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Lindsay Anne Hallam
(in preferential order)
1. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) I should really call these my favourite films, rather than the 'ten best'. I've picked the films that have stayed with me, the ones that you get cravings for. Oh, and I don't like 'realism'. See also Lindsay's revised list: July–Aug 2001 Lindsay Anne Hallam is a 21 year old student at Curtin University in Western Australia where she is majoring in Film and Television.
Benjamin Halligan
(in no particular order)
La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) ...but one can't live without… Performance (Roeg/Cammell), Passion (Godard), Before the Revolution (Bertolucci), Cyclo (Hung), In A Year of 13 Moons (Fassbinder), October (Eisenstein), The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky), Heaven's Gate (Cimino), Othello (Welles), L'Âge d'or (Buñuel), Bad Timing (Roeg), The Last Movie (Hopper), Providence (Resnais), A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger), La Luna (Bertolucci), Withnail and I (Robinson), La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette), Blow-Up (Antonioni), Fellini-Casanova (Fellini), La Bete (Borowczyk), Ucho (Kachyna), Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (Roberts), The Green Room (Truffaut), The Testament of Orpheus (Cocteau), All My Good Countrymen (Jasny), The Devils (Russell), New York Ripper (Fulci), Stroszek (Herzog), Rome, Open City (Rossellini), Madame de… (Ophuls), Greed (Von Stroheim), The Ascent (Shepitko), Great Expectations (Lean), Rules of the Game (Renoir), City Lights (Chaplin). In case this all becomes a bit too heady, I'll quote another: "Good flick" – Prince Philip, the Duke Of Edinburgh, to Sir David Lean, after attending the premier of Lawrence of Arabia, 10th December 1962. Benjamin Halligan's La Luna will be published in February by Flicks Books. He is current preparing a book on Michael Reeves.
Christoph Huber
(in preferential order)
1. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) The ironic thing about lists is that they seem to be dominated by their absences. When I look at this one, I have to question my sanity. How can one be so cowardly not to include Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema because they are a video or Meadville by David Thomas & The 2 Pale Boys because it's a record? Mainly, every list (apart from charting a way we perceive pleasure) is a series of trade-offs. I'll explain some of mine. Tati's masterpiece of masterpieces just had to be included – in a way it stands for the directors who didn't make it because the sum of their work is more important to me than a singular point in their career: Godard, Eastwood, Tourneur, Ford, Bresson, Dreyer, Rossellini, Hawks, Melville, Kubrick, Ozu, Malick, Peckinpah, Buñuel, Welles (and so on). Les Maîtres fous will have to do for all the documentaries (from Lumiere and Flaherty to In The Year Of The Pig and Herve Le Roux' Reprise) and Musicals (from Kelly/Donen to Demy, from Berkeley to Rivette), Vertigo for all the great films about perception and seeing (from Méliès over Peeping Tom to Videodrome and Nouvelle Vague), Blast Of Silence for the the level of abstraction great b-pictures could achieve and elevate them into transcendence (like Murder By Contract, Shockproof, Terror In A Texas Town, D.O.A. and – my most regretful omission – Out Of The Past), Two-Lane Blacktop for all the "impure", immensely moving films that abandon accepted ways of commercial filmmaking from within to create a world of their own (from The Lost One to Repo Man), Arnulf Rainer for all the great avantgardists from Lye to Gehr, from Brakhage to Conner, Sonatine for the purity a vision can achive (Johnny Guitar, Le samourai, Rio Bravo, Day Of Wrath, Not Reconciled), Goodfellas for film as music (Scorpio Rising, Free Radicals, Cosmic Ray, Demy again), The Loyal 47 Ronin for the way we perceive space and the complete abstraction of emotion (too numerous to mention) and, finally The Fatal Glass Of Beer for the sheer power of comedy (from Sherlock Jr. to Blitzwolf, from Monsieur Verdoux to The Big Mouth) and its incredible masters (from Laurel & Hardy to the Marx and Farelly Brothers). You realise: If I don't stop right now before I realise I've omitted such inexplicable wonders as diverse as The Scarlet Empress, Late August, Early September, the last three Murnaus or Jackie Brown I never will: movies are worse than any of Borges' labyrinths. Christoph Huber was thrilled at an early age by Roger Corman's House Of Usher. His biggest fear since is that his writings on film (mainly for Videofreak and cycamp) are nothing but self-therapy. His other biggest fear is interviewing Aki Kaurismäki.
