The movie lists that get the most attention these days are sadly fan-pandering lists from major movie publications (EW, Empire, etcetera) that cater to the last 25 years or are overly worried about mainstream relevance and DVD sales (AFI)... forgetting that the most noble purpose of 'all time lists' is not to pat people on the back for what they love but to inspire them to dig deeper. "Great" lists should be filling up our rental queues. Best book lists are not best seller charts after all but encouragements to read. Best music lists are often about new discoveries, too. What
haven't you heard? So I'm totally excited to study
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? reworked "Top 1000 Films of All Time" list.
I am powerless against a good list. Here's two samples from their top 1000. First, the top 20 and I've picked two that I really insist that you see right now (since you probably haven't)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- Vertigo (1958)
- Rules of the Game (1939)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- 8 1/2 (1963)
- The Godfather (1972)
- The Searchers (1956)
- Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- The Seven Samurai (1954)
- Tokyo Story (1953)
- Singin' in the Rain (1952)
- Sunrise (1927)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- The Bicycle Thief (1948)
- Casablanca (1942)
- L'Atalante (1934) rent it immediately
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) unforgettable -see now and twice
- Raging Bull (1980)
- Rashomon (1950)
- The Godfather Part II (1974)
Aside from Singin' in the Rain it's very
solemly serious. Of those I have yet to see
The Searchers, Tokyo Story and
Rules of the Game and am appropriately filled with shame. Because there are 1000 films and not 100 there's less shunning of "women's pictures" than most Greatest Films list attempt and that's a relief. There's multiple countries represented as there should be. Overall it's good stuff. I quibble with certain things (that's the other great purpose of lists): There's
way too little
William Wyler (no
Dodsworth in 1000 movies? F*** you, list and list-makers!), too little
Spike Lee and
Mike Leigh (1 film each? STINGY!), the wrong
Sydney Pollack (no
They Shoot Horses Don't They or
The Way We Were? I cry foul) there's only 14 movies from the Aughts and yet they found room for
Oldboy? Yeesh, I
hate that movie's boastful sadism.
The thing I love most about this list at first glance is the ease by which you can dig in. You can sort by year and watch movies chronologically. You can sort by director. Here's their top twelve auteurs with the number of films they were alloted.
- John Ford: 18 (He's also Oscar's favorite director with 4 Best Director wins. Who knew that cinephiles would agree with the Academy so wholeheartedly?)
- Fritz Lang: 16
- Luis Bunuel: 15
- (tie) Jean Luc Godard & Alfred Hitchcock: 14 movies each
- Ingmar Bergman: 13
- Federico Fellini: 12
- (4-way tie) Jean Renoir, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa and Howard Hawks: they all get 11 films in the top 1000. Kubrick only made 16 films so that's quite an accomplishment. They just left out his first 5. I guess he was warming up.
- Charles Chaplin: 10
I think it's the first "greatest films" list I've ever seen that honors Steven Spielberg but doesn't go completely overboard (only 7 films... what a relief). Since it's an excel spreadsheet with numerous columns they've even been generous enough to include amazon and imdb links if you want to purchase or study and --my favorite part --
the running times. If you never have enough time to drink up all the movies your eyes thirst for, you can either start with the longest movies and sip away or start short and gulp them down --there's 391 movies that are under 100 minutes. Oh, the delicious nectar of succinct motion pictures!
Once you download you can even add your own columns to mess with it privately. No way can I have a list without
Dodsworth, Sleeping Beauty, Heavenly Creatures or any
Merchant/Ivory. I think I'll "fix" this list right now...
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