino)
“Raging Bull” (1980, dir. Martin Scorsese)
“Young Frankenstein” (1974, dir. Mel Brooks)
“The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie” (1972, dir. Luis Bunuel)
“The Godfather” (1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
“Blue Velvet” (1986, dir. David Lynch)
“Groundhog Day” (1993, dir. Harold Ramis)
Quentin Tarantino:
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (1966, dir. Sergio Leone)
Apocalypse Now (1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The Bad News Bears (1976, dir. Michael Ritchie)
Carrie (1976, dir. Brian DePalma)
Dazed And Confused (1993, dir. Richard Linklater)
The Great Escape (1963, dir. John Sturges)
His Girl Friday (1940, dir. Howard Hawks)
Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg)
Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971, dir. Roger Vadim)
Rolling Thunder (1977, dir. John Flynn)
Sorcerer (1977, dir. William Friedkin)
Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)
(Props to Quentin for sticking in that Vadim.)
Shamus: What I love abourt Preminger’s dozen movies from ANATOMY OF A MURDER through THE HUMAN FACTOR (his strongest period for me) is his continuing passion for mise en scene while chronicling the decline of rational modernism as his male protagonists lose their footing and arrive at increasingly problematic conclusions. His earlier films maintained (an often small) hope that rationality and male initiative could bring about a just conclusion, but starting with ANATOMY, his films give up on that hope while still maintaining the beauty and rigor of their form.
ANATOMY’s Biegler wins the case, but rationality is trumped by irresistable impulse. In ADVISE & CONSENT, Brig commits suicide because of his own irresistable impulse since there is no rational way for him to continue his role as senator and husband. In a final twist of the knife, Munsion says that there is no desire to make Anderson’s “tired old sin public” (a rational political decision), but would he have said that if the sin was on the opposite side of the aisle?
THE CARDINAL is a fantastic study of male failure in that Fermoyle fails at everything he does, and yet is promoted ever upward. The one success he has is when he demonstrates that the “miracle” of the statue is the result of a rusty pipe. The one time he is “right,” he serves to lessen faith rather than increase it (supposedly his calling). At the end of IN HARM’S WAY, Torrey has lost a leg and the war is going on (though a spectator knows it will end, I believe the closing credits represent its continuation/permanance in human existence).
All these movies are large films, but their largeness results from representing the collapse of the giant edifices of rational modernism and male initiative. Though I cannot read his mind, these films give me the impression that Preminger wants to believe that the practice of rationality (“official surroundings”) can save humanity from itself, but his honest reconnaissance of society does not permit him to report this hope as being born out. What remains is his astounding mise en scene.
D., thank you for the detailed rebuttal. I agree about ANATOMY- that Biegler, after all his theatrics, may have just succeeded in acquitting a murderer (although we never know for certain), and I agree too that it is one of his finest and ambiguous films.
But I saw THE CARDINAL about 2 weeks back and I resented that, after sticking with it for 3 hours, all I got was a fudged history lesson about how the Vatican was “concerned” about the Nazis and Hitler (patently untrue) and how, at the end of the film, Fermoyle appears to treat Catholicism and the US constitution and “liberty” or whatever as somehow being identical…
His expressionism, too, gives way to something less poetic and more didactic in his later films- he is increasingly less concerned about individuals and more about public institutions- the Vatican, Capitol Hill, the Courts and so on. You may, of course, be right when you say that he is privately concerned about the failures of individuals in these system rather than he cataloging the glories of those powerful institutions, but, from where I’m sitting, that suggests a kind of subversion that even Sirk may not have been able to pull off- I doubt if there is sufficient irony in those films to buttress your interpretation: the sort of irony that is so palpable in Kubrick or Ophuls or Renoir.
These movies ARE large, but the private passions and the calamities of emotions are better expressed in LAURA (Waldo’s irresistible impulse, McPherson’s impulse), ANGEL FACE and his cycle of film noir in the 40’s (surely among the best body of such films ever made). There is a hush around DAISY KENYON too, where the presence of crowds are non-existent- characters are often alone and there are complex interactions between two or three of them- that is where Preminger’s true art lies- in realizing an impartial enactment of guarded, private emotions (if that makes any sense at all).
