My personal list, maybe idiosyncratic. Some are firm choices, some may be different tomorrow.
- The 40s:
The Great Dictator (1940)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Gaslight (1944)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Heiress (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
- The 50s:
All about Eve (1950)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
On the Waterfront (1954)
A Star Is Born (1954)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Room at the Top (1959)
- The 60s:
The Apartment (1960)
Psycho (1960)
The Innocents (1961)
Yojimbo (1961)
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
8 ½ (1963)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Charulata (1964)
Persona (1966)
- The 70s:
Cries and Whispers (1972)
The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Last Detail (1973)
Amarcord (1973)
The Conversation (1974)
Chinatown (1974)
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Stalker (1979)
- The 80s:
Raging Bull (1980)
On Golden Pond (1981)
The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Ran (1985)
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Monsieur Hire (1989)
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Cinema Paradiso (1989)
- The 90s:
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Farewell my Concubine (1993)
To Live (1994)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Happy Together (1997)
Festen (1998)
Run Lola Run (1998)
- The 2000s:
Memento (2000)
The Pianist (2002)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)
Memories of Murder (2003)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Sideways (2004)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Babel (2006)
The Lives of Others (2006)
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
- The 2010s:
The Dance of Reality (2013)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Spotlight (2015)
The Handmaiden (2016)
Phantom Thread (2017)
The Square (2017)
Shoplifters (2018)
Parasite (2019)
Pain and Glory (2019)
Little Women (2019)
I don't think I saw a lot of French movies on your list lol, except "Monsieur Hire" which I haven't seen yet. Quite strange to see this only one French movie in your list, if I'm not mistaken, it's really not the most famous one. Just search for it, and it turns out I've seen "Panique" by Duvivier, which is based on the same story, so I see what it is about. The Duvivier movie is really good btw.
ReplyDeleteCool to see "Room at the Top" in it, the story isn't memorable, but Signoret's performance is one of the best I've ever seen from an actress, truly one of a kind and unforgettable.
Among the others I've not seen yet, I'm quite curious about "On Golden Pond".
I'm gonna be nice and not say anything about the French hahahaha.
DeleteI do think Room at the Top is in many ways a perfect film. The psychology of the characters is all very good, the details are good.
Yeah, the characterizations are really good in the movie, Signoret stands out, but the main male character is also very interesting, though he is mostly insufferable throughout the movie. The sense of tragic is well-rendered and paced, everything falls into place. I was more meaning that the story at first sounds ordinary (the ambitious young man) but what comes out of it is very well done.
DeleteYou should give a real chance to French cinema one day, you're really missing out, plenty of great movies in it if you choose the right ones.
Yeah. The guy is insufferable for a large part of the film, but he does change and develop, and there's a tragic dimension to the role.
DeleteThe best performance in the film is of course, as you say, Simone Signoret's.
There's another French film on my list: The Phantom of Liberty. Or do you not count it because it's by Bunuel?
"Jules and Jim"?
DeleteI think I saw part of it and stopped. I just don't get along well with French films hahaha.
DeleteOh, and for others coming across this, here's my own list : https://litteratureencastalie.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-best-10-films-of-every-decade-from.html
ReplyDeleteMaybe I see too many films -- or like too many films -- or maybe it's just a bump in my groove, but whatever the reason, I've never been able to make top ten lists. So I'm always curious about others' lists; and yours is especially interesting. (Oh, I should mention: I became acquainted with your blog only recently when Patrick Kurp wrote of you, and have lurked reading here frequently since then.)
ReplyDeleteI find two or three favorites of mine in each of your decades except the latest. What surprises me is finding no Shakespearean films. Kozintsev's Russian "King Lear" is the greatest, and it's conceivable you haven't seen it yet; but Olivier's "Henry V" or his "Richard III" -- and Welles's "Othello" and "Falstaff" -- when I saw the blog post heading, I felt sure of meeting some or all of those here. Even apart from Shakespeare, they're fantastically entertaining movies.
Hi Baceseras,
DeleteWelcome to my blog.
Don't you like any of my picks for the 2010s?
There is one Shakespearean film that you missed: Ran. I have seen Kozintsev's King Lear, but it was years ago, when I read the play for the first time and watched Ran also for the first time, and only Ran had an impact on me. It was only last year that I finally "got" King Lear.
Haven't seen Welles's Shakespearean films, nor Olivier's except The Merchant of Venice. That The Merchant of Venice is excellent, but I count it as a filmed play rather than a film adaptation.
I doubt that they would have got on my lists if I had seen them. The 50s and 60s were great decades, full of masterpieces.