Joe McElhaney
(in chronological order)
Spione (Fritz Lang, 1928) There is very little I can say about the problem in compiling a list of this nature that hasn't already been said many times over: The impossibility of confining oneself to ten titles, that the list finally submitted is more a selection of favourites than an attempt to offer an objective list of the ten greatest, that a different list of ten could easily be compiled every day of the week, etc. As with a number of people who have already submitted, I find it painful to exclude films from major figures who have meant a great deal to me: Fassbinder, Gehr, Minnelli, Visconti, Straub/Huillet, Antonioni, Akerman, Vidor, and so much of Japanese cinema. But none of this is real anyway and there's always six months from now, isn't there? Joe McElhaney is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Film History at Sarah Lawrence College. His book The Quality of Imperfection is forthcoming from Temple University Press.
Bree McKilligan
(in preferential order)
1. Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997) Bree McKilligan is a Melbourne writer/director and scriptwriting teacher. Her short films have screened internationally. She has just recieved funding from the Australian Film Commission for a short film. Currently residing in Germany.
James McSwain
This list is purely arbitrary and indefensible:
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges, 1942)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)
Woman of the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
The Idiot (Akira Kurosawa, 1951)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
La Cité des enfants perdus (Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995)
Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) Dr. James B. McSwain is an Associate Professor of History at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama (USA).
Alberto Pezzotta
Without a particular order, and with a certain confusion:
1) Public
Vampyr (Carl Dreyer, 1932) 2) Private The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928); Le Sang des bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949); Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949); Branded to Kill (Suzuki Seijun, 1967); Ecologia del delitto/Reazione a catena (Mario Bava, 1971); Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976); Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978); Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986); Burning Snow (Patrick Tam, 1987); Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1987). Alberto Pezzotta lives in Milano and has written an essay about the style of Hong Kong movies, and monographs on Mario Bava, Abel Ferrara, Clint Eastwood and Taxi Driver.
Jit Phokaew
How do I select these ten films for my list? I just know that these films exceedingly affect my feelings, my emotions, my imagination, and, needless to say, my life. They are my most favourite films of all time.
(in preferential order)
1. Celine et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
6. The Sleep of Reason (Ula Stockl, 1984)
7. The Bread of Those Early Years (Herbert Vesely, 1961)
8. Le Rayon vert (Eric Rohmer, 1986)
9. Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini, 1965)
10. The Love Machine (Gordon Eriksen, 1999)
Favourite director: Derek Jarman Jit Phokaew is a 27-year-old cinephile living in Bangkok.
Max Scheinin
In an effort to cut down on the absurdity of lists, I've decided to list only my top four – i.e., very most beloved – films in any preferential order. After that, the picks are alphabetical:
(revised list)
1. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Others... I suppose I should go with a more high-brow Polanski pick, Chinatown or Knife in the Water or Tess, perhaps. But the man's overlooked 1976 masterpiece is the single most effective horror film I've ever seen, so, in this case, I've decided to go with my gut choice. See also Max's other lists: June 2000 Jul–Aug 2001 Max Scheinin is a teenage film buff and lover who writes a column on the movies for a local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Daniel Sully
(in roughly preferential order)
1. Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Films that could have made it on another day: Sansho Dayu, Days of Heaven, Man Bites Dog, Underground, Vertigo, Hana-Bi, Surviving Desire and Exotica. See also Daniel's revised list: Oct–Dec 2006 Daniel Sully is a media student, film-lover and wannabe filmmaker from the UK.
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TALLY at December 2000–January 2001,
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By film: |
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1. 2. 3. 6. 7. 9. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
25 12 11 11 11 9 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 6. 8. 9. 10. |
Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Robert Bresson Andrei Tarkovsky Orson Welles Carl Dreyer Jean Renoir Yasujiro Ozu Michelangelo Antonioni Kenji Mizoguchi |
39 33 31 23 23 21 21 20 19 18 |
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Zach Campbell
These are the films I cherish the most right now. Limit one film per director. I have no idea how to explain my '60s/'70s skew.
