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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) It's always difficult to choose between films of a favourite director, especially when that director happens to be Robert Bresson. A recent viewing of Balthazar has persuaded me that it's his best film. See also Bill's other lists: Dec 1999 Apr–May 2001 Bill Mousoulis is an independent filmmaker and co-editor of Senses of Cinema.
Chesney O'Donnell
(in preferential order)
1. A Bout de Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959) Notable mentions: Antoine and Colette (F Truffaut, 1960), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (J Hughes, 1986), The Thin Red Line (T Malick, 1998), The Right Stuff (P Kaufmann, 1983), Land and Freedom (K Loach, 1995), Raging Bull (M Scorsese, 1980), The Godfather Pt 2 (F Coppola, 1974), The Seventh Seal (I Bergman, 1959), Sid and Nancy (A Cox, 1986), A World Without Pity (E Rochant, 1989). I saw most of these foreign classics on SBS, a jewel in an otherwise plastic crown of television viewing in Australia. Chesney O'Donnell studied media at Macquarie Uni and is now studying law as well as working in IT.
Harry Oldmeadow
(in chronological order)
Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) A few of dozens of other contenders: Day of Wrath (Dreyer, 1943), The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Mouchette (Bresson, 1967), Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)... Harry Oldmeadow teaches cinema studies at La Trobe University Bendigo. His homepage can be found at: http://www.sae.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/arts/harrys_homepage.html
Sam Pupillo
(revised list, in no transcendental order)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) Recently viewing Shanghai Express, I wished I had a Josef Von Sternberg film in my top ten list. I'm very glad that I can do that now and include The Saga of Anatahan, his greatest film for me. Reasons – I'll simply quote from his autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry: "All reference books seem to agree that art requires uncommon skill, though this too is open to debate, as skill often reveals shallow content. Nowhere is it stated that art, might perhaps, be a hygienic search for obscure values, or a cultural memorandum, or an attempt to rival creation, an orderly investigation of chaos, or, at best, a compression of infinite power, spiritual power, into a confined space." All this and more, in the films of Von Sternberg. Thanks Mr. Von Sternberg and Senses of Cinema for this opportunity to thank him. See also Sam's previous list: Dec 1999 Sam Pupillo is a long time moviegoer and observer of Melbourne film culture.
Bill Schaffer
The following represents no more than an instantaneous cross-section of the turbulent
mind of a 'film writer' who must in all honesty align himself as much with
cinephobia as cinephilia (when is someone going to defend that?!) as he
struggles to lose himself/return to himself in this endless sea of moving images we all call home...
(in preferential order)
1. Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
2. Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
3. Vampyr (Carl Dreyer, 1932)
4. Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
5. Street of Crocodiles (Brothers Quay, 1986) 6. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
7. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) / Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
8. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
9. La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) 10. To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942) Bill Schaffer is an associate lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Newcastle.
Max S. Scheinin
(in preferential order)
1. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) These are my favourite films, not my choices for the best of all time, though some of them would also show up on the latter list. Other films that flit in and out of my list include Blade Runner (Scott), Aguirre: the Wrath of God (Herzog), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Keaton) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman). See also Max's revised lists: Dec 2000–Jan 2001 July–Aug 2001 Max Scheinin is a teenage film buff who writes for www.rushmagazine.com
Stephen Teo
(in preferential order)
1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) My own relativistic experience of cinema is invariably linked with youthful or childhood evocations – the first experience of the wonder of cinema! Citizen Kane remains my choice as the greatest film ever made because it still conjures up the kind of dazzle and brilliance and magic that every boy thinks cinema should be. Having said that, the best films ought to be grounded in a universal kind of wonderment, setting us to ponder questions of human behaviour, life's vicissitudes and its joys and sorrows. They should be Zen-wonders to a degree, challenging our minds and our senses! The films of Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Ozu and Renoir are the greatest of Zen-wonder narratives. Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town and King Hu's A Touch of Zen are not as well known as they should be, but if they were better known in their times, they might have changed the entire history of world cinema as it was written from the end of the 1940s to the 1970s. Kiarostami's film is representative of how Iranian cinema is changing our perceptions of cinema right now; while Hou Hsiao-hsien's work intimates the loveliest of moods in the East Asian cinematic revolution. Stephen Teo is the author of Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997). He currently resides in Melbourne, Australia, where he does some part time teaching at RMIT University and is working on a thesis which he hopes to publish as a book.
