Perhaps they're running out of lists to find. Next year Sight and Sound's once a decade poll of the ten best films of all time is going to be updated and it's one of those monumental milestones in film canonization. There may be some significant changes, even in the top ten come next year's updates, so perhaps 2011's list is the calm before the storm.
One of the gripes often made by even the makers of the list is that it relies far too heavily on lists and polls from the US and Europe leaving the majority of Asian cinema, and those down in Australia and Africa somewhat neglected. This does pose a bit of a problem even if anyone from anywhere can theoretically select any film from anywhere for a greatest film list, but based on my own local preference I can imagine the troubles when that gets magnified a thousand times over.
My first encounter with the list was probably somewhere around 2005-6. Someone posted on a film site asking how many films from the top 100 we needed to see. I outdorked myself (not the first time trust me) and found I had already seen the top 100. I went on further in the list and went until about 193 before I found a film I hadn't seen yet, which was Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore which has since if you refer to my 70s post quickly became one of my favorites. While beefing up my films to look for list, I went through the rest of the list one lazy day and found I needed to see over two hundred films from the list, quite a daunting task. Sporadically for the next few months/year I watched what I could without focusing too intently on the list, after all with that many films to see it wasn't exactly a weekend marathon that could complete things.
Then came the end of 2007 when I ventured into my quest to see every film from my top 20 favorite directors. It was a grueling several month long quest with 20 individual stops some lasting longer than others but at the end I realized what a singular purpose could accomplish. Then in January of 2008 the list was updated in rather grand fashion, I wrote down what I needed to see and decided this list would be my next objective. By this point the number of total films to see was whittled down quite a bit, but was far from a short list. Thanks in large part to Facets I went through the films I needed to see chronologically, from such pictures as Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim to Harmony Korine's Gummo. Along the way two films slipped through the cracks.
The Always Elusive
Truth be told more films slipped through the cracks but at various times I was able to see those. Yet two remained, and still remain elusive. The first was Stan Brakhage's The Art of Vision. Now there have been a few series of his films shown at Doc Films over the past couple years, and two different anthologies of his work released by the Criterion collection. In all I've easily seen more Brakhage films than any director ever, yet The Art of Vision is not one of those. Now from the research I've done it appears that The Art of Vision was a re-edit of Dog Star Man, perhaps the most seminal film from Stan Brakhage. They're both listed as the same year, but I've reason to believe they're two different films rather than two titles for the same picture. So although I've seen Dog Star Man, I can't quite technically say I've seen Art of Vision. For shame this one remains as elusive as ever. I'm still amazed any Brakhage is available on DVD so I shouldn't complain too much but how the hell did enough people see this for it to get on the top 1000, and not just that it's ALWAYS been on the top 1000, no matter how many updates it never seems to leave. Thorn in my side number one.
The other film is one that I did have an opportunity to see but wound up out of state that particular weekend. That film is Jacques Rivette's Out 1: Spectre. Roughly four hours and some change (Art of Vision is also a bit of an epic) it is actually a smaller condensed version of a much more epic film called simply Out 1. Now one glorious weekend in 2007 I watched all 12 hours of Out 1 during it's one and as far as I can tell only screening in the city of Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Two weeks later was the scheduling of Out 1: Spectre which of course had no makeup screening. So I can say I saw a rough cut or an extremely extended cut of the film and all the footage therein, but it's apparently re-edited in a way that makes it seem like a completely different film, at least according to pretentious people who believe the film has a plot to begin with. This one I feel a little more inclined to say "technically I've seen it", but well not under that title. Ironically bit torrent files exist for the 12 hour version which was THE most difficult to find film for decades, but nothing seems to be circulating for the four hour version, who knows?
