Another few observations by Philip Powers
I’m not trying to come up with a comprehensive list of the top hundred films – which will represent my opinion – ever made, by the time I reach the end of my 52 weeks of self-imposed viewing. And it’s an evolving list, developed by people from everywhere, growing slightly as I research more opinions.
In fact, I’m viewing a lot more than 100 films. At this stage the number of films on my list sits at about 150, and it is growing.
I know some people have an issue when their favourite film or films is/are not included on these so-called official lists of the great films. But that’s not what this is about for me. I know that when tabulated by Sight and Sound magazine, the Top Ten Films, by 847 critics, programmers, academics and distributors; and the Top Ten Films by 357 film – documentary and feature – directors, contain only two of my Top 50 Favourite Films: 2001 and Vertigo. But four of My Top Ten Best Films ever are there: 2001, Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. You may notice that Vertigo isn’t there amongst my Best Films, but is in my Favourite Films and yet Hitchcock is one of my favourite 6 or 7 directors. That’s the difficulty that presents itself when trying to put together a list of 100 or 150 great films.
Some people supplied their favourite ten films and other gave what they thought were the ten best – or greatest – films. For me, I may have chosen Psycho in place of Vertigo in the Ten Best List, despite the fact that I believe Vertigo is by far the most daring and multi-faceted of. Interestingly, Vertigo ranks #1 on the 2012 Critic’s List, #7 on the 2012 Director’s List and Psycho only ranks #48 on the Director’s List. Interestingly for Psycho, it was #41 in 2002 and is #35 in 2012 as hundreds more film critics are added to the poll; whereas in the Director’s List it has fallen from #17 to #48 as the net widens to embrace more directors from more countries, than ever before. And yet Vertigo has stayed rock solid, move up from #8 to #7 in that ten year period.
Nevertheless, both films are still firmly in the Top 100 Film whatever the basis of the people polled and are on my list. I find it interesting to analyse the lists and see where tastes have changed, or opinions have changed, and there are some films which I won’t watch as part of this 52 weeks which were once in the Top 100 but now are significantly absent.
Amongst the Top 10 films, I haven’t seen Tokyo Story or Mirror, so I can’t comment yet; and whilst I saw 8½ and Bicycle Thieves – when I was 18 – I didn’t rate those films highly then and they wouldn’t figure amongst my 500 Best Films or my 500 Favourite Films. There’s one film I haven’t mentioned yet, that comes in as the 5th Greatest Film Ever, as ranked by 357 directors (but is #31 by critics) – Taxi Driver. I’ve seen it three times and I think it is a four-star film on a **** system and on a five-star system it is a ****½. Although it is in my Top 100 Films, it is not amongst my Top Ten Favourites or Top Ten Best.
If we expand the list to twenty films, although I have seen eight of the first ten, I’ve only seen five of the films which rank from eleven to twenty. One of those films, Barry Lyndon, is in my Top 100 Films Ever. I think Breathless (I’ve seen once) and Raging Bull (I’ve seen five times – in an attempt to understand its standing), are good films, on a certain level, when judged in mind of certain criteria. Seven Samurai, however, which I first saw at age 15, then in my twenties, then in my thirties, left me cold. Rashomon left me colder and I never revisited it. Persona, The 400 Blows, Andrei Rublev, Fanny and Alexander and Ordet, are films I haven’t seen, which hundreds and hundreds of film scholars have seen and rate highly. As well as thousands of people who review (or just rate) films on the IMDB.
Over the years I’ve become more and more aware of the difficulty in ranking films – or being judgmental about the absence of one’s own favourites in other people’s lists, especially when factoring in that nearly all of the film academics and historians would have seen all of the Top 100 Films and I’ve seen just 55 of them. And the ones I haven’t seen are nearly all non-English-speaking films: from France, India, Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, Sweden – with just a couple of films here and there which I missed from the British and American cultures.
Having lived a life that is so Anglo-centric, I’ve realised the enormous gap in my knowledge of important films. Thus the journey. Part of this realization has come about because I’ve just finished a decade of work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, where my attention has been focused on classical music to the exclusion of most other interests of mine. That nine and a half years with the SSO exposed me to the greatest pieces of classical music, time and time again, plus gave me the opportunity to hear them by visiting orchestra, like the Israel, Vienna and Berlin orchestra, as well as a Russian orchestra (playing Shostakovich – amazing) and a couple of London orchestras.
