My picks for best feature year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll
Read the introduction for background & further explanation
This category is at once the most subjective and the least erratic - I would probably stand by most (though not all!) of these choices today, which is more than I can say for some of my other selections. Going with my gut, I treated the category more as a "favorite" than a "best" - that is to say, I gave enthusiasm the edge over admiration. The results reveal an eclectic taste, I guess - everything from animation to documentary to experimental, across four continents - but also a consistent sensibility. I like visceral cinema, movies that grab ahold of you via bold and inventive choices in camera, theme, character, and construction. As Sam Fuller says in Pierrot le fou (not featured below, though the quote will appear again elsewhere): "Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: emotion." That's true whether you're a psychologically tormented cross-dressing saint, a hardbitten yet sweetly naive streetwalker, a wittily wry and deeply pained playwright...or a brave little toaster.
Every title is accompanied by a single producing country (I chose one in the case of co-productions), the director (unless another participant has greater claim as auteur), and a genre assignation, debatable at best but included just for fun. And then there's the image, usually a screen-cap - for this category I chose pictures to represent the wide range of cinematic expression: from close-up to wide shot, distilling the luminosity of a face or the sweep of an evocative landscape.
Do you know these films? If so, share your own thoughts below. If not, check out the links below, which lead to any relevant posts (be they essays, visual tributes, or video clips) featured on this very blog. Get ready to explore, but with fair warning: there be dragons...
Feature
La Roue
(France, dir. Abel Gance)
•drama
Die Nibelungen
(Germany, dir. Fritz Lang)
•adventure
The Gold Rush
(USA, dir. Charles Chaplin)
•comedy
Faust
(Germany, dir. F.W. Murnau)
•horror
Sunrise
(USA, dir. F.W. Murnau)
•drama
The Passion of Joan of Arc
(France, dir. Carl Th. Dreyer)
•drama
The Man with the Movie Camera
(USSR, dir. Dziga Vertov)
•avant-garde
The Blood of a Poet
(France, dir. Jean Cocteau)
•avant-garde
The Public Enemy
(USA, dir. William Wellman)
•gangster
Scarface
(USA, dir. Howard Hawks)
•gangster
42nd Street
(USA, dir. Lloyd Bacon/chor. Busby Berkeley)
•musical
It's a Gift
(USA, dir. Norman McLeod)
•comedy
The Bride of Frankenstein
(USA, dir. James Whale)
•horror
Dodsworth
(USA, dir. William Wyler)
•drama
Make Way for Tomorrow
(USA, dir. Leo McCarey)
•drama
The Adventures of Robin Hood
(USA, dir. Michael Curtiz/William Keighley)
•adventure
Young Mr. Lincoln
(USA, dir. John Ford)
•drama
Pinocchio
(USA, prod. Walt Disney)
•animation
Citizen Kane
(USA, dir. Orson Welles)
•drama
Casablanca
(USA, dir. Michael Curtiz)
•adventure
Day of Wrath
(Denmark, dir. Carl Th. Dreyer)
•drama
Murder, My Sweet
(USA, dir. Edward Dmytryk)
•noir
Brief Encounter
(UK, dir. David Lean)
•drama
It's a Wonderful Life
(USA, dir. Frank Capra)
•drama
Kiss of Death
(USA, dir. Henry Hathaway)
•noir
Bicycle Thieves
(Italy, dir. Vittorio De Sica)
•drama
The Third Man
(UK, dir. Carol Reed)
•noir
In a Lonely Place
(USA, dir. Nicholas Ray)
•noir
The River
(UK, dir. Jean Renoir)
•drama
Singin' in the Rain
(USA, dir. Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)
•musical
Ugetsu
(Japan, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
•drama
On the Waterfront
(USA, dir. Elia Kazan)
•drama
Pather Panchali
(India, dir. Satyajit Ray)
•drama
The Searchers
(USA, dir. John Ford)
•western
The Nights of Cabiria
(Italy, dir. Federico Fellini)
•drama
Vertigo