(in preferential order)
1. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974) Honorable Mentions (also one film per director): The Night of the Hunter ('55; Laughton), City of Sadness ('89; Hou), Lola Montes ('53; Ophuls), Taste of Cherry ('97, Kiarostami), Johnny Guitar ('54; Ray), Nosferatu ('22; Murnau), Eyes Wide Shut ('99; Kubrick). And I've got a horribly long list of films to catch up with. Zach Campbell is a high-schooler with a web page who will hopefully be studying film come next fall.
Michelle Carey
(in no order)
Celine et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974) To single out individual films is not as easy or self-indulgent a task as one would presume. How is it that not one single Godard (my favourite all-time director) rates yet his entire body of work could? Ditto for Antonioni or Bergman. This list comprises for me the ten films that convey the most meaning as individual works at this time: whether it be because they make me want to cry (Marker), laugh (Donner), be scared silly (Lado, Polanski) or inspire my childlike crazy side to surface (Wong, Chytilová). See also Michelle's revised list: Sept–Oct 2001 Michelle Carey is an Adelaide-based cinephile and radio presenter.
Laura Carroll
Ten most important and worthiest films of all time? I don't think so. But if this was all they screened at the desert island multiplex, I think I'd survive.
(in alphabetical order)
The African Queen (John Huston, 1951) Laura Carroll is researching a thesis, on literature to film adaptation, at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Andrew Chan
(in alphabetical order)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) It's hard to find the right words for the movies you truly love, so I won't bother elaborating on why I regard these films as my absolute favourites. Films that aren't on the list but should be are Sunset Blvd., The Bicycle Thief, Schindler's List, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bringing Up Baby, and, believe it or not, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Andrew Chan is a movie lover and film critic, with a website, My Two Cents.
Marcos Ribas de Faria
(in preferential order)
1. Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) See also Marcos' revised list: Oct–Dec 2004 Marcos Ribas de Faria is a Brazilian critic who writes for the website web4fun and was the film critic for the magazines Opinião, Jornal do Brasil, O Jornal, and Última Hora.
Anthony Dugandzic
Here are the films which I believe have challenged my sense of how cinema can shape, and sometimes transcend, human experience. And, when placed in the right hands, cinema can be the most beguiling of all the arts.
(in no particular order)
Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954)
Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931) There are, of course, dozens of other films which are worthy of such recognition. A list of 1,000 films might be more accurate to encompass one's favourite films, but, alas, a list of such magnitude would seem more than a little impractical. However, I would like to make mention of my 10 favourite filmmakers, in order of preference: 1) Stanley Kubrick 2) Orson Welles 3) Luis Buñuel 4) Kenji Mizoguchi 5) Michelangelo Antonioni 6) Alfred Hitchcock 7) Andrei Tarkovsky 8) Carl Dreyer 9) Jean Renoir 10) John Ford. Anthony Dugandzic is a celluloid nomad currently living in Chicago.
Dan Georgakas
Picking the ten best films ever has always struck me as rather meaningless, given a lack of criteria that could possibly address the multitude of film genres. The impact of different cultures and time periods are other factors that cannot be casually dismissed. The very concept of "the best" has a buff or commercial strain to it that has little to do with film scholarship. So my only claim for the films that follow are that I never tire of looking at them. They appeal to different parts of my personality and life experiences. And on the nights I would want to screen one of them, I probably would not be in the mood to screen some of the others.
(in no order)
La Battaglia di Algeri (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965) Dan Georgakas is a long-time editor of Cineaste and his commentary on Greek film has been carried by The Voice of America and Cosmos Hellenic Public Radio.
Rhys Graham
Lots of first films, lots of films about childhood (something about urgency, impatience and the urge towards recklessness). The list, significantly influenced by a number of staggering films seen in the past year, as of this moment, and with equal parts frustration and joy, is:
(in no order)
My Childhood (Bill Douglas, 1972)
Seventeen (Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines, 1982) (I would like to have been asked to compile a list of films with my all time favourite impromptu dance or musical numbers. Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole, Claire Denis' US Go Home, Bertolucci's Il Conformista, Hal Hartley's Surviving Desire, Godard's Bande à Part, Anthony Michael Hall in John Hughes' Sixteen Candles, and any number of scenes of drunken song and dance combinations in any number of Cassavetes' beautiful, brilliant films. Some other time, maybe…) Rhys Graham is a filmmaker and writer based in Melbourne.