Thank you, from the 2010s on your list I like Shoplifters, although there are two Kore-Eda films I like better, After the Storm and The Third Murder. Of your other picks, Parasite was at least interesting (to throw the dog a bone); the rest . . . well, the Almodovar is not the weakest of his late work but it doesn't shine either . . . the rest at best made no impression on me; at worst [The GBH] revulsion. Oh, but one I haven't seen, The Dance of Reality. Heard about it when it came out, remembered Jodorowsky's slovenly work in the '70s, passed on seeing it and promptly forgot it existed. On your say-so now I've added it to my go-sees. Because your other decades are really quite lovely; either your 2010s are some kind of fluke, or my crabwise take on them is.
DeleteRan is Shakespeare at a remove, even more of a remove than Kurosawa's "Macbeth" Throne of Blood. Magnificent stuff. The highest achievement I've seen in that vein is, curiously, from the darn 2010s again! A Kashmiri film, Haider, which is "Hamlet" at a remove. Have you seen it?
What might be the best film of the decade more nearly approaches being a production of one of the plays: Caesar Must Die, which comes at "Julius Caesar" the way Topsy-Turvy came at "The Mikado," through the conception, casting, rehearsals, stagecraft, and audience-eye view of the stage, as well as (sometimes) within the scenes. It's fragmentary and yet satisfyingly complete.
The decade for me, well, my bests range from Aloha (weirdly and cruelly dumped by the studio that produced it; a labor of love by Cameron Crowe and everyone who worked on it) to Mad Max: Fury Road (big hit, top-rated film of its year on imdb, and the most visually exciting fantastic-adventure in decades -- it certainly shows up the comic-book movies for the pretenders they are). There are thrillers, as different as Headhunters and de Palma's Passion; and documentaries, as different as Free Solo and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu. And hard-to-define wonders like Computer Chess. For a so-called not-great decade of filmmaking, hah! I may be an old guy but I see as much variety and promise as the '70s ever showed.
With the 2010s, it's likely that I haven't seen the truly great ones, as I don't think most of the ones on my list are on a par with the ones on my 50s or 70s list.
DeleteI hate the majority of the highly regarded films: Roma, Mank, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Boyhood, The Shape of Water, The Three of Life, etc. Hollywood to me is dead.
Revulsion is a strange reaction to a film like The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Haven't seen the other films you mentioned. Aloha gets 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and 40% on Metacritic, so I wouldn't have seen it (even though I no longer trust high ratings of contemporary films), not to mention my dislike of Emma Stone. Mad Max doesn't look like my thing. Nor does Headhunters.
I doubt that those films would make me think that was a great decade for Hollywood.
Interesting films are made elsewhere.
Very strong lists, to the extent that I have seen the films. Maybe half. My 1940s list would be full of Preston Sturges - have you seen any of his movies?
ReplyDeleteIf you ever do a 1930s list you may well make up for the lack of French films. What a superb decade for French film.
I've only seen The Lady Eve, which I didn't quite get.
DeleteI want your full list, for all these decades.
About the 30s, I've seen a few and I'm sure I can name 10 good films, but that's not the same.
So glad you're a Preston Sturges fan too!
Delete"It is one of life's great tragedies that the men nost n need of a beating up are invariably enormous!"
Only went up to the 80s, as anything later is too modern for me!
ReplyDeletePersonal choice, and no more than one per director from each decade:
30s:
Bringing Up Baby
City Lights
Duck Soup
Frankenstein
La Grande Illusion
Midnight
The Roaring Twenties
Sons of the Desert
Top Hat
Trouble in Paradise
40s:
Bicycle Thieves
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
The Grapes of Wrath
The Lost Weekend
The Maltese Falcon
A Matter of Life and Death
Sullivan’s Travels
The Third Man
To Be or Not To Be
50s:
The Big Heat
I’m All Right Jack
Pather Panchali
Pickpocket
Seven Samurai
Shane
Singin’ in the Rain
Sunset Boulevard
Tokyo Story
Wild Strawberries
60s:
Andrei Rublev
Brides of Dracula
Charulata
La Dolce Vita
The Gospel According to Matthew
The Innocents
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Through a Glass Darkly
Yojimbo
70s:
Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder)
La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie
Cries and Whispers
Cross of Iron
The Godfather Part 2
The Last Detail
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Stalker
Sunday Bloody Sunday
80s:
L’Argent
Das Boot
The Dead
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Fanny and Alexander
Fitzcarraldo
King of Comedy
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Ran
The Sacrifice
Your lists are so different from mine.
DeleteTo this day, I still don't understand what you like about L’Argent. I very much dislike it.
You don't make a list of the 2000s, but if you do, I hope Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring would secure a spot on it? And Raise the Red Lantern for the 90s?
Okay.
