one-hundred-something cinematic pillars

Submitted by dphayes on Mon, 04/10/2006 - 03:27
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  1. The Seasons (Artavazd Peleshyan, 1975, USSR)
  2. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959, France)
  3. Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948, USA)
  4. Histoire(s) du Cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-1998, France)
  5. Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965, Spain)
  6. The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1970, Canada)
  7. Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927, France)
  8. L'Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969, France)
  9. Too Early, Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1982, France)
  10. Pour La Suite du Monde (Pierre Perrault, 1963, Canada)

  12. After Death (Evgeni Bauer, 1915, Russia)
  13. Behind the Screen (Charles Chaplin, 1916, USA)

  15. Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922, USA)
  16. L'inhumaine (Marcel L'Herbier, 1924, France)
  17. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR)
  18. Menilmontant (Dmitri Kirsanoff, 1926, France)
  19. A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926, Japan)
  20. Beggars of Life (William A. Wellman, 1928, USA)
  21. The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick/Buster Keaton, 1928, USA)
  22. The Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR)
  23. New Babylon (Grigori Kozintsev/Leonid Trauberg, 1929, USSR)

  25. The Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks, 1930, USA)
  26. The Murderer Dmitri Karamazov (Fyodor Otsep, 1931, Germany)
  27. Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931, USA)
  28. Happiness (Alexander Medvedkin, 1932, USSR)
  29. Ivan (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1932, USSR)
  30. Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933, USA)
  31. Quatorze Juillet (Rene Clair, 1933, France)
  32. Scarlet River (Otto Brower, 1933, USA)
  33. L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934, France)
  34. The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch, 1934, USA)
  35. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935, USA)
  36. The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935, USA)
  37. By the Bluest of Seas (Boris Barnet, 1936, USSR)
  38. Rose Marie (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936, USA)
  39. You and Me (Fritz Lang, 1938, USA)
  40. Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939, Japan)

  42. Christmas in July (Preston Sturges, 1940, USA)
  43. Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943, UK)
  44. The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl, 1944, USA)
  45. Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur, 1945, USA)
  46. Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946, USA)
  47. Golden Earrings (Mitchell Leisen, 1947, USA)
  48. Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, 1948, USA)
  49. The Red Shoes (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1948, UK)

  51. Venom and Eternity (Jean Isidore Isou, 1951, France)
  52. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1952, USA)
  53. Vida en Sombras (Lorenzo Llobet Gracia, 1952, Spain)
  54. Bienvenido Mister Marshall (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953, Spain)
  55. Anatahan (Josef Von Sternberg, 1954. USA/Japan)
  56. Sound of the Mountain (Mikio Naruse, 1954, Japan)
  57. Centuries of June (Joseph Cornell/Stan Brakhage, 1955, USA)
  58. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, USA, 1955)
  59. Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, France/West Germany, 1955)
  60. The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955, USA)
  61. Elena et les hommes (Jean Renoir, 1956, France/Italy)
  62. Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray, 1957, USA)
  63. China Gate (Sam Fuller, 1957, USA)
  64. The Man Who Invented Gold (Christopher Maclaine, 1957, USA)
  65. Jalsaghar (Satyajit Ray, 1958, India)
  66. Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958, USA)
  67. Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958, USA)
  68. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, USA)
  69. India (Roberto Rossellini, 1959, France/Italy)
  70. Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959, USA)

  72. The Young One (Luis Bunuel, 1960, Mexico/USA)
  73. Taste of Fear (Seth Holt, 1961, UK)
  74. An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962, Japan)
  75. Bachelor Flat (Frank Tashlin, 1962, USA)
  76. The Fire Within (Louis Malle, 1963, France)
  77. The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963, Iran)
  78. Muriel (Alain Resnais, 1963, France)
  79. Normal Love (Jack Smith, 1963, USA)
  80. The Passenger (Andrzej Munk. 1964, Poland)
  81. Gertrud (Carl Th Dreyer, 1964, Denmark)
  82. Mass for the Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie, 1964, USA)
  83. Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio, 1965, Italy)
  84. Fugitive From the Past (Tomu Uchida, 1965, Japan)
  85. Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966, Japan)
  86. Unsere Afrikareise (Peter Kubelka, 1966, Austria)
  87. 23rd Psalm Branch (Stan Brakhage, 1967, USA)
  88. Marketa Lazarova (Frantisek Vlacil, 1967, Czechoslovakia)
  89. Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967, Italy)
  90. Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968, Japan)
  91. Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968, Cuba)

