By my reckoning, it’s a
week until Sight and Sound, the British Film Institute’s magazine, releases the
results of its ten yearly poll. For
those not in the know – every ten years, beginning in 1952, Sight and Sound has
surveyed the world’s directors and critics and asked them what they think the
10 best films of all time are. Every decade
but the first has seen Citizen Kane come in at number 1. I suspect this year will see Kane lose that
top spot for the first time since ’52 – Tokyo Story might rise above it, as
might Sunrise (a film more viewed and accessible now and in a quality blu-ray
print). As is usual, I suspect no film
more recent than 1979 will make the list.
In 1961, Penelope Houston,
then editor of the magazine, asked people to play this “impossible but
intriguing game again” and nominate 10 films.
Nick James, the current editor, has been doing the same again over the
last twelve months. Because I’m not a
famous director or film critic (at least not yet!), I’ll just have to suffice
with you, the readers of my lovely blog.
There a number of ways of
approaching this question: do you go for films that have had the biggest
influence upon the medium? Or do you go
for films that have had the biggest impact on you, the viewer? Each question would, I am certain, provoke a
very different top 10. Do you select a
film because you know it is important, but isn’t actually one you would watch
more than once? For instance, I adored
Battleship Potemkin, but I have no inclination to watch it again. But I’ll happily sit through El Dorado every
Christmas (it’s my Great Escape equivalent).
El Dorado, no matter how brilliant it is, wouldn’t make my top 10, but
Potemkin might.
So I’ve given it some
thought, and I think it’s best to mix a bit of the two different views:
important works and personal favourites.
A blend of everything that makes cinema what it is for me.
It is also very tough to
choose just 10 films. I wrote a long
list, and whittled it down. The final
push from 12 to 10 was toughest.
Here then are my top 10
films, in alphabetical order, according to English title:
The Apartment (1960)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Badlands (1973)
City Lights (1931)
The General (1926)
Il vangelo secondo Matteo
[The Gospel According to Matthew] (1964)
Irréversible (2002)
Die Büchse der Pandora [Pandora’s
Box] (1929)
Pather Panchali (1955)
Sunrise: A Song of Two
Humans (1927)
It’ll be an odd list to
some. Surely Irreversible isn’t great
art? It’s surely not as good as
Kane?! And where is Kane anyway? I love Kane, adore it, but it’s not in my top
10.
The Apartment (1960)
I think Billy Wilder and
I.A.L. Diamond’s script is one of the sharpest ever. Wilder’s direction is superb. It is the sweetest, and yet bitterest,
romance on screen.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The opening minutes of
this, when I was 11 years old, up late on a school night when everybody else in
the house was fast asleep, watched through sleepy eyes, became the moment I
fell in love with cinema. It remains as
powerful to me now, over 20 years later.
Badlands (1973)
Cinema for me, between the
ages of 13-20, was dictated by my parents’ choice. We saw Steven Seagal films galore. We saw James Bond, again and again. If there was a gun on the front cover, we
watched it. No, they didn’t mistake this
for an action movie. I saw it independently,
but I’d forgotten cinema could be this.
I never knew it could do such lyricism.
Like Apocalypse Now, Badlands changed my world. I still think it the finest American film of
its generation.
City Lights (1931)
I’d never cried in a
cinema. I did as Chaplin bought a
flower. Magic
The General (1926)
Is this the funniest film
ever made? No. But it’s the funniest film I return to the
most often. There is craft and genius
here that is missing from other comedies of the era. The General casts a bewitching spell on
me. It’s more than a comedy, that’s
why. It’s bigger than its parts would
have you believe. It's utter genius.
Il vangelo secondo Matteo
[The Gospel According to Matthew] (1964)
The finest religious film,
and one of such simple elegance and beauty, it holds me utterly
transfixed. I’m not religious at all –
though I once was - and I think it is because it speaks to the soul in a way
that other cinema fails to, that Passolini’s finest film retains its power.
Irréversible (2002)
To me, Gaspar Noé’s film challenged
everything we had begun to take for granted.