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TALLY at June 2000,
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By film: |
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|
1. 2. 3. 5. 7. 9. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) |
21 11 9 9 8 8 7 7 6 6 |
By director: |
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|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 9. 10. |
Alfred Hitchcock Robert Bresson Jean-Luc Godard Orson Welles Jean Renoir Carl Dreyer Yasujiro Ozu Andrei Tarkovsky F.W. Murnau Martin Scorsese |
30 29 21 18 17 16 16 16 14 12 |
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Bruce Hodsdon
in preferential order (features only):
1. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942) Films on the verge: The Green Ray (Rohmer), Playtime (Tati), The Big Red One (Fuller), A Man Escaped (Bresson), The Rules of the Game (Renoir), Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick), High and Low (Kurosawa), Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette), Daisy Kenyon (Preminger), Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls), The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien), The Bed You Sleep In (Jost) and more.... Documentaries: Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov), Battle of Chile (Guzman), City of Gold (Low), Time of the Barmen (MacDougall), The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Straub/Huillet). Experimental: Nostalgia (Frampton), Quick Billy (Baillie), Dog Star Man (Brakhage), Spacy (Ito), Mystical Rose (Lee). Bruce Hodsdon has acquired copies of countless 'ten best' films for film libraries in Canberra and Brisbane.
Needeya Islam
(in no particular order)
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) See also Needeya's revised list: Nov–Dec 2001 Needeya Islam works at the Australian Writers' Guild and is a freelance writer. Her essays have appeared in Kiss Me Deadly: Cinema and Feminism for the Moment and in RealTime/OnScreen.
Martha P. Nochimson
(In chronological order)
Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, 1920) With each of these films, one or more links in the culturally "mind forg'd manacles" snapped and what film can do was made manifest. Uh-oh, here come the others, slithering from my sub-cortex to my cortex demanding recognition: Lubitsch, Sturges, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Kurosawa, Ophuls, Buñuel, von Stroheim, Sirk, Bergman, Fellini, Campion, Akerman, Gorris, much more Lynch, and... Help! I'm wavering. See also Martha's revised list: Oct–Dec 2006 Martha P. Nochimson has written on soap opera and on David Lynch and is working on a third book about the rhetoric of the onscreen couple.
John O'Brien
Here are ten miraculous films.
My apologies that they fit the mould so much. I guess edjicated humans are similar everywhere.
(in preferential order)
1. Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio de Sica, 1948) Which leaves out Winter of Our Dreams, The Conversation, all of Woody Allen, Mr Vampire, Sweetie, Ghosts... of the civil dead, Cannery Row, The Stunt Man, Kitchen Sink, Reservoir Dogs, Dr Strangelove, Breaking the Waves, The Tin Drum, Swann in Love, India Song, Casablanca and Passionless Moments. How to construct a list for this list of lists... which hitch? which bresson? which up your bum I liked it even if it was a piece of shit? which recent american film (since 1980)? which silent? which central or eastern european? which french new wave? which kubrick, welles, malick, bergman, dreyer, renoir? then fellini, antonioni, rossellini, leone, bertolucci, de sica? well, which? and why not scorsese? and if scorsese, why not coppola? which comedy? which other french or belgian new wave? which film theory course did I study? which film from an 'exotic' place, such as Iran, Japan, India, Africa, or even ... oops, which australian film can I mention in my notes at the end? See also John's revised lists: Nov 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.
David Shapiro
(in no particular order)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949) Others: The Chelsea Girls by Warhol; Los Olvidados by Buñuel; Vertigo by Hitchcock; L'etoile du Mer by Man Ray; Wrong Moves by Wenders; Lancelot du Lac by Bresson; Rome Open City by Rossellini. Other directors: Jim Jarmusch, Michael Snow, David Haxton, Preston Sturges, Chantal Akerman. David Shapiro is a poet and art critic and has taught film for twenty years. His books include the first monograph on Jasper Johns' Drawings, the first study of Mondrian's flower studies, and books on Pop art and Jim Dine. He resides in Riverdale, NYC.
Sophy Williams
I would just like to say that this list changes daily. Today it is:
(in no particular order)
Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974) Sophy Williams is completing a Master of Arts in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University.
