20. Come and See (1985) Dir. Elem Klimov, 140 mins.
Set in 1943, during the Nazi German occupation of the Byelorussian SSR, Klimov’s anti-war psychological horror follows a young peasant boy (Alexei Kravchenko), who, having defied his parents by joining the resistance movement, witnesses the atrocities committed on the populace. Although it went on to be a large box office hit in the Soviet Union, Klimov had had to wait 8 years before he was given approval by the authorities to produce it. Unrelenting in its brutal realism, Come and See combines disorienting camera work, extreme facial close-ups and a brilliant use of sound to enhance some of the most harrowing imagery ever seen on film. There was much speculation as to why Klimov had made no more films after this. In 2001 he provided an answer, “I lost interest in making films…Everything that was possible I felt I had already done.” For those who have seen Klimov’s lyrical and nightmarish masterpiece, this seems like no idle boast. Buy
19. The Mirror (1975) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 106 mins.
Propelled by autobiographical reflections on Tarkovsky’s own childhood trauma, The Mirror unfolds as an organic flow of memories recalled by a dying poet (based on Tarkovsky’s absent father Arseny, who in reality outlived his son by three years) of key moments in his life both with respect to his immediate family as well as that of the Russian people as a whole during the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Extremely experimental, the film uses an unconventional nonlinear structure featuring contemporary scenes combined with childhood memories and dreams that have a hallucinatory and rhythmic quality that speaks directly to the subconscious of the viewer. Although when released the film was considered an unfocused failure by some critics and the narrative incomprehensible by many cinema-goers, The Mirror has grown in reputation since to now be considered one of the most beautiful and poetic films ever made. More…
18. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 110 mins.
Dreyer’s last silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc was shot in France with massive technical and financial resources and in conditions of great creative freedom. Having spent over a year researching Joan of Arc (played here by stage actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti), Dreyer forgoes medieval pageantry or Joan’s military exploits, instead using the records of the Rouen trial to focus on the spiritual and political conflicts of her last day as a captive of England. Instantly acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece (although it was a commercial failure), the film is probably most notable for the symbolic progression of close-up faces that reaches an apotheosis in the long sustained sequence of Joan’s interrogation against a menacing architectural backdrop. Despite French nationalists’ scepticism about whether a Danish person could be in charge of a film that centred on one of France’s most revered historical icons, it’s Dreyer’s brilliant direction, particularly the unconventional emphasis on the actors’ facial features, that along with Falconetti’s unforgettable performance, gives the film its immense emotional power. More…
17. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) Dir. Werner Herzog, 93 mins.
One of the great haunting visions of world cinema and the first collaboration between Herzog and star Klaus Kinski, the story follows the mostly fictionalised travels of sixteenth century Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who, in open and irrational defiance of nature and God, leads a group of conquistadors down the Orinoco and Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. With its incongruous adherence to courtly grandeur in the midst of the jungle, the film is both a parody and criticism of colonialism. By means of extreme camera angles and long shots, Herzog visualises primordial nature as an antagonistic and terrifying force that dwarfs and eventually destroys the coloniser. The film is also notable for the infamous production incidents such as Herzog (who was unarmed at the time) threatening to shoot the unpredictable and difficult Kinski if he left the set. More…
16. Bicycle Thieves (1948) Dir. Vittorio De Sica, 93 mins.
One of the major achievements of neo-realism and the film that convinced Satyajit Ray to become a filmmaker, Bicycle Thieves sees De Sica using a non-professional cast to tell the story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family. It touches broadly on Italy’s institutions and cultures but at its centre is always the grinding poverty of the family, exemplified in the relationship between the well meaning father and the young plucky son who helps him look for the bicycle. It’s the balance between the careful direction with its intricate mise-en-scene, the use of the inexperienced actors, and the input of writing collaborator Cesare Zavattini, who championed the poetics of everyday life and the normal man, that makes Bicycle Thieves the most well known and successful work of De Sica’s long and varied career. More…
15. Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 113 mins.