ReplyDelete1909 or earlier:
Workers Leaving the Factory (Lumière brothers, 1895)
The Arrival of a Train at the Station (Lumière brothers, 1895)
The Squirter Squirted (Lumière brothers, 1895)
The Kiss (Edison, 1896)
A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
The Impossible Voyage (Méliès, 1904)
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Porter, 1906)
Last Days of Pompeii (Maggi, 1908)
Fantasmagorie (Cohl, 1908)
Joyous Microbes (Cohl, 1909)
1910s:
L'Inferno (Bertolini / Padovan / De Liguoro, 1911)
Musketeers of Pig Alley (Griffith, 1912)
Conquest of the Pole (Méliès, 1912)
The Pawnshop (Chaplin 1916)
The Waiters' Ball (Arbuckle, 1916)
Terje Vigen (Stroheim, 1917)
Teddy at the Throttle (Sennett, 1917)
The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)
Shoulder Arms (Chaplin, 1918)
Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1919)
But I've never seen a Griffith feature - huge gap.
1920s:
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922)
Safety Last (Lloyd, 1923)
Sherlock Junior (Keaton, 1924)
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)
The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
The Big Parade (Vidor, 1925)
Metropolis (Lang, 1926)
The General (Keaton, 1927)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1928)
Much like Knulp's list.
1930s:
M (Lang, 1931)
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
Le Million (Clair, 1931)
À Nous la Liberté (Clair, 1931)
Duck Soup (Cooper, 1933)
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937)
Snow White (Hand, 1937)
Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
After that, I have not though about it enough. The 1940s would be some mix of Knulp's and Himadri's lists plus "I Know Where I'm Going."
Oh yes, I love Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Chaplin.
DeleteWhat about after the 40s?
I have not given later decades much thought, and have seen fewer films. Well, I have seen way more 1980s and 1990s films, but I haven't thought about a list. I've seen 5 from your 1980s list, but only 2 from your 1990s, 2 from your 2000s, and 3 from your 2010s. So what do I know.
ReplyDeleteWhich 2 from the 90s?
DeleteThe two big American hits. It is never true that "everybody" sees something, but man, everybody saw those two.
DeleteOh yeah.
DeleteYou should watch Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine. Even Himadri has seen them, and he likes them.
I'm under the impression that the best decade for Chinese cinema is the 90s.
These are all interesting lists. My own list would be less interesting and varied, probably. You'd see a lot of Wenders, Jarmusch, and Hitchcock, probably. Some Bergman and Fellini.
ReplyDeleteAh okay.
DeleteFor me making these lists, the ones for the 50s-70s were hard because there were lots and lots of great films, hard to choose, whereas the 2000s-2010s were hard because there were so few and I wasn't that happy with my final choices.
Yeah, the recent decades don't seem to offer much that satisfies me, either. My list for the 1970s would include "Jaws," which is my all-time favorite movie. I'm not even kidding.
DeleteOh really? I'm surprised. Why so?
DeleteIt has some technical flaws, but mostly it's a perfect movie. It has some of the spirit of noir (the sense of unseen menace broken by flashes of comedy) and also the sort of clockwork plot of Hitchcock. It's possibly the most well-done working out of the three-act hero's transformational journey to come out of Hollywood, and it has a quite good cast who all give excellent performances. I have seen this movie scores of times. Maybe a hundred times, honestly. It's eminently quotable, too.
DeleteOkay.
DeleteCan't comment as I haven't seen Jaws (I know, I know). It's just that whenever I come across it on a streaming site, I'm not in the mood for it, so that hasn't happened yet.
Also, my bf's stepdad became irrationally afraid of sharks because of the film, so that's my excuse hahahaa.
That's not an irrational fear! My wife goes swimming in the ocean and I always bite my nails until she comes to shore. She's crazy to go in the water. I mean, sharks, right?
DeleteLol. Irrational as in for a while he was afraid of all waters, even swimming pools haha.
DeleteTiny sharks in the bathroom sink.
DeleteLol.
DeleteI just started watching In a Lonely Place. Thanks for the recommendation. Too soon to have an opinion on the movie, but "Dick Steel" might be the coolest name for a character in movie history.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha yeah.
DeleteI've watched all but 4 of your 40's movies and agree they all deserve a place on a Best 10 list. I've seen only a handful of the movies in later decades - fewer & fewer as the years have past.
ReplyDeleteFrom your lists I particularly like - all the 1940's movies of the six that I have seen. In subsequent decades:
"Maltese Falcon"
"Raise the Red Lantern"
"A Streetcar Named Desire"
"Fanny and Alexander"
"Memento"
"Brokeback Mountain"
"The Lives of Others"
I'll add
"M"
"It Happened One Night"
"The Third Man"
"Double Indemnity"
"The Shop on Main Street"
"The Painted Veil"
And I can sing the song for "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence".
I'm sure there are more but I'd have to research it.
Which are the 4 films from the 40s list that you haven't seen?
