French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma have compiled a list of the 100 greatest films of all time.
It is published this month in an illustrated book and was put together by 76 French film directors, critics and industry executives.
Here are the 100 films:
- Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
- The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
- The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
- Sunrise – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
- M – Fritz Lang
- Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
- Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
- Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
- The Searchers – John Ford
- Greed – Erich von Stroheim
- Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
- To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
- Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
- Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
- Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
- City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
- The General – Buster Keaton
- Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
- Freaks – Tod Browning
- Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
- The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
- The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
- The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
- Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
- The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
- Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
- Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
- The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
- Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
- Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
- Pleasure – Max Ophüls
- The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
- The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
- Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
- Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
- Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
- The Wind – Victor Sjöström
- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
- Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
- The Crowd – King Vidor
- 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
- La Jetée – Chris Marker
- Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
- Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
- Amarcord – Federico Fellini
- Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
- Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
- Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
- Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
- King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
- Laura – Otto Preminger
- The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
- The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
- La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
- The Dead – John Huston
- Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
- It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
- Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
- The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
- À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
- Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
- Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
- La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
- Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
- A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
- Playtime – Jacques Tati
- Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
- Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
- Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
- Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
- An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
- Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
- The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
- Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
- Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
- The Party – Blake Edwards
- Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
- A Star Is Born – George Cukor
- Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
- America, America – Elia Kazan
- El – Luis Buñuel
- Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
- Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
- Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
- Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
- Lola – Jacques Demy
- Manhattan – Woody Allen
- Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
- My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
- Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
- The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
- Scarface – Howard Hawks
- Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
- Napoléon – Abel Gance
The reaction from some outlets in this country is surprise that there are no British films on the list.
The Telegraph say:
The list in the publication Les Cahiers du Cinema features films from the USA, Germany, Russia, Italy and Sweden but there is no place for some of the biggest British directors including David Lean, Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway.
British-born Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin are both mentioned but only for the movies that they made in Hollywood.
The nearest the British cinema industry comes to a mention is the 17th (equal) place given to 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968, by the American director, Stanley Kubrick, partly with British money and with British technicians.
The 1962 classic Lawrence of Arabia came seventh in a recent list of the best 100 movies drawn up by the American Film Institute in Hollywood but is perhaps the highest profile omission.
Jean-Michel Frodon, the editor of Les Cahiers du Cinema, has pointed out that the lack of