Leading on from the critical acclaim of Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese continued further into the darker side of New York City with a film set soon after the Vietnam War. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man and former Marine living in Manhattan who becomes a night time taxi driver in order to cope with his chronic insomnia. Bickle becomes attracted to a young woman (Cybill Shepherd), shows concern for a child prostitute (a disturbingly precocious turn from Jodie Foster), and becomes progressively more troubled over what he sees as the city’s filth and human scum. His compressed anger finally erupts into a rage focused simultaneously on Foster’s pimp and Shepherd’s boss, a political candidate. Brilliant and controversially violent, the film features an alarming psychological atmosphere (enhanced by a jazzy and eerie music score by Bernard Hermann), a remarkable central performance from De Niro and established Scorsese as one of the great talents of the New Hollywood era. More…
14. Seven Samurai (1954) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 207 mins.
Deeply influenced by Hollywood and particularly the westerns of John Ford, Kurosawa’s epic samurai adventure takes place in Warring States Period Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (including the terrific Toshiro Mifune) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. One of the most influential films of all time, evidenced by the breakthrough films of directors such as Spielberg, Lucas and Sergio Leone, it was remade by Sturges as the western The Magnificent Seven six years later. With its memorable characters and stunning action sequences Seven Samurai is as much a thrilling and engrossing form of entertainment as it is art and is, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…
13. 8½ (1963) Dir. Federico Fellini, 138 mins.
Made when neo-realism was still the reigning orthodoxy, Fellini’s surrealist avant-garde masterpiece is a portrait of a famous Italian film director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), who is suffering from “director’s block”. Stalled on his new science fiction film that includes veiled autobiographical references, he loses interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. Fellini delivers a highly influential and inventive spectacle of imagery that’s helped along by a funny and thought provoking script, Mastroianni’s terrific performance and Nino Rota’s unique musical style. While the director’s own autobiographical tendencies became more accentuated with 8½, it’s his ability to draw from other people’s recollections and fantasies as well as his own, that made it his most representative film and one of the greatest ever. More…
12. The Conformist (1970) Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 107 mins.
Adapted from the novel by Alberto Moravia and set initially in 1930s Italy, Bertolucci’s poetic expressionist art film explores the bourgeois roots of fascism by following Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is so eager to fit in and find normality, that he agrees to a traditional marriage (despite having little regard for his fiance) and joins the Fascist secret police, finding himself ordered to assassinate his old friend and teacher, Professor Quadri, an outspoken anti-Fascist intellectual now living in exile in France. Propelled to greatness by Trintignant’s superb and compelling performance, a clever narrative structure (with memorable flashback sequences) and the remarkable use of Fascist era art and decor, The Conformist is a masterpiece of stunning cinematography (featuring the brilliant use of lighting and warm colours from Vittorio Storaro and art director Ferdinando Scarfiotti) and relaxed rhythm interrupted by explosions of violent intensity. The film was also a huge influence on New Hollywood film makers such as Francis Ford Coppola. More…
11. The Rules of the Game (1939) Dir. Jean Renoir, 110 mins.
Ending a decade of great artistic achievement for French cinema, Renoir’s masterpiece marked a striking departure in filming technique, (particularly from Hollywood norms) with its long takes, constantly moving camera and use of deep focus. Looking at French society just before the start of World War II, the film is principally set in the country estate of the Marquis de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) and shows the collapse of a frivolous, static and corrupt aristocratic society. This image of France, as well as the film’s elaborate structure and the ambiguity of the characters, confused critics, provoked hostility from the public and was banned as demoralising by the French government after the outbreak of war. Renoir never recovered from the negative reaction but despite this and the lack of commercial success, the director’s filming style, that brought out a complex mise-en-scene, the rich and varied array of characters and the 1959 restoration version helped to grow its reputation as one of the greatest films of all time. More…
10. Raging Bull (1980) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 129 mins.
One of a string of early 1980s box office disappointments for Martin Scorsese, the film is a hugely ambitious and superbly edited biography of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), an Italian American middleweight boxer whose sadomasochistic rage, sexual jealousy and animalistic appetite destroys his relationship with his wife and family. Scorsese gives De Niro the freedom to truly transform into the unsympathetic working class boxer and he’s got strong support from relative newcomers Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty (as LaMotta’s brother and wife). It received mixed reviews and criticism for its violent content on release, but De Niro’s explosive and absorbing performance, the brutal yet poetic fight scenes and the bleakly beautiful black and white cinematography make Raging Bull not only Scorsese’s finest film but also one of cinema’s best ever. More…