  93. Claire's Knee (Eric Rohmer, 1970, France)
  94. Eden and After (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1970, France)
  95. N-Zone (Arthur Lipsett, 1970, Canada)
  96. Hapax Legomena III: Critical Mass (Hollis Frampton, 1971, USA)
  97. The House in the Woods (Maurice Pialat, 1971, France)
  98. La Region Centrale (Michael Snow, 1971, Canada)
  99. Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1971, USA)
  100. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971, USA)
  101. What's the Matter With Helen? (Curtis Harrington, 1971, USA)
  102. The Red Psalm (Miklos Jancso, 1972, Hungary)
  103. Travels With My Aunt (George Cukor, 1972, USA)
  104. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974, USA)
  105. Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974, Iran)
  106. Curriculum Vitae (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1975, Poland)
  107. Death of the Rat (Pascal Aubier, 1975, France)
  108. The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975, Greece)
  109. Welfare (Frederick Wiseman, 1975, USA)
  110. The Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976, Italy)
  111. Charmed Particles (Andrew Noren, 1977, USA)
  112. Le Fond de l'air est rouge (Chris Marker, 1977, France)
  113. News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977, France/Belgium)
  114. Hitler: A Film From Germany (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1978, West Germany)

  116. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980, West Germany)
  117. The Night of the Hunted (Jean Rollin, 1980, France)
  118. Francisca (Manoel de Oliveira, 1981, Portugal)
  119. Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981, France/West Germany)
  120. The Marathon Family (Slobodon Sijan, 1982, Yugoslavia)
  121. Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983, Italy)
  122. The Power of Emotion (Alexander Kluge, 1983, West Germany)
  123. Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984, USA)
  124. Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1986, Taiwan)
  125. Opera (Dario Argento, 1987, Italy)
  126. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terrence Davies, 1988, UK)
  127. The Eye Above The Well (Johan Van Der Keuken, 1988, Netherlands)

  129. And Life Goes On (Abbas Kiarostami, 1991, Iran)
  130. El Sol de Membrillo (Victor Erice, 1992, Spain)
  131. Videogram of a Revolution (Harun Farocki, 1992, Germany)
  132. Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994, Hungary)
  133. Spiritual Voices (Alexander Sokurov, 1995, Russia)
  134. A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996, Iran)
  135. Tren de Sombras (Jose Luis Guerin, 1997, Spain)
  136. Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 1998, Austria)
  137. Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999, Austria)
  138. Time Regained (Raoul Ruiz, 1999, Portugal/France)

  140. Mission to Mars (Brian De Palma, 2000, USA)
  141. Chico (Ibolya Fekete, 2001, Hungary)
  142. Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem, 2001, Spain)
  143. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2003, Taiwan)
  144. Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003, France/USA)
  145. The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005, USA)
  146. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006, USA)
  147. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006, Portugal)
  148. Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006, USA)
  149. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-Soo, 2006, South Korea)
  150. Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2008, Belgium)
ephender04/11/2006

You are the best thing ever.

WB04/23/2006

Looks fucking great to me! Wish i had seen all those films. Are you familiar with all the filmmakers you mentioned?

lukeprog05/09/2006

Wow.

WB06/01/2006

Hope you don't mind cloning this :-)))

ephender12/16/2006

I didn't print off the previous incarnation. What did you add to this?

dphayes12/26/2006

I should have kept a copy of the old one. The only ones I can remember adding recently were High Tide and Fugitive From the Past. Will most likely add something by Mitchell Leisen soon as well.

