Seen: 11/100
[ ] Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles - A magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life. - Directed by Chantal Akerman, 1975 Belgium, France[ ] Vertigo - A former detective with a fear of heights is hired to follow a woman apparently possessed by the past, in Alfred Hitchcock’s timeless thriller about obsession. - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 USA[-] Citizen Kane - Famously sitting at the top of the Sight and Sound poll from 1962 to 2002, Orson Welles’s masterful debut, about newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, remains an enduring classic. - Directed by Orson Welles, 1941 USA[ ] Tokyo Story - Told in Yasujirō Ozu’s simple and elegant style, this story of intergenerational discord is heartbreaking and deeply human. - Directed by Yasujirō Ozu, 1953 Japan[ ] In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar Wai’s masterpiece is a heartbreaking story of illicit love that pulses with the ache of repressed desire. - Directed by Wong Kar Wai, 2000 Hong Kong, France[ ] 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick’s grand vision of mankind’s journey from its hominid beginnings to its star-child evolution is a towering achievement of science-fiction cinema. - Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1968 USA, United Kingdom[ ] Beau travail - Claire Denis’s great gift is to evoke emotion with gesture and juxtaposition. In the desert, water shimmers and ripples, naked shoulders perspire, black mosquito nets recall sheer lingerie. - Directed by Claire Denis, 1998 France[ ] Mulholland Dr. - Hollywood is dark and dangerous, yet alluring, in David Lynch’s acclaimed thriller. - Directed by David Lynch, 2001 France, USA[ ] Man with a Movie Camera - Bottomless invention and frenetic, dizzying montage make this city symphony one of cinema’s sharpest, most exciting experiences nearly a century after its release. - Directed by Dziga Vertov, 1929 USSR[ ] Singin' in the Rain - Hollywood’s troubled transition from silent to talking pictures at the end of the 1920s provided the inspiration for perhaps the greatest of movie musicals. - Directed by Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1951 USA[ ] Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - The first American film by one of German expressionism’s leading exponents, this lush, atmospheric silent drama is replete with groundbreaking cinematography. - Directed by F.W. Murnau, 1927 USA[x] The Godfather - The first of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic trilogy about the Corleone crime family is the disturbing story of a son drawn inexorably into his father’s Mafia affairs. - Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 USA[ ] La Règle du jeu - Huge-spirited and sharp-eyed, Jean Renoir’s French-society fresco gathers high classes and low for a weekend of country-house fallout. - Directed by Jean Renoir, 1939 France[ ] Cléo from 5 to 7 - In real time, Cléo becomes more real, more subject than object. She discards her whipped-cream wig and polka dots for a simple black shift. She performs less and feels more. - Directed by Agnès Varda, 1962 France, Italy[ ] The Searchers - This poll’s last western standing, John Ford’s sweeping, stirring rescue-or-revenge quest remains a film of magnificent mystery and poetry. - Directed by John Ford, 1956 USA[ ] Meshes of the Afternoon - Had Californian sunlight ever looked as suggestive or sinister before the sharply etched dreamworld of Meshes of the Afternoon? - Directed by Maya Deren, Alexander Hackenschmied, 1943 USA[ ] Close-up - The more ‘information’ we’re offered about the case, the more we come to realise that there are no easy answers to any of the questions being raised. - Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, 1989 Iran[ ] Persona - Any sense of a conventional psychodrama is constantly disrupted by the experimental, improvisatory filmmaking. - Directed by Ingmar Bergman, 1966 Sweden[ ] Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War blowout, a hell-trip through the smoke and dazzle of imperial America’s most grandstanding rogue show. - Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 USA[x] Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa’s monumental, scintillating