(USA, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
•thriller
The World of Apu
(India, dir. Satyajit Ray)
•drama
The Virgin Spring
(Sweden, dir. Ingmar Bergman)
•drama
Through a Glass Darkly
(Sweden, dir. Ingmar Bergman)
•drama
Lawrence of Arabia
(UK, dir. David Lean)
•adventure
This Sporting Life
(UK, dir. Lindsay Anderson)
•drama
Band of Outsiders
(France, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
•comedy
Fists in the Pocket
(France, dir. Marco Bellocchio)
•drama
Masculin Feminin
(France, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
•drama
Miraculous Virgin
(Czechoslovakia, dir. Stefan Uher)
•drama
Rosemary's Baby
(USA, dir. Roman Polanski)
•horror
Civilisation
(UK, hos. Kenneth Clark)
•documentary
Gimme Shelter
(USA, dir. Albert & David Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin)
•documentary
Out 1
(France, dir. Jacques Rivette)
•thriller
The Godfather
(USA, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
•gangster
The Mother and the Whore
(France, dir. Jean Eustache)
•drama
The Godfather Part II
(USA, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
•gangster
Barry Lyndon
(UK, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
•drama
Taxi Driver
(USA, dir. Martin Scorsese)
•thriller
Star Wars
(USA, dir. George Lucas)
•sci-fi
A Walk Through H
(UK, dir. Peter Greenaway)
•avant-garde
Stalker
(USSR, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
•sci-fi
Raging Bull
(USA, dir. Martin Scorsese)
•drama
My Dinner With Andre
(USA, dir. Louis Malle)
•drama
The Verdict
(USA, dir. Sidney Lumet)
•thriller
Scarface
(USA, dir. Brian De Palma)
•gangster
Heimat
(West Germany, dir. Edgar Reitz)
•drama
Shoah
(France, dir. Claude Lanzmann)
•documentary
God's Country
(USA, dir. Louis Malle)
•documentary
The Brave Little Toaster
(USA, dir. Jerry Rees)
•animation
Dekalog
(Poland, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski)
•drama
For All Mankind
(USA, dir. Al Reinart)
•documentary
Goodfellas
(USA, dir. Martin Scorsese)
•gangster
JFK
(USA, dir. Oliver Stone)
•thriller
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
(USA, dir. David Lynch)
•horror
Schindler's List
(USA, dir. Steven Spielberg)
•drama
Satantango
(Hungary, dir. Bela Tarr)
•drama
La Haine
(France, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz)
•thriller
Secrets & Lies
(UK, dir. Mike Leigh)
•comedy
End of Evangelion
(Japan, dir. Hideaki Anno)
•animation
The Big Lebowski
(USA, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
•comedy
The Virgin Suicides
(USA, dir. Sofia Coppola)
•drama
Platform
(China, dir. Zhangke Jia)
•drama
Mulholland Dr.
(USA, dir. David Lynch)
•thriller
Bus 174
(Brazil, dir. Jose Padhila)
•documentary
Los Angeles Plays Itself
(USA, dir. Thom Andersen)
•documentary
2046
(Hong Kong, dir. Kar Wai Wong)
•sci-fi
Grizzly Man
(USA, dir. Werner Herzog)
•documentary
Syndromes and a Century
(Thailand, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
•drama
No Country for Old Men
(USA, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
•thriller
Historias Extraordinarias
(Argentina, dir. Mariano Llinas)
•adventure
Antichrist
(Denmark, dir. Lars Von Trier)
•horror
And Everything is Going Fine
(USA, dir. Steven Soderbergh)
•documentary
The Story of Film
(UK, dir. Mark Cousins)
•documentary
It's Such a Beautiful Day
(USA, dir. Don Hertzfeldt)
•animation
•
Explore these films on Lost in the Movies:
Additionally, 57 of my Best Features are featured alongside brief capsules in:
5 comments:
I haven't seen nearly enough to confidently place a ballot for a particular year, but I loved reading along with the polls, and got a lot of films to put on my watchlist because of it. Your choices are very electric- cool to see Scarface (De Palma) and GoodFellas up there with the more obscure foreign picks.