Nonetheless, I think your interpretation is fascinating and I’ll remember it when I watch EXODUS (something I need to do soon). Obviously, there is no right interpretation to Preminger- maybe just a whole lot of wrong ones…
I was just re-reading the remarks attached to Glenn’s list, and it prompted me to wonder if he genuinely considers LAST TEMPTATION to be Scorsese’s best film. I’ve seldom heard that idea put forward, but it’s intriguing, as are most choices outside the prescribed canon.
Only recently did I “gather” myself to watch the film, owing to a youth beset by repressive Baptist influences circa ’88. (So many culture wars, so little time.) At times, the main character’s doubts and hesitation seemed to also belong to the director, and several supporting players looked lost in their surroundings. BUT, I imagine much of this effect was deliberate, in ways that further study of the film and/or novel might clarify.
Shamus: THE CARDINAL for me is muddled about the Catholic Church’s history and inner workings, but dead-on about how a mediocrity can rise to power within an institution. In a way, the film is a one-off: the study of an inadequate man. It is nice to do it once, but it is a one-trick pony, much like Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” which has a cipher at the center of the action (at least before Kazan got through desecrating it). But with Williams, you also get fabulous poetry, while THE CARDINAL is definitely a film of prose not poetry (though like Kundera, I rank prose as high as poetry – it all depends on how well it is done).
You are also correct about Preminger’s films lacking irony, which is why I love them so much. His position as artist is not superior to the worlds he creates – he is totally implicated in and despairing of them. It may be that his refusal to withdraw is what I find so compelling about his work.
Lastly, I love your notion of a hush around DAISY KENYON (my favorite of the FOX films). The focus is solely on the characters, as if Preminger is dampening the representation of the matrices and institutions in which they are enmeshed. I happen to love when Preminger removes the cloak of invisibility and shows the systems along with the inhabitants.
Brian: I have one minor quibble re your comment: an artist can be despairing of his characters but still manage to be ironic. I cannot actually explain why this is so but I can give an example- the way Ophuls concludes his final shot of RECKLESS MOMENT, with Joan Bennett, almost disappearing behind the staircase banisters, and telling her husband that she misses him. Ophuls is clearly sympathetic (possibly despairing) but he is also being ironic. And I cannot imagine that Ophuls positions himself as superior to any of the characters in the film. (Whenever I think of cinematic irony, I think of this scene in RECKLESS MOMENT.)
Maybe, you and D. are right about THE CARDINAL (it is more than possible that my waning interest in the film contributed to missing this aspect) but there is no question that Fermoyle is portrayed a better person than nearly everyone else in the movie, and certainly those in the clergy (free of racial bigotry and so on). In that case, it may be the study of a mediocre albeit a so-called good man’s rise in the Church. So it may not be right to talk about him as a complete failure.
Bummed I didn’t pop in here earlier to throw my support in for Tourneur’s Canyon Passage, an interesting hybrid Western that’s a real original.
And weighing in on the whole post-noir Preminger discussion, I’m wondering how you guys feel about Bunny Lake is missing, which definitely stands apart from the rest of those larger productions, like then or not. Do you feel Preminger failed to recapture what made his earlier noirs so great, or does his late-career ambition add new layers to what he’s doing there?
Personally it’s my favorite from this period along with Anatomy, though if we’re including Bonjour Tristesse in his “bloated” period that would be at the top.
Awesome list!
Brian, D., you might also see Fermolye’s nobility as conferred, not by his actions, whose merit are, as you say, ambiguous and unclear, but in the nature of his choices: so his renunciation of his love in Vienna, might be interpreted, not as a futile gesture in banishing happiness from the lives of two people but as a meaningful attempt to resolve his doubts and turmoil- at least, I think this is how the movie (if not Preminger himself) would like us to view the protagonist. He may be a mediocre man but his choices (purportedly) make him virtuous.
