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The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2021) 20-1

Introduction

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.  (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 , 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…

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The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2020) 20-1

20. Rashomon (1950) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 88 mins.

Decisively breaking away from the Japanese studios ‘Hollywood’ narrative model, Rashomon is set in feudal Japan and depicts the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her samurai husband, through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses. By presenting these conflicting views of the same event, the film explores the imperfections of humanity and was probably the first in Japanese cinema that featured such ambiguity, allowing the audience to make their own judgements rather than being provided with a single truth. The film is also notable for the emotive acting, Kurosawa’s mastery of mise-en-scene and the sentimental but compelling ending. Winner of the grand prize at Venice and best foreign film at the Academy awards, Rashomon helped propel Japanese film toward world recognition and is now widely regarded as one of the premiere works of art cinema. More…

19. There Will Blood (2007) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 mins.

Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil!’ There Will Be Blood tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a real work of art with Anderson managing to bring to life a lost era with a staggering aesthetic clarity. Day-Lewis’s relentlessly focused portrayal of the often unfathomable and greedy oil man saw him rightly awarded with a Best Actor Oscar. While the final scene and confrontation between Plainview and his nemesis Eli (Paul Dano) polarised critics, like it or loathe it, it provides one of most memorable moments of 21st century cinema. More…

18. 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…

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. Pulp Fiction (1994) Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 154 mins.

Directed in a highly stylised manner and drawing on a mixture of cinematic sources (such as American B pictures and the French New Wave), Pulp Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals and a mysterious briefcase. The film reinvigorated the career of John Travolta and features a brilliant ensemble cast, particularly Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. Tarantino confidently deploys an ingenious structure, rapid fire rhetoric and graphic violence with a surprising playfullness and exceptional intelligence. 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, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…

13. 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…

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.  (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 , 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…

10. 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…

9. 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…

8. 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…

7. 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…

6. 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…

5. 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…

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…

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The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2019) 20-1

Introduction

20. 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…

19. 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…

18. There Will Blood (2007) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 mins.

Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil!’ There Will Be Blood tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a real work of art with Anderson managing to bring to life a lost era with a staggering aesthetic clarity. Day-Lewis’s relentlessly focused portrayal of the often unfathomable and greedy oil man saw him rightly awarded with a Best Actor Oscar. While the final scene and confrontation between Plainview and his nemesis Eli (Paul Dano) polarised critics, like it or loathe it, it provides one of most memorable moments of 21st century cinema. More…

17. Rashomon (1950) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 88 mins.

Decisively breaking away from the Japanese studios ‘Hollywood’ narrative model, Rashomon is set in feudal Japan and depicts the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her samurai husband, through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses. By presenting these conflicting views of the same event, the film explores the imperfections of humanity and was probably the first in Japanese cinema that featured such ambiguity, allowing the audience to make their own judgements rather than being provided with a single truth. The film is also notable for the emotive acting, Kurosawa’s mastery of mise-en-scene and the sentimental but compelling ending. Winner of the grand prize at Venice and best foreign film at the Academy awards, Rashomon helped propel Japanese film toward world recognition and is now widely regarded as one of the premiere works of art cinema. More…

16. 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…

15. Pulp Fiction (1994) Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 154 mins.

Directed in a highly stylised manner and drawing on a mixture of cinematic sources (such as American B pictures and the French New Wave), Pulp Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals and a mysterious briefcase. The film reinvigorated the career of John Travolta and features a brilliant ensemble cast, particularly Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. Tarantino confidently deploys an ingenious structure, rapid fire rhetoric and graphic violence with a surprising playfullness and exceptional intelligence. More…

14. 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…

13. 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…

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. 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, probably, the most beloved of Japan’s jidaigeki masterpieces. More…

9. 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…

8. 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…

7. 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…

6.  (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 , 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…

5. 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…

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 amongst 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…



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David Denby (Sight & Sound) Top 10 Films

David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine. Below are his picks for Sight & Sounds critics poll for the Greatest Films of All Time 2012. His choices include some of the most influential films ever made.

L’Avventura 1960 Michelangelo Antonioni
Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles
The Godfather Part II 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
Journey to Italy 1954 Roberto Rossellini
The Life Of Oharu 1952 Mizoguchi Kenji
Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir
Seven Samurai 1954 Akira Kurosawa
Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau
Tree of Life, The 2010 Terrence Malick
Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock

Do the Movies Have a Future? (Hardcover)
Film 70/71 (Hardcover)
Film 71/72 (Paperback)
Film 72-73 an Anthology by the National Society of Film Critics (Paperback)
Film, 73-74 (Hardcover)
Awake in the Dark: An Anthology of American Film Criticism, 1915 to the Present (Paperback)

 





TIFF’s Essential 100

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.

