Sight and Sound has had its say what are your choices for Greatest film??

Roxie Hart

had it all. intricate but not overly complicated plot, brilliant acting, great wardrobe & sets, wonderful score.

i don't know enough (or much of anything, really) about the technical angle of film-making to determine what the objectively greatest movie is, but i have my recurring favorites. i never know how much i love them until i see them again. here are my current favorites, w/ out any explanation.

THE APARTMENT (1960)

ALIEN 3 (1992)

THE FLOWERS OF ST FRANCIS (1950)

BLUE VELVET (1986)

LES MISERABLES (1934)

THE SCARLET EMPRESS (1934)

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944)

THE BIG SLEEP (1946)

IT'S LOVE I'M AFTER (1937)

COME AND SEE (1985)

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN (1989)

SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

IVAN THE TERRIBLE : PART II (??)

What about "Casablanca", everybody's favorite?

for some reason.

Pls watch it the next time you run across it as you channel surf. You owe it to yourself. Or rent it even.

I like the two Bogie/Bacall movies but RED RIVER is a better film.

Night of the Hunter is fascinating film, visually, which is a thing I've noticed about films directed by actors. They are often more self-consciously artistic.

as i have an unjustified aversion to john wayne movies. this is also why the only john ford movies i've seen were the ones w/ henry fonda.

NotH is flat-out beautiful to look at .

It is perhaps John Wayne's one real villain role. Contains the famous over-the-top gay symbolism scene of Montgomery Cliff and another good looking young man playing with each other's guns... makes it into most documentaries about gay subtext in Hollywood.

Wonderful film.

Contains the amusing (and realistic) complaints of the cattle drivers that they can't wait to get into town because they are sick of eating steak all the time.

(Dinner is whichever cow keels over dead)

Bravo. You're the only English speaking person I've known who's seen those three films and sat through that 4.5 hours of cinematic greatness. Seldom mentioned in America, Baur was a major world star before the war and was murdered by the Gestapo. Harry Baur is one of the greatest actors in history and Rod Steiger's greatest influence. Speaking of Steiger, I think Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker where Steiger put on a masterful performance deserves mention. I love your list, especially The Big Sleep and Night Of The Hunter. Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion and Kurosawa's masterpiece Ikiru are ones I would put in my own top ten. I like the English film The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner. And I think the modern masterpiece and what I consider Spielberg's only great film (one that never fails to bring me to tears) is Schindler's List and belongs on a top list.

Another great Hollywood send-up is S.O.B.


A great screwball but heartwarming comedy is Harvey.


Another is Auntie Mame.


I love Hitchcock, and my favorite homage to him is High Anxiety.


My two favorite Joan Crawford movies are Torch Song and A Woman's Face, both for two totally different reasons.
Torch Song for laughs (it's so absurd):

A Woman's Face for suspense (great filmmaking!):


And there's the under-appreciated comedy The Big Bus about the world's first nuclear-powered bus.


Heck, and there are a gazillion more for which I DON'T have DVDs.

I'm too old to care about messages in movies. I just want entertainment from them.

But I doubt that Reefer Madness, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster, Death Race 2000, or Assault of the Killer Bimbos are going to make it on to any "best of" lists anytime soon.

As much as I can appreciate the use of light and shadow in the halls of Xanadu or marvel at Atlanta burning to the ground while Tara is being evacuated, I still emphasize with knocking down the cardboard tombstones in the cemetary or rescuing all the bikini-clad maidens from those perverts from space ("maximum energy," indeed).

They really need to introduce a "Merde d'Or" award at Cannes.

that values Forrest Gump (I'm all for love and care for mentally challenged people, but, damn, Forrest Gump is NOT a role model.) and doesn't value Sextette (an 80-something sex kitten married to a future James Bond! Come on!).

And what about The Little Shop of Horrors, the original and the musical?

than I expected.

