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Lists have always played an important role in my own film education, and over the last decade or so they've taken on an increasing importance in my writing. A polemic of mine entitled "List-o-Mania"--an angry response to the American Film Institute's poll of the 100 best American movies, which provoked me into drawing up an alternative list of my own--may be the most popular piece of mine that's ever appeared in the Reader. The many responses to it eventually inspired me to come up with a list of my 1,000 favorite films for my last book, Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons.
Lists of movie titles have become more important to cinephiles in recent years because of the need to make informed selections from the wealth of what's available on DVD. But nothing quite prepared me for the spadework behind the Web site They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, which presents a list of the 1,000 top films drawn from more than 1,300 previous lists (including mine). This is supplemented with a blog by filmmaker Kevin Lee, who's seen more than 900 of the films in question, and two appendices of sorts: a 276-page PDF file with titles from the master list grouped by "All-Movie Guide genres, keywords, themes and tones" and a 125-page performer index.
I recently had occasion to look through portions of the 276-page groupings, which the bloggers intend as a guide to selecting films from the 1,000 that "best suit your mood at any given time." If you're wondering, as I was, how these categories play out, here are a few strange factlets I've compiled. "Genres," stretching alphabetically from "abstract film" (five titles) to "world history" (just one title, Shoah), consumes 40 pages. "Keywords," proceeding from abandon (eight titles) and ABC News (just one title, Breathless) to zombie (four titles, including Eraserhead), covers 146 pages. "Style," omitted in the above summary for some reason, stretches from "allegory" (quite a few) to "TV miniseries" (just two, the Decalogue and Heimat) and takes up only two pages; "theme," from "actor's life" (22 films) to "zombies" (three films, excluding Eraserhead), covers 30. Finally, "tone," which goes from "affectionate" to "wry" (plenty of each, but more of the latter), takes up 56 pages.
Like me, you may be puzzled about how "world history" functions as a genre that Shoah belongs to or what the keyword ABC News has to do with Breathless. But I can see some of the other categories proving to be useful research tools.
But my main comment was for which would you, or anyone here, say is the strongest movie year? I was leaning towards 1939 because I caught Rules of the Game and Last Chrysanthemum (and love Only Angels Have Wings). But I suppose the Nouvelle vague years probably will win out.
such important movies as Au hasard Balthazar, Persona, Andrei Rublev, The Battle of Algiers, Blow-Up, The Round-up, Hunger, The War Game, Closely Observed Trains, Rise of Louis XIV, Red Angel, Pornographers, The Ugly Story, Stravinsky Portrait.
But I personally find the most precious part of Mr. Rosenbaum's list is the last one since 80s. Though his choice of not inclusion 'A Woman's Tale' is absolutely excusable, as he exposed me to Où gît votre sourire enfoui?, Goodbye, Dragon Inn and many other deserving films, respectively.
and Major artists like Mamoulian, Lubitsch, Dreyer, Pudovkin, Ozu, Fejos,Vertov,Renoir, Vigo, Dovzhenko,Eisenstein,D'arrast,Cukor,Wyler,Medvedkin,pabst,Lang, Murnau, Feyder,Leisen, Vidor, Borzage, Walsh were producing major works. W.c. Fields and the Marx Brothers were at their artistic peaks as well.
66? The only flick there that I'm familiar with is Blow Up. I'm a bad movie snob.
1. Some recommended books (a short list): Noel Burch's THEORY OF FILM PRACTICE, Manny Farber's NEGATIVE SPACE (expanded edition), Andrew Sarris's THE AMERICAN CINEMA, Andre Bazin's WHAT IS CINEMA? (two volumes), James Naremore's MORE THAN NIGHT and THE MAGIC WORLD OF ORSON WELLES, Tom Gunning's book on Fritz Lang. Chris Fujiwara's book on Jacques Tourneur
2. I haven't had time to count how many of the 1000 items on the list I've seen.
3. I don't have any opinion about the strongest year for films. I tend to find this a futile exercise because no one's seen all the candidates.
4. Why no Gone With the Wind or Cold Water? Simple. Because I don't like them enough to include them.
Elite film culture has been so hermetically isolated from the other arts of the 20th century, that very few seem to be bothered by such a pervasive bias in favor of so-called "narrative" film (which is actually very abstract, by focusing on concepts like "story" and "characters" rather than what is actually projected onto the screen). As long as critics are preoccupied with reflecting a type of politically-correct cosmopolitanism -- name-checking "foreign" films in order to avoid being labeled "provincial" and to appear "hip" -- and fail to call into question modes of perception, then the true scope of the art of cinema will continue to be conveniently ignored.
binkie - besides Jonathan's books, I'd recommend Stan Brakhage's "Metaphors on Vision", P. Adams Sitney's "Visionary Film", Bruce Kawin's "How Movies Work," and David Bordwell's "Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema" (currently out of print, but incredibly insightful - even if you've never seen an Ozu film). Some links you might find helpful:
http://www.restructures.net/chicago/film-links.htm...
Will you be revisiting your American Films list now that the AFI is revisiting theirs?
Also a very helpful book list for rounding out my collection. Of the less well-known titles, I'm going to order Tom Gunning's book on Lang. I also want to re-read Manny Farber's book. The Chris Fujiwara book on Tourneur, The Cinema of Nightfall, is excellent.
Ha. Which is different from the exercise of 100 American movies, 1000 favorite movies, Best of the 90s, annual top 10, because it's not futile? or everyone has seen the candidates? or both?
"Some recommended books (a short list)"
I would also add Jonathan's PLACING MOVIES.
Was meant to be a friendly jab.
There is a world of difference between being asked for "the best year for film" (as though it can be answered objectively) and Mr. Rosenbaum's "best lists" (a self-aware subjective exercise). It is the same difference between Paul Schrader's film canon and Mr. Rosenbaum's 1000 favorite films. When Mr. Rosenbaum makes his lists, he is quite aware of their subjectivity and how much he has yet to see (when talking about the great Japanese directors, he confesses that he has yet to experience a Naruse film). When the ilk of Paul Schrader and the AFI make their lists, it comes as across as some grand, objective, and unassailable statement, as though subjectivity were totally absent from their enterprise and that they have seen all that there is to see. When one looks at Paul Schrader's canon, one notices which films are missing. When one looks at Mr. Rosenbaum's list, one notices which films are mentioned.
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/review_vertigo.ht...
Also: there is a checklist website which They Shoot Pictures links: http://www.listsofbests.com/list/591
1. Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Patrice Chéreau, 1998)
2. 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
3. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
4. Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (Robert Bresson, 1956)
5. La Commune (de Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000)
6. The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1949)
7. Lola Montès (Max Ophuls, 1955)
8. La Cicatrice Interieure (Philippe Garrel, 1972)
9. The Devils ( Ken Russell and Derek Jarman, 1971).
10. Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970)