Maximilian Le Cain
(in preferential order)
1. Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971) All of these films along with a few others which unfortunately didn't quite make it – Tokyo Story, Vampyr, Whispering Pages, Double Life of Veronique, Cries and Whispers, etc – mark defining moments in my film viewing, moments of revelation after which I find the cinema a much vaster, richer place than I could ever have dreamed. These films are points of no return. See also Max's revised list: June 2001 Sept–Oct 2003 Maximilian Le Cain is a 22-year-old filmmaker and cinephile living in Cork City, Ireland. He has has written for the magazine Film West.
John O'Brien
Thanks for this opportunity. I find I've been turning to comedy lately. Are TV shows allowed? I have to put them in anyway.
(revised list, in preferential order)
1. Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
8. Candy Stripers (Bob Chinn, 1978)
9. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
10. Twilights (Tengai Amano, 1994) I left out: Get Smart (many episodes); Duck Soup; one scene in Stunt Man (Richard Rush) ... These are the things that still shape me, as once they shaped me. See also John's other lists: May 2000 Apr–June 2005 John O'Brien is a scriptwriter based in Sydney. He has written the TV series Bondi Banquet and the feature film A Wreck, A Tangle, among other things.
Alan Pavelin
Thanks for the invitation to revise my list. Most are as before, but I must have been suffering a mental aberration to have omitted Rossellini. Kieslowski also sneaks in ahead of Kiarostami (why do so many great directors have names ending in "i"? Especially if you spell Tarkovski that way.). My list confirms 1953–54 as the greatest-ever time for filmmaking, especially in Japan.
(revised list, in chronological order)
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Dreyer, 1928)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953)
Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
Gertrud (Carl Dreyer, 1964)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)
Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994) See also Alan's other lists: April 2000 June 2001 Jul–Aug 2003 Alan Pavelin is the author of the book Fifty Religious Films (1990), and has written for several U.K. magazines on this topic, including The Month and Media Development.
Lisa Roosen-Runge
(in no order)
Beiqing Chengshi / City of Sadness (HOU Hsiao-hsien, 1989)
Shen Nu / Goddess (WU Yonggang, 1934)
Hua Yang Nian Hua / In the Mood for Love (WONG Kar-wai, 2000)
Banshun / Late Spring (OZU Yasujiro, 1949)
Banoo-ye Ordibehesht / May Lady (Rakhshan BANI ETEMAD, 1998) Lisa Roosen-Runge lives in Toronto, Canada, where there is still one remaining first-run Hong Kong cinema. She spends her spare time trying keeping up on current Asian films. Her Cantonese is not really improving. Check out her webpage.
Constantine Santas
(in preferential order)
1. La Passion de Jeannne d’Arc (Carl Dreyer, 1928) In making the above selection, I am aware of its extreme subjectivity, but how can it be otherwise? I also intend to suggest that the distinction usually made between 'art house' and 'mainstream' movie should not be a criterion of a 'great' movie. A great movie rises above such distinctions, making its appeal to most audiences most of the time. Constantine Santas is a Professor of Literature and Film at Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida, and the author of Responding to Film (Burnham, Inc., 2001).
David Stratton
The trouble is, of course, to confine the list to ten – and what constitutes 'top'? My favourites? The ten I think are the best?
I'll try. (in no particular order)
Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952) Best Australian film: Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, 1979). David Stratton was the Director of the Sydney Film Festival 1966–1983. He is co-host of The Movie Show, SBS TV (since 1986), film critic for The Australian (since 1988), reviewer for Variety (since 1979), and lecturer on film history at the University of Sydney (since 1990).
Puya Yazdi
(in preferential order, apart from the first and last films)
1. The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) As Godard so aptly put it, the cinema begins with Griffith and ends with Kiarostami. In between we had all the above greatness and much more: Ford, Lang, Dreyer, Welles, Bresson, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kubrick, Resnais, Marker, Ray, Antonioni, Rivette, and of course Vigo. Ah, "the cinema is an invention without a future" indeed. Puya Yazdi is a former producer of the University of California at Irvine Film Society. Currently, he is trying to pursue a career as a film critic.
M. C. Zenner
(deleted list)
Mr. Zenner's list appeared in February 2000; he has requested its removal, and this removal is reflected in the Tally that now follows.
