I feel honored to take part in the upcoming Sight & Sound Greatest Film Poll. Here is my ballot:
1. Rear Window
(1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
Superbly
crafted allegory of watching and following that touches upon our primal
voyeuristic drives. By the end of the screening, the film seems to be looking
back at us with an amused little smirk. Hitchcock defines the movies; Rear Window defines Hitchcock.
2. The Long Day
Closes (1992, Terence Davies)
Cinema
is both a retreat and a prison in Davies’ memoir of childhood bliss slowly
turning into scary gay desire that the protagonist doesn’t know how to handle.
A love song that is also a dirge, it’s a profoundly sad work of immense beauty.
3. The Thin Red
Line (1998, Terrence Malick)
Malick’s
Whitman-by-way-of-Emerson poem of grace intertwined with death is as boundless
as it is instantly accessible (not to mention totally immersive). Edited in
accordance with the world’s hidden heartbeat that Malick seems completely
attuned to, it never fails to intoxicate me, no matter how often I see it.
4. City Lights
(1931, Charlie Chaplin)
No one
merged emotional mush with slapstick brilliance in quite this way – you can be
angry at the movie for tugging at your heart strings, but you stand no chance
of resisting its pull.
5. WR: Mysteries
of the Organism (1971, Dušan Makavejev)
The
only movie that managed to accommodate and satirize all the Cold War chasms at
once, and do so in a happy-collage way that’s as ingenious as it is brilliant.
6. Partie de
campagne (1936, Jean Renoir)
“Unfinished”
only in the most crude of senses, this is a work that overflows with emotion to
the point of drugging the viewer into an uncontrolled reverie. A masterpiece of
sensual seduction that feels both like a breeze and a barely suppressed sob of
sympathy for all human dreams and desires.
7. L’Atalante (1934,
Jean Vigo)
Cinema
as a diaphanous waft of half-dreamed desire; the most beautiful erotic dream
ever put on film.
8. Man with a
Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
In
some YouTube visual dictionary of tomorrow, a full video of this movie may as
well serve as the most comprehensive definition we have yet of „modernity”
itself.
9. Only Angels
Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks)
Unyielding
in its reproach of sentimentality, this is a work of true feeling and deep
compassion that asks for nothing and gives you everything.
10. Topsy-Turvy
(1999, Mike Leigh)
The
most Dickensian movie ever made is as rich as a finest novel and accommodates
everything from gaiety to sadness to grief to song.
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Pierwsza trójka robi wrażenie i jestem bardzo pozytywnie zaskoczony, że w końcu ktoś wymienia tak wysoko Daviesa i Malicka, w szczególności te tytuły (jestem fanem obu reżyserów). Osobiście stawiam wyżej "Vertigo", ale twój typ jest tuż za nim w mojej Hitchockowksiej hierarchii. Czekam w takim razie aż opublikują wyniki (ciekawe czy będzie świta moich ulubionych krytyków też) :)
ReplyDeleteDziękuję! Sam czekam na rezultaty i oczywiście jestem ciekaw dziesiątki Hobermana, który ostatnio numerem pierwszym wyróżnił PŁONĄCE ISTOTY Jacka Smitha :-)
ReplyDeletePrawda (zaczynałem to oglądać kiedyś, ale wyłączyłem po czasie). Z kolei w takim Village Voice miał trochę inną listę na koniec stulecia, więc to zawsze mały event jest :) Rosenbaum też zmieniał - w '92 a '02 były zauważalne różnice. Ciekawi mnie jak zawsze Amy Taubin, nie wiem czy Lim będzie, no i ktoś się tam jeszcze nawinie pewnie.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous. Especially thrilled to see TOPSY-TURVY amongst your selection; a stunning movie and I love and admire it a little bit more every time I see it. (How I hope that Leigh makes something on that scale once again!) Also second REAR WINDOW, TLDC, MWAMC, and L’ATALANTE. So, can you reveal which films *almost* made your ballot? :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting list except for the pompous THIN RED LINE and silly WR: MYSTERIES.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I disagree, of course :)
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDelete