Another few observations by Philip Powers
So, it has just begun. One Hundred and Fifty Great Films in 52 Weeks.
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. I believe Halliwell is terribly elitist and dismisses 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. But, what they agree, almost to a fault, is that a select few films are unreservedly great – the hundred on this list I’ve compiled.
Curiously, in the Sight & Sound list, there are approximately thirty directors who have at least two films re-occurring every decade in the Top 100 Films, and about ten directors who have three or more films habitually populating the lists. And as more critics and, latterly, directors and academics have been polled each decade, the number of deliberations by people who have watched thousands of films, from the earliest days of silent film until 2012, has only slightly changed the order, and hardly changed the occupants.
I will publish a list of a few films, every two weeks, which I propose to watch in the ensuing two weeks. Because there are a significant number of directors with two or more films in the list of 100 Greatest Films, I’m also grouping the weekly schedule of films around directors. And if a third or fourth film by any one director, is consistently mentioned by those who responded to the survey, at the expense of the more highly regarded films by the same director, I’ve included those as extra films to view.
I could have grouped the films by the decade in which they were made, and worked my forward; or by country; but I have chosen to group them by director, because I’m interested to see three or four great films by the same director, back-to-back.
A lot of film historians, academics and critics reject the idea of the auteur conceit, but I’ve chosen to view the films by director, to see what themes, subjects, ideas and images, regularly appear. By watching four Fellini films in a week, or four Bergman films, or four Orson Welles films, I hope to see fingerprints that expose an arc of interest, or obsession, by different filmmakers. And as I continue on this journey I’m going to pay attention to the producers of films who reoccur on this list, as well as the writers of the screenplays of these movies.
© Philip Powers 20170701