Jake Wilson
In the order I first saw them:
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933) These are personal favourites (not really 'the greatest films of all time'). Twin Peaks is a bit of a cheat entry, but I couldn’t leave it out – especially the first series, and especially for Agent Dale Cooper. A list like this is bound to seem hopelessly inadequate, but once you start trying to include everything there's no end. I saw Ghost Dog the other week and that’s a favourite too. Jake Wilson is a Melbourne writer, cinema student and filmmaker.
Ben Zipper
(in preferential order)
1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Even though I have for some time thought about why I chose these films, ultimately I can never be sure. That said, I am confident as to what sorts of films I personally dislike: simply, those with an overarching morality that strives to say something about the world beyond the closed logic of the film. I don't believe cinema should ever dabble outside of itself and it should never dedicate itself to an ethical commitment. Ben Zipper has written on film and the arts for numerous publications over the past three years, as well as working as editor for the Melbourne International Film Festival catalogue. Aside from sitting on the programming committee for Melbourne's Queer Film and Video Festival, he also sits on the Next Wave Festival board, and has just completed his first novel.
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TALLY at May 2000,
|
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By film: |
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|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
16 9 8 7 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. |
Robert Bresson Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Andrei Tarkovsky Carl Dreyer Orson Welles Jean Renoir John Cassavetes F.W. Murnau Yasujiro Ozu Martin Scorsese |
24 21 19 15 14 13 12 11 11 11 11 |
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Geoff Andrew
(in no particular order)
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Most likely runners up on another day: Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks), Le Deuxieme Souffle (Melville), Ordet (Dreyer), Psycho (Hitchcock), Once Upon a Time in America (Leone). Geoff Andrew is Senior Film Editor, Time Out magazine, and London Programmer, National Film Theatre, London.
Terry Ballard
This is purely a personal selection. I'm well aware that Citizen Kane and Rules of the
Game are considered to be the best films of all time by real film critics, but these are the films that I keep going back to.
(in preferential order)
1. East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) See also Terry's revised list: Feb–Mar 2001 Terry Ballard is the Automation Librarian at Quinnipiac College in Hamden Connecticut, and Library Systems columnist for Information Today. He is the author of the web site, Eric Rohmer, A highly unofficial web page
Thomas Beltzer
(in no order, apart from the No.1 film)
1. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) A pretty eclectic list. Some are on the list for personal reasons, some for ideological reasons and some for artistic reasons, but my main reason for choosing them is ultimately because I watch them over and over again – which has to be the greatest reason of all. Thomas Beltzer is Assistant Prof. of English, Lane College, Jackson, TN, and has published several reviews in the Gulf Coast Historical Review and an essay on Babette's Feast in Critique. His first book, Antojitos, will be published in May of 2000.
Richard Brody
(in no particular order)
King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard, 1987) then Opening Night (1977) John Cassavetes, the collected musical sequences of Busby Berkeley, The Mother and the Whore (1972) Jean Eustache, Playtime (1968) Jacques Tati, Gertrud (1964) Carl Theodor Dreyer, Bringing Up Baby (1938), Red River (1947) Howard Hawks, Not Reconciled (1965) Jean-Marie Straub, Shoah (1987) Claude Lanzmann, Chimes at Midnight (1966) Orson Welles, In a Lonely Place (1951) Nicholas Ray. Richard Brody is a filmmaker in New York.
Gary Caganoff
My interest lies in 'sense
of place', whether reflecting on the good and the bad of our human made
environment or exploring the wild natural environment to expand our spiritual,
mental, emotional and social understanding of our place in the world. The
films listed below are ones that have had profound impact on my own sense
of place in a universe that is beautifully wild and chaotic.
(in rough preferential order)
1. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) Gary Caganoff specialises in environmental and social justice documentaries and aspire to direct feature dramas exploring the same themes. He also initiated and coordinated the Wild Spaces Environmental Film Festival since 1996, in Australia.
Darron Davies
(in alphabetical order)
Au Hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) The above films all fall in the latter part of the last century. These films inspire me by their sounds, their images, their content, dignity, individuality, humour, tenderness, surprises and depth of feeling. Once they were experienced and left me speechless. As memories they return in different forms to whisper the uniqueness of human spirit. As most of the directors are still alive I await future films like gifts from the unknown. Darron Davies works in education and lives in Ballarat in western Victoria, Australia. He sees films occasionally, finds music equally as enriching and has dabbled in filmmaking, film criticism and acting.