Blue Velvet, (Goddard's) Weekend, If..., The Machinist, and the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. l

The French make some unforgettable films.







Also, check out "Delicatessen"

A great film for study, but a tedious storyline based solely on personal animus.

I'd add Sullivan's Travels and Mean Streets to the list.

Sullivan's travels is a great movie I always forget about...

I would have put these two in the top five:

Fellini's 8 1/2 and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.

I would add to the list: The Gold Rush, The Wizard Of Oz,

Lawrence Of Arabia, The Life and Death Of Colonel Blimp.

"Network" because it was so freakin' prescient. Paddy Chayefsky was absolutely psychic about what TV "news" would eventually become.

The Grapes of Wrath, Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Rules of the Game, and The Shawshank Redemption.

My top ten.

Sunrise, Bringing Up Baby, Double Indemnity, and Sunset Boulevard.

And one of my favorite musicals is Footlight Parade. The Shanghai Lil number and Honeymoon Hotel number are fantastic!

"The Sting" "To Kill A Mockingbird" "The Godfather" "Master and Commander" and "MASH"

That's probably my top ten but this is also fluid and I may think of some others later.

Thanks for the thread, WI_DEM.

in the order they came to my mind right now:

Mulholland Drive - David Lynch
The Tree of Life - Terrence Malick
Duck Soup - Leo McCarey
Apocalypse Now (director's cut) - Francis Coppola
Yojimbo - Akira Kurosawa
The Kaspar Hauser Story or Every Man For Himself and God Against All - Werner Herzog
Big Business (Laurel & Hardy silent) - James W. Horne (supervised by Leo McCarey)
The Silence of the Lambs - Jonathan Demme
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Peter Jackson
Full Metal Jacket - Stanley Kubrick

Honorable mentions:
The Godfather Trilogy - Francis Coppola
La Strada - Federico Fellini
ETA: Taxi Driver, Kelly's Heroes, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I'm glad Malik's Tree Of Life was mentioned in this thread.

The Werner Herzog film I would add is Fitzcarraldo.

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Grapes of Wrath is good too.

Both in black and white, btw, which
is interesting.

Oh, and Inherit the Wind, loved that one.

Also, just about anything with Paul Newman!
I used to have his t-shirt poster tacked on
the ceiling above my upper bunkbed in college.
Whew... not all that socially conscious, but
who cares.

Some of my favorites in no particular order.

Barry Lyndon
Playtime
Dead Man
Mr. Deeds goes to Town
The Searchers
Big Lebowski
The Bear
Unforgiven
Blazing Saddles
Arsenic & Old Lace
UHF
The Fugitive Kind

Dr. Strangelove is near the top for me, too.

My favorite loony comedy is My Man Godfrey, William Powell, Carole Lombard, and a flawless supporting cast and script.

I agree with your Magnificent Ambersons choice, too. Wonderful flick from Orson Welles' stable of actors.

Double Indemnity is on my list, too. But I would add The Third Man to the noir list.

Two foreign language flicks make mine. Z from Costa Gavras and Wild Strawberries from Bergman.

My fave SciFi is The Day the Earth Stood Still, the Robert Wise version, not the silly remake. Wise's The Haunting makes my list, too, mostly because it honors Shirley Jackson's novel so well.

Thanks for the post. I love flick posts. I always learn about movies I haven't yet seen. So many; so little time.

I saw it in the movie theater when it came out and the audience stood up and applauded at the end. I watched it again a few years ago to see if it was as good as I remembered and it was, except for the noticeable rubber clubs that wiggled. That part was amusing.

the artform was pretty new in those days, and rough around the edges. Most of these movies were more like filmed plays or vaudeville than "movies" as we think of them today, and I doubt that many people watch them for anything but nostalgia or film school projects.

Even Hitchcock is, to me, more notable for what he *started* than for what he actually did. People have picked up on so many of his techniques and greatly sharpened them over the years. It's a bit like saying Marlon Brando was the greatest movie actor ever, because he was the first to not act in that old, stagey way.