tale of hired samurai protecting a peasant village: period thriller and moral/political fable in one. - Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1954 Japan[ ] The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer’s rapturous silent masterpiece, with soulful close-ups of Renée Jeanne “Maria” Falconetti’s tremulous martyr, transcending tyranny and temporality. - Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer, 1927 France[ ] Late Spring - The first of Yasujirō Ozu’s great cycle of dramas that place the joys and sadnesses of family life in the context of a Japan disrupted by modernity. - Directed by Yasujirō Ozu, 1949 Japan[ ] Playtime - Jacques Tati’s most painstaking accomplishment blends deft slapstick, endless visual ingenuity and sonic comedy in a stupendous modern satire. - Directed by Jacques Tati, 1967 France[ ] Do the Right Thing - Racial tensions reach boiling point in Spike Lee’s incandescent portrait of a Brooklyn neighbourhood on the hottest day of the year. - Directed by Spike Lee, 1989 USA[ ] Au hasard Balthazar - Robert Bresson gave us a typically stark vision of humanity as experienced by a put-upon, maltreated beast of burden that passes from owner to owner. - Directed by Robert Bresson, 1966 France, Sweden[ ] The Night of the Hunter - Actor Charles Laughton’s only film as director, starring Robert Mitchum as an implacable child-hunting preacher, still leaves an indelible mark. - Directed by Charles Laughton, 1955 USA[ ] Shoah - To make sense of the 20th century’s most horrific atrocity, Claude Lanzmann reinvented documentary itself, giving the form colossal new significance. - Directed by Claude Lanzmann, 1985 France[ ] Daisies - This feminist milestone is an anarchic comedy of subversion whose approach to montage is as exuberant as the film’s two protagonists. - Directed by Věra Chytilová, 1966 Czechoslovakia[ ] Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s high-art vigilante movie for fallen times, with a coiled Robert De Niro as psycho-saviour of an infernal NYC. - Directed by Martin Scorsese, 1976 USA[ ] Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Portrait of a Lady on Fire demonstrates Céline Sciamma’s ability to make a timelessly beautiful film that also crystallises the gender politics of her era. - Directed by Céline Sciamma, 2019 France[ ] Mirror - Cinema scaled new heights of visual poetry in this deeply personal, elliptical film by the master of ‘sculpting in time’. - Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975 USSR[ ] Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock’s unsparing wrong-motel shocker starring Janet Leigh is a watershed for mainstream horror and still seminal in its suspense games. - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 USA[x] 8½ - Federico Fellini’s portrait of the film director as harried ringmaster and unreliable dreamer, spinning gold from his memories and fantasies. - Directed by Federico Fellini, 1963 Italy, France[ ] L'Atalante - Jean Vigo’s headily poetic portrait of young newlyweds on – and off – Michel Simon’s barge on the Seine. - Directed by Jean Vigo, 1934 France[ ] Pather Panchali - All the mischief, discoveries, joys and tragedies of life are given endlessly lyrical expression in Satyajit Ray’s debut, the first entry in ‘The Apu Trilogy’. - Directed by Satyajit Ray, 1955 India[ ] City Lights - A purely beautiful outing from the Tramp, this delightful urban romance features one of cinema’s most heartbreaking smiles. - Directed by Charles Chaplin, 1931 USA[x] M - Fritz Lang’s rack-taut first talkie, with a searing, animalistic Peter Lorre as a serial child-murderer turned manhunt target. - Directed by Fritz Lang, 1931 Germany[ ] Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder’s supreme gender-bending comedy has Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as female-posing musicians on the lam, and many knickers in a twist. - Directed by Billy Wilder, 1959 USA[ ] À bout de souffle - Jean-Luc Godard’s cock-of-the-walk calling card, mixing pulp pastiche and upstart rebellion with Jean-Paul Belmondo’s footloose Parisian delinquent. - Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1960 France[ ] Rear Window - The Master of Suspense ratchets up the tension while dishing out