9. Blade Runner (1982) Dir. Ridley Scott, 117 mins.
Loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ the film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered beings called replicants are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on off-world colonies. When a fugitive group of replicants led by Roy Batty (Ruger Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down. On release it struggled at the box office and turned off critics with its unconventional pacing and plot, but still grew a reputation as cult sci-fi. After a director’s cut and The Final Cut (just two of seven versions) and helped by an outstanding cast, particularly Ford and an iconic turn from Hauer (who wrote the famous ‘Tears in the Rain’ speech himself), and the music of Vangelis, Blade Runner is now considered one of the most thematically complex and aesthetically stunning films ever made. More…
8. The Godfather Part II (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 200 mins.
While Coppola had no initial interest in making a follow up to The Godfather, Part II became one of the most commercially and critically successful sequels of all time. The film is actually both a sequel and prequel, with the tale of a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) and his ascent into criminality paralleling the continuing story of Vito’s youngest son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who is now in charge of the criminal family enterprise. While some were quick to declare it greater than the original and few could argue against the outstanding performances and stunning cinematography, there were notable critics who attacked the non-linear narrative and the pacing. However, the film was soon reevaluated with many previous detractors changing their minds and it is now seen as one of the great creative triumphs of American cinema. More…
7. Andrei Rublev (1966) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 205 mins.
Loosely based on the life of Andrei Rublev, the monk and great 15th century Russian icon painter, Tarkovsky’s historical epic concerns the relationship between man and God, man and nature, the artist and the people, the artist and the art form. It was banned by the authorities, largely because of its portrayal of the conflict between the artist and the political powered structure, and not released in the Soviet Union until 1971. Deeply moving and mysterious the film is rich in symbolism and full of remarkable imagery. More…
6. Apocalypse Now (1979) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 153 mins.
Drawing from war correspondent Michael Herr’s dispatches and Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, John Milius adapted the story of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, changing its setting from late nineteenth-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The plot revolves around two US Army special operations officers Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Willard is sent to assassinate the rogue and insane Kurtz in what becomes a nightmarish journey into the darkness of war and the monsters who inhabit it. The film is also notable as one of cinema’s most troubled productions (as documented in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) with sets destroyed by severe weather, Sheen having a near fatal heart attack and the release being postponed while Coppola edited thousands of feet of film. Apocalypse Now received mixed reviews on release and while Brando’s bravura turn (much of it improvised) threatened to unbalance the film, (and he arrived on set overweight and unprepared), the brilliant direction of Coppola, inspired writing by Milius and Vittorio Storaro’s acclaimed cinematography has seen it reevaluated to now be considered one of the greatest films ever made. More…
5. Vertigo (1958) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 129 mins.
Alfred Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers when he made Vertigo, a psychological thriller, based on the French novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, that follows a retired police detective, Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who has acrophobia, and is hired as a private investigator to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behaviour. Focusing on the romantic obsession that Scottie develops for the enigmatic woman (Kim Novak), Vertigo received mixed reviews upon release, particularly in Hitchcock’s native England, with some fans disappointed at the director departing from his earlier lighter romantic thrillers and a number of critics dismissing it as nothing more than a slowly paced murder mystery. However, it’s re-evaluation began in the following decade, when writers at the influential French magazine Cahiers du cinéma began to view Hitchcock as a serious cinematic artist rather than just a slick crowd pleaser and soon film scholars were singling the movie out as a work of hypnotic visual beauty and a profound meditation on love, loss and identity. Over sixty years on, Vertigo continues to fascinate and is now heralded, by many, as Hitchock’s most important contribution to cinema. More…
