8.04.2012

BFI's "Greatest Films" we never saw

The British Film Institute - via the cineaste journal Sight and Sound - recently updated their rather stodgy list of cinema's top 50 movies of all time.  To us, it's the sort of screening list we saw in film school.  Lots of "medicine" movies, many of them either quite old or quite foreign (because, you know, American and recent equals mainstream crap), that may not taste good but are supposed to be good for you.

Sure, we've seen Vertigo (the new number 1), Citizen Kane (the old number 1), and Some Like It Hot (ranked at a criminally low 42).  But there's a lot we haven't seen.  And some we've never even heard of.

Here are the movies we would be trying to make an effort to see, if only we didn't have two small children, a full-time job, and a underdeveloped sense of film snobbery that tends to prefer any movie not spoken in English.

Tokyo Story
La Regle du jeu
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
The Searchers - We really would like to see this one.  It's on our list.
Man with a Movie Camera
The Passion of Joan of Arc
8 1/2
L'Atalante
Late Spring
Au hasard Balthazar
Seven Samurai - We wouldn't mind seeing this.
Persona
Mirror
L'avventura
Le Mepris
Ordet
In the Mood for Love - Heard lots of good things.  On our list.
Rashomon
Andre Rublev
Stalker
Shoah
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles - Is this really a movie?
Satantango
The 400 Blows
La Dolce Vita
Journey to Italy
Pather Panchali - Huh?
Gertrud
Pierrot le Fou - Now you're just messing with us.
Play Time
Close Up
The Battle of Algiers - Heard good things about it, wouldn't mind seeing it.
Histoires du Cinema

That's a whole lot of Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and Godard, filmmakers all who lean towards the tedious, the esoteric, and the dull.  No thanks.  We'll take Dazed and Confused, Pulp Fiction, and Goldfinger.

The shorter list may be the "Greatest Films" we have seen:

Vertigo
Citizen Kane
2001: A Space Odyssey
Battleship Potemkin
Breathless
Apocalypse Now
Singing' in the Rain
The Godfather
Mulholland Drive
The Godfather Part II
Taxi Driver
The Bicycle Thieves
The General
Metropolis
Psycho
Some Like It Hot
City Lights
Ugetsu monogatari - Thank you, film school.
La Jetee