Kenji's Canon: THE BIG 1000
by Kenji
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Just my personal 1000 favourites, including some TV programmes. Yes, many popular and famous films are missing. Most films here are not in English but that simply reflects the reality of film-making worldwide.
Near misses:
A Trip to the Moon (Melies),
Westinghouse Works (Bitzer),
The Land Beyond the Sunset (Shaw),
Cabiria (Pastrone),
A Child of the Big City (Bauer),
The Cheat (De Mille),
Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Bauer),
Broken Blossoms (Griffith),
The Phantom Carriage (Sjostrom),
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Dulac),
A Woman of Paris (Chaplin),
Die Nibelungen (Lang),
The Fall of the House of Usher (Epstein),
The Little Match Girl (Renoir),
Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst),
The Love Parade (Lubitsch),
Working on the Douro River (Oliveira),
Light Penetrates the Dark (Vavra, Pilat),
Night of the Crossroads (Renoir),
Que Viva Mexico (Eisenstein),
Every Night Dreams (Naruse),
The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (Donskoi),
Ministry of Fear (Lang),
It Always Rains on Sunday (Hamer),
They Made Me a Fugitive (Cavalcanti),
Force of Evil (Polonsky),
The Pirate (Minnelli),
Portrait of Jennie (Dieterle),
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson).
The Lady of Musashino (Mizoguchi),
El (Bunuel),
French Can Can (Renoir),
Toute la Mémoire du Monde (Resnais),
The Lovers (Malle),
The Magician (Bergman),
Spartacus (Kubrick),
El Cid (Mann),
Carnival of Souls (Harvey),
Electra (Cacoyannis),
The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford),
Raven’s End (Widerberg).
She and He (Hani),
Diamonds of the Night (Nemec),
Hamlet (Kozintsev),
Genevieve (Brault),
Go! Go! Go! (Menken),
The Train (Frankenheimer),
Alphaville (Godard),
Ashes (Wajda),
Chimes at Midnight (Welles),
Boniface’s Holiday (Khitruk),
Father (Szabo),
The Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec),
Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg),
Le Samourai (Melville),
The White Bus (Anderson),
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Straub, Huillet),
Silence and Cry (Jancso),
I Was Nineteen (Wolf),
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger),
The Spider’s Stratagem (Bertolucci),
Walkabout (Roeg),
Maya Darpan (Shahani),
Our Lady of the Sphere (Jordan),
Papillon (Schaffner),
Three Days of the Condor (Pollack),
Invisible Adversaries (Export),
Providence (Resnais),
Les Mains Négatives (Duras),
Black Jack (Loach),
Vengeance is Mine (Imamura),
The Aviator’s Wife (Rohmer),
Rhythm of a Crime (Tadic),
Mind of Clay (Kaul),
From the Pole to the Equator (Gianikian, Lucchi),
The Dead (Huston),
Wedding in Galilee (Khleifi),
Alice (Svankmajer),
Prospero’s Books (Greenaway),
A Sense of History (Leigh),
Darkness in Tallinn (Jarvilaturi),
Exotica (Egoyan),
The Last Seduction (Dahl),
Foreign Land (Salles, Thomas),
The Ice Storm (Lee)
An Autumn Tale (Rohmer),
The Apple (S.Makhmalbaf),
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick),
Chunhyang (Im),
Mourning Rock (Koutsaftis),
Suzhou River (Lou),
Monday Morning (Iosseliani),
Pistol Opera (Suzuki),
The Magdalene Sisters (Mullan),
Rabbit-Proof Fence (Noyce),
Russian Ark (Sokurov),
Eldra (Lyn),
Downfall (Hirschbiegel),
The Incredibles (Bird),
2046 (Wong),
The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog),
Separado! (Goch, Rhys),
Cobra Gypsies (Treza),
Captain Fantastic (Ross),
Handmaiden (Park),
Hell or High Water (Mackenzie),
I Am Not Your Negro (Peck),
A Quiet Passion (Davies).
and TV Series
The Blue Planet,
Morecambe and Wise,
Top Cat,
Porridge,
Midsomer Murders,
Cheers,
Boys from the Blackstuff,
I Claudius,
The Nazis: A Warning from History,
Red Dwarf,
Only Fools and Horses.