DeleteM is from 1931, so it may be on my 30s list. The Third Man almost made the list, but I replaced it with something else. Double Indemnity is something I never quite got, I mean I didn't get the appeal. The Painted Veil is interesting.
The others I haven't seen.
The Great Dictator (1940)
ReplyDeleteBicycle Thieves (1948)
The Heiress (1949)
A Letter to Three Wives (1949) I might have seen this - I know what it's about
They're all great, but I think Bicycle Thieves and The Great Dictator are films everyone must watch.
DeleteThe Heiress is based on James's Washington Square. The other day when I was writing on fb about the decline in quality of film dialogue, I thought of this one as one example of great film dialogue.
The first two of those movies are available through my library e-media. Very handy.
DeleteOh great. You'll love them.
DeleteI only came across your blog recently but I couldn't resist taking a stab at this. (No particular order within each decade)
ReplyDelete20s/30s:
Sherlock Jr.
Trouble in Paradise
The Lady Vanishes
The Spy in Black
Bringing Up Baby
City Lights
Gold Diggers of 1933
L'Atalante
M
My Man Godfrey
40s:
I Know Where I'm Going!
A Canterbury Tale
The Red Shoes
Notorious
The Philadelphia Story
The Lady Eve
Casablanca
To Be or Not To Be
The Third Man
Children of Paradise
50s:
Orphée
Singin' in the Rain
Love in the Afternoon
Sunset Boulevard
The Night of the Hunter
Roman Holiday
The Lavender Hill Mob
Vertigo
Ugetsu
The Bridge on the River Kwai
60s:
Charade
The Apartment
Lawrence of Arabia
Billy Liar
Cléo from 5 to 7
Play Time
Daisies
Blow-Up
Loves of a Blonde
Pierrot Le Fou
70s:
The Passenger
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
The Sting
Network
Nashville
Daguerréotypes
The Long Goodbye
Alien
Breaking Away
O Lucky Man!
80s:
Vagabond
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Caravaggio
Repo Man
Distant Voices, Still Lives
The Draughtsman's Contract
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover
Die Hard
Bull Durham
Dressed to Kill
90s:
The Double Life of Véronique
Three Colors: Red
Mission: Impossible
The Long Day Closes
My Own Private Idaho
Contact
Eyes Wide Shut
Fargo
The Last Days of Disco
Chungking Express
00s:
The Royal Tenenbaums
Hot Fuzz
The Informant!
Gosford Park
A Serious Man
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Dogville
Lost in Translation
Brick
Love and Basketball
10s:
Eden
Little Women
Under the Skin
Meek's Cutoff
The Art of Self-Defense
Transit
Midsommar
The Lobster
Tully
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Oh hi,
DeleteI like quite a lot of your choices, like Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, Ugetsu, Roman Holiday, etc. but what is Die Hard doing there???
I love a good action movie, and it's about as good as they get, with fun performances from the stars (particularly Rickman) to the bit parts. It's also one of the great movies about architecture, up there with The Conformist. Granted, the '70s and '80s were probably the two decades where I had the hardest time coming up with candidates, but I have no qualms about including Die Hard. Anyway, I had the fourth Resident Evil movie, which is in part an homage, on my list for a while, which I think would have been the more controversial choice!
DeleteWhat do you mean about the 70s? I had a hard time with the 70s because there were too many options!
DeleteI did struggle with the 80s though, so I understand. The 80s, 2000s, and 2010s were hard because I didn't find that many great films.
It's partly an era I haven't seen that much from, since when I got into movies in the early '00s I was mostly watching either contemporary stuff or '60s and earlier. But I also don't have any particular attachment to a lot of the big Hollywood directors from that era - Scorsese, F.F. Coppola (though I could have picked The Conversation), Spielberg, Allen, Friedkin, Bogdanovich etc. - which limits my pickings somewhat.
DeleteOh I love the 70s. I always say my favourite decades for cinema are the 50s-70s.
DeleteYou could make an amazing 80s list just limiting yourself to directors whose names begin with a K.
ReplyDeleteI barely watch films from the 80s, which was when the infantilisation began.
DeleteThe 90s was a great decade for Chinese cinema, which is why I named quite a few Chinese films. Actually I should have included more.
Kiarostami made a number of films about children, but I doubt you'll find them infantilizing.
DeleteAnyway, forget Hollywood and stick to Kiarostami, Kieslowski, Kaurismaki, and Kusturica. And Kurosawa, but you have him already.
Or expand to J, K, and L and add some films from the great creative response to Hollywood infantilization, American indie film, like the great "Repo Man" listed above.
Oh yeah.
DeleteMy list earlier mentioned Dekalog, then I took it out because it's TV, but next time I might randomly bring it back.
I should watch more Iranian cinema.
Haven't seen Kusturica and Kaurismaki. I imagine they should be on BFI.