It is structurally a most fascinating film – it owes debts to Memento,
to L'année dernière à Marienbad (which almost made my top 10) – but it is
bigger than all them. It seemed, by the
turn of the twenty-first century, that all of cinemas taboos had been broken. Cinema was no longer transgressive. Then Irréversible came along, and kicked you
hard in the face. Its blended philosophy
and extreme violence. It attacked the logic of cinema. It implicated the viewer in its action. It made cinema an event again. It is a moral film – it forces the viewer to
consider the acts of vengeance they have seen.
Whereas cinema until this moment had gloried in violence (we cheer when
the hero gets vengeance in cinema), Irréversible makes us feel sick with the
image of violence. If this film had been
played the right way round, we would have been cheering Vincent Cassell by the
end. Noé was brave enough to show us how
wrong this attitude is. French shock
cinema is often seen as nothing more than ribaldry, a cheap nasty entertainment
at the end of some dead-end alley. It’s
not. I think they’ll be evaluating the
importance of this film in decades to come.
Die Büchse der Pandora [Pandora’s
Box] (1929)
Lulu. No, not the singer. Lulu Brooks – Louise Brooks – has there ever
been a sexier woman on the screen? An
icon that defined a generation, a style much imitated but never bettered. It’s not a perfect film – its shaggy, too
long, over ambitious – but it retains an elusive quality that brings you back
time and again. It is beautiful in its
horror.
Pather Panchali (1955)
The best film about
childhood. Ray’s film contains more
heart, beauty and soul than a dozen other films. Its simple elegance I think belies its great
intelligence, and so people often mistake it for a lesser film than it truly
is. The Apu trilogy, of which this is
the first piece, remains India’s greatest cinematic masterpiece.
Sunrise: A Song of Two
Humans (1927)
When people ask me: what’s
your favourite movie? I tell them
this. They’ve never heard of it usually,
and when I tell them it’s a silent movie from the 1920s, they look at me as if
I’m mad. Unless they’re cineastes themselves,
and then they nod, and go yes, it is the finest film of its era. Some even say the finest film ever made. There is not a duff note here, not a wasted
image. Murnau’s masterpiece remains the
pinnacle of cinematic achievement for me.
And now I’ve justified
each of my choices, I’m aching with pain that I couldn’t include: Don’t Look
Now, The Third Man, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, Singin’ in the Rain, It’s
Winter, The Ladykillers, Last Year in Marienbad, The Lavender Hill Mob, Metropolis,
Vertigo, Nosferatu, The Woman in the Dunes, Piccadilly and more, so much more. Hitchcock, Welles, Ozu, de Sica, Mizoguchi, Tati…
Still, I've 10 films. 5 American, 5 International (I'm counting Sunrise as European, even though it was made by Fox, as everything but it's money and its stars scream Germany and expressionism), from the 1920s to the 2000s. Even if you don't agree, there are ten films worth your time here.
UPDATE: Sight & Sound have released their lists. Here is my reaction:
UPDATE: Sight & Sound have released their lists. Here is my reaction:
I predicted Citizen Kane
would lose its position at #1 in the Sight & Sound 10 year poll and indeed
it has. Kane is down 1, to #2. Vertigo has ousted Welles's classic. Not a surprise, as Vertigo remains a powerful
and pertinent piece of cinema, even today, while Welles' film, though still
powerful, is more a historic document now.
Also, no films made later than 1980 made the lists, and two films from
the 1920s appeared in the top 10 for the first time. Proof that DVD accessibility has revealed the
quality and power of these early films to a wider audience. I’ve still not seen Dreyer’s Joan of Arc, and
until DVD and blu-ray it would have been impossible for me to see it. Now I can.
I wonder, as DVD companies release more of the forgotten and misplaced
films of yesteryear, whether in another 10 years’ time, this poll will look
very different indeed.
In my top 20, there would have been La Regle de Jeu, Vertigo, Tokyo Story. Of John Wayne's films, though, I much prefer Red River to The Searchers. And the inclusion of Man With A Movie Camera is interesting... I find it a fascinating historical document but it's not a film I would rush to watch again. I'd much rather take Potemkin over it.
Go on, hit me with your
top 10 in the comments below…
No comments:
Post a Comment