~
Some famous films not included:
Birth of a Nation,
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,
Greed,
Un Chien Andalou,
The Blue Angel,
Triumph of the Will,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
Gone with the Wind,
Stagecoach,
The Wizard of Oz,
His Girl Friday,
How Green Was My Valley,
Brief Encounter,
Rome Open City,
Ikiru,
On the Waterfront,
La Strada,
Cabiria Nights,
Wild Strawberries,
Rio Bravo,
Ben Hur,
Breathless,
Viridiana,
Yojimbo,
West Side Story,
Doctor Zhivago,
The Sound of Music,
Au Hasard Balthazar,
A Clockwork Orange,
Dirty Harry,
Cries and Whispers,
Amarcord,
The Exorcist,
A Woman under the Influence,
Jaws,
Nashville,
Rocky,
Taxi Driver,
Annie Hall,
Star Wars,
Alien,
E.T,
Gandhi,
The Terminator,
Shoah,
Die Hard,
Reservoir Dogs,
Unforgiven,
Jurassic Park,
Forrest Gump,
The Shawshank Redemption,
Se7en,
Trainspotting,
Life is Beautiful,
Titanic,
The Big Lebowski,
Saving Private Ryan,
Fight Club,
The Matrix,
Gladiator,
Yi Yi,
Amelie,
Lord of the Rings,
City of God,
Kill Bill,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Pan’s Labyrinth,
The Dark Knight,
Inception,
Amour.
~
Directors with most films included here:
Mizoguchi 13
Renoir 9
Hitchcock 9
Satyajit Ray 9
~
We didn’t have a TV till i was 12. My first memory of going to the cinema was Fantasia- my introduction to the devil and dinosaurs. Then there was a film called Emil and the Detectives. My small town’s cinema closed when i was 7- TV was too strong a competitor-, my sole memory of films there of “red Indians” on a hill. The bigger films were at the grand metropolis of the county town of 3,000 people 20 miles away, or an even greater city of a few thousand more in the other direction. How i wept when the childcatcher caught them in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the sky outside had changed, with castles hidden in the majestic domes of cumulo-nimbus. At 11, The Great Escape was the greatest adventure, at 12, El Cid. At 13, i joined the school film society. I gazed in awe at the naked female on a motorbike in Vanishing Point- more fun than that boring Wild Strawberries. In my mid teens, the best discoveries were North by Northwest and Fred Astaire. At uni, on a French course, my special subject was French Cinema of the 30s- Renoir and Pagnol.. but i really got obsessively hooked on world cinema once i’d bought a video player in the late 80s (ooh those Wenders road movies!) and John Kobal’s book The Top 100 Movies (see my list on that); Tarkovsky and Mizoguchi were new names to me. Soon i saw Andrei Rublev and the rain and light had changed. Then a few years on (less availability in those days) it was the turn of Sansho the Bailiff.
~
I’ve been asked to do a list of all my lists, but that would take time and anyway would get jumbled in with the others. So here are the ones i like or i think are most worthwhile:
Kenji’s Japanese Canon
My 101 Favourite Films
Pastel Films
The Labyrinth
The Kenji Awards
The Mubi/Auteurs World Cup Films (thanks to all who helped that groundbreaking event work)
The Welsh Connection
Mizoguchi Revered
Directors Round Mizoguchi
Le Cinéma, c’est Jean Renoir
Let there be Light: The Birth of Films
A Rosefinch Sang: the Czechoslovakian New Wave
19th Century Britain
Essential Films by Women
Portugal, Land of my Dreams
Satyajit Ray
A Library of Film Books
Essential French Films
The Silent Era: 1888-1929
The Best of British
Hidden Treasures
100 Directors’ Essential Films
500 Directors
Favourite Short Films
Essential Hitchcock
Essential Kubrick
Essential Godard
Tumbleweed and Tomahawks
The Caucasus
Spain: Mystery, Passion, Life
Canada: A Collection of Contraband Curiosities
Tarkovsky’s Legacy
Films Admired by Tarkovsky
Eric Rohmer
Alice Guy-Blaché, Queen of the Pioneers
An Exquisite Soirée at Baron Kenjitski’s Magnificent Chateau
Romanticism
Double Bills
Painters and Films
Mental Illness
Notable Films by Black Directors
Essential African Films
Essential Hungarian Films
Poland
Kazakhstan
Nepal
Belgium
They Do Not Exist: Palestine
Lesotho
Mali