Philippa Hawker
This isn't a "Top Ten films of all time". It's personal. And submitting it feels a bit like putting
an ad in the classifieds on Valentine's Day: public, formulaic, sentimental.
So... the first five are forever, I think. After that, my criteria are all over the place.
(in rough preferential order)
1. La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1982) (or maybe Dead Ringers [1988])
Chungking Express (1994), Happy Together (1997), Fallen Angels (1995), Days of Being Wild (1990).
The Specialist (Eyal Sivan, 1999) Philippa Hawker is a film reviewer for The Age in Melbourne.
Jeff Lambert
(in chronological order)
L' Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) And three beautiful losers: Beware of a Holy Whore (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971); Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980); King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990). Jeff Lambert lives in California and works at the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Karli Lukas
(in preferential order)
1. Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947) I hate lists because I:
(a) am hopeless at remembering directors, dates and on bad days, titles; Anyway, the films in this list have longevity – they either continue to make me laugh or cry. Some are just so beautiful. If I had the luxury of a top 15 I’d add these more recent films:
1. Mabarosi (Hirokazu Koreeda,1995) For a person who hates making lists, I’ve done a lot of list making! Karli Lukas is a writer on film and filmmaker. Currently working in the Media Studies section of the Faculty of Art, Design and Communication at RMIT University, she also sits on the boards of Melbourne Cinematheque Incorporated and Women In Film and Television (Victoria).
Alan Pavelin
(in chronological order)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) See also Alan's revised lists: Nov 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.
Gilberto Perez
I don't presume to be selecting the best films ever made; these twelve are among the films I find enduringly moving.
(in chronological order)
Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) Gilberto Perez is Professor of Film Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Chris Wood
(in preferential order)
1. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) Chris Wood's article on the playwright Ann Devlin appears in the spring 2000 issue of The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
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TALLY at April 2000,
|
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By film: |
||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
13 9 8 6 5 5 5 5 5 |
By director: |
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|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 8. |
Robert Bresson Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Andrei Tarkovsky Carl Dreyer Jean Renoir F.W. Murnau Luis Buñuel Yasujiro Ozu Martin Scorsese Orson Welles |
23 17 14 13 12 12 11 9 9 9 9 |
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Acquarello
Art and science are often considered to be two disparate courses in the spectrum of human endeavor.
However, inherent in each perspective is a common ideal: the search
for truth. And then, there is design – the interactive process between the two cerebral hemispheres – creating order in this noble pursuit through
structure, composition, aesthetics, and utility. It is in this realm that great cinema exists. If beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder,
then it is magnified when viewed through the fusion of the objective
eye that can detect the precision of the craft, and the subjective eye that can respond to its humanity. Therein, lies the science of a masterpiece.
This dynamic list contains the films that embody my creative ideals: (in preferential order)
1. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) The following indelible films are regrettably omitted from the list, but have profound, personal relevance: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964), Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), I Girasoli (Vittorio de Sica, 1970), Montparnasse 19 (Jacques Becker, 1958), Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) See also Acquarello's revised lists: Sept–Oct 2000 Apr–May 2001 Acquarello is a NASA Design Engineer and author of the Strictly Film School website.
Alex Castro
(in no particular order)
8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) Such lists are a bugger. What (and who) to leave out, what to include? Whichever way you go the list is destined to be incomplete. These are the films that have significantly moved me in one way or another. They either made me cry, angry, think, happy or took me way beyond the movie house into the cinema of emotions. Each one of them reminded me of the truly transcendental effect of cinema. See also Alex's revised list: Jul–Aug 2002 Alex Castro is director/fat controller of Filmoteca: Spanish and Latin American Film Society of Melbourne; director of the Melbourne Hispanic Film Festival (1999), and is currently organising a Muestra de cine cubano/Retrospective of Cuban Cinema.
Anna Dzenis
An impossible task, but words and images from these films have occupied my dreams.
(in no particular order)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) Anna Dzenis lectures in the Department of Cinema Studies, La Trobe University.