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TALLY at November 2000,
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By film: |
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1. 2. 3. 5. 6. 8. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952) Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
24 12 11 11 10 8 8 7 7 7 7 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 9. 10. |
Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Robert Bresson Orson Welles Carl Dreyer Jean Renoir Yasujiro Ozu Andrei Tarkovsky Michelangelo Antonioni F.W. Murnau Kenji Mizoguchi |
37 32 30 22 20 20 20 20 18 17 17 |
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Acquarello
(revised list, in preferential order)
1. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) What can I say? In adding Tokyo Story, Ordet and Life of Oharu, some films must, regrettably, drop off the list (but fortunately, not out of my thoughts). See also Acquarello's other lists: Mar 2000 Apr–May 2001 Acquarello is a NASA Design Engineer and author of the Strictly Film School website.
Victor Couwenbergh
Because of the fact that I saw lots of (old) films lately, my list is changed at a number of places, although my number one is still untouchable. The more films you see, the harder it is to make such lists. But the more fun it is also.
(revised list, in preferential order)
1. El Espíritu de la colmena (Victor Erice, 1973) See also Victor's previous list: Feb 2000 Victor Couwenbergh is a film operator in a local cinema in The Netherlands, and a freelance film critic. http://victorsworld.homepage.com
Mike DeJong
(in preferential order)
1. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
2. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
3. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
4. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
5. Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979)
6. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
7. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
8. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
9. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1975)
10. The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995) Honourable mentions: Woody Allen's Manhattan; Godard's Breathless, Easy Rider by Dennis Hopper and Kiarostami's Life and Nothing More. See also Mike's revised list: Apr–May 2001 Mike DeJong is a writer and communications/film student at York University in Toronto. His website is Mike's Cinema
Michael Helms
Only one French film, not sorry...
(in preferential order)
1. Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1971)
2. Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)
3. The Legend of Hell House (John Hough, 1972)
4. Thundercrack! (Curt McDowell, 1976)
5. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
6. The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)
7. Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1982)
8. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Robert Enrico, 1965)
9. Spider Baby (Jack Hill, 1964)
10. Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965) See also Michael's revised list: June 2001 Michael Helms roams Australia and New Zealand for Fangoria magazine. He regularly contributes to Crimson Celluloid and always fails to turn up at DVD Users Anonymous meetings.
Brett Kashmere
(in chronological order)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919) A fine list. Brett Kashmere is completing his M.A. in Film Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.
George Papadopoulos
These are the films that I have revisited in the last six months and I savoured every glorious moment. Therefore, they comprise my current list of favourite films.
(revised list, in preferential order)
1. The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) See also George's other lists: Feb 2000 Jan–Mar 2004 George Papadopoulos works in finance and acquisitions for Newvision Film Distributors.
Ray Privett
These are the ten films that have been affecting me most of late.
(in preferential order)
1. Saladin the Victorious (United Arab Republic, 1963) Ray Privett has published recently in International Documentary. He is preparing a text on the work of Noël Carroll.
Jack Sargeant
Top tens are a strange concept – the idea that one can chain one's taste to some honest list. Invariably top tens represent only the current tastes (or lack of) espoused by the compiler, rather than an intrinsic act of insight, or, worse, some collective Platonic Truth of cinema, as it were. With that in mind, and considering this top ten is (consciously) different from another compiled whilst in Brisbane for Trash Video, what follows is a strategic guide to what I am watching, or at least thinking about, at the moment. Notably there is cross over between the two lists in the form of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Violent Cop, films I watch – or at least think about – almost weekly.
(in no order)
Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
SXXX80 (Monte Cazazza, 1980)
Mondo Cane (Cavara & Jacopetti, 1963)
Aguirre: the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
film aktions (Otto Muehl, 1968–1970)
The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano, 1989)
Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984) Jack Sargeant is the author of Naked Lens: Beat Cinema (1997), Deathtripping:The Cinema of Transgression (1995) and sUTURE (1998) (all published by Creation Books ). He is also a regular contributor to many journals and magazines; a collection of his writings Cinema Contra Cinema is available (Fringecore via Amazon).
Erik Ulman
(in chronological order)
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916) It's sad to leave out Le Voyage dans la lune, Greed, The Scarlet Empress, La Signora di tutti, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Ugetsu, Ensayo de un crimen, L'Avventura, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Muriel, Gertrud, Stalker, Out of the Blue, The Idiots; in another mood, some of these might displace my winners.... See also Erik's revised lists: Apr–May 2001 May–June 2002 Jan–Mar 2004 Erik Ulman is a composer now finishing his doctorate at the University of California, San Diego.
Constantine Verevis
Looking through other lists posted at this site reminded me of the many films that might have made it to my own Top Ten. Realising that I'd never be able to limit myself to just ten, I decided to impose an artificial requirement: I'd only select from films I've had the opportunity (alibi) to screen at Monash University (at least twice) over the past couple of years (this excluded, for instance, a recent film in Wonderland, that would otherwise have made the list). Keeping in mind, then, the institutional limits that the films for Monash subjects are selected within (requirements of pedagogy, canon, availability, and the like) the Ten, in alphabetical order, are:
Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) Con Verevis teaches in the area of Visual Culture in the School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies at Monash University, Melbourne.
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TALLY at September–October 2000,
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By film: |
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1. 2. 4. 6. 7. 8. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Un Condamné à Mort s’est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) |
21 11 11 10 10 8 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 8. 9. 10. |
Alfred Hitchcock Robert Bresson Jean-Luc Godard Orson Welles Carl Dreyer Jean Renoir Yasujiro Ozu Andrei Tarkovsky F.W. Murnau Kenji Mizoguchi |
34 29 26 20 18 18 18 17 16 14 |
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Fred Camper
(in preferential order)
1. Genroku Chushingura (The Loyal 47 Ronin) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1942) I have limited myself to one film per filmmaker. Obviously such lists are somewhat arbitrary, polemical rather than precise. Rating these as the "top" films doesn't mean I like the work of Baillie, Dreyer, Epstein, Ophuls, Welles, von Sternberg, or many others, any less. With seven of the above filmmakers, the choice of a favourite film was fairly easy, and these choices have also been my favourites for many years. WIth three, Brakhage, Breer and Hawks, there seem to be many "best" films. For example, any one of a half-dozen Hawks films, including eccentric picks such as Red Line 7000, could have been used. See also Fred's revised list: Oct–Dec 2004 Fred Camper is a writer and lecturer on film, art, and photography who lives in Chicago. His writing appears regularly in the Chicago Reader.
Dan Harper
This is a silly editorial game, but fun.
(in no particular order)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Sorry, no American films. I don't believe in them. See also Dan's revised list: Feb–Mar 2001 Dan Harper is your typical Fogey-Without-Portfolio. No credentials that would make any sense to an academic. He has been a serious film-watcher since he was first introduced to Fellini's La Strada at the tender age of 13 (an unlucky age).
Dmetri Kakmi
(revised list, in chronological order)
Diary of a Lost Girl (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1929) See also Dmetri's previous list: Jan 2000 Dmetri Kakmi is a critic and essayist. Among others, his work is published in Heat, Metro, Sevenmag, Screaming Hyena. He currently works as an editor for Penguin Books Australia.
Julian Savage
Here are ten film titles culled from an initial list of 30 or more.
(in chronological order)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919) 'Taste is a matter of a thousand distastes', wrote Truffaut, and any list such as this unveils a leaning towards a particular kind of cinema, a predilection against another. My list comes from the 'learned cinephilic difficult film perspective'; films that are predicated on being cinematically experimental, viewing that is personally and politically confrontational, and cinema that challenges and provokes the way we see things by the way in which these things seem in a film. Conversely, my ten films could have been taken from experimental, animation, European horror, erotica, documentary or ten films by Fassbinder. The one exception to the canon is Australian filmmaker Michael Lee's experimental film The Mystical Rose, which remains as one of cinema's most powerful personal statements combining almost every effective experimental trope with an influential use of sound, music and image juxtaposition. Sometimes ten is not enough. Without doubt such a list tends to dismiss too many filmmakers whose collected output singles them out as the true visionaries of cinema over and above the preceding ten individual films, and so I'll conclude with shout outs to: Godard, Cronenberg, Svankmajer, Fassbinder, Snow, Brakhage, Deren, Scorsese, Antonioni, Bresson, Welles, Borowczyk, Hitchcock, Fellini, Pasolini, Lindsay Anderson, Atom Egoyan, Ruiz, Méliès, Polanski, and so on. Julian Savage is a Melbourne based artist, filmmaker and writer.
Andrew Slattery
(in disorder)
Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962) Oh well, I missed Chaplin, Kubrick, Jarmusch, Ozu and Welles – chances are they'd spring up if I wrote this list again tomorrow. See also Andrew's revised list: Feb–Mar 2001 Andrew Slattery is a film student at the University of Newcastle. He is also festival producer of the Newcastle Film Festival.