12/26/2006

Thanks, but not nearly as phenomenal as yours! You have the best film list on listology!

dphayes12/26/2006

Whoa, high praise, thanks. Just browsing your most wanted list, might be able to help you out with a few of those. Send me an email at westernhistory@gmail.com if interested

12/28/2006

Great new list! And thanks very much for the offer, I'll email you.

awu04/05/2007

some news on peleshyan: http://kinoslang.blogspot.com/2007/03/good-work.html

dphayes04/06/2007

Thanks for the link. It's just been so long that it's hard to get too excited about it, but I guess if Godard's Histoires finally get released on dvd than almost anything is possible!

awu04/10/2007

thought you might enjoy this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1UmtIiuHis

awu04/19/2007

hey, just caught an amazing found footage work, "if you stand with your back to the sound of the slowing of the speed of light" by julie murray, that is highly reminiscent of baillie's quixote. i think she may have a chance for a spot in your triumvirate of ballie, lipsett, and peleshyan. apparently, upon encountering lipsett's work for the first time, she exclaimed, "he stole my ideas before i was born!"

dphayes04/19/2007

I'll keep an eye open for it, there are two ongoing avant-garde series here in Portland that usually just show a film or two per month, I'll ask if her work might be a possibility.

And I can definitely relate to getting annoyed at dead people stealing your ideas. In his last novel Gaddis rants about Thomas Bernhard stealing his ideas before he had them, which is pretty much the way I feel about Gaddis.

Non Plus08/26/2008

Where, and how, did you see The Man Who Invented Gold? Fantastic list, btw! This has to be one of my all-time favorites. Right up there with Rosenbaum's 1,000 favorite films list. Of course, his is a tad more expansive than yours. I'm especially interested in your use of obscure films to represent the more canonical directors on your list, save a few exceptions. Is this intentional, or are those really your favorites by them? Also, I see you have a Pedro Costa film in your top 10. He, too, is one of my favorites. Sadly, I've only been able to see In Vanda's Room w/o English subs, but I've managed to watch all of his other films with subs, save The Blood. I take it you saw them in the cinema, which is probably how you also saw The Man Who Invented Gold, correct? I'm forced to track down obscure films through KG, which is great, but the quality, and experience, is not the same as the cinema, though, that is true of all films, not just obscure ones.

dphayes08/28/2008

Glad my list can be of use. Obviously I owe much to Rosenbaum over the years. Surely the godfather of this variety of film mixture.

Re: Man Who Invented Gold, saw it at a program dedicated to films about/inspired by Jess Lerner and then again at a night of Maclaine's work at Anthology. Most likely the most representative film from that period with the most simple uses of repetition, aural juxtaposition etc. A marvelous work.

And yes, Costa, a true master, and I am pleased to see him getting more recognition. I saw Hidden Smile and Ossos several years ago but only saw Vanda and Colossal Youth earlier this year in Seattle. I must say, watching the former in a near-empty theater twice back-to-back was quite the life-altering experience, while I believe the latter may be the superior film.

The obscurity question: depends on the film I suppose. Especially with the more prolific directors it's tough to pick a representative one. Hawks and Ford for example, I picked an early and late one for the two respectively, which depicts my slight preference for their career arcs; emphasis on slight though, could easily have picked Sun Shines Bright and Red Line instead.

But, of course, there's the proselytizing impulse when you feel the same batch keep getting all the praise. But I try to use George Romero's criteria when it comes to lists, that of having died and standing at the gates of hell and finding Satan in a generous mood film-wise, has an increased level of urgency when compared to the oft-used "desert island" scenario where one's SOS calls still have the remote chance of being answered, where one could then trade in Christmas in July for Palm Beach Story if one wished. No, with the flames beckoning you'd have to be SURE...

And yes, I saw Silent Light after I made that list. Greatly enjoyed it, especially since I graduated from a Mennonite High School. There's still a haphazard quality to his work that sometimes rubs me the wrong way. He seems decidedly more shot-oriented than montage-oriented which I think he mistakenly believes to have been his masters' credos as well. From interviews, I've deduced that he likes to cut where it "feels right," as if that were in contrast with what his head knows is right. Not my bag really, that such a choice even exists.