Class of 2011
These two I check each year and see them slip a little on the list but hold their ground and no at least for one more year they remain on top of my list of films to look for. Of the 38 new films added this year I discovered only three were new for me, and by that I mean 1. For some reason I mistook The Amazing Transparent Man with The Incredible Shrinking Man. By title this mistake is genuine but anyone who knows of the quality between the two films couldn't begin to fathom such a grievous error being made. I figured even if I HAD seen The Incredible Shrinking Man before I clearly didn't remember it enough so watching it again couldn't hurt, especially when the film is a mere 80 minutes long. So I found it nice and quick and watched it last night. When you get over the limitations of it's genre, with extremely corny and predictable dialogue and characters, horribly over the top music that feels like being hit in the head repeatedly with a frying pan, and cheesy special effects that may or may not have been cutting edge at the time the film is a masterpiece. You can forgive simple lines and laughable relationships in a 50s film because you come to expect it, however there is no way a film could get away with that in today's day and age. The film at times is your cold war radiation monster film, but instead it deals with a lot of potent themes of the time and today for that matter. You can make allegories all you want for him being a "shrinking man" just as you can say all you want about a fear of feminism in the Attack of the 50ft Woman. The last half hour of the film, which makes a basement seem like the most terrifying place on the planet is horror filmmaking at it's absolute best with arguably the most gruesome, nerve wrecking, and downright terrifying man vs. creature fight ever. When looking for a little cheese, do yourself a favor and hunt this one out.
Also on the list was Anthony Mann's Bend of the River. Now I was somewhat shocked to find this film was on the list last year, the year before that, etc. I even have the film on DVD and meant to watch it one day, but never put any priority to it meanwhile not realizing it was on my list and had been for quite some time. I've adored pretty much all the Mann-James Stewart Western's I've seen and perhaps I was savoring them too much by putting off watching the last few remaining. Well that ended a couple hours ago when I watched this film at long last. I kicked myself a bit because the film featured Julia Adams in it's cast, yes the same Julia Adams from Creature from the Black Lagoon, arguably the most attractive scream queen of all time. She also happened to have been burdened by a rather bad Universal contract that kept her from making hardly any films of note. However this film made two years prior is worth hunting out for Creature fans longing to see Adams in anything worthwhile. Granted there's a lot less one piece swimsuits in this film, but you can't expect much else in a Western shot around Portland. Stewart is again a somewhat morally suspect anti-hero who nearly reluctantly is goaded into doing right usually by being contrasted with someone even worse. Far greater minds than mine have examined the Mann-Stewart Westerns ad-nauseam so I'll just refrain and say it's a great Western for people who don't like Westerns to watch.
The one true new addition to the list that I needed to see was one of those "aw hell" films. Not because I didn't want to see it, but because I already had the film and was planning on watching it because it was on another list I was working on, in this case Film Comment's 150 best of the decade list. That film was Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris 1871). Like the Mann-Stewart Westerns I've made a point to savor Watkins work. I first encountered his films when his Punishment Park was recommended in the Village Voice film guide. I was completely blown away with the pseudo-documentary style, the highly political subject matter and the overreaching belief that "this could happen". More of his films were luckily available at the time and I shortly afterward saw The Battle of Culoden, The War Game, and Privilege. Only the first film was truly a "documentary" which borrowed from modern day recreation techniques so it is far from simply a talking head documentary, much like the style employed in La Commune. This film which totals a mere 6 hours in length is about the self governing Commune set up in Paris following the defeat during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. This was the first true socialist government set up in the modern world and was an experiment doomed to failure. Rather than tell it's tale conventionally, Watkins built sets, cast actors, encouraged them to do their own research and recreated the tumultuous times, employing many modern media techniques with his own on the scene news anchors covering the anarchy much like CNN would today. It's a wonderful mix that makes it nearly impossible to define yet proves once again why Watkins films are so special and why I wanted to space out his work as much as I could to savor and enjoy each individual film.
So I'd figure I'd let you know where the list stands, still 998, damn bastards but a whole lot less work to catch up this time around. I can scarcely recommend a better consensus list to work on if you're looking for a year long film project.
Up next . . .
I've toyed with the idea of expanding the 90s list to 11-50, no great explanations just extra recommendations.
Research has begun for the 2000s list and boy there's a lot where that came from.
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