4. Tokyo Story (1953) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 136 mins.
With his masterful ability for understanding the human condition, Yasujiro Ozu, by the time of his death in 1963 (aged just 60), had become, by common consent, Japan’s greatest director and his most famous and acclaimed film remains Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story), the poignant tale of a couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. The elderly grandparents find their offspring too preoccupied with their jobs and families to spend much time with them. In fact, the only affection and kindness comes from their daughter-in-law Noriko, widow of a son they lost to war. Ozu combines his seemingly simple but distinctive minimalist filming techniques, (placing the camera, which rarely moves, at a low height as well as intricate cutting), with brilliant narrative control to deliver an emotionally rich yet subtle family drama that’s as close to everyday life as any the cinema has given us. More…
3. Citizen Kane (1941) Dir. Orson Welles, 119 mins.
Considered by some as overly self-conscious, artificial and even baroque, Orson Welles’s sensational first studio film examines the life and legacy of the fictional Charles Foster Kane (Welles himself) who rises from obscurity to become a publishing tycoon. Coming off the back of Welles’s infamous 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast, RKO gave him full creative freedom and let him loose on the studio’s latest technology. While his role as the ‘auteur’ has been questioned (Pauline Kael argued Herman J. Mankiewicz was the sole scriptwriter) it was his revolutionary approach to the film medium that encouraged large scale experimentation on existing techniques, particularly the complex narrative structure, cinematographer Greg Toland’s rule breaking use of lighting and deep focus and the innovative use of the music of composer Bernard Herrmann (his first film score), that helped make Citizen Kane a technical and stylistic triumph. Despite a campaign by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst that delayed the release (Hearst thought the portrayal of Kane to be too close to his own megalomaniac personality), the film received rave reviews and has gone on to be acclaimed as a landmark achievement in cinema. More…
2. The Godfather (1972) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 175 mins.
Brilliantly combining the temperament of European art cinema with the Hollywood gangster genre of the past, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic mafia saga chronicles ten years (1945-55) in the lives of a fictional Italian American crime family. The film focuses most on the ageing patriarch Vito Corleone (a come back for Marlon Brando), and his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), whose transformation from war hero and reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss propels much of the narrative. Coppola had to fight to cast Brando (and also Pacino), who gives a performance of immense authority among a magnificent cast of what were then mainly unknown actors. With a success that marked the transition from Classic Hollywood to New American Cinema and revitalised Paramount, The Godfather is a masterpiece of stunning artistry and masterful story telling that is continually lauded as one of the greatest and most influential films in world cinema. More…
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 141 mins.
Remarkably once labelled as dull, unimaginative and lacking dramatic appeal, Kubrick’s grand science fiction spectacle took four years to prepare and used special effects, particularly in depicting space flight, that were without precedent in the industry. The film, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith, deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the existence of extraterrestrial life. With the hypnotic imagery, scientific realism and Kubrick’s elaborate use of music, 2001 is now acclaimed as visionary cinema. Even watching it fifty years after its original release, you are provided with a visual and technical quality that’s still without equal in the history of film. More…
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine. Below are his picks for 
Do the Movies Have a Future?
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In 2010, the Toronto International Film Festival released its “Essential 100” list of films, which merged one list of the 100 greatest films of all time as determined by an expert panel of TIFF curators with another list determined by TIFF stakeholders. The list reads like a definitive guide to the best of world cinema.
The Atom Egoyan Collection (7 Disc Set) [DVD]
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Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the 1960s French New Wave film movement. Like his New Wave contemporaries, Godard criticised mainstream French cinema’s “Tradition of Quality”, which “emphasised craft over innovation, privileged established directors over new directors, and preferred the great works of the past to experimentation.” As a result of such argument, he and like-minded critics, started to make their own films. Many of Godard’s films challenge the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema. He is often considered the most radical French filmmaker of the 1960s and 1970s and his approach in film conventions, politics and philosophies made him arguably the most influential director of the French New Wave. In 1963, still in his early thirties, Godard compiled a list of the ten best American sound films.
Jean-Luc Godard + Jean-Pierre Gorin: Five Films, 1968-1971 (6-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray + DVD]
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In 2008 Le Figaro polled 76 participants: critics, screenwriters and directors to come up with a list of the one hundred most beautiful films in the world. Citizen Kane predictably came top while Charles Laughton’s only film, The Night of the Hunter was second along with the highest ranked French Film from Jean Renoir, The Rule of the game. Charlie Chaplin is the only one to have five films listed. The most recent titles are Talk to Her by Pedro Almodovar (2002) and Mulholland Drive (2001).
