Yesterday evening, a Facebook friend of mine had been requesting that his Facebook friends name their 10 favorite movies in response to Sight & Sound’s 2012 quintessential 10-year film poll, released earlier this year. I didn’t want to make a list at the time, but given my ranking obsession, I couldn’t resist. So I submitted my top 10 list. But there were some frustrations and feelings of guilt in making my list. As much as I love the act of ranking, I feel like there are so many great films I haven’t seen that it wasn’t fair to make a list at this point. Nevertheless, I did (and I have been obsessively watching films and thinking about my 10 favorite films ever since Sight & Sound released their poll). On the form that my Facebook friend linked us, there was not a place to make comments. I suggested that there should be, and he happily obliged and said I could re-submit my entry. I did, and I probably took advantage of this new-found comment space, as I kind of used it to talk about my concerns and issues and reticence in making my list. And now, I’m going to post my (slightly-edited) comments here, as it’s a more appropriate forum anyway. But first, my top 10; you’ll notice that there are several films on this list I’ve already discussed:
- The Godfather
- Airplane!
- There Will Be Blood
- Goodfellas
- The Third Man
- Rashomon
- Duck Soup
- North By Northwest
- High Noon
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Now for the comments:
First of all, I love making lists, ranking things, and movies, so it would seem like this exercise would be a piece of cake or at least something I enjoy doing. I certainly can’t say I didn’t enjoy making this list, but at the same time, I feel a little guilty. Guilty because there are so many films I haven’t seen, whether they’re adored by critics or simply huge cult classics or whatever else, and I’m afraid that I could enjoy a film I see in the very near future (as I make a very concerted effort to watch more films, especially classic foreign films) more than I do the films I listed. Additionally, the external surroundings of my watching a film (i.e. age, philosophical disposition, what I know about the film beforehand, critics’ opinions, common moviegoers’ opinions etc) has a huge impact on my enjoyment of these films, and I’m not sure what that means, if anything, in terms of the films being my favorites– it’s a very personal exercise after all. For instance, I saw Airplane! for the first time in middle school, and never have I ever laughed as much or as intensely during a film as I did when saw it for the first time. I’ve seen at least 15 times since then probably, and I wouldn’t laugh nearly as much today as I did when I first saw it. But the fact that I have that memory will always keep Airplane! at the top of my favorites. Another example, I saw Citizen Kane for the first time in middle school as well. I didn’t care for it all that much, but I tried to appreciate it for how I was told or had read how it had influenced filmmaking. I’ve watched it several times since then, and at one of the subsequent viewings, something clicked in my brain, and I realized how great of a movie it was beyond its mythical influence.
As I semi-implied above, I began to get into film watching in middle school, first with what people considered classic comedies (because that was and is my favorite genre, the one that’s most important to me), and then with classic movies in general. After consulting my parents for a short time, I decided to double my efforts and do some research on my own. I came across AFI’s (the American Film Institute) 100 Years…100 Movies series, and I eventually made their 1997 list of 100 greatest movies my reference point for watching classic films. Of course, their list is limited by only including American-proudced/directed/written films. The list is also predictable in its content and order and takes very few risks, but despite these problems, I think it’s a great jumping off point if you want to learn what films are commonly considered classic.
I made it my goal to watch all 100 of the AFI films (only a handful of which I had seen when first starting out), but in 2007, the AFI took a page from Sight and Sound’s book and decided to make their poll every 10 years too. 23 films were taken out of the poll and 23 new films were added (including a few released between 1997 and 2007). So now I had even more films to watch! Out of the 123 total films, I’ve seen 82 of them at least once, which I believe is exactly two-thirds.
The reason I bring all this up goes back to my love/hate relationship with ranking these movies. Not only was my goal to watch all of the AFI films, but I also attempted (am attempting actually) to rank all of them to my own taste. Yet my tastes might have changed, and my memories of certain movies have grown hazy. For instance, Schindler’s List, a very meaningful and personal movie to me, is ranked highly on my list from how I remember it impacting me when I watched it, but I’ve only seen it once, and I don’t remember the content of it very well. Another kind of problem that I have is that I rank them as I go, so if I saw a movie for the first time today, and I rank it at a spot above or below a movie I saw only once, 6 or 7 years ago, I don’t know how fair that is. I guess it doesn’t really matter all that much. But I’ve been trying to re-rank the movies based on I’ve changed or think I’ve changed and a few other movies. Star Wars (the first one is the only one on AFI’s list), for a long time, was my 2nd place movie on the AFI list, right behind The Godfather, but at some point, I realized I wasn’t a true Star Wars fan in the sense that I don’t really remember all the scenes and plot points as well as most fans do; I just remembered the critical and most exciting moments. And some of the cheesy acting and dialogue also began to bother me a bit more. So I dropped Star Wars on my rankings (I like Star Wars better when the original trilogy is considered one movie rather than looking at each of the films individually). But I still consider Star Wars to be among my favorites on AFI’s list and of all time, if nothing else for the excitement and memories it gave me as a kid. In fact, I would consider at least 18 movies on AFI’s list among my all time favorites, including 6 on this top 10 list and including Citizen Kane, which is clearly not on this list, but like I said, it’s grown on me.
