I’ve posted a page with a list of the 101 greatest films. Not my “greatest films,” but rather an aggregate of 60+ “best” lists from a variety of sources—Sight & Sound polls, AFI lists, various lists by directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, reasonably well-informed lists on specific cinemas like South Korea, Hong Kong and Africa, and so on.
My scoring system weights the Sight & Sound polls (all of them) heavily, with points for their position in those lists, and so in my top 101 list there are not huge differences from their polls. Further down on my full list (which is much, much longer than 101 entries), though, the aggregation of so many lists does provide insights into well-regarded films which have never gotten the nod in an S&S poll.
But let’s digress for a moment or maybe… upgress? Get meta. Boys and lists. What is it with boys and lists, especially pop culture lists? Should we make a list? Seriously, though, go read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which is an acute look at the male psyche, and in particular the psyche of males who make lists, structured around… a list of top 5 breakups. The protagonist, Rob, is of the view that “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like,” a view shared by the employees of his record store, “the musical moron twins,” and the three of them are forever making lists and judging people on their lists and likes. But the point of the book (it’s about girls, right? – just kidding) is that this is something we—blokes—need to grow out of. Which Rob does in the end.
Okay, that said…
The top 20 films from my aggregation that don’t appear in S&S, listed below, show a definite science fiction bias, which is interesting, and also suggest something of the disconnect of “popular” from “greatest” (at least as determined by critics and directors that S&S polls). It’s weird, for instance, to consider that neither The Maltese Falcon nor King Kong rank with S&S. These are mostly just very popular films, with the exceptions—like Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast—being films that are popular with film scholars, cinephiles and filmmakers, the kinds of people who make lists of “best” films.
The top 20 highly regarded films on my aggregate list that don’t make Sight & Sound‘s cut:
- 1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
- 2. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- 3. Star Wars (aka Episode IV – A New Hope) (1977)
- 4. Annie Hall (1977)
- 5. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
- 6. Alien (1979)
- 7. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- 8. All About Eve (1950)
- 9. Beauty And The Beast (La Belle et la Bête) (1946)
- 10. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
- 11. Brazil (1985)
- 12. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- 13. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- 14. Duck Soup (1933)
- 15. Gone With The Wind (1939)
- 16. King Kong (1933)
- 17. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- 18. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
- 19. On the Waterfront (1954)
- 20. Back to the Future (1985)
Filed under: Movies, Classic Films, Film, personal
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