1 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2 CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
3 L’AVVENTURA (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
4 THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola)
5 PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson)
6 SEVEN SAMURAI (Akira Kurosawa)
7 PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray)
8 CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz)
9 MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
10 BICYCLE THIEVES (Vittorio De Sica)
11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
12 8 ½ (Federico Fellini)
13 BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein)
14 RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa)
15 TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu)
16 THE 400 BLOWS (François Truffaut)
17 UGETSU (Kenji Mizoguchi)
18 BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard)
19 L’ATALANTE (Jean Vigo)
20 CINEMA PARADISO (Giuseppe Tornatore)
21 LA GRANDE ILLUSION (Jean Renoir)
22 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (David Lean)
23 PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman)
24 GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming)
25 SUNRISE (F.W. Murnau)
26 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Stanley Kubrick)
27 VOYAGE IN ITALY (Roberto Rossellini)
28 AMÉLIE (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
29 CITY LIGHTS (Charlie Chaplin)
30 STAR WARS (George Lucas)
31 SHERLOCK JR. (Buster Keaton)
32 RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir)
33 THE LEOPARD (Luchino Visconti)
34 LA DOLCE VITA (Federico Fellini)
35 L’ARRIVÉE D’UN TRAIN À LA CIOTAT (Frères LumiereLouis Lumière and Auguste Lumière)
36 THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming)
37 LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
38 VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock)
39 NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
40 PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino)
41 THE SEARCHERS (John Ford)
42 SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (Danny Boyle)
43 THE CONFORMIST (Bernardo Bertolucci)
44 CITY OF GOD (Fernando Meirelles)
45 TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese)
46 APOCALYPSE NOW (Francis Ford Coppola)
47 SALÓ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
48 THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman)
49 LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (Georges Méliès)
50 METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang)




51 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Gillo Pontecorvo)
52 IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar Wai)
53 VIRIDIANA (Luis Buñuel)
54 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (Roberto Benigni)
55 THE SORROW AND THE PITY (Marcel Ophüls)
56 PAN’S LABYRINTH (Guillermo del Toro)
57 THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… (Max Ophüls)
58 BLADE RUNNER (Ridley Scott)
59 THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Abbas Kiarostami)
60 LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (Marcel Carné)
61 BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks)
62 SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (Stanley Donen)
63 JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray)
64 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Stanley Kubrick)
65 MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
66 M (Fritz Lang)
67 SCORPIO RISING (Kenneth Anger)
68 PSYCHO (Alfred Hitchcock)
69 DUST IN THE WIND (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
70 SCHINDLER’S LIST (Steven Spielberg)
71 NASHVILLE (Robert Altman)
72 CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee)
73 WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
74 JULES ET JIM (François Truffaut)
75 CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch)
76 THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
77 GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
78 SOME LIKE IT HOT (Billy Wilder)
79 JAWS (Steven Spielberg)
80 ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen)
81 THE BIRTH OF A NATION (D.W. Griffith)
82 CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wai)
83 LA NOIRE DE… (Ousmane Sembene)
84 RAGING BULL (Martin Scorsese)
85 THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston)
86 CHINATOWN (Roman Polanski)
87 ANDREI RUBLEV (Andrei Tarkovsky)
88 WINGS OF DESIRE (Wim Wenders)
89 VIDEODROME (David Cronenberg)
90 WRITTEN ON THE WIND (Douglas Sirk)
91 THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed)
92 BLUE VELVET (David Lynch)
93 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Sergio Leone)
94 BREAKING THE WAVES (Lars von Trier)
95 A NOS AMOURS (Maurice Pialat)
96 CLEO DE 5 A 7 (Agnès Varda)
97 ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodóvar)
98 EARTH (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
99 OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook)
100 PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati)




Atom Egoyan (Sight & Sound) Top 10 Films

Atom Egoyan is a Canadian stage and film director, writer, and producer. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica (1994), a film set primarily in and around the fictional Exotica strip club. Egoyan’s most critically acclaimed film is the drama The Sweet Hereafter (1997), for which he received two Academy Award nominations, and his biggest commercial success is the erotic thriller Chloe (2009). Below are his top 10 choices for Sight & Sound’s Director film poll for 2012.

2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick
1963 Federico Fellini
Bicycle Thieves, The 1948 Vittorio de Sica
Breathless 1960 Jean-Luc Godard
Godfather: Part I, The 1972 Francis Ford Coppola
Metropolis 1927 Fritz Lang
Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer
Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman
Pulp Fiction 1994 Quentin Tarantino
Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock

The Atom Egoyan Collection (7 Disc Set) [DVD]
Speaking Parts by Zeitgeist Films by Atom Egoyan (DVD)
Adoration / While She Way Out / Nothing but the Truth by Atom Egoyan (DVD)
Where the Truth Lies (Rated Edition) by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment by Atom Egoyan (DVD)
Adoration by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment by Atom Egoyan (DVD)




Jean-Luc Godard’s Ten Best American Sound Films

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.

  1. Scarface (Howard Hawks)
  2. The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
  3. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
  4. The Searchers (John Ford)
  5. Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly-Donen)
  6. The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
  7. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
  8. Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
  9. To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
  10. Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg)

Jean-Luc Godard + Jean-Pierre Gorin: Five Films, 1968-1971 (6-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray + DVD]
Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks (book/kindle)
Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (book/kindle)
Jean-Luc Godard (Three-Disc Collector’s Edition) (DVD)
Histoire(s) Du Cinema (DVD)




The 100 most beautiful films in the world

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).