A couple of movies not on AFI’s list that are on this list are laugh-a-minute comedies. I wanted to make sure I included some of the movies that have made me laugh the most on here because to me, laughter can be as or more profound as a movie that itself is profound. So it may be weird to see a movie like Airplane! in company with a movie like The Godfather, but it’s honestly been just as important to my movie-watching experience.
Lastly, I want to mention that I made a purposeful effort to include North By Northwest on this list. I haven’t seen a ton of Hitchcock movies, but of the ones I’ve seen, North By Northwest is my favorite. And, while it’s one of my favorite films on its own merit, I wanted to be sure it was on here so I could say I liked it better than Vertigo. For that matter, I liked Citizen Kane better than Vertigo. And for the record, I just re-watched Vertigo recently, and as you can tell, I did not have a dramatic realization of it being the greatest film of all time. But it’s still a good movie.
Okay, so that’s everything I wrote last night, slightly edited. I want to mention that once I see every AFI film, if it ever happens, and re-watch some of the films I think I need to re-watch, I plan to post my personal re-ranking of all 123 AFI films in a blog post on here. For now, I’ll post my top 18 that I would consider among my all time favorite films. As always, the order of them could change, and in fact, I’ve changed the order recently:
- The Godfather
- Goodfellas
- The Third Man
- Duck Soup
- North By Northwest
- High Noon
- Forrest Gump
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
- The Godfather Part II
- Schindler’s List
- Star Wars
- The Maltese Falcon
- Citizen Kane
- Unforgiven
- Rear Window
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- 12 Angry Men
As I mentioned in my comments, there have been two AFI lists so far, and you can see how my top 18 deviates or doesn’t deviate from both AFI lists here: http://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx ; http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx
It may seem a little conservative? ( I’m not sure what the word I’m looking for here is) to have so many AFI films (and critically acclaimed films) among my all time favorites and even beyond the 18 I listed, there is a second tier of AFI films that could be considered among my favorites as well, including Dr. Strangelove, The Silence of the Lambs, The Searchers, and Double Indemnity. So I like classic, critically-acclaimed films I guess. But I will say that they are considered classic and critically-acclaimed for a reason. I will also say that some of the so-called “critically-acclaimed” films that are among my favorites are somewhat maligned now by critics and fans, namely Forrest Gump. I still love that movie though, and it’s one of my favorites. I also differ from AFI’s list in my own personal re-rankings a good bit, and some of the films on their list, I simply don’t like. I don’t like every classic film! Still, like I said, they are considered classic for a reason and are worth watching if you have the chance and are interested in film, even if you end up not liking the movies that much.
Now, I want to post the much more perceptively credible Sight & Sound lists (there’s both a director’s poll and a critic’s poll), as those lists inspired this exercise in the first place, critics’ list followed by directors’ list:
- Vertigo
- Citizen Kane
- Tokyo Story
- La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of The Game)
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Searchers
- Man with a Movie Camera
- The Passion of Joan Arc
- 8 1/2
- Tokyo Story
- Citizen Kane (Tie-2)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Tie-2)
- 8 1/2
- Taxi Driver
- Apocalypse Now
- The Godfather (Tie-7)
- Vertigo (Tie-7)
- Mirror
- Bicycle Thieves
It’s worth looking up Sight & Sound’s poll over the course of its history, as it’s been around since 1952 (directors’ poll has only been around since 1992). You can find all of the polls on wikipedia at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sight_%26_Sound
It’s fun to see how their list has and hasn’t changed (and remember people who voted in 1952 and 1962 may not be voting today).
Well, that’s all I have to say about this subject. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! As always, feel free to comment and/or let me know of any mistakes I may have made.
Ashes of Laughter 