Another few observations by Philip Powers
Only three of my favourite hundred films appear in this list and despite the fact that in the first thirty years of my life I’d already seen about 80% of these, so-called (approximately 150) greatest films ever, I am setting myself a new, and substantial, target. I want to see the films I’ve already seen, for a second or third time, and get an understanding of why some of the films I never regarded as great, others regard as great; and to track down the films (on this list which) I’ve never made a concerted effort to see.
The choice of films I’ve compiled in a long and extensive list of cinema from many countries around the world comes, mostly, from four sources: the Sight and Sound survey, which has been revised every decade since it began; the original Halliwell, The Filmgoers Companion; Pauline Kael’s umpteen books of critiques and Roger Ebert’s book of Great Films. But guess what? The majority of films these three reviewers consider as indisputably great – they agree upon – and are on the list I’m pursuing.
Before anyone gets cranky about why I even mention the names of Kael, Halliwell and Ebert, let me reassure you that I don’t consider these the three best critics. Not by a long shot, but I do respect their opinion, particularly when they make a cogent argument of the merit of any film. I believe Halliwell was terribly elitist and dismissed hundreds of films of merit as if they were bird-droppings on the sidewalk. Kael is so quixotic that I can’t guess what she will like from one review to the next. Ebert is too liberal in his acceptance of what constitutes a good film. I’ve also been particularly interested to read Richard Corliss (Time Magazine) and Anthony Lane (New Yorker). I enjoy Judith Crist, Vincent Canby and Rex Reed (in moderation) And, I can always get a good laugh from John Simon.
What do they have in common? They agree, almost to a fault, that a select few films are unreservedly great – the hundred or hundred fifty on the list I’ve compiled, which I will publish every week or so, a bit at a time, just before I see the films.
I’ve also taken into account the top-ranked films on the IMDB which I consider one of the most important databases of film criticism. One of the things I enjoy most about the IMDB is reading the reviews by everyday film critics who have excellent reasons why films as diverse as To Kill a Mockingbird and Hellboy rate a 10/10. Not only do I go through the external reviews, but also the user reviews.
I know that by sheer weight of numbers, The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II jostle for poll position; that The Dark Knight and Schindler’s List are consistently in the top ten of people born after 1963, followed closely by The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Fight Club and Fellowship of the Ring. Thereafter, the rankings become muddier. (Within a four-star rating system all of those films received **** when I saw them, except Fellowship which I saw in Glenelg, while visiting my brother and his family, I gave it a very good 3.75. It really was good, but it was the first time I’d seen it and sometimes you need to see a film two or three or more times before it settles in your brain. I didn’t give it the full 100% even though it was brilliantly executed, and I don’t know why I deducted a half or a quarter star. But I did. It was probably because the battles went on too long, and the book wasn’t about battles, whereas the films celebrated them.
What is extraordinary about comparing the top-twenty IMDB ratings (which are ranked by tens of thousands and sometimes millions) with the Sight & Sound list, is that nine of those films regularly turn up on both lists.
Why is that extraordinary? Because it’s a reasonable guess that the majority of critics and filmmakers who voted in the S&S poll went to a Film School (somewhere), or studied film (in school or in university).
That there is a significant crossover amongst the people that vote on films on the IMDB, who haven’t studied film formally, is probably an almost incomprehensible statistic of agreement by millions of people across the globe.
And I mean this in a good way. For example, films that were released before (1996 when) the internet was generally accessible – for example, by me in 1996, accessing it weekly – or by others, a little later – comprise at least 34 of the top 55 films on the IMDB. So, it’s not just a generation-thing, polled by people who know how to go online.
This is where awareness of films from countries around the world and films made before 1949, becomes an important factor. On the IMDB, of films made prior to 1949, only six films (Casablanca, Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life and three Chaplin films) occur in the top 75 films.
For the purpose of finding an insight into what the 100 most important, or the 100 greatest, or the 100 best, of the 100 most influential, or the 100 most brilliant, films of all-time, I’ve calculated how many films made before 1960 appear on the IMDB list: 1 in the top ten; 2 in the top twenty; 3 in the top thirty; 7 in the top forty; 7 in the top fifty; 10 in the top sixty; 12 in top seventy; 15 in top eighty; 16 in top ninety; 19 in top one hundred.
This illustrates the biggest problem in a comprehensive global evaluation of the best films: the lack of access to viewing the best films. Without a doubt, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are interesting in viewing and then ranking films, by their own criteria.
Also, the weight of a group of opinionated fans, which when numbering less than 40,000 (50,000 or 60,000) still gives a ranking, dilutes the value of that ranking because of their passion for the film.
My first idea, eight weeks ago, was to accumulate enough films by the same director or from the same era, so I could undertake an ambitious plan to view one grouping per month for the next four or five years and invite friends to participate. Getting hold of the films to view all three or four or five in one week would be a challenge. Not for Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder or John Ford; or Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola or Stanley Kubrick. But definitely, for Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, John Cassavetes, Luis Bunuel, Frederico Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut and Tarkovsky.
Two weeks ago, I realised I had enough films at hand that I could view the works of 30 directors or filmmakers for the next 30 weeks and that’s when I decided to change the difficulty factor of the challenge. Not 150 films in 5 years but 150 films in 52 weeks.
My favourite filmmakers are Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Blake Edwards, Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg – revealing an embarrassing Western bent. In the list I’m following, three miss out completely, only Hitchcock (one film) and Orson Welles (one film) have an indisputably highly-ranked film: Vertigo and Citizen Kane. They both have a secondary film: Psycho and Touch of Evil occur on a sigificant number of best-ten lists.
Interestingly, amongst the Rotten Tomatoes, with 40 or more reviews, several films in the Sight & Sound list crop up again. Some have weight added by the number of reviews because they are more recent films, and some have added weight because they are (regarded as) classic films and have vociferous proponents. Prior to 1960, Rotten Tomatoes, gives extraordinary ratings to The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Cabinet of Dr Caligari, All About Eve, Godfather, Metropolis, E.T., Modern Times, It Happened One Night, Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca, Laura, Nosferatu… and on it goes, many, many great films made before 1960 and before 1950 and before 1940. This is a list of films generated by people with an agenda, not dissimilar to the Sight & Sound list, with lots of crossovers.
© Philip Powers 20170702