Invited by the Guardian newspaper to compile his best films of the 20th century at the turn of the millennium, distinguished film writer and critic Derek Malcolm chose and wrote essays on the one hundred films, by one hundred different directors, he personally felt best represented 20th century world cinema. This work was then published in book form – ‘A Century of Films: Derek Malcolm’s Personal Best’ – in November 2000. A decade later Malcolm said he would add A Separation, The Death of Mr Lazarescu, Festen and Silent Souls at the expense of Swing High Swing Low, Trash, Behind the Green Door and The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Whilst Malcolm listed the films in a numerical order he has always stated that they are in no particular order. Buy – A Century of Films: Derek Malcom’s Personal Best (Paperback)
(Orson Welles, 1958)
(Satyajit Ray, 1958)
(Howard Hawks, 1959)
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
(Jean Vigo, 1926)
(Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
(Max Ophuls, 1953)
(Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
(Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
(Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
(Roberto Rossellini, 1966)
(Nicholas Ray, 1953)
(Luis Buñuel, 1961)
(Charles Laughton, 1955)
(Tod Browning, 1932)
(Claude Chabrol, 1968)
(Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
(David Lean, 1945)
(Dusan Makavejev, 1971)
(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
(Santiago Alvarez, 1968)
(John Ford, 1939)
(Jean Cocteau,1946)
(Sam Fuller, 1963)
(Victor Sjöström, 1928)
(GW Pabst, 1929)
(Charles Chaplin, 1947)
(Kamal Amrohi, 1971)
(Robert Bresson, 1959)
(William A Seiter, 1934)
(Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
(Eric Rohmer, 1967)
(Victor Erice, 1973)
(Robert Hamer, 1949)
(Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
(Jiri Menzel, 1966)
(Billy Wilder, 1944)
(Walt Disney, 1940)
(Werner Herzog, 1974)
(Marcel Carné,1945)
(Buster Keaton, 1926)
(DW Griffith, 1915)
(Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)
(Robert Altman, 1971)
(Bob Rafelson, 1972)
(Les Blank, 1982)
(Woody Allen, 1984)
(Sam Wood, 1935)
(Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968)
(David Lynch, 1986)
(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)
(Carol Reed, 1949)
(Anthony Mann, 1958)
(Zhang Yimou, 1991)
(Carl Dreyer, 1943)
(Robert Flaherty, 1921)
(Powell and Pressburger, 1943)
(George Cukor, 1940)
(François Truffaut, 1962)
(Walerian Borowczyk, 1971)
(Mitchell Leisen, 1937)
(Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
(Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)
(Ken Loach, 1970)
(The Mitchell brothers, 1972)
(John Cassavetes, 1976)
(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
(Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)
(Marcel Varnel, 1937)
(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)
(John Huston, 1972)
(Gauber Rocher, 1969)
(Károly Makk, 1971)
(Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
(Jean Renoir, 1932)
(Paul Morrissey, 1970)
(Sergei Eisenstein, 1924)
(Miklós Jancsó, 1962)
(Wim Wenders, 1975)
(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
(Preston Sturges, 1941)
(Luchino Visconti, 1963)
(Fritz Lang, 1956)
(Michael Reeves, 1968)
(Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
(Ousmane Sembene, 1974)
(Francesco Rosi, 1961)
(Frank Capra, 1932)
‘The most important and misappreciated American films since the beginning of the cinema’, is a book of 150 pages published by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium (now known as Cinematek) in 1978 and compiled by Jacques Ledoux. The list in the book came from a survey which polled 203 participants (116 Americans and 87 non-Americans) around the world. Each participant compiled two lists, a list of the most important films (limited to 30 titles) and a list of misappreciated films (not limited in number). The final list is sorted by number of votes (including both important and misappreciated votes). The book lists all 2327 films that received at least 1 vote. This list below includes the films that received at least 5 votes. “Misappreciated” was taken by those with a knowledge of the English language as meaning underrated.