Monday, September 16, 2013

What are the 10 Greatest Movies of All Time?

By Nicholas Stix
Last revised, Monday, March 31, 2014, 12:46 a.m.

Last year, critics chosen by Sight & Sound’s editors voted thusly:

1. Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (191 votes)
2. Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, 1941 (157 votes)
3. Tokyo Story, Yasujiro Ozu, 1953 (107 votes)
4. The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, 1939 (100 votes)
5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, F.W. Murnau, 1927 (93 votes)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (90 votes)
7. The Searchers, John Ford, 1956 (78 votes)
8. Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929 (68 votes)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Dreyer, 1927 (65 votes)
10. , Federico Fellini, 1963 (64 votes)
 

Time’s Richard Corliss chose:

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
Histoire(s) du cinema (Jean-Luc Godard; it was made for TV, and thus wasn’t even a theatrical picture and, accordingly, was ineligible)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
Pyaasa (Guru Dutt; Corliss’ “Indian film”)
The Searchers
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
WALL•E (Andrew Stanton; Corliss’ animated feature).

[One year earlier, Corliss had written that Kane was the greatest ever; he does not explain why he changed his mind.]
 

My list, chosen by a majority of one, is (drum roll, please):

10. Casablanca, 1943 (Michael Curtiz)
9. The Third Man, 1948 (Carol Reed)
8. On the Waterfront, 1954 (Elia Kazan)
7. The Philadelphia Story, 1940 (George Cukor)
6. Shane, 1953 (George Stevens)
5. It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946 (Frank Capra)

And The Big Four:

Citizen Kane
The Godfather, Part II, 1974 (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Godfather, 1972 (Coppola)
The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946 (William Wyler)
 

Time’s Top 100 List.
 

Sight & Sound’s Top 50 List.
 


(March 31, 2014) My revised list is (drum roll, please):

10. The Third Man
9. On the Waterfront
8. The Philadelphia Story
7. It Happened One Night, 1934 (Frank Capra)
6. Shane
5. It’s a Wonderful Life

And The Big Four:

Citizen Kane
The Godfather, Part II
The Godfather
The Best Years of Our Lives

The big change was in It Happened One Night shooting up from the Top 30 to Top Ten. The entire Stix Family recently watched it again, and the picture is bloody perfect. It remains the greatest romantic comedy of all time, and planted some of the seeds that would grow into screwball comedy (Bringing Up Baby). If it has a shortcoming, it is in having virtually no musical score. I’m debating with myself, whether to even move it past Shane.

The loser in the new order was Casablanca, which started dropping last year in my esteem, when I noticed a severe flaw in its ending. Captain Renault furnishes two letters of passage, for himself and Rick. But what about Sam? He would have required a letter of passage, as well, and Rick wasn’t going anywhere without him. And no, Rick’s letter would not have covered his servant.

 



5 comments:

AnalogMan said...

Seems like everybody's greatest hits list has Citizen Kane near the top. That's how I judge the lists: if it includes this one, I know I'm unlikely to enjoy any of the movies on the list.

I tried to watch it once. It just irritated and bored me from the start. It seems to be the source of all the onanistic directorial flourishes, the "arty" camera angles (including my favourite, the close-up on the talking mouth), that I find just plain insulting to the audience - me. Needless to say, I never saw the end - and never will.

Anonymous said...

TCM ran "Vertigo" on Sunday. The host said it didn't do well at the box office or with critics at the time, but is now Number 1 in some polls.

David In TN

Anonymous said...

I say Apocalypse Now is the greatest movie of all time. A 100 years from now they will still be watching this flick.

Nicholas said...

Analog Man,

“Seems like everybody's greatest hits list has Citizen Kane near the top. That's how I judge the lists: if it includes this one, I know I'm unlikely to enjoy any of the movies on the list.”

So, if you read my Top 100 list, because Kane is one of the The Big Four, you would be unlikely to enjoy a single picture on the list? How does that work; is it like a metastasized cancer that had spread to all 99 other pictures? Or is it more like you hate Kane so much that you would take it out on any maker of greatest movie lists who had the temerity to put Kane on his list?

Nicholas said...

SPOILER ALERT

David,

“TCM ran ‘Vertigo’ on Sunday. The host said it didn't do well at the box office or with critics at the time, but is now Number 1 in some polls.”

Although I don’t rate Vertigo as highly, it’s on my Top 100 list, and I’m very happy for Jimmy Stewart, and above all, Kim Novak, that it is now rated so highly. Novak gave one of the greatest performances ever by a female lead, and should have been up for Best Actress that year. (Stewart, perhaps, too.) Alas, for the reasons you cited, the picture was up for nothing, not even for Bernard Hermann’s brilliant score. Hitchcock responded by ditching his heretofore favorite star, Jimmy Stewart, whom he blamed for the movie’s box office failure, and Novak, in his continued search for another Grace Kelly.

It’s a brilliant story about desire and false identity: A man falls in love with a woman who isn’t who she seems, and later tries to turn “another” woman (who is that woman) into the woman he loved, and the woman’s hopeless love for him.

Some critic (Richard Corliss?) bad-mouthed Novak’s turn as the elegant, rich wife, but I disagree. I think she was great in both identities. If she hadn’t been credible as the possessed, rich wife, she wouldn’t have been heartbreaking as the poor shop girl.