Kent Jones
(in alphabetical order)
The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937) Almost anything by John Ford, Fritz Lang, Val Lewton and Robert Bresson. Lists always seem like such piddling, dispirited things – exciting to make, then you read them and feel the comic predicament of trying to freeze something in time. On the other hand, all of these movies are there when I close my eyes and let all questions of fashion, expediency and all the other things that are part of criticism dissolve into nothing. All of them come from somewhere unnameable – beauty, truth, expressivity, excitement all blend into one potent swirl. All of them have a powerful physical effect on me, for a variety of reasons, some of them tied up with history (Kuhle Wampe, La Règle du jeu, Paisa), many of them tied up with desire (McCarey, Leone, Hitchcock, Donen/Kelly), and many others bravely pulling themselves through the portal into another dimension of memory, experience, time, space: the tram ride in the Murnau, Bogart breaking in and inspecting the murder site in the Hawks, the monumental accumulation of sadness in the Kubrick, the awful realisation of the merciless progression of time in the Welles. As for the Huston and the Anger, words kind of fail me: they both seem to originate in realms of experience that movies never even touch. Kent Jones is a programmer at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. He is the author of the BFI monograph L'Argent (1999) and a forthcoming book on Hou Hsaio-hsen. He is also the co-writer of Il Dolce Cinema, a documentary on Italian cinema directed by Martin Scorsese.
Sander Lee
These are listed in the order they occurred to me. If I created a list tomorrow it would probably be
different, but right now these are the films that have meant the most to
me and have yielded the greatest rewards from repeated viewings. I’m also
cheating a bit as I only list each director once. In my mind, Vertigo
stands in for many Hitchcock films, The Apartment many Wilder films, and so on.
(in no particlular order)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Sander Lee teaches Philosophy at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He is the author of Woody Allen's Angst: Philosophical Commentaries on his Serious Films (McFarland, 1997).
Hasan Ergen Özay
(in preferential order)
1. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974) It was the most difficult thing I've faced in my life to choose just ten films from thousands. What about L'Eclisse (M. Antonioni, 1962), Viridiana (L. Buñuel, 1961), He Liu (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1997), Edipo Re (P.P. Pasolini, 1967), La Guerre est Finie (A. Resnais, 1966), Le Genou de Claire (E. Rohmer, 1971), Ziemia Obiecana (A. Wajda, 1975), Mefie-toi de L'Eau qui Dort (J. Deschamps, 1996), El Sur (V. Erice, 1983), Dans la Ville Blanche (A. Tanner, 1983), and so many others? This is the top ten list of a man who belongs to the audience. I've seen all of these films many times, again and again. They are my treasure. Hasan Ergen Özay is a full-time film-lover, residing in Istanbul.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
(in alphabetical order)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966) The basic idea here – obscured when the list is given alphabetically – was to pick one film per decade and, if possible, avoid some of the more obvious titles that have dominated previous ten-best lists, my own included (e.g., Gertrud, Ordet, Playtime, The Magnificent Ambersons). But how could I have possibly left out Dovzhenko (Earth), Godard (Alphaville), Hawks (Rio Bravo), Mizoguchi (Story of the Late Chrysanthemums), Ozu (I Was Born, But...), Resnais (L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad), and Rivette (Out 1), among countless others? And, come to think of it, Kiarostami's Regularly or Irregularly may be even better in some ways than Close-Up. Jonathan Rosenbaum is the main film critic for the Chicago Reader and the author of Placing Movies (1995) among other books.
David Sterritt
(in chronological order)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) It's remarkable that this list stops at the end of the 1960s. It's equally remarkable that some of my favourite films – Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, Bruce Conner's Mongoloid – don't appear on it. The magic of movies! David Sterritt is film critic of The Christian Science Monitor, film professor at Long Island University and Columbia University, and author/editor of several books on film.
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TALLY at March 2000,
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By film: |
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1. 2. 3. 4. 7. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
13 8 7 5 5 5 4 4 |
By director: |
|||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 9. |
Robert Bresson Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Carl Dreyer Jean Renoir Luis Buñuel Martin Scorsese Orson Welles John Cassavetes F.W. Murnau Andrei Tarkovsky |
20 17 11 10 9 8 8 8 7 7 7 |
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Victor Couwenbergh
(in preferential order)
1. El Espíritu de la colmena (Victor Erice, 1973) See also Victor's revised list: Sept 2000
Victor Couwenbergh is a film operator in a local cinema in The Netherlands, and a freelance film critic.
Bill Flavell
(in chronological order)
Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967) Several caveats: I'm 51 years old and still harbour aspirations to actually direct something someday. Also, being anti-elitist, I've tried to restrict my list to those films which I was able to see in 35mm. at commercial theatres, preferably during their initial release. Discreet Charm and Pat Garrett were the specific films that pushed me "over the edge" into being a film directing wanna-be. I've only been able to study Buñuel and Peckinpah in depth, so my list reflects that. Another criterion was to include those films which seemed to point toward the future evolution of film language. Bill Flavell is a 51-year-old Scottish/Welsh cineaste, film/video editor, and film/video directing wanna-be who lives in San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Geoff Gardner
(in chronological order)
A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin, 1918) There are two films on this list I've only seen once. A further viewing may change my mind as to what ten films I'd select tomorrow. See also Geoff's revised list: Sept–Oct 2001 Geoff Gardner was once a founder of the company that evolved into Ronin Films and was once the director of the Melbourne Film Festival (retired hurt, 1982). These days he offers some program suggestions to the Brisbane International Film Festival.
Paul Harris
(in no particular order)
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) This top ten are favourites that I am repeatedly drawn to, an important point to take into consideration when playing the 'Ten Best ' sport. Personal tastes constantly change and fluctuate but there are only a handful of films I would classify as 'favourites', providing a perennial source of pleasure and re-discovery. Admittedly my handful (of feature titles) makes for a huge fist and I have endeavoured to trim the list to ten with some difficulty and trepidation. The only title in the Ten worthy of some explanation is Sons Of The Desert, the Laurel and Hardy feature. The comedy duo's best work is arguably in their silent and sound two reelers, but it is difficult to single out a title from this rich period of their career, so I have chosen a feature-length comedy which I regard with equal affection. As a final observation, looking over the list I belatedly notice that the most recent title is nearly thirty years old, but I can't attach any particular significance to this fact. Paul Harris is a long-time writer, cinephile, and 3RRR broadcaster, currently helming Film Buff's Forecast.
Aysen Mustafa
(in no particular order)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) My list is not academic. This is a shifting list that includes a favourite from my childhood and a couple from the university days. The films are included for their humanism, the cultural diversity represented, for the laughter and tears, and the light and beauty. Aysen Mustafa is a librarian at the Australian Film Institute in Melbourne and editor of Biblioz (http://www.afi.org.au/biblioz), Australian web bibliographies accessed on the AFI's website.
Angela Ndalianis
(in no particular order)
The Ladies' Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961) Angela Ndalianis is a Senior Lecturer in film and new media. She teaches in the Cinema Studies Program in the School of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne.
George Papadopoulos
The following films were selected on the basis of the emotional impact they had on me upon first
viewing, their artistic merit and visceral attraction, and the immense pleasure they continue to bring me on repeated viewings:
(in preferential order)
1. The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) There are some other films that pop in and out of my list, depending on current state of mind and mood, and these include Ivan's Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962), Heat (Mann, 1995), The Godfather Part 2 (Coppola, 1974), Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997), Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958), The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), McCabe and Mrs Miller (Altman, 1971) and Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski,1994). See also George's revised lists: Sept 2000 Jan–Mar 2004 George Papadopoulos is the Finance and Acquisitions Manager for Newvision Film Distributors.
Mark Simpson
-- list deleted at the request of the author --
(note: list was deleted Jan 2002, the tally presented below does not recognise this deletion, but the tally after Mar 2002 does recognise it.)
M. C. Zenner
-- list deleted at the request of the author --
(note: list was deleted Nov 2000, the tally presented below does not recognise this deletion, but the tally after Nov 2000 does recognise it.)
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TALLY at February 2000,
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By film: |
||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergeo Leone, 1968) Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959) |
10 7 5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 |
By director: |
|||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 8. 9. |
Robert Bresson Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard Carl Dreyer Martin Scorsese Jean Renoir Luis Buñuel John Cassavetes Jacques Rivette Sergio Leone Sam Peckinpah Orson Welles |
16 14 10 9 8 7 7 6 5 5 5 5 |
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Ross Gibson
Please note...this is today's list. It would change daily. As it must.
(in no particular order)
Un Condamné à Mort s’est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Ross Gibson is a writer and teacher who also makes the occasional film and multimedia program.
Sue Gillett
(in preferential order)
1. Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)
7. Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997) Sue Gillett lectures in Literature & Film and Women's Studies at La Trobe University Bendigo. She also edits Beyond the Divide, an interdisciplinary Arts journal.
Dmetri Kakmi
(in chronological order)
The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) Add to that This Gun For Hire (1942), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1948), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), The Third Man (1949), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Lola (1960), L'Armeé des Ombres (1969), Carrie (1976) and Fight Club (1999). See also Dmetri's revised list: Jul–Aug 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.
Gary Morris
(in alphabetical order)
Un Condamné à Mort s’est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Gary Morris is editor/publisher of Bright Lights Film Journal. He writes on film for the SF Weekly and The Bay Area Reporter, and has written for many other magazines.
James Naremore
(in chronological order)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) I miss Keaton, Chaplin, Hawks, Minnelli and a dozen other major directors. I have no room for my irrational (not guilty) pleasures, such as Teacher's Pet (1958) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Nor my personal great films, such as The Night of the Hunter (1955) and L'Avventura (1960), which were important to my youth. James Naremore, Indiana University, is the author of several books on film, including More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (1998).
Margot Nash
-- list deleted at the author's request --
Brad Stevens
(in preferential order)
1. Mikey And Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
2. Snake Eyes (Abel Ferrara, 1993)
3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
4. La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)
6. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
7. Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1928)
8. Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
9. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
And, as a necessary cheat (because one cannot live without Rossellini): So, lots of cheating and I've still managed to leave out Tati, Ferreri, Capra, Antonioni, Dreyer, Lang, Boetticher, Melville, Hou, Sirk, Kiarostami, Murnau, Scorsese, Jacques Tourneur, Pasolini, Dovzhenko, Godard, Bergman, Eastwood, The Beekeeper, Ishtar, The Conversation, The Last Movie, Mouchette, Zalman King's Blue Movie Blue, The Sheltering Sky, Ganja & Hess, The Kremlin Letter, Magnificent Doll, The Night of the Hunter, Charles Eastman's The All-American Boy, Cannibal Holocaust, The Trial, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Caught, The Leopard, Love Streams, The Wild Bunch, The Searchers, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song, Days And Nights In The Forest, etc... I really have no excuse. Brad Stevens recently completed a book, Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision, which will be published soon in the UK by FAB Press. He has written for numerous film magazines worldwide.
|
TALLY at January 2000,
|
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By film: |
||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Un Condamné à Mort s'est Echappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman, 1975) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) |
7 5 4 3 3 3 3 |
By director: |
|||
|
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. |
Robert Bresson Alfred Hitchcock Carl Dreyer Jean-Luc Godard John Cassavetes Chantal Akerman Jean Renoir Jacques Rivette Roberto Rossellini Martin Scorsese Jacques Tourneur Orson Welles |
11 10 8 7 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 |
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Leo Berkeley
This top ten list is not in any order, although I nominate Paisà as my best film of all time when asked.
1. Paisà (Roberto Rossellini, 1946) Leo Berkeley is a long time independent filmmaker who now lectures in film and television production at RMIT University.
John Conomos
(in no order)
El (Luis Buñuel, 1952) See also “A Top Ten List”, John's original list with commentary. John Conomos is a media artist, critic and writer who lectures in film and media studies at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Cinema has been his life-long passion.
Adrian Danks
(in preferential order)
1. L' Armeé des Ombres (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969) Too many French films, not enough cultural diversity, not enough Melville films, too heavy, too deep, not funny enough, too poetic, too male, too European, no Godard (Vivre sa vie), no Tarkovsky (Mirror), no Ozu (Late Spring), no Scorsese (Age of Innocence), no Kiarostami (Through the Olive Trees), no Varda (Vagabond), no Dreyer (Gertrud), no Ford (The Searchers), no Brakhage (The Dante Quartet), no Welles (The Magnificent Ambersons), no Ophuls (Madame De...), no Lubitsch (Angel), no Erice (Secret of the Beehive), all sorely missed, and, for some, too many Australian films. A completely unjustifiable list, perhaps, but a also collection of films that’ll, to quote Warren Oates in Two-Lane Blacktop, "give you a set of experiences that’ll stay with you... period." See also “L'Armee des Ombres”, Adrian's analysis of the Melville film. Adrian Danks is President of the Melbourne Cinémathèque and lectures in cinema and cultural studies at RMIT University, Department of Communication Studies.