1st : Citizen Kane, Orson Welles.
2nd tie : The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton; The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir.
3rd : Sunrise, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.
4th : L’Atalante, Jean Vigo.
5th : M, Fritz Lang.
6th : Singin’ the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.
7th : Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock.
8th tie : The Children of Paradise, Marcel Carné; The Searchers, John Ford; Greed, Eric von Stroheim.
9th tie : Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks; To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch.
10th : Tokyo Story, Yasujiro Ozu.
11th : Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard.
12th tie : Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi; City Lights, Charles Chaplin; The General Buster Keaton; Nosferatu, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau; The Music Room, Satyajit Ray.
13th tie : Freaks, Tod Browning; Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray; The Mother and the Whore, Jean Eustache.
14th tie : The Dictator, Charles Chaplin; The Leopard, Luchino Visconti; Hiroshima My Love, Alain Resnais; Pandora’s Box, GW Pabst; North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock; Pickpocket, Robert Bresson.
15th tie : Casque d’or, Jacques Becker; The Barefoot Contessa, Joseph Mankiewicz; Moonfleet, Fritz Lang; Madame de …, Max Ophuls; Le Plaisir, Max Ophuls; The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino.
16th tie : L’Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni; Battleship Potemkin, SM Eisenstein; Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock; Ivan the Terrible, SM Eisenstein; The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola; Touch of Evil, Orson Welles; The Wind, Victor Sjöström.
17th tie : 2001: The Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick; Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman.
18th tie : The Crowd, King Vidor; Eight and a half, Federico Fellini; La Jetee, Chris Marker; Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard; The Story of a Cheat, Sacha Guitry.
19th tie : Amarcord, Federico Fellini; Beauty and the Beast, Jean Cocteau; Some like it hot, Billy Wilder; Some Came Running, Vincente Minnelli; Gertrud, Carl Th. Dreyer; King Kong, Ernest Schoedsack and Merian J. Cooper; Laura, Otto Preminger; The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa.
20th tie : The 400 Blows, François Truffaut; La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini; The Dead, John Huston; Trouble in Paradise Ernst Lubitsch; It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra; Mr. Verdoux, Charles Chaplin; The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Th. Dreyer.
21st tie : Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard; Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola; Barry Lindon, Stanley Kubrick; The Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir; Intolerance,  DW Griffith; A Day in the Country, Jean Renoir; Playtime, Jacques Tati; Rome open city, Roberto Rossellini; Senso, Luchino Visconti; Modern Times, Charles Chaplin; Van Gogh, Maurice Pialat.
22nd tie : An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey; Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky; The Scarlet Empress, Joseph von Sternberg; Sansho the Bailiff, Kenji Mizoguchi; Talk to Her, Pedro Almodovar; The Party, Blake Edwards; Tabu, FM Murna; The Band Wagon, Vincente Minnelli; A Star is Born, George Cukor; Les Vacances de M. Hulot, Jacques Tati.
23rd tie : America America, Elia Kazan; El, Luis Bunuel; Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich; Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone; Le jour se lève, Marcel Carné; Letter from an unknown Woman, Max Ophuls; Lola, Jacques Demy; Manhattan, Woody Allen; Mulholland Drive, David Lynch; My night at Maud’s, Eric Rohmer; Night and Fog, Alain Resnais; The Gold Rush, Charles Chaplin; Scarface, Howard Hawks; Bicycle thieves, Vittorio de Sica; Napoleon, Abel Gance.



Derek Malcolm’s Top 100 Films of the Century

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)

  1. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
  2. The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
  3. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
  4. The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
  5. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1926)
  6. The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)
  7. Earrings of Madame De. (Max Ophuls, 1953)
  8. Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
  9. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
  10. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
  11. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini, 1966)
  12. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1953)
  13. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
  14. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
  15.  (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  16. Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
  17. The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme infidèle) (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
  18. Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
  19. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
  20. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)
  21. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
  22. LBJ (Santiago Alvarez, 1968)
  23. Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)
  24. The Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau,1946)
  25. Shock Corridor (Sam Fuller, 1963)
  26. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
  27. Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst, 1929)
  28. Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)
  29. Pakeezah (Kamal Amrohi, 1971)
  30. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
  31. Sons of the Desert (William A Seiter, 1934)
  32. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
  33. La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, 1967)
  34. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
  35. Kind Hearts And Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
  36. Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
  37. Closely Observed Trains (Jiri Menzel, 1966)
  38. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
  39. Fantasia (Walt Disney, 1940)
  40. The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)
  41. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
  42. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné,1945)
  43. The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
  44. The Birth of a Nation (DW Griffith, 1915)
  45. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)
  46. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
  47. Cuba Si! (Chris Marker, 1961)
  48. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
  49. The King Of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, 1972)
  50. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)



  51. Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982)
  52. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)
  53. A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)
  54. Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968)
  55. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
  56. A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)
  57. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
  58. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
  59. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
  60. Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
  61. Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
  62. Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer, 1943)
  63. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1921)
  64. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger, 1943)
  65. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
  66. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  67. Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)
  68. Blanche (Walerian Borowczyk, 1971)
  69. Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen, 1937)
  70. The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
  71. The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
  72. The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)
  73. Kes (Ken Loach, 1970)
  74. Behind The Green Door (The Mitchell brothers, 1972)
  75. Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
  76. Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
  77. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)
  78. Oh, Mr. Porter! (Marcel Varnel, 1937)
  79. The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)
  80. Fat City (John Huston, 1972)
  81. Antonio Das Mortes (Gauber Rocher, 1969)
  82. Love (Károly Makk, 1971)
  83. Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
  84. Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)
  85. Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)
  86. Boy (Nagisa Oshima, 1970)
  87. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1924)
  88. The Round Up (Miklós Jancsó, 1962)
  89. Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1975)
  90. Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
  91. Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
  92. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
  93. Welfare (Frederick Wiseman, 1973)
  94. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)
  95. Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968)
  96. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
  97. Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1974)
  98. Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1961)
  99. Manila: In The Claws of Darkness (Lino Brocka, 1978)
  100. The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1932)



Malcolm was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford. He worked for several decades as a film critic for The Guardian, having previously been an amateur jockey and the paper’s first horse racing correspondent. In 1977 he was a member of the jury at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. In the mid-1980s he was host of The Film Club on BBC2, which was dedicated to art house films, and was director of the London Film Festival for several years. After The Guardian, he became chief film critic for the Evening Standard, before being replaced in 2009 by novelist Andrew O’Hagan. He still contributes film reviews for the newspaper and is president of the British Federation of Film Societies and the International Film Critics’ Circle.