insights into obsession, urban living and the dangers of the gaze. - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1954 USA[ ] Bicycle Thieves - The film that topped our inaugural poll in 1952, Vittorio De Sica’s indelible neorealist parable offers a sharp-eyed portrait of Italy ’s post-war privations. - Directed by Vittorio De Sica, 1948 Italy[ ] Rashomon - The film that brought Japanese cinema to the world, this 88-minute firecracker proved a seminal assault on the notion of objectivity. - Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1950 Japan[ ] Killer of Sheep - Charles Burnett’s tender and witty tale of a disillusioned slaughterhouse worker and the solace to be found in the simplest moments of life. - Directed by Charles Burnett, 1977 USA[ ] Stalker - Two men recruit a guide to take them into ‘the Zone’, a mysterious realm where one’s innermost wishes come true, in this metaphysical sci-fi epic. - Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 USSR[ ] The Battle of Algiers - A window on Algeria’s wider liberation war, recreating a violent phase of guerrilla struggle and suppression in powerful free-documentary style. - Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 Italy, Algeria[ ] North by Northwest - Insouciant big-screen thrill-games from the Master of Suspense, hounding Cary Grant’s smug adman across a continent’s span of peerless set pieces. - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1959 USA[ ] Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick’s meticulously designed epic recounts the picaresque exploits of an 18th-century Irish adventurer. - Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1975 USA, United Kingdom[ ] Wanda - Barbara Loden’s tough, unsentimental portrait of a woman adrift in the industrial heartlands of the north-eastern United States. - Directed by Barbara Loden, 1970 USA[ ] Ordet - An austere parable on the power of faith, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s penultimate film culminates in a transcendent resurrection scene. - Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer, 1955 Denmark[ ] The 400 Blows - François Truffaut’s free-wheeling debut, with Jean-Pierre Léaud as his rebel-schoolboy surrogate, is still a banner film for nouvelle vague lyric realism. - Directed by François Truffaut, 1959 France[x] The Piano - This virtuoso drama of a mute woman’s and her daughter’s silent defiance of patriarchy in 19th-century New Zealand still has searing emotional heft. - Directed by Jane Campion, 1992 Australia, France[ ] Fear Eats the Soul - Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s heart-on-sleeve melodrama of a doomed romance across racial and age divides probes social hypocrisy with feeling. - Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974 Federal Republic of Germany[ ] News from Home - Chantal Akerman’s epistolary film, shot in the grime of 70s New York, bridges the distance from Brussels through dictated letters from her mother. - Directed by Chantal Akerman, 1976 France, Belgium[-] Blade Runner - Iconic neo-noir in a befouled sci-fi Los Angeles where humans and their machine replicas vie to be predators rather than prey. - Directed by Ridley Scott, 1982 USA, Hong Kong[ ] Battleship Potemkin - Sergei Eisenstein’s renowned agit-drama of proto-revolutionary mutiny and repression, often quoted but still powerful in its montage effects. - Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925 USSR[ ] Le Mépris - Disillusion in love and cinema in Jean-Luc Godard’s most opulent and emotive production, with lovers and film legends at loggerheads in Capri. - Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1963 France, Italy[ ] Sherlock Jr. - Buster Keaton’s would-be sleuth dreams himself into movie-heroic mastery in this dazzling, evergreen, meta masterpiece of silent comedy. - Directed by Buster Keaton, 1924 USA[ ] The Apartment - Billy Wilder’s then-risqué romcom, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine finding love amid corporate New York’s sea of sexual deception. - Directed by Billy Wilder, 1960 USA[ ] Sans Soleil - Chris Marker’s speculative travelogue-essay, reflecting on culture and history in narrated letters from Guinea to Japan to Iceland. - Directed by Chris Marker, 1982 France[ ] Moonlight - Instantly heralded as a modern masterpiece, Barry Jenkins’ stunning three-part story of queer identity is both a technical and an emotional marvel. - Directed by Barry Jenkins, 2016 USA[ ] La dolce vita - Federico Fellini’s ode to Rome presents a lush, vibrant exterior to the swinging city, before revealing its rotting moral core. - Directed by Federico Fellini, 1960 Italy, France[ ] Daughters of the Dust - Julie Dash’s visionary visual marriage between Afrocentric aesthetics and the rich emotional depth of Black - 1991 USA, womanhood is a cinematic triumph.