November 18, 2011

30. Favourites in Film Art

These are the films that I could in no way exclude from the list of my favourites; in case of doubt, I left the film out. The 112 form a bit more than 20% of all the motion pictures I have seen in my life (yes, I do keep an account). The majority of them are included because of the narrative structure or style, which I generally find more appealing than the "message" or the content of the story. Where I could not decide which film of a director I should include and considered two to be too much, I gave both alternatives. And, of course, if I had compiled it yesterday (or next Sunday, or on my 25th birthday), the list would have been different. 
  • The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (Auguste & Louis Lumière, 1896)
  • Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
  • Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924)
  • The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
  • Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
  • The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
  • City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
  • M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
  • L'atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
  • Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
  • Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
  • Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
  • Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943)
  • Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
  • Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
  • Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
  • Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
  • Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
  • Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
  • Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
  • Tokyo monogatari (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  • Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
  • Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
  • The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
  • The Unvanquished (Satyajit Ray, 1956)
  • The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
  • Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
  • Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
  • Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
  • Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959)
  • La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
  • L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
  • Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
  • Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
  • The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
  • Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1962)
  • The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1962)
  • 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  • Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
  • The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
  • Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1964)
  • Red Desert (Michelangelo Antionioni, 1964)
  • The Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
  • Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
  • The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has, 1965)
  • Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
  • Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
  • Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
  • Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
  • Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey, 1966)
  • Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
  • Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
  • The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
  • Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
  • Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
  • Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969)
  • My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer, 1969)
  • The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969)
  • Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
  • Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971)
  • The Emigrants (Jan Troell, 1971)  or  The New Land (1972)
  • McCabe & Mrs Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
  • Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
  • Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
  • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
  • Ciao Manhattan (John Palmer & David Weisman, 1972)
  • The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
  • Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)  or  Days of Heaven (1978)
  • Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
  • The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974)
  • The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974)
  • A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
  • Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
  • The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
  • Grey Gardens (Albert & David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffy Meyer, 1975)
  • Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
  • Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
  • Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
  • Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
  • Sebastiane (Derek Jarman & Paul Humfress, 1976)
  • The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978)
  • The Meetings of Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978)
  • Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
  • Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
  • Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
  • Siberiade (Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, 1979)
  • Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)
  • Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
  • Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
  • Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
  • Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
  • The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989)
  • Three Colours: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
  • Sátántángo (Béla Tarr, 1994)
  • Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994)
  • Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)  or  Ten (2002)
  • Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)
  • Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
  • Ulysses' Gaze (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1995)
  • Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)
  • Eternity and a Day (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1998)
  • Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
  • In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
  • Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hrantizky, 2000)
  • Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
  • The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002)
  • Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
  • Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
  • Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003)
  • Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003)
  • Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
  • The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
  • The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)