Despite a knowledge of more than half the films, that still leaves a lot of films on which I can’t yet comment. I’d be a bold person to be aggrieved at the absence of a film I consider one of the best ever, given I haven’t seen almost 50% of the films on a list compiled by people who have seen all of the films. And many more than the ones on the list, from so many different cultures…
Not only do I lack the ability to judge these films I haven’t seen (which I will get to see in the next 52 weeks), I lack the context of the country’s film culture to judge those films.
At the ripe old age of 54, I’m undertaking to i) watch the 45 I haven’t seen, ii) to watch the other 55 again, and iii) to include other important films by the represented filmmakers in my weekly diet, which are widely debated as being their best films.
Where does Australian film fit into a list of the greatest films ever made?
Significantly, I think. But it depends how long the list of greatest films ever made will run to.
Obviously not significantly enough to get a film in the top 100 of the Sight & Sound survey. However, Picnic at Hanging Rock was mentioned a few times in Top Ten lists by Directors (not critics/historians etc.). So was The Truman Show and Dead Poet’s Society. All Peter Weir.
I reckon Fred Schepisi has made two really important Australian films, as well. I think Bruce Beresford has also made a couple of exceptional films, but the films I’m thinking of are not really Australian films, per se (but irrespective of where their financing originates). I think Ray Lawrence has directed an exceptional Australian film. Possibly Gillian Armstrong. Possibly Donald Crombie. Definitely Phil Noyce. As for the Australian producers, there are a handful – and I mean five or six – who have produced one or two great Australian films. But producers aren’t represented in the pool of people polled for the Once-a-Decade-Poll. And that’s crazy on one level, because producers drive to develop the films that get directed by the directors in the poll, which are then criticised by the critics in the poll, which are then considered in the totality of film by the film academics and film historians, in the poll. And there are Australian producers who have seen the potential of material which no one else has optioned, or others have rejected, which they have then developed into feature films, and directors have then come on board and made them great.
This is where adjectives like Influential, Great, Important and Best hit their snags. Influential and Important are similar in scope (by academics) but Great and Best (by regular people) lie purely in the land of the viewer and how it is seen – and evaluated – through one person’s eyes. And then approved of by thousands or millions of other eyes and brains – or not!
Which brings me to the IMDB.
Just as the internet enabled wider polling of critics from most countries in the world for Sight and Sound (between the 2002 and 2012 surveys), it enabled millions of film viewers (lovers and haters) around the world to give their opinions via websites or blogs. What the IMDB brings to film criticism is that it enables a person who has seen ten films in their lifetime to vote for their favourite ten films; or to reveal reviews by hundreds, thousands or millions of people with an opinion. I love it. I can read along with people who love something and people who hate something, as well as getting the best bits – the people who like a bit and hate a bit and love a bit and think another bit is interesting, despite their overall response. So, as I said when I was nineteen, about people who are paid a living to review films, and why I don’t read their reviews before I see the film myself, ‘They’re just another person with an opinion’.
For years I’d been bleating about the stupidity of so many newspaper reviews of films and I’d arrived at an answer that gave credence to my opinion and validity as much as anyone else’s. My opinion, and their opinion, amount to a kind of grey area. At the age of 19, I walked out of my local University, with a few weeks of my third year unfinished, exams still to come and started working for a filmmaking organisation, amongst dozens of producer, directors, cameramen and editors. It was October 1983. I was studying to be a teacher, and my next step would have been either a Masters or a Diploma of Education. But this chance to work at the coal face with people that made films day in and day out, was something I couldn’t pass up. I told my parents, who had financially supported me through three years of University, that I’d take a morning or afternoon off each day, so I could do my final exams in November, but I wasn’t going to continue onto a fourth year of study in 1984. It wasn’t received well, but I was adamant, and bargained with them, finally agreeing that if I couldn’t make it in the film industry in 1984, I’d do my fourth year at Uni in 1985.
Having studied so many interesting films, and then had to write and co-direct a film for a quarter of my final mark – as well as writing music for two stage plays and a graduating film for a NIDA student – I knew that making films was better than reviewing or criticising them.
By this stage, aged nineteen, I’d reviewed dozens of current films and planned to continue doing so; plus I’d seen two dozen of the groundbreaking films which shaped filmmaking as we knew it in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In Australia what we were exposed to was largely British and American, but over the last three years I’d seen many of the most important – and dare I say it, greatest – films (including the pivotal films before sound) of all time: from Russia, France, Germany and Italy, to Sweden, India and Japan. I’d have been happy if I could have made a career out of studying film and writing reviews; but to work with people who actually made films, was something I wanted to do, even if it was just one year, and that was it – and then it was all over.
If a film critic was just another person with an opinion – why can’t I do that? – then filmmakers were the people who made the films which other people criticised.
© Philip Powers 20170709