Lazarus, I’ve not seen BUNNY LAKE (a lot of gaps in what I’ve seen of the Preminger oeuvre) but I’ll take your word for it that it is great (and, in any case, I wasn’t dismissing Preminger’s entire later career with a single epithet).
(Also, props to Jaime Christley for picking MINISTRY OF FEAR, one of Lang’s best and most beautiful films.)
Skidoo is kinda great too.
I am a pathetically infrequent contributor, but I cannot resist this if only to have a place to capture. This is some combination of greatest and favorites and in no particular order.
1) Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressberger)
2) Playtime (Tati)
3) Point Blank (Boorman)
4) Petulia (Lester)
5) Toby Dammit (Fellini)
6) Vampyr (Dreyer)
#5 and #6 the two scariest films I know of.
7) Bigger Than Life (Nick Ray)
8) El (Bunuel)
9) The Long Goodbye (Altman)
10) Brighter Summer Day (Ed Yang)
And now follows the rush of regret a moment after hitting Post.
“And now follows the rush of regret a moment after hitting Post”
Anybody who sticks Point Blank and The Long Goodbye on as their new-wave American selections can’t be all bad.
Shamus: sorry if I was unclear. I do believe that an artist can be both despairing and ironical; I just do not see Preminger as being an ironist in his work. What I love about his films is what I experience as an unmediated directness – like the shock cut to Sinatra’s singing voice in Club 602 (a moment I treasure). Preminger’s honest bafflement and disappointment at the failure of rational discourse is powerful for me since it is so immediate (with SKIDOO representing the ultimate collapse of rationality out of which the final films must dig themselves).
My last viewing of THE CARDINAL left me with the understanding that Fermoyle’s choices were made in accordance with Catholic dogma, and the film demonstrated how inadequate that dogma was to the situations presented. In other words, Fermoyle gets to be a cardinal for toeing the party line, and not necessarily for being effective in his work. The question becomes: if the “nature of the choice” is determined by dogma, does the choice attain nobility, or must the consequences of the choice be factored into any attempted evaluation of nobility? Since these thoughts are subsequent to my last viewing, I will have to watch the movie again to see if this understanding holds up when I watch the film with them in mind.
Lazarus: BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING is also about male failure – Steve regresses to childhood – manhood does not become him. In fact, most of the male characters seems disconnected from reality. Even Newhouse gets to the climax late – Ann is the actual agent of rescue. BLIM is a noir caught in rationality’s spiral of decline – a most wonderful film.
“Preminger’s honest bafflement and disappointment at the failure of rational discourse is powerful for me since it is so immediate (with SKIDOO representing the ultimate collapse of rationality out of which the final films must dig themselves).”
It’s a pretty upbeat film for a baffled and disappointed director to make…
These are wonderful lists, and makes my own top 10 kind of embarrassing:
1. Yellow Submarine (Dunning)
2. Help! (Lester)
3. The Confession (Costa-Gavras)
4. Murder on the Orient Express (Lumet)
and six imminently more respectable and obvious alternatives. Personally, I blame Stanley Kramer for hurting Costa-Gavras and Lumet’s reputations.
Petey: SKIDOO has never seemed upbeat to me – a tone of regret hangs over it for me.
One generation plants the trees in whose shade another generation rests.One sows and another reaps.
“Petey: SKIDOO has never seemed upbeat to me – a tone of regret hangs over it for me.”
Really? Really?
It’s not big on the power of rational discourse, in fact it seems to be making fun of some of that, but it doesn’t seem too unhappy about which way it thinks the wind is blowing…
I am leaving off (Yang! Naruse!…and, yep, Godard; what am I thinking?) the more I can twist a long knife inside both my guts and brain. And for all that this is a list that in its way satisfies me. If anybody asks me “What IS cinema,” yeah, I can show them any one of these pictures and say “This is.”
The individual critics lists are now available:
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter
There went my afternoon…
mechanical design engineer salary in India
Some Came Running: My “Sight