One film per director.
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman)
Sunset Boulevard (dir. Billy Wilder)
Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtis)
A Star Is Born (dir. George Cukor)
The Conversation (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The Phantom of Liberty (dir. Luis Bunuel)
The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
Raise the Red Lantern (dir. Zhang Yimou)
F for Fake (dir. Orson Welles)
Good list. Some I have never encountered and so will seek them out.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing the last 4 are the ones you don't know?
Delete
ReplyDeleteTo pick your Top 10, you need, first of all, to pick a Chaplin, a Laurel & Hardy, and a Marx Brothers. Then you start thinking about the rest.
I love horror: not the special-effects-laden gorefests, but the more creepy types, or those that evoke childhood nightmares. I didn’t pick a classic Hammer, much though I love those films: although I do think they’re undervalued by the more serious critics, I won’t pretend they’re up there with the Renoirs and the Bergmans. But I have picked a particularly eerie and disturbing ghost story - perhaps the best supernatural film of them all, and one that can stand comparison with any film outside the genre in terms of cinematic quality.
I find myself fascinated by that wonderful wave of film-makers who emerged from around the world in the 1950s & 1969s (some had been around from earlier, but it was in the 50s & 60s they came into international prominence). To represent them, I have picked films by Kurosawa, Bresson, & Ray, though I could just as easily have picked films by Bergman, Buñuel, Fellini, Tarkovsky, etc. (I do find myself out of sympathy with the French nouvelle vague, though.)
That leaves space for three more films. I was a teenager during the 70s, and that period saw a wonderful (and all too short-lived) burst of creativity in US mainstream cinema. I picked a western directed by Clint Eastwood that’s so good that even John Ford might have been proud of it.
That doesn’t leave me much space for films from the Golden Age of Hollywood - these films are particularly close to my heart - but since I’ve already picked Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers, I needn’t feel too bad about that. I’m sorry to miss out on Citizen Kane; on Jimmy Cagney gangster movies; on screwball comedies; and I’m particularly sorry to exclude films by such masters as John Ford, Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch. But there shouldn’t be too many complaints about the ones I *have* picked.
( I see I have also missed out on Singin’ in the Rain, which is possibly unique in being a feelgood film that really does make you feel good.)
City Lights (1932, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Duck Soup (1933, Marx Brothers)
Sons of the Desert (1933, Laurel & Hardy)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, dir. John Huston)
The Lost Weekend (1945, dir. Billy Wilder)
Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Pickpocket (1959, dir. Robert Bresson)
The Innocents (1961, dir. Jack Clayton)
Charulata (1964, dir. Satyajit Ray)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, dir. Clint Eastwood)
Nice list.
DeleteI was going to mention The Innocents and Charulata, but in the end didn't.
And thanks for the long comment. Puts my blog post to shame lol.
City Lights (1931, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
ReplyDeleteLa Grande Illusion (1937, dir. Jean Renoir)
The Shop around the Corner (1940, dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
There Was a Father (1942, dir. Yasujirō Ozu)
My Darling Clementine (1946, dir. John Ford)
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Apu Trilogy (1955-1956-1959, dir. Satyajit Ray)
Rio Bravo (1959, dir. Howard Hawks)
Trois Couleurs : Rouge (1994, dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski)
Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang)
Wait, I expected an Eric Rohmer???
DeleteL'Ami de mon amie would probably make it in a top 20 list :)
DeleteHaha okay.
DeleteDo it! Let me know what you think.
ReplyDeleteGreat.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit obsessed with Persona.
Susan Sontag wrote an essay about it that you might find interesting.
ReplyDeleteI used to love Bergman, but not so much now. If I had to pick one Bergman, it would be probably Winter Light. I find Persona quite pretentious.... It's just my humble opinion :) Who are your top 5 directors?
ReplyDeleteBilly Wilder, Bergman, Kurosawa, Ozu, and probably Fellini.
DeleteRear Window (Hitchcock).
ReplyDeleteRashomon (Kurosawa).
Citizen Kane (Wells).
Chinatown (Polanski).
Mean Streets (Scorsese).
The Godfather Part II (Coppola).
Cries & Whispers (Bergman).
The Maltese Falcon (Huston).
Dead of Night (Cavalcanti etc al).
And I feel I shouldn't but - Manhattan ( Allen).
Very good list. The only film I haven't seen is Dead of Night.
DeleteThank you. Dead of Night is a 1940s portmanteau horror film made in Ealing. Much of it is pretty dated and laughable unless you are a dedicated horror fan and committed to suspending disbelief, as I am, but it is catapulted into greatness by the connecting scenario, which is (to use literary language) a trippy headf*ck as good as anything in The Twilight Zone.
DeleteI see, then I guess it's not for me.
DeleteI may create such a list in a separate blog post.
ReplyDelete