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BFI Top 10 films


Liam

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CRITICS TOP 10 FILMS OF ALL TIME

1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

4. La Regle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)

5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)

10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

=2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

=2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

=7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

=7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

Just thought I would throw this out there. The first one is by critics asked by BFI, whilst the second one is directors. Any opinion? Films you have/haven't seen?

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Of those, I really like The Bicycle Theives, Taxi Driver and Vertigo.

I need to give Apocalypse Now another watch......I watched it when I was tired before, and couldn't wait for it to end.

Have Citizen Kane and 2001, but have never watched them.

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I've never seen any of these but I have the Kubrick Blu-Ray boxset (the UK one mind so no Spartacus or Dr Strangelove *shakes fist*) so 2001 I will watch at some point at least.

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2001 is genuinely one of the most incredible movies I have ever seen. It's very slow-paced, though, especially by today's standards.

It would be interesting to compare this to the reactions the movies got at the time of release. I know 2001 certainly wasn't unanimously loved, by any stretch of the imagination.

Of the lists, I've seen;

Vertigo

Citizen Kane

2001: A Space Odyssey

Taxi Driver

Apocalypse Now

The Godfather

I'm surprised by the lack of Kurosawa, and would have expected more Kubrick, especially considering how well Coppola is represented shows that they have no qualms about heaping praise on a single director.

Both are good lists. I find it fascinating that the directors only favoured films from a specific thirty year period, and the last thirty years are totally missed out.

I'm actually surprised that there aren't any earlier films. It'd be interesting to know who the directors actually were, as there's a very definite mood to the list.

I'm not surprised that nothing from the last thirty years made the list - it takes a long time for a film to reach "classic" status. I'm sure very few of these films were seen as the greatest of all time on their release, it's only when the next generation of directors champions them, or cites their influence, that it becomes clear.

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I decided to write a quick post about it, which I'm putting up on my blog later, but I thought it'd make for good discussion on here. So discuss away. Or not.

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Vertigo is as great as Citizen Kane, so it certainly deserves the accolade.

What fascinates me more are the top ten lists from Sight and Sound and the directors, and the comment in the BBC article about this reflecting "changes in the culture of film criticism". If anything, it enforces a fogeyish attitude towards what great filmmaking is.

The trends are blatant. Sight and Sound's critics and writers go for older, obscure, and/or foreign language films as they are the ones normally described as 'intellectual'. Meanwhile, the directors favour the period between 1948 and 1979, the time between the fall of the old Hollywood studio system and the rise of the new one when directors/auteurs, rather than the money men, were the most powerful people in Hollywood.

It reminds me of how music criticism disregards everything remotely new (that is not Radiohead) when looking at the 'greatest of all time'. If The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin started today, would they get instant recognition of being 'the greatest', or would they too fall for the underlying argument that "everything was better in the good old days"?

Do not get me wrong, the films I have seen from those lists are fantastic. But are the Jaws' and Shawshank Redemption's of the world missing out because they were made too late? We will find out when the next poll happens.

See you in 2022.

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Skummy, re: about the thirty year period... Citizen Kane was first announced as the greatest film in 1962, just over twenty years after its release. The only film to enter the critic's list since the poll started is 1968's 2001. It's deeply fascinating as while critics have cited newer films in their personal top 10's, no one universally agrees on anything made in the past 50 years.

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In truth I would likely disregard any list featuring Shawshank Redemption. I don't know that a film that was stronger as a book deserves a place on the list. Totally personal opinion and all that, but it would stick out like a sore thumb to me.

Have totally never seen any of those films. I don't think I want to either. As I get older movies interest me less and less.

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Sight and Sound's critics and writers go for older, obscure, and/or foreign language films as they are the ones normally described as 'intellectual'.

Or because films have been made for 100+ years all around the world. I think it's not as much going for "intellectual" films as critics having a global vision of the medium they are analysing. Of course older films or non-American films dominate, there's more material from 1898-1970 than 1970-2012 or from the rest of the world combined than just the US.

It reminds me of how music criticism disregards everything remotely new (that is not Radiohead) when looking at the 'greatest of all time'. If The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin started today, would they get instant recognition of being 'the greatest', or would they too fall for the underlying argument that "everything was better in the good old days"?

That's just how critic works. Once you get to judge a piece of art as a part of the canon, you need some perspective. The Beatles, Hendrix or Led Zeppelin are regarded as the greatest because they have proved to be time-proof, which is something you can't say for any modern band or singer - just because you don't have that perspective. Also there's the fact that when you look at the past, there's already a defined list of what's "worth remembering", so most people have listened to Led Zeppelin.

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In truth I would likely disregard any list featuring Shawshank Redemption. I don't know that a film that was stronger as a book deserves a place on the list. Totally personal opinion and all that, but it would stick out like a sore thumb to me.

As much as I like Shawshank, it shouldn't be on the list because it's not as good as a lot of other movies that do deserve to make the list. Again, purely opinion.

I don't think whether the movie is as good as the source material should factor into it; you should look at the film as an isolated product and judge it solely on its own merits. I'm sure someone could argue that the book of 2001 was stronger than the movie in many ways, but by taking that view you miss out on what makes 2001 such a powerful film, and that's purely down to film-making techniques, to the way it uses its genre to its advantage. The movie of 2001 could never have been anything but a movie, and as such transcends the comparison to the book, in my eyes.

I know that's not a great example, as 2001 wasn't adapted from the book, the two were effectively written in unison (the film is credited to "Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke", and Clarke had intended for the book to be credited to "Arthur C. Clarke & Stanley Kubrick"), but it's the only film on the list where I've read the book as well as seeing the movie.

You could potentially make a similar point about Vertigo not being as strong as The Living And The Dead - I don't know, I haven't read the book - but would that devalue Vertigo as one of the greatest films of all time?

Also, can I just say how much Citizen Kane bugs me, due to the entire film hinging on a huge plot hole? It's still a brilliant film, but the entire plot makes no sense, as there was no one there to even hear his last word!

In addition to Kurasawa, who I would have expected to pop up on at least the directors', if not the critics', list, I'm surprised there's no sign of Ingmar Bergman on the critics' list.

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Also, can I just say how much Citizen Kane bugs me, due to the entire film hinging on a huge plot hole? It's still a brilliant film, but the entire plot makes no sense, as there was no one there to even hear his last word!

It's been a while since I've seen it, but isn't that more of a bookend that an actual inciting incident or plot device?

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