 

The most important and misappreciated American films since the beginning of the cinema

‘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.

1 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles
2 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927 F.W. Murnau
3 Greed 1924 Erich von Stroheim
4 Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages 1916 D.W. Griffith
5 The Birth of a Nation 1915 D.W. Griffith
6 Singin’ in the Rain 1952 Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
7 Nanook of the North 1922 Robert J. Flaherty
8 The General 1926 Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman
9 The Gold Rush 1925 Charles Chaplin
10 The Crowd 1928 King Vidor
11 The Magnificent Ambersons 1942 Robert Wise, Fred Fleck, Orson Welles
12 The Searchers 1956 John Ford
13 Modern Times 1936 Charles Chaplin
14 The Grapes of Wrath 1940 John Ford
15 Scarface 1932 Richard Rosson, Howard Hawks
16 Trouble in Paradise 1932 Ernst Lubitsch
17 Sunset Blvd. 1950 Billy Wilder
18 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock
19 Stagecoach 1939 John Ford
20 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick
21 King Kong 1933 Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper
22 Psycho 1960 Alfred Hitchcock
23 City Lights 1931 Charles Chaplin
24 Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl 1919 D.W. Griffith
25 Touch of Evil 1958 Orson Welles
26 Casablanca 1942 Michael Curtiz
27 The Wind 1928 Victor Sjöström
28 Duck Soup 1933 Leo McCarey
29 Sullivan’s Travels 1941 Preston Sturges
30 The Scarlet Empress 1934 Josef von Sternberg
31 The Night of the Hunter 1955 Charles Laughton
32 It Happened One Night 1934 Frank Capra
33 Gone with the Wind 1939 Sam Wood, George Cukor, Victor Fleming
34 Nashville 1975 Robert Altman
35 The Big Sleep 1946 Howard Hawks
36 Sherlock Jr. 1924 Buster Keaton
37 On the Waterfront 1954 Elia Kazan
38 The Maltese Falcon 1941 John Huston
39 Monsieur Verdoux 1947 Charles Chaplin
40 Bonnie and Clyde 1967 Arthur Penn
41 To Be or Not to Be 1942 Ernst Lubitsch
42 Letter from an Unknown Woman 1948 Max Ophüls
43 Rear Window 1954 Alfred Hitchcock
44 Foolish Wives 1922 Erich von Stroheim
45 The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 William Wyler
46 The Wedding March 1928 Erich von Stroheim
47 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930 Lewis Milestone
48 You Only Live Once 1937 Fritz Lang
49 The Wild Bunch 1969 Sam Peckinpah
50 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 1932 Mervyn LeRoy




51 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 John Huston
52 Paths of Glory 1957 Stanley Kubrick
53 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 Stanley Kubrick
54 Young Mr. Lincoln 1939 John Ford
55 White Heat 1949 Raoul Walsh
56 Salt of the Earth 1954 Herbert J. Biberman
57 Rio Bravo 1959 Howard Hawks
58 Red River 1948 Arthur Rosson, Howard Hawks
59 My Darling Clementine 1946 John Ford
60 Underworld 1927 Arthur Rosson, Josef von Sternberg
61 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 John Ford
62 High Noon 1952 Fred Zinnemann
63 Bringing Up Baby 1938 Howard Hawks
64 The Great Train Robbery 1903 Edwin S. Porter
65 The Band Wagon 1953 Vincente Minnelli
66 All About Eve 1950 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
67 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas 1931 F.W. Murnau
68 Some Like It Hot 1959 Billy Wilder
69 The Navigator 1924 Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton
70 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 1936 Frank Capra
71 Love Me Tonight 1932 Rouben Mamoulian
72 A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate 1923 Charles Chaplin
73 Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 Alexander Hammid, Maya Deren
74 McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971 Robert Altman
75 Freaks 1932 Tod Browning
76 Chelsea Girls 1966 Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey
77 The Big Parade 1925 King Vidor, George W. Hill
78 Morocco 1930 Josef von Sternberg
79 Lonesome 1928 Pál Fejös
80 Fury 1936 Fritz Lang
81 Force of Evil 1948 Abraham Polonsky
82 Written on the Wind 1956 Douglas Sirk
83 Tol’able David 1921 Henry King
84 The Tarnished Angels 1957 Douglas Sirk
85 Scorpio Rising 1963 Kenneth Anger
86 Johnny Guitar 1954 Nicholas Ray
87 The Covered Wagon 1923 James Cruze
88 Wavelength 1967 Michael Snow
89 A Star Is Born 1954 George Cukor
90 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 William Cottrell, David Hand, Ben Sharpsteen, Perce Pearce, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey
91 North by Northwest 1959 Alfred Hitchcock
92 Ninotchka 1939 Ernst Lubitsch
93 Meet Me in St. Louis 1944 Vincente Minnelli
94 Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 Don Siegel
95 The Informer 1935 John Ford
96 How Green Was My Valley 1941 John Ford
97 Easy Rider 1969 Dennis Hopper
98 The Big Heat 1953 Fritz Lang
99 To Have and Have Not 1944 Howard Hawks
100 Shanghai Express 1932 Josef von Sternberg