Still, having said that, my choice for best movie ever would either be Laurence of Arabia or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both are just masterfully done pieces of storytelling.

It is distinctly possible that some com temporary films are "greater," but a lot of the most critically praised contemporary films will be down-right embarrassing in a few years time.

Contemporary criticism is almost a counter-indicator... critics are as swayed by fashion as anyone else, or even more.

The early 1990s were strong. I found Todd Haynes SAFE to be an almost perfect film. I would put Natural Born Killers fairly high. 12 Monkeys is a marvel. Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is spectacular film-making.

But I don't mind the canon being old. And it does get corrected over time. For instance, Birth of a Nation was way up there in the early S&S polls, but no longer makes it.

I don't know what the greatest film is—I go back and forth between TOUCH OF EVIL and PSYCHO.

(The Exterminating Angel wows me, but lacks the world-class craft.)

But dethroning Citizen Kane is silliness. Contrarianism. It has long served as a fine #1 because no film is clearly better, and its historical import is so great.

Vertigo, on the other hand, has always been a bizarre entrant because it isn't even Hitchcock's best film. A fun and fascinating film, yes, but STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and PSYCHO are clearly superior. And I'd add NOTORIOUS and (oddly enough) THE BIRDS to that.

The directors poll has outshone the critic's poll pretty reliably in the decades since they added the director's poll.

And THE SEARCHERS... even if we grant that it is better than any of the calvary trilogy, it isn't better than STAGECOACH.

It's NEVER shown anymore... probably because it exposes the intersecting lines of war & media , and how they corrupt everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_25th_Hour_%281967_film%29

Charade
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Just for Audrey singing Moon River
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Shop Around the Corner
Rope
Rear Window
American Gigolo (signaled the beginning of the High Concept Era)
Flashdance - Music Video is a Movie
The Wizard of Oz
Casablanca
Gentleman Prefer Blondes
Philadelphia Story AND High Society - both excellent versions
The Mouse that Roared
Bonjour Tristesse
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
A Raisin in the Sun
The Diary of Anne Frank
Miracle in the Rain
The Color Purple

Going to show my age here . . .
Swingers
Reality Bites

Edit - Let me show a little bit more of my age - can't believe I left this off the list:

High Fidelity!

but once I start heading down Audrey Hepburn Road, I can never stop.

I'm just putting all of her movies on the list!

I'm a big fan - met her when I was a little girl at a department store in Rochester NY.

Tiffany's is a tough one to put out there because of the portrayal of an Asian caricature by Mickey Rooney. That in comparison to Capote's novella's language? Audrey wouldn't do the movie unless she could drop all of Holly's 'N-Bombs'. And Holly used it like I say the word 'and'.

Honestly - his portrayal is up there with Natives being portrayed by whites, the continuous 'tragic mulatto' stereotype, the 'Sassy Sapphire' stereotye . . . though - these continue to this day. . . . Check out the movie/book The Help for the last two. And even right here at DU people fall all over themselves to fawn over The Help.

This is Spinal Tap
Raiders of the Lost Arc
Hollywood Shuffle
Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
Wild at Heart
Glory
The Great Waldo Pepper
Once
The Quiet Man
Taxi Driver

a) I don't think all good movies are necessarily black and white and/or subtitled.
b) Anyone's opinion is as good as anyone elses.

It's very subjective.

Was "Gone with the Wind" better than Ken Burns "The Civil War"?

Was "The Little Big Man" better than "A Man Call Horse" or "The Unforgiven" or "Blazing Saddles"

Was "Saving Private Ryan" better than "Letters from Iwo Jima" or Kelly's Heros"

Was the "The Graduate" better than "Harold & Maude"

I just don't think there's a definitive answer because the variety of films is just too broad.