Knowing that I have much to expand upon in every year, here would be my choices (with a * next to our overlaps and ... next to choices I really don't care for but won out of lack of competition)
1923: N/A
1924: The Thief of Bagdad
1925: The Gold Rush *
1926: The General (going off IMDb date)
1927: Sunrise *
1928: The Passion of Joan of Arc *
1929: The Man with a Movie Camera *
1930: N/A
1931: City Lights
1932: Scarface *
1933: Woman of Tokyo
1934: A Story of Floating Weeds
1935: The 39 Steps
1936: Modern Times
1937: Make Way for Tomorrow *
1938: Bringing Up Baby…
1939: The Rules of the Game
1940: The Grapes of Wrath
1941: Citizen Kane *
1942: Casablanca *
1943: N/A
1944: Double Indemnity
1945: N/A
1946: The Best Years of Our Lives
1947: N/A
1948: Letter from an Unknown Woman
1949: Late Spring
1950: The Flowers of St. Francis
1951: A Streetcar Named Desire
1952: High Noon
1953: Tokyo Story
1954: On the Waterfront * (with special mentions to Rear Window and Sansho the Bailiff)
1955: Kiss Me Deadly
1956: The Killing
1957: 12 Angry Men
1958: Vertigo *
1959: Pickpocket (special mentions to Hiroshima Mon Amour)
1960: The Apartment
1961: West Side Story…
1962: Vivre Sa Vie
1963: Le mepris
1964: Dr. Strangelove…
1965: Pierrot le Fou
1966: Masculin Feminin
1967: Playtime (special mentions to Le Samurai)
1968: Once Upon a Time in the West
1969: The Wild Bunch
1970: Claire’s Knee
1971: The French Connection
1972: The Godfather *
1973: Mean Streets
1974: A Woman Under the Influence
1975: Mirror
1976: Taxi Driver *
1977: Star Wars… *
1978: Days of Heaven (special mentions to The Driver)
1979: Killer of Sheep
1980: Raging Bull *
1981: Thief (which is coming to Criterion!)
1982: E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial *
1983: Scarface *
1984: The Terminator
1985: After Hours
1986: Blue Velvet
1987: Where is the Friend’s Home?
1988: Colors…
1989: A City of Sadness
1990: Days of Being Wild (special mention to Goodfellas)
1991: Barton Fink
1992: Bad Lieutenant (special mentions to Life… And Nothing More The Last of the Mohicans)
1993: Jurassic Park (special mentions to Naked)
1994: Chungking Express
1995: Heat (special mentions to Casino and La haine)
1996: A Moment of Innocence
1997: Titanic
1998: The Thin Red Line
1999: The Insider
2000: Werckmeister Harmonies
2001: Mulholland Drive *
2002: Far From Heaven
2003: Lost in Translation
2004: Collateral
2005: A History of Violence
2006: Syndromes and a Century *
2007: Zodiac (special mentions to No Country for Old Men)
2008: Hunger
2009: My Son My Son What Have Ye Done…
2010: Restrepo
2011: Oslo, August 31 (special mentions to The Tree of Life and Rampart)
2012: Holy Motors
Overall I'm pretty happy about most of these. But many are subject to change once I've seen more.
Love the early part of your list - many of these would actually be my runners-up (on Saturday I'm posting, along with a simpler list of the remaining categories, my various honorable mentions, runners-up, and close calls). In later years, there's actually a ton I haven't seen - as I said in my intro, from the 80s on I'm not nearly as comfortable with my veiwing reach as in earlier years but, well, I voted anyway because that's the fun of it right? ;)
to wit, these are the ones I haven't seen: Woman of Tokyo, Thief, Where is the Friend's Home, City of Sadness, Barton Fink, Bad Lieutenant, A Moment of Innocence, Werckmeister Harmonies, and all of the films from 2008 on (except for Restrepo).
Of your picks, the ones that probably came closest to getting awarded (and indeed, some of these did win in the directing category) are probably The Thief of Bagdad, The Best Years of Our Lives, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Late Spring, Claire's Knee, Mirror, Lost in Translation. Interesting to see you place Titanic so highly; it gets knocked about a lot now but I haven't seen it since it's theatrical release (I liked it then).
I'd feel a lot safer starting with my earliest memory of being in the theater... which happens to be 1995 at age 3, than I do starting with 1923 where I honestly was not around with the opportunity to see every movie at the time and as such would be very biased...
1995: Heat
1996: Sling Blade
1997: Boogie Nights
1998: The Big Lebowski
1999: Fight Club
2000: In the Mood for Love (with acknowledgement towards Requiem for a Dream)
2001: Mulholland Drive (with acknowledgement towards The Royal Tenenbaums)
2002: City of God
2003: Dogville
2004: Collateral
2005: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
2006: The Host
2007: No Country for Old Men
2008: Love Exposure
2009: A Serious Man
2010: The Social Network
2011: The Tree of Life
2012: The Master
Interestingly, this list aligns more closely with my directors list (which appears Friday) than with my Feature list. Still haven't seen Sling Blade or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Do you prefer the latter film to Oldboy, out of curiosity?
It's honestly a bit hard to figure out which of the three I prefer, but when I have a gun put to my head... my vote will more likely than not go to Lady Vengeance indeed. It happens to be the most avant-garde of the two and as such there is more emotional weight elicited through its cinematic techniques.
I do find Oldboy to have the better script, though.
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