Sunday 23 November 2008

Listmania again

How about this for a list? Pretty much as you'd expect from les Cahiers, I guess - but Freaks at no 22 seems a tad de trop...

8 comments:

  1. A strange mix and some films I'm going to now search out. Delighted to see 'Monsieur Verdoux' there. One of my favourites and the film that should have put an end to the lie that Chaplin never succeeded outside silent film.

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  2. Never been a fan of Davd Lean, but a list that excludes Lawrence and includes Freaks, shows a wilfully skewed bias against the Croydon misogynist who, if nothing else, was a great craftsman.

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  3. Reprehensible, those foreign johnnies, not one carry on flick on the list, very insular the froggies.
    mahlerman, Cairo Freds on camel ride to camera is the greatest movie opening, ever.

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  4. What, greater than the opening tracking shot in Touch of Evil, Malty? Virtuosity before art perhaps....

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  5. Though i'm not a huge film buff - i like films but don't seek out black & white 20s films like a true enthusiast, i nonetheless feel right to be somewhat suspicious of these lists. They naturally omit anything which is recent & popular, or which isn't hard to watch; and they seem to put in a lot of pretty drab films because they were influential, the first film to do such-and-such - well, that doesn't make a film any good, it just means it was influential, that's all. Andy Warhol was influential. Any list that omits The Thin Red Line, Kieslowski's 3 Colours Trilogy, or Manhunter, has a lot of explaining to do.

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  6. Yes mahlerman, I had forgotten that one..will it, won't it go bang, excellent, its on the Amazon wish list.
    Another cracker from Orson, The Third Man (apart from the irritating Holly Martin character)
    Elberry, you are right of course modern=bad. One of the best movies we have seen in recent years is Dead Mans Shoes, Paddy Considine is the new Mongomery Clift.

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  7. Best Orson Welles film: 'F For Fake'. There's just nothing else like it.

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  8. Wot, no Casablanca?

    Or, for that matter, Withnail and I, but I wouldn't expect the froggies to appreciate that.

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