I would add The Searchers and Chinatown.

oh, and "The Wrestler"

Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird

Also no one mentioned any of the Shrek movies. I think Shrek 2 is one of my favorites. And Babe is wonderful cinematography and story and just plain adorableness.

I guess I like movies that leave me with a smile now.

but what I really liked about Milagro was that special mysterious magic about it that a lot of Spanish stories have. Like 100 Years of Solitude.

Because movies can be so many things. How does it make sense to compare The Wizard of Oz to Dawn of the Dead?

I also agree with an above poster that was critical of these lists being biased to old movies. Is our culture so dead that we haven't made a good movie in 50 years? What about art's role in commentary about contemporary culture? Dr. Strangelove is a great, hilarious movie but how can a movie satirizing cold war politics be relevant outside of a narrow historical context? What about Taxi Driver? A movie that is as relevant today as the day it was made but its themes weren't even on the radar during the golden age of film.

This lack of newer films is particularly strange when you consider how much the craft of filmmaking has actually advanced over time. We're at a point now technologically that anything anybody can imagine can be convincingly realized in a movie.

I think there are many reasons for this phenomenon. Perhaps the most basic is the desire to point to a good recent movie and say "oh this movie was just ripping off X", or, more charitably, "this movie was influenced by X" and then people conclude in some sort of mixed up application of transitivity that X must somehow be a better movie. Naturally this just leads us further and further back in time. Pulp Fiction,? Ever see Mean Streets? Mean Streets? Ever see The Wild Bunch? The Wild Bunch? You telling me you didn't know they made westerns until 1969? And on and on it goes until the only good movies are full of black and white long shots of a wagon in the American west. It's not so much that these movies are exactly like an older movie, it's just that they are naturally influenced by an idea or technique of their predecessors.

In summary, these lists are totally irrational and crazy and absurd but we keep going through them because, well, we need the eggs.

And the Third Man...

And the cast first rate and in their prime. It was awesome.

The beautiful scenery marred by a war where children were soldiers,families starved and the rich didn't understand.

the test of time. I bought the movie (two tapes) and have it sitting prominently where I can see it at all times. That one seen where Omar Sharif in the role of Zhivago is walking home from the war in the blizzard is simply mesmerizing. The cast, their performances, the photography, the script all simply impeccable. Once you see it, you can never forget it.

Sam

Sid

Full Film here for your pleasure!

That is a crime...

These top 10 lists are bullshit...

The thing is masterful in so many categories. I love to see reruns of it on TV.

I can't agree on Godfather II. But I think Godfather I is a masterpiece...

If I am really stuck picking just one.

British ones first.

An Inspector Calls: based on Priestley's time play with the magnificent and under-rated Alastair Sim.

A Matter of Life and Death: Starring David Niven, Production/direction Powell and Pressburger.

Little Dorrit: Exquisite and beautiful Dickens adaptation, Starring Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi.

Kind Hearts and Coronets: Guinness again, and the blackest Ealing comedy.

Others

7 Samurai: perhaps not Kurosawa's finest but his most accessible.

Kagemusha: Kurosawa again and just so wonderful ...

Night of the Hunter: Mitchum doing extraordinary things and completely out classed by Lillian Gish.

Casablanca: 'nuff said

2001: Kubrick being spectacularly inventive.

Dr Strangelove: got to be on the list.

Easter Parade: Astaire and Garland.

The Heat of the Night: Poitier and Steiger are dynamite.

And for a surprise

The Green Mile: a great weepy

List of more recent films:
Full Metal Jacket
No Country for Old Men
Goodfellas
Unforgiven
Empire Strikes Back
Usual Suspects
American Beauty
Inception

His theory is that partly ot's nostalgia and a common human tendency to glorify the past. Te other part of his theory is that the Siht and Sound voters, and cinephiles in general, like to look over a director's whole career and identify a masterpiece.

I'll have to watch Inception again, but the rest of your list is spot-on to me. Unforgiven, especially, changed the rules of almost a hundred years of Westerns overnight.