McKenzie Wark
I don't believe in canons. The 'best' is always context dependent. So here instead are the films I find myself coming back to and getting something from.
(in preferential order)
1. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
2. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
3. Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
4. Body Double (Brian De Palma, 1983)
5. Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948)
6. Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
7. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
8. Pickup on South Street (Sam Fuller, 1953)
9. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
10. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957) See also McKenzie's revised list: Feb–Mar 2001 McKenzie Wark is senior lecturer in media studies at Macquarie University. His most recent book is Celebrities, Culture and Cyberpsace (Pluto Press) which includes a chapter on Australian cinema.
George Wu
(in alphabetical order)
Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984) Movies that could have made the list any other day: The Seventh Seal, It's a Wonderful Life, Hope and Glory, O Lucky Man!, Life is Sweet, Weekend, 8½, The Third Man, A Clockwork Orange, Last Year at Marienbad. George Wu graduated from New York University with a Masters in Cinema Studies and is currently a writer and film director in New York who maintains the Obsessed About Movies Page as a hobby.
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TALLY at July–August 2000,
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By film: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 6. 7. 8. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) |
20 11 10 9 9 8 7 6 6 6 6 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 6. 8. 10. |
Alfred Hitchcock Robert Bresson Jean-Luc Godard Orson Welles Jean Renoir Carl Dreyer Yasujiro Ozu Andrei Tarkovsky F.W. Murnau Kenji Mizoguchi |
31 30 23 18 18 17 17 16 16 13 |
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Noel Bert Bjorndahl
(in no particular order)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1925)
One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1961)
Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi. 1953)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Noel Bjorndahl teaches Film and Media within TAFE and is an occasional writer on film. He was the founding President of the University of Qld Film Group and of the Cody Jarrett Memorial Film Society.
David Boyd
(in chronological order)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931) The usual disclaimers apply: live-action feature-length fictional narratives only; purely a personal selection; probably be different tomorrow; etc, etc, etc. David Boyd, Associate Professor of English at the University of Newcastle, is author of Film and the Interpretive Process (Peter Lang, 1989) and editor of Perspectives on Alfred Hitchcock (G.K.Hall, 1995).
Michael Campi
(in alphabetical order)
City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989) Of course, others want to edge in, like L'Atalante, Sherlock Jnr, etc. etc. Michael Campi has been in the spell of the cinema for half a century. He was involved with the film society movement, assisted with the former National Film Theatre of Australia and was a committee member of the Melbourne Film Festival in the 1970s. He feels as passionate about Beethoven and Mozart as Bresson and Mizoguchi.
Michael Cohen
This is harder than it seems.
1. Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1981) and in alphabetical order:
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992) I don't actually want to comment on this list. I love them all. That's enough. Michael Cohen is completing his M.A. in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.
Antony I. Ginnane
(in chronological order)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939) On the verge: The Scarlet Empress (Josef Von Sternberg 1934), Madame De... (Max Ophuls 1953) Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk 1956), Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger 1957), Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli 1958), Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard 1965), Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson 1966), Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville 1967), Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini 1968), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah 1969). In culling down from an original list of 50 (a surprisingly difficult enterprise), I realise I've listed no title later than 1970. I'm not sure what that says. Maybe films, like wine, need to age but Unforgiven (Eastwood) 1992 and Taxi Driver (Scorsese) 1976 are well on the way. Melbourne born Antony I. Ginnane now based in Los Angeles, has enjoyed a 30 year career in the Australian and world film industries as a producer, distributor and commentator. His current bio lists 54 films and 2 mini series which he has produced or executive produced.
Gabe Klinger
(in alphabetical order)
Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Five painful omissions: Citizen Kane, Close-Up, Intervista, Man Escaped and Mean Streets. When I began making this top ten list, the only thing I asked myself was, "Which movies make me cry?" As much as I would like to have a list of alternative classics from each decade, as Jonathan Rosenbaum has, I just haven't seen enough movies yet. Gabe Klinger is a 17 year old film geek who lives in Chicago. He's been rejected by both The Chicago Reader and The Village Voice. Check out his web page at: http://home.earthlink.net/~cklinger/regular.html
Bill Mousoulis
(revised list, in preferential order)
1. Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