[ ] Casablanca - Ingrid Bergman rallies Humphrey Bogart’s embittered cynic to the anti-Nazi cause in this classic romance. - Directed by Michael Curtiz, 1942 USA[ ] GoodFellas - The dizzying story of wiseguy Henry Hill, from his seduction into a life of crime to his paranoid, cocaine-fuelled departure. - Directed by Martin Scorsese, 1990 USA[ ] The Third Man - Joseph Cotten chases Orson Welles’s agent of corruption through the ruins of divided post-war Vienna in this evocative classic thriller. - Directed by Carol Reed, 1949 United Kingdom[ ] Touki Bouki - A restless young couple dream of escaping Senegal for Paris in Djibril Diop Mambéty ’s stylish, poetic, irreverent expression of post-colonial fantasies. - Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973 Senegal[ ] The Gleaners and I - Agnès Varda’s essay portrait of society ’s scavenger-recyclers – herself included – is both free-radical and infectious. - Directed by Agnès Varda, 2000 France[ ] La Jetée - The rare short film in this list, Marker’s dazzling photo montage ruminates on memory from beyond the apocalypse. - Directed by Chris Marker, 1962 France[ ] Andrei Rublev - Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic portrait of a medieval artist may be the most wrenching depiction of belief, creativity and the search for meaning ever filmed. - Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966 USSR[x] Metropolis - Fritz Lang’s bombastic, stylised depiction of a future of profound inequality has influenced generations of genre filmmakers. - Directed by Fritz Lang, 1927 Germany[ ] The Red Shoes - The feverish Technicolor and astonishing ballet sequences for which this film is so renowned are as spellbinding as they are disturbing. - Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1948 United Kingdom[x] My Neighbour Totoro - The storytelling is as simple as Totoro is inscrutable, unfolding in a series of delightful, exquisitely constructed sequences. - Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 1988 Japan[ ] Journey to Italy - Roberto Rossellini’s plaintively simple portrait of a marriage on the rocks, imprinted with the ghosts of love, cultures and civilisations. - Directed by Roberto Rossellini, 1954 Italy, France[ ] L'avventura - Michelangelo Antonioni’s high-modernist breakthrough sends Monica Vitti in search less of her disappeared friend than her own self, via images to get lost in. - Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 Italy, France[ ] Imitation of Life - Douglas Sirk’s melodrama holds a mirror to the hypocrisies of 1950s America with its pairs of mothers and daughters across class and racial divides. - Directed by Douglas Sirk, 1959 USA[ ] Sansho the Bailiff - Kenji Mizoguchi’s tragic folk saga of the tribulations of an exiled governor’s family in feudal Japan, tracked with exquisitely moving camerawork. - Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954 Japan[ ] Spirited Away - Hayao Miyazaki’s rich anime fantasy follows its ten-year-old heroine into the labyrinth of a spirit-world bathhouse, teeming with phantoms and peril. - Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 2001 Japan[ ] Sátántangó - As timely as ever in its grim poeticisation of demagogues and doom, helplessness and hope. If music be the food of death, play on. - Directed by Béla Tarr, 1994 Hungary, Germany, Switzerland[ ] A Brighter Summer Day - Young love and teen delinquency in Taiwan’s early 1960s adolescence, in Edward Yang’s slow-burn, bittersweet epic. - Directed by Edward Yang, 1991 Taiwan[ ] Céline and Julie Go Boating - Jacques Rivette’s most playful, innovative frolic, in which his irreverent Parisian heroines dissolve worlds, genres, social codes and boundaries. - Directed by Jacques Rivette, 1974 France[ ] Sunset Blvd. - Tinseltown’s greatest self-satire, a gothic requiem for big-screen bygones and the highs of screen stardom. - Directed by Billy Wilder, 1950 USA[ ] Modern Times - Industrial modernity proves mercilessly madcap in Charlie Chaplin’s final (mostly) silent feature, one of the most inspired and ingenious of all his comedies. - Directed by Charles Chaplin, 1936 USA[ ] A Matter of Life and Death - Love is rescued from the jaws of the afterlife in the Archers’ delirious World War II air-pilot fantasia. - Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1946 United Kingdom[ ] Histoire(s) du Cinéma - The apotheosis of Jean-Luc Godard’s experimental era, this sprawling essay film indicts the 20th century through its most popular medium. - Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1988 France, Switzerland[x] Pierrot le fou - Jean-Luc Godard’s most effervescent escapade, a primary-coloured lovers-on-the-run blow-out heading south with Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo. - Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1965 France, Italy[ ] The Spirit of the Beehive - Victor Erice’s exquisite impressionistic distillation of childhood fear and wonder in the ruins of the recently ended Spanish Civil War. - Directed by Víctor Erice, 1973 Spain[ ] Blue Velvet - David Lynch’s adult fairytale follows teen sleuth Kyle MacLachlan’s murder inquiry into the surreal, perverse corners of small-town America. - Directed by David Lynch, 1986 USA[ ] CHUNGKING EXPRESS - A sense of wistful, romantic longing joins the two stories in Wong Kar Wai’s freewheeling portmanteau portrait of Hong Kong. - Directed by Wong Kar Wai, 1994 Hong Kong[x] The Shining - Stanley Kubrick’s much analysed and often spoofed psychological horror spends a chilling and claustrophobic winter at the empty Overlook Hotel. - Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1980 USA, United Kingdom[ ] Madame de... - Max Ophuls’ woozy whirligig tracks a pair of unwanted earrings around high-society Paris – until they bear the weight of lost time and passion. - Directed by Max Ophuls, 1953 France, Italy[ ] The Leopard - Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous epic portrays the fall of 19th-century Sicilian nobility, its decadent displays of wealth tinged with melancholy. - Directed by Luchino Visconti, 1963 Italy, France[ ] Ugetsu Monogatari - Kenji Mizoguchi’s bewitching, insinuating Edo-period ghost story renders civil war as a parable of heedless male greed. - Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953 Japan[ ] Yi Yi - Urban anomie and multi-generational growing pains are given rich, relaxed expression in Edward Yang’s heartfelt Taipei family tapestry. - Directed by Edward Yang, 1999 Taiwan, Japan[x] Parasite - Like Get Out, Bong Joon Ho’s endlessly twisty, blackly sincere class-war thriller is a pop provocation for our unequal times. - Directed by Bong Joon-ho, 2019 Republic of Korea[x] Get Out - A poster film for Black Lives Matter, Jordan Peele’s horror-satire of white vampirism gleefully needles America’s racial malaise. - Directed by Jordan Peele, 2017 USA, Japan[ ] Tropical Malady - A work that defies straightforward understanding and suggests understandability may be overrated. - Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004 France, Thailand, Germany, Italy, Switzerland[ ] Black Girl - Ousmane Sembène lifts the mask on France’s racist post-colonial relationship with Senegal in his small yet commanding feature debut. - Directed by Ousmane Sembène, 1965 Senegal, France[ ] The General - Buster Keaton’s most lavish production and his warmest, bringing together a boy, a girl and a train amid the maelstrom of the US Civil War. - Directed by Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman, 1926 USA[ ] A Man Escaped - This prison-break study is Robert Bresson at his most starkly essential: a man, four walls, his ingenuity and the mysterious inflections of fate. - Directed by Robert Bresson, 1956 France[ ] Once upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone’s operatic widescreen elegy to the old American West, with the forces of corporate capitalism coming down the railroad. - Directed by Sergio Leone, 1968 Italy, USA