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Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The 50 Greatest Films
Iain Stott's blog, the One-Line Review, is conducting a poll of "The 50 Greatest Films," and I have submitted my entry. Unless one revisits all the candidates within a short period of time, polls like this are bound to be exercises in "individual whimsical expression" (can anyone name the movie on my top-50 list that this quote comes from?), so please take my list in the spirit of fun. By the way, Anne and Muriel is the UK title of Les deux anglaises et le continent (Two English Girls).
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10 comments:
Fort Apache (1948, Ford).
I wrote the previous without even looking at your list. Do I get a prize for my correct answer?
Just funnin' son...
(That was another reference to your list...any takers?)
Anyway, I'm adding this because I then looked at your list and wrote a one line comment. It was supposed to come up with my name but for some reason came up Anonymous. I'm sure you know it was me though.
Iain invited me to submit my 50 and I'm thinking about it. But I must say I'm now tempted to do it just so that same film can have one more vote.
Dan, I've seen all of the films on your list up to 1964, and must say I can't quarrel with any of those choices (I did catch up with LATE SPRING very belatedly, but would be tempted to put it on my own list if I allow films based on a single viewing--it might be a good rule to take those out though). Of those since, I've seen all but eight.
A question immediately jumped to mind. What happened to A NOS AMOURS? I thought that would be one of the first ten choices. Everyone keeps telling me I should give Pialat more of a chance and I'd be very interested to know if this actually fell for you or simply got surpassed (I know there may be another Pialat title there but I didn't recognize one). If it did get surpassed, it's surpassed by MICHAEL CLAYTON which I must admit ended your list in a strange way for me, but I realize you saw things in that film I simply didn't and don't mean this aside as any kind of quarrel.
My worry to make a list of 50 is that it isn't enough to keep me from feeling heartbroken over omisson. After I submitted a top ten to Senses of Cinema a few years ago, I felt maybe that would be the end of list making for me, at least for publication. I still do lists all the time for myself, but it's more for something that has a calming effect on me, or helps me keep my identity or something. It's hard to explain. Lists tend to change--they change somewhat less as we get older, and I hope that isn't just because we are letting our minds harden.
The Searchers! I knew I should have said, "Can anyone except Blake name this movie?"
I haven't downgraded À nos amours very much, but maybe just enough that I didn't put it on this list. At least 100 other astonishing masterpieces didn't make this list.
"At least 100 other astonishing masterpieces didn't make this list."
Sounds like you have the requisite stoicism to live with this. Like I was saying, I just don't know if I can. It's easier with a ten best list to say "well, I could only choose 10 so of course some of my all-time favorites are left out." But when it's 50, I feel like people are going to take the attitude, "well, you've covered it haven't you?...I guess Hugo Fregonese doesn't mean as much to you as you say he does."
The Raid was still on my list when I'd trimmed it down to 70 films....
I've been invited too, but have only just begun to think about it.
It would be easier to come up with "50 favorite short films", or "50 favorite silent films". Fewer choice problems.
Your list concentrates on "realistic, serious dramas". There are few genre films. There are no musicals, and few films even with musical interludes (Morocco, the march in Fort Apache). This is very much the realist side of auteurism.
Yeah, I think The Raid could be in my top 70 when I trimmed it down too, and then miss in the end. So who'd know...
With justice, it would be in the top 50. Too many movies like that.
Mike, there are a lot of genre films on Dan's list--comedies, melodramas...
...and Westerns! When I look at that list, the films look pretty fanciful to me: there are films that are almost fairy tales, films about the dead coming back to life, films about walking into the Sahara wearing high heels.... Realism is a relative term, though.
I didn't say Westerns because there are only three! They're all by commonly acknowledged pantheon directors too.
I wanted to observe no prejudices against genres, but there would sure be a lot more Westerns on my list. I think I'm more with Jim Kitses on this: It's not just the directors, but the interplay of the directors with the genre itself that makes the Western so rich for me.
Minor directors often rise to an unaccustomed level with this genre, at least in its peak period. This rarely happens with any other kind of film in my experience.
There are quite a few films on this list I have not seen yet, especially after 1970.
Thank you for posing this!
I will try to track these down.
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