Tag: Lists

French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma have compiled a list of the 100 greatest films of all time.

It is published this month in an illustrated book and was put together by 76 French film directors, critics and industry executives.

Here are the 100 films:

1. Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
2. The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
3. The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
4. Sunrise – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
5. L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
6. M – Fritz Lang
7. Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
8. Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
9. Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
10. The Searchers – John Ford
11. Greed – Erich von Stroheim
12. Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
13. To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
14. Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
15. Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
16. Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
17. City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
18. The General – Buster Keaton
19. Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
20. The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
21. Freaks – Tod Browning
22. Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
23. The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
24. The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
25. The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
26. Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
27. The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
28. North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
29. Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
30. Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
31. The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
32. Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
33. Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
34. Pleasure – Max Ophüls
35. The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
36. The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
37. Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
38. Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
39. Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
40. The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
41. Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
42. The Wind – Victor Sjöström
43. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
44. Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
45. The Crowd – King Vidor
46. 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
47. La Jetée – Chris Marker
48. Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
49. Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
50. Amarcord – Federico Fellini
51. Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
52. Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
53. Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
54. Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
55. King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
56. Laura – Otto Preminger
57. The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
58. The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
59. La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
60. The Dead – John Huston
61. Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
62. It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
63. Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
64. The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
65. À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
66. Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
67. Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
68. La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
69. Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
70. A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
71. Playtime – Jacques Tati
72. Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
73. Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
74. Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
75. Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
76. An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
77. Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
78. The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
79. Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
80. Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
81. The Party – Blake Edwards
82. Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
83. The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
84. A Star Is Born – George Cukor
85. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
86. America, America – Elia Kazan
87. El – Luis Buñuel
88. Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
89. Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
90. Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
91. Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
92. Lola – Jacques Demy
93. Manhattan – Woody Allen
94. Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
95. My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
96. Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
97. The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
98. Scarface – Howard Hawks
99. Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
100. Napoléon – Abel Gance

The reaction from some outlets in this country is surprise that there are no British films on the list.

The Telegraph say:

The list in the publication Les Cahiers du Cinema features films from the USA, Germany, Russia, Italy and Sweden but there is no place for some of the biggest British directors including David Lean, Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway.

British-born Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin are both mentioned but only for the movies that they made in Hollywood.

The nearest the British cinema industry comes to a mention is the 17th (equal) place given to 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968, by the American director, Stanley Kubrick, partly with British money and with British technicians.

The 1962 classic Lawrence of Arabia came seventh in a recent list of the best 100 movies drawn up by the American Film Institute in Hollywood but is perhaps the highest profile omission.

Jean-Michel Frodon, the editor of Les Cahiers du Cinema, has pointed out that the lack of British-made films was “striking” but not part of any Gallic conspiracy:

“It does not reflect an anti-British bias. It is simply the result of the individual choices of 76 people in the French industry. Each was asked to name their 100 best films and this was the result.

Yes, it is surprising, maybe, that there is no Lawrence of Arabia, or no film by Ken Loach or Stephen Frears (The Queen).

But there are many other national film industries which are also missing. There are no Brazilian films, for instance.”

Some British films that should have made the list would surely include:

• The Third Man
• A Matter of Life and Death
• Blowup
• Don’t Look Now

That said, if you were to ask me what are the truly great British films of the last 20 years, then I would struggle to come up with one.

In May 1957 a former editor of Cahiers (and later director) Francois Truffaut once remarked:

“The British cinema is made of dullness and reflects a submissive lifestyle, where enthusiasm, warmth, and zest are nipped in the bud. A film is a born loser just because it is English.“

Maybe nothing has changed in 50 years.

> The Telegraph on the list
> Official site for Cahiers du Cinema
> Geoffrey MacNab of The Guardian in 2001 on Cahiers du Cinema