101 A Place in the Sun 1951 George Stevens
102 Only Angels Have Wings 1939 Howard Hawks
103 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939 Frank Capra
104 Louisiana Story 1948 Robert J. Flaherty
105 Kiss Me Deadly 1955 Robert Aldrich
106 42nd Street 1933 Lloyd Bacon
107 The Docks of New York 1928 Josef von Sternberg
108 Anatahan 1953 Josef von Sternberg
109 Rebel Without a Cause 1955 Nicholas Ray
110 The Jazz Singer 1927 Alan Crosland
111 It’s a Wonderful Life 1946 Frank Capra
112 The Godfather: Part II 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
113 Sylvia Scarlett 1935 George Cukor
114 Shadow of a Doubt 1943 Alfred Hitchcock
115 Safety Last! 1923 Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
116 The River 1938 Pare Lorentz
117 Our Hospitality 1923 John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton
118 Make Way for Tomorrow 1937 Leo McCarey
119 Little Caesar 1931 Mervyn LeRoy
120 Hallelujah 1929 King Vidor
121 The Conversation 1974 Francis Ford Coppola
122 The Bitter Tea of General Yen 1932 Frank Capra
123 The Awful Truth 1937 Leo McCarey
124 The Asphalt Jungle 1950 John Huston
125 The Wizard of Oz 1939 Mervyn LeRoy, King Vidor, George Cukor, Norman Taurog, Victor Fleming
126 Way Down East 1920 D.W. Griffith
127 Swing Time 1936 George Stevens
128 The Southerner 1945 Jean Renoir
129 Seven Chances 1925 Buster Keaton
130 A Night at the Opera 1935 Sam Wood, Edmund Goulding
131 The Merry Widow 1934 Ernst Lubitsch
132 The Kid 1921 Charles Chaplin
133 Five Easy Pieces 1970 Bob Rafelson
134 Faces 1968 John Cassavetes
135 America America 1963 Elia Kazan
136 True Heart Susie 1919 D.W. Griffith
137 Top Hat 1935 Mark Sandrich
138 Strangers on a Train 1951 Alfred Hitchcock
139 Shadows 1958 John Cassavetes
140 Out of the Past 1947 Jacques Tourneur
141 Limelight 1952 Charles Chaplin
142 The Lady from Shanghai 1947 Orson Welles
143 East of Eden 1955 Elia Kazan
144 Double Indemnity 1944 Billy Wilder
145 The Birds 1963 Alfred Hitchcock
146 Wild River 1960 Elia Kazan
147 Twentieth Century 1934 Howard Hawks
148 They Live by Night 1948 Nicholas Ray
149 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949 John Ford
150 7 Women 1966 John Ford




151 The Ox-Bow Incident 1943 William A. Wellman
152 The Nutty Professor 1963 Jerry Lewis
153 Isn’t Life Wonderful 1924 D.W. Griffith
154 Holiday 1938 George Cukor
155 Gold Diggers of 1933 1933 Mervyn LeRoy
156 The Godfather 1972 Francis Ford Coppola
157 Frankenstein 1931 James Whale
158 The Fountainhead 1949 King Vidor
159 Prelude: Dog Star Man 1962 Stan Brakhage
160 Dog Star Man: Part I 1962 Stan Brakhage
161 Dog Star Man: Part II 1963 Stan Brakhage
162 Dog Star Man: Part III 1964 Stan Brakhage
163 Dog Star Man: Part IV 1964 Stan Brakhage
164 Ride the High Country 1962 Sam Peckinpah
165 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 Billy Wilder
166 The Pirate 1948 Vincente Minnelli
167 Our Daily Bread 1934 King Vidor
168 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1975 Milos Forman
169 The Marriage Circle 1924 Ernst Lubitsch
170 Marnie 1964 Alfred Hitchcock
171 Laura 1944 Otto Preminger
172 The Lady Eve 1941 Preston Sturges
173 The Hustler 1961 Robert Rossen
174 Heaven Can Wait 1943 Ernst Lubitsch
175 Fantasia 1940 Samuel Armstrong, Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Paul Satterfield, James Algar, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe Jr., David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson, Bill Roberts
176 Elmer Gantry 1960 Richard Brooks
177 Dodsworth 1936 William Wyler
178 The Devil Is a Woman 1935 Josef von Sternberg
179 Camille 1936 George Cukor
180 The Cameraman 1928 Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick
181 The Apartment 1960 Billy Wilder
182 Wagon Master 1950 John Ford
183 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? 1969 Sydney Pollack
184 Sweet Smell of Success 1957 Alexander Mackendrick
185 The Struggle 1931 D.W. Griffith
186 Stark Love 1927 Karl Brown
187 Shock Corridor 1963 Samuel Fuller
188 Shane 1953 George Stevens
189 The Public Enemy 1931 William A. Wellman
190 The Philadelphia Story 1940 George Cukor
191 Moonfleet 1955 Fritz Lang
192 The Misfits 1961 John Huston
193 The Manchurian Candidate 1962 John Frankenheimer
194 His Girl Friday 1940 Howard Hawks
195 The Great Dictator 1940 Charles Chaplin
196 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 1921 Rex Ingram
197 City Girl 1930 F.W. Murnau
198 The Cheat 1915 Cecil B. DeMille
199 Bride of Frankenstein 1935 James Whale
200 Blonde Venus 1932 Josef von Sternberg




201 The Barefoot Contessa 1954 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
202 Badlands 1973 Terrence Malick
203 The Bad and the Beautiful 1952 Vincente Minnelli
204 Applause 1929 Rouben Mamoulian
205 Angel 1937 Ernst Lubitsch
206 All the King’s Men 1949 Robert Rossen
207 West Side Story 1961 Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
208 A Walk in the Sun 1945 Lewis Milestone
209 Unfaithfully Yours 1948 Preston Sturges
210 12 Angry Men 1957 Sidney Lumet
211 Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son 1969 Ken Jacobs
212 Some Came Running 1958 Vincente Minnelli
213 Reflections in a Golden Eye 1967 John Huston
214 Pickup on South Street 1953 Samuel Fuller
215 The Palm Beach Story 1942 Preston Sturges
216 Orphans of the Storm 1921 D.W. Griffith
217 Man’s Castle 1933 Frank Borzage
218 The Long Goodbye 1973 Robert Altman
219 The Last Command 1928 Josef von Sternberg
220 It’s a Gift 1934 Norman Z. McLeod
221 Ice 1970 Robert Kramer
222 Her Man 1930 Tay Garnett
223 The Graduate 1967 Mike Nichols
224 The Freshman 1925 Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
225 Fireworks 1947 Kenneth Anger
226 Duel in the Sun 1946 Otto Brower, Sidney Franklin, King Vidor, David O. Selznick, William Dieterle, Josef von Sternberg, William Cameron Menzies
227 The Diary of a Chambermaid 1946 Jean Renoir
228 Cat People 1942 Jacques Tourneur
229 Cabaret 1972 Bob Fosse
230 Brewster McCloud 1970 Robert Altman
231 Bigger Than Life 1956 Nicholas Ray
232 Beggars of Life 1928 William A. Wellman
233 The African Queen 1951 John Huston
234 The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
235 The Thief of Bagdad 1924 Raoul Walsh
236 The Shanghai Gesture 1941 Josef von Sternberg
237 7th Heaven 1927 Frank Borzage
238 The Salvation Hunters 1925 Josef von Sternberg
239 Ruby Gentry 1952 King Vidor
240 The Red Badge of Courage 1951 John Huston
241 The Quiet One 1948 Sidney Meyers
242 One Way Passage 1932 Tay Garnett
243 One-Eyed Jacks 1961 Marlon Brando
244 Notorious 1946 Alfred Hitchcock
245 Mickey One 1965 Arthur Penn
246 Lolita 1962 Stanley Kubrick
247 Leave Her to Heaven 1945 John M. Stahl
248 The Last Picture Show 1971 Peter Bogdanovich
249 Kiss Me, Stupid 1964 Billy Wilder
250 The King of Marvin Gardens 1972 Bob Rafelson




251 I Walked with a Zombie 1943 Jacques Tourneur
252 Hands Up! 1926 Clarence G. Badger
253 Hallelujah the Hills 1963 Adolfas Mekas
254 The Gunfighter 1950 Henry King
255 Gun Crazy 1950 Joseph H. Lewis
256 Fat City 1972 John Huston
257 A Face in the Crowd 1957 Elia Kazan
258 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1931 Rouben Mamoulian
259 A Corner in Wheat 1909 D.W. Griffith
260 The Art of Vision 1965 Stan Brakhage
261 Anticipation of the Night 1958 Stan Brakhage
262 The Woman in the Window 1944 Fritz Lang
263 Wild Boys of the Road 1933 William A. Wellman
264 Twice a Man 1964 Gregory J. Markopoulos
265 The Trouble with Harry 1955 Alfred Hitchcock
266 They Were Expendable 1945 John Ford, Robert Montgomery
267 Suddenly, Last Summer 1959 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
268 Splendor in the Grass 1961 Elia Kazan
269 The Set-Up 1949 Robert Wise
270 Run of the Arrow 1957 Samuel Fuller
271 Ruggles of Red Gap 1935 Leo McCarey
272 Robin Hood 1922 Allan Dwan
273 The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond 1960 Budd Boetticher
274 Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania 1972 Jonas Mekas
275 Queen Kelly 1929 Erich von Stroheim, Richard Boleslawski
276 Queen Christina 1933 Rouben Mamoulian
277 Primary 1960 Robert Drew
278 The Power and the Glory 1933 William K. Howard
279 On the Town 1949 Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen
280 Moonrise 1948 Frank Borzage
281 Miss Lulu Bett 1921 William C. de Mille
282 The Merry Widow 1925 Erich von Stroheim
283 Mean Streets 1973 Martin Scorsese
284 Lost Horizon 1937 Frank Capra
285 The Little Foxes 1941 William Wyler
286 Lilith 1964 Robert Rossen
287 The Last Detail 1973 Hal Ashby
288 The Killing 1956 Stanley Kubrick
289 Johnny Got His Gun 1971 Dalton Trumbo
290 Jeremiah Johnson 1972 Sydney Pollack
291 Imitation of Life 1959 Douglas Sirk
292 Giant 1956 George Stevens
293 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 1947 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
294 Gentleman Jim 1942 Raoul Walsh
295 Funny Face 1957 Stanley Donen
296 Flesh and the Devil 1926 Clarence Brown
297 Flaming Creatures 1963 Jack Smith
298 Easy Street 1917 Charles Chaplin
299 Crime Without Passion 1934 Lee Garmes, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
300 Mr. Arkadin 1955 Orson Welles




301 The Brig 1964 Jonas Mekas
302 Big Business 1929 Leo McCarey, James W. Horne
303 All That Money Can Buy 1941 William Dieterle
304 Alice’s Restaurant 1969 Arthur Penn
305 Ace in the Hole 1951 Billy Wilder
306 Zorns Lemma 1970 Hollis Frampton
307 Zoo in Budapest 1933 Rowland V. Lee
308 The Unknown 1927 Tod Browning
309 Two-Lane Blacktop 1971 Monte Hellman
310 Trash 1970 Paul Morrissey
311 Thieves Like Us 1974 Robert Altman
312 The Strong Man 1926 Frank Capra
313 A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 Elia Kazan
314 Street Angel 1928 Frank Borzage
315 Stella Dallas 1925 Henry King
316 Steamboat Bill, Jr. 1928 Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton
317 Smouldering Fires 1925 Clarence Brown
318 The Shop Around the Corner 1940 Ernst Lubitsch
319 Scenes from Under Childhood Section #1 1967 Stan Brakhage
320 Scenes from Under Childhood Section #2 1969 Stan Brakhage
321 Scenes from Under Childhood Section #3 1969 Stan Brakhage
322 Scenes from Under Childhood Section #4 1970 Stan Brakhage
323 Scarlet Street 1945 Fritz Lang
324 Rose Hobart 1936 Joseph Cornell
325 The River 1928 Frank Borzage
326 The Rain People 1969 Francis Ford Coppola
327 The Quiet Man 1952 John Ford
328 Puzzle of a Downfall Child 1970 Jerry Schatzberg
329 Pursued 1947 Raoul Walsh
330 Portrait of Jason 1967 Shirley Clarke
331 Point Blank 1967 John Boorman
332 Pinocchio 1940 Jack Kinney, Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson, Bill Roberts
333 Peter Ibbetson 1935 Henry Hathaway
334 The Party 1968 Blake Edwards
335 The Old Dark House 1932 James Whale
336 Native Land 1942 Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz
337 Murder by Contract 1958 Irving Lerner
338 The Mother and the Law 1919 D.W. Griffith
339 The Most Dangerous Game 1932 Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack
340 The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 1943 Preston Sturges
341 Midnight Cowboy 1969 John Schlesinger
342 Meet John Doe 1941 Frank Capra
343 Man, Woman and Sin 1927 Monta Bell
344 Love Affair 1939 Leo McCarey
345 Long Pants 1927 Frank Capra
346 The Lawless 1950 Joseph Losey
347 The Kremlin Letter 1970 John Huston
348 The Iron Horse 1924 John Ford
349 In the Year of the Pig 1968 Emile de Antonio
350 The Honeymoon Killers 1970 Donald Volkman, Leonard Kastle




351 Heaven and Earth Magic 1962 Harry Smith
352 The Great McGinty 1940 Preston Sturges
353 Story of G.I. Joe 1945 William A. Wellman
354 From Here to Eternity 1953 Fred Zinnemann
355 David Holzman’s Diary 1967 Jim McBride
356 The Chase 1966 Arthur Penn
357 Caught 1949 Max Ophüls
358 Barry Lyndon 1975 Stanley Kubrick
359 Avanti! 1972 Billy Wilder
360 The Arrangement 1969 Elia Kazan
361 Anatomy of a Murder 1959 Otto Preminger
362 An American in Paris 1951 Vincente Minnelli
363 Adam’s Rib 1949 George Cukor
364 Petulia 1968 Richard Lester
365 The Wrong Man 1956 Alfred Hitchcock
366 Wind Across the Everglades 1958 Budd Schulberg, Nicholas Ray
367 The War Lord 1965 Franklin J. Schaffner
368 Underworld U.S.A. 1961 Samuel Fuller
369 The Ten Commandments 1923 Cecil B. DeMille
370 The Sun Shines Bright 1953 John Ford
371 Song 1 1964 Stan Brakhage
372 The Scarlet Letter 1926 Victor Sjöström
373 Scarecrow 1973 Jerry Schatzberg
374 Rosemary’s Baby 1968 Roman Polanski
375 A Romance of Happy Valley 1919 D.W. Griffith
376 Point of Order! 1964 Emile de Antonio
377 Party Girl 1958 Nicholas Ray
378 Park Row 1952 Samuel Fuller
379 One More River 1934 James Whale
380 The Naked Spur 1953 Anthony Mann
381 The Naked Prey 1965 Cornel Wilde
382 The Naked City 1948 Jules Dassin
383 My Man Godfrey 1936 Gregory La Cava
384 The Musketeers of Pig Alley 1912 D.W. Griffith
385 The Mortal Storm 1940 Frank Borzage
386 Moana 1926 Frances H. Flaherty, Robert J. Flaherty
387 The Marrying Kind 1952 George Cukor
388 Man of the West 1958 Anthony Mann
389 The Love Parade 1929 Ernst Lubitsch
390 The Long Voyage Home 1940 John Ford
391 The Last of the Mohicans 1920 Clarence Brown, Maurice Tourneur
392 Lady Windermere’s Fan 1925 Ernst Lubitsch
393 Judgment at Nuremberg 1961 Stanley Kramer
394 The Italian 1915 Reginald Barker
395 Intruder in the Dust 1949 Clarence Brown
396 The Immigrant 1917 Charles Chaplin
397 I Married a Witch 1942 René Clair
398 Images 1972 Robert Altman
399 He Who Gets Slapped 1924 Victor Sjöström
400 The Haunting 1963 Robert Wise




401 Hatari! 1962 Howard Hawks
402 The Front Page 1931 Lewis Milestone
403 Forty Guns 1957 Samuel Fuller
404 Easter Parade 1948 Charles Walters
405 Diaries Notes and Sketches 1969 Jonas Mekas
406 Design for Living 1933 Ernst Lubitsch
407 The Cool World 1963 Shirley Clarke
408 The Connection 1961 Shirley Clarke
409 Civilization 1915 Thomas H. Ince, Jay Hunt, J. Parker Read Jr., Raymond B. West, Reginald Barker, David Hartford, Walter Edwards
410 City Streets 1931 Rouben Mamoulian
411 The Circus 1928 Charles Chaplin
412 Chinatown 1974 Roman Polanski
413 Campanadas a medianoche 1965 Orson Welles
414 Castro Street 1966 Bruce Baillie
415 Carnal Knowledge 1971 Mike Nichols
416 Boomerang! 1947 Elia Kazan
417 Blood Money 1933 Rowland Brown
418 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ 1925 Charles Brabin, Christy Cabanne, Rex Ingram, Fred Niblo, J.J. Cohn
419 The Beguiled 1971 Don Siegel
420 Beat the Devil 1953 John Huston
421 San Pietro 1945 John Huston
422 The Ballad of Cable Hogue 1970 Sam Peckinpah
423 An Affair to Remember 1957 Leo McCarey
424 Zabriskie Point 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni
425 Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 Michael Curtiz
426 Woodstock 1970 Michael Wadleigh
427 The Woman on the Beach 1947 Jean Renoir
428 White Shadows in the South Seas 1928 W.S. Van Dyke, Robert J. Flaherty
429 The White Rose 1923 D.W. Griffith
430 White Gold 1927 William K. Howard
431 Viva Zapata! 1952 Elia Kazan
432 Vanishing Point 1971 Richard C. Sarafian
433 Two for the Road 1967 Stanley Donen
434 Twelve O’Clock High 1949 Henry King
435 Trader Horn 1931 W.S. Van Dyke
436 They Won’t Forget 1937 Mervyn LeRoy
437 Strangers When We Meet 1960 Richard Quine
438 Show Boat 1936 James Whale
439 Shoulder Arms 1918 Charles Chaplin
440 She Done Him Wrong 1933 Lowell Sherman
441 Scaramouche 1952 George Sidney
442 The Savage Eye 1960 Joseph Strick, Sidney Meyers, Ben Maddow
443 Ruthless 1948 Edgar G. Ulmer
444 Ride the Pink Horse 1947 Robert Montgomery
445 Ride Lonesome 1959 Budd Boetticher
446 La région centrale 1971 Michael Snow
447 Rachel, Rachel 1968 Paul Newman
448 Quick Millions 1931 Rowland Brown
449 The Prowler 1951 Joseph Losey
450 The Professionals 1966 Richard Brooks




451 Pretty Poison 1968 Noel Black
452 The Pawnbroker 1964 Sidney Lumet
453 The Patsy 1964 Jerry Lewis
454 The Painted Lady 1912 D.W. Griffith
455 Nothing But a Man 1964 Michael Roemer
456 The Naked Kiss 1964 Samuel Fuller
457 A Movie 1958 Bruce Conner
458 Mother’s Day 1948 James Broughton
459 The Molly Maguires 1970 Martin Ritt
460 The Miracle Worker 1962 Arthur Penn
461 Ministry of Fear 1944 Fritz Lang
462 Midnight 1939 Mitchell Leisen
463 Marty 1955 Delbert Mann
464 Man Hunt 1941 Fritz Lang
465 Life of an American Fireman 1903 Edwin S. Porter, George S. Fleming
466 Laughter 1930 Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast
467 Land of the Pharaohs 1955 Howard Hawks
468 King-Size Canary 1947 Tex Avery
469 The Kid Brother 1927 Lewis Milestone, Harold Lloyd, J.A. Howe, Ted Wilde
470 It 1927 Clarence G. Badger, Josef von Sternberg
471 High Sierra 1941 Raoul Walsh
472 High School 1969 Frederick Wiseman
473 Heller in Pink Tights 1960 George Cukor
474 The Gypsy Moths 1969 John Frankenheimer
475 Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life 1925 Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper
476 The Godless Girl 1929 Cecil B. DeMille
477 The Girl Can’t Help It 1956 Frank Tashlin
478 For Heaven’s Sake 1926 Sam Taylor
479 Footlight Parade 1933 Lloyd Bacon
480 The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. 1953 Roy Rowland
481 Dirty Harry 1971 Don Siegel
482 Deliverance 1972 John Boorman
483 The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951 Robert Wise
484 Days of Wine and Roses 1962 Blake Edwards
485 Night of the Demon 1957 Jacques Tourneur
486 A Clockwork Orange 1971 Stanley Kubrick
487 The City 1939 Ralph Steiner, Willard Van Dyke
488 California Split 1974 Robert Altman
489 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia 1974 Sam Peckinpah
490 Bitter Victory 1957 Nicholas Ray
491 The Big Sky 1952 Howard Hawks
492 The Big Combo 1955 Joseph H. Lewis
493 American Madness 1932 Allan Dwan, Roy William Neill, Frank Capra
494 All the President’s Men 1976 Alan J. Pakula
495 All That Heaven Allows 1955 Douglas Sirk
496 Advise & Consent 1962 Otto Preminger



 

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