Steve Erickson
(in no order)
Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956) Trying to sum up one of my favourite films in a paragraph, much less ten, is an impossible task, so I'll just say that these are the films that go furthest for me in exploring the mysteries of identity and personality and that have retained the most mystery over the years. Steve Erickson is a freelance writer living in New York. He writes reviews for his own web site (Chronicle of a Passion) and has contributed to numerous film magazines.
Stephen Goddard
(in chronological order)
The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944)
Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945)
Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1966)
Poto and Cabengo (Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1979)
Double Blind (Sophie Calle/Gregory Shephard, 1992) Stephen Goddard teaches at Deakin University in the School of Contemporary Arts, and wanders about sounds and images – without an itinerary.
Sue Goldman
(in no order)
Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
A Bout de Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1959)
Im Lauf der Zeit (Wim Wenders, 1976)
To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
Jonah Who will be 25 in the Year 2000 (Alain Tanner, 1976)
Poto and Cabengo (Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1979)
Gone to Earth (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1950)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
Kiss me, Stupid (Billy Wilder, 1960) Sue Goldman concedes that she is a cineaste whose hobbies include occasional social research.
George Kouvaros
(in no order)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984) George Kouvaros teaches film in the School of Theatre, Film and Dance, University of NSW, Sydney.
Bill Mousoulis
(in preferential order)
1. Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1953) How could I possibly leave out Dreyer, Ozu, Rohmer, Cassavetes? Rush It is a modest, telemovie-like film that lifts my spirits with its purity like no other film can. Happy Together is a sign that the cinema will keep growing, keep changing, and keep amazing. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe acts as a verification of the auteur theory, as Renoir's expansive vision shines through even here. See also Bill's revised lists: June 2000 Apr–May 2001 Bill Mousoulis is an independent filmmaker and occasional writer on film based in Melbourne.
Sam Pupillo
If I was casual about this, I would probably put all of Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer in a list with lots of subsets, i.e. ten number ones, etc. And really important filmmakers for the development and history of cinema like Godard, Akerman, Antonioni and heaps of others would have been acknowledged. But I used a variation on a line by Nietzsche (who I normally don’t care much for): "What good is a book that doesn’t take you beyond all books?" Just replace books with films in this statement and you have the criterion I used. Well they took me beyond, anyway.
(in no transcendental order)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) See also Sam's revised list: June 2000 Sam Pupillo is a long time moviegoer and observer of Melbourne film culture.
Dimitri Tsahuridis
In compiling yet one more filmic hit parade after a century of cinema, the writer wishing to speak
to an audience need remember two propositions methinks:
Exclude all references to Citizen Kane for there is no novelty in that text’s inclusion (and it will be in everybody else’s list). (So far so good, Dimitri! –eds.) Ignoring the post-modern naivete for neutered subjectivity, define the films which brought laughter and tears and terror and pity in his/her world rather than those which should be in the selection – because they have been in many others’. (in no particular order)
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
La Passion de Jeannne d’Arc (Carl Dreyer, 1928)
Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein, 1938)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Good Morning Babylon (Paolo Taviani/Vittorio Taviani, 1986)
Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)
The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967)
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987)
Amici Miei (Mario Monicelli, 1975 –eds.) Finally, never compile a list such as this by providing the number of entries requested. This way your proposition is by definition outstanding. Dimitri Tsahuridis was born in Greece 1964 and educated (mostly) there, predominantly in musical theory. In the Antipodes since the mid ‘80s, after writing some music for theatrical works he would never acknowledge in public, has spent the last decade loitering in the word playgrounds.
Fiona A. Villella
(in no order)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Fiona A. Villella is a Melbourne based writer on film, and assistant curator and promoter of Filmoteca de Melbourne, Melbourne's Latin American and Spanish Film Society.
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TALLY at December 1999,
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By film: |
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1. 2. |
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954) |
4 3 |
By director: |
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1. 2. 3. 6. |
Robert Bresson Carl Dreyer John Cassavetes Jean-Luc Godard Alfred Hitchcock Jacques Rivette |
8 6 5 5 5 4 |
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