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12-28-2011 #1
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The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
Every ten years the British Film Institute asks professional film critics and directors to nominate the ten best films and directors of all time. The first survey (for films) was carried out in 1952, so the next one will be published in Sight & Sound, in either January or February 2012.
There is a list of all the surveys in this link:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/topten/
The benefit of the directors list is that I don't have to put their films in the top ten -their status means only their films would make it, so it gives me a chance to recognise other films, but I found it difficult to compile. Also, I have tried to be fair, I don't like John Ford's films, but I acknowledge his status as the greatest American director of the 20th century.
It will be interesting to see other lists, and then compare them with the BFI one when it comes out.
Here's mine
Ten Best Films (in chronological order)
The Man With a Movie Camera (Russia 1929, Dziga Vertov)
Citizen Kane (USA 1941, Orson Welles)
Casablanca (USA, 1942, Michael Curtiz/Hal B. Wallis)
Rome, Open City (Italy, 1945, Roberto Rossellini)
Les Enfants du Paradis (France, Marcel Carne, 1945)
Seven Samurai (Japan, Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Barry Lyndon (UK/USA, Stanley Kubrick 1975)
The Travelling Players (Greece, Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1975)
Bunt by the Sun (Russia 1994, Nikita Mikhalkov)
Satantango (Hungary 2001, Bela Tarr)
Ten Best Directors (in alphabetical order)
Ingmar Bergman
Robert Bresson
John Ford
Terrence Malick
Chris Marker
Yasujiro Ozu
Jean Renoir
Andrei Tarkovsky
Kenji Mizoguchi
Satyajit Ray
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12-28-2011 #2
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
I think that list is a bit up it's own arse.
Sergio Leone? Martin Scorcese? Akira Kurosawa (over Ozu!)?
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12-28-2011 #3
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
I don't think I could even list my top 10. I like so many movies for so many reasons to nail down the best of the best would be to difficult for me
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12-28-2011 #4
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
Where's Pluto Nash?
William Escalade is no more. He's done his service to the site.
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12-28-2011 #5
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
This will inevitably bring forth responses from people here proclaiming their favourite films - or favourite types of films. A personal best in other words.
What the BFI are likely to get is a series of lists of films which those in the business feel are the most important films - those which shaped the history of cinemas art. So there will be certain inevitable names on the list - some of which Stavros has already identified (Citizen Kane for sure, Seven Samurai Les Enfants Du Paradis etc) Probably a Hitchcock or two, a Bunuel, something by Chaplin, Jacque Tati, Battleship Potemkin and perhaps a Tarkovsky (Andrei Rubliev? Mirror> Stalker?)
But best? That is such a subjective thing. By what measure? Artistic? commercial? Ground breaking? Best loved?
I'll bet - for instance - that no-one else here (nor at the BFI) would include that Bela Tarr film. I saw his most recent work (yes its very hard work indeed) The Turin Horse. Two hours of utter tedium. But I respect the arguments of others that this sort of minimalist film is great art. Can't see it myself.
Best crime? Best western/Best love film? Best horror? Best sci fi? etc etc.
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12-28-2011 #6
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Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
Robert McKee argues that film is, in essence, a form of storytelling, and that what makes a great/successful film is the craft that is used to make it work. Writing, acting, photography, camera angles, sets and costumes and make-up and lighting, and editing are all part of an integrated whole. But like great books, readers divide -I consider Dickens such a liar about the condition of England that, even though I have read most of his books, and enjoyed two, I cannot rate this bloated hypocrite above George Eliot, if we must stick with the 19th century.
Kurosawa is an over-rated director, a man who made 3 films -Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Throne of Blood that are worth seeing more than once; Ozu cannot be compared, the emotional depth of Ozu's films, the exquisite artistry with which he uses the camera, the peerless acting throw Kurosawa's work into shadow. I would rather ditch the whole of Kurosawa than lose Late Spring. Scorsese has also made but three films worth seeing more than once: Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas; the rest of his output is flimsy at best, at its worst, self-indulgent tosh (as is most of Kubrick's oeuvre). The body of work is what makes a director's reputation, and while I know Bresson is not commonly known or much liked, but to me his films could only be films, not stories or songs or paintings, and the consistent quality of his films places him on a different level from others.
Satantango works at the simple level of a story -that it takes more than 7 hours to unfold is undoubtedly a challenge, but such is the power of the story and the manner in which it is filmed, that at least two viewings confirm it as a work of genius. Tarr is an extremist of sorts, I admit, but then so am I. I love Jaws, it is almost perfect; the flaw is Spielberg's utter cowardice as a film-maker, the end of a film about nature beyond man's control fails, and fails so badly it cannot make the list. The opening half-hour of The Godfather is one of the greatest movements in film, but Coppola's film tells so many unforgiveable lies about Cosa Nostra that its moral vacuum and its complete disdain for women relegates it to an also-ran. Hitchcock's misogyny, particularly vile in trash like Psycho and Vertigo, makes it impossible for me to rank him, even though I enjoy a lot of his films and recognise his skill as a film-maker.
So I think there are criteria for marking out best films from the rest, and its not about films people like, some of my favourites -Bullitt, Bad Timing, Wizard of Oz, The Big Sleep, Nine Queens dont make the list, because they are not profound, they are well-made and enjoyable but lack an edge -so its not about genre either.
In the end, its just a list.
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12-28-2011 #7
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
No Lucio Fulci???
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08-01-2012 #8
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Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
The 2012 results have been flagged in The Guardian; the full results will appear in Sight and Sound's September issue.
Ten Best Films -Critics List
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 19 fifty eight
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
4. La Regle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 19sixty eigt
7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
Ten Best Films -Directors List
1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
=2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 19sixty eight
=2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980)
6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
=7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
=7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 19fifty eight
9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)
10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 19forty eight
I don't see how anyone can rate Vertigo as a best film, it isn't even Hitchcock's best film, while its over misogyny makes it a non-runner for me. Self-indulgent tosh like Eight and a Half are not even worth sitting through never mind voting for, and while Bicycle Thieves is a charming film, Rossellini's Rome Open City is far superior. Apocalypse Now is an incoherent mess and is also not worthy of such a list.
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08-01-2012 #9
Re: The Ten Greatest Films and Directors
Agree with Vertigo but "Eight and a Half" is superb and Apocalypse Now ... well the mess and chaos, even though they may have been unintentional to begin with help illustrate what that war was about and I think it should be ranked there.
I think it's a bit hard to try and come up with 10 films when you are putting seminal stuff in there from the 20's which while groundbreaking for the time and undoubtable moved cinema forward, can't be rated with the same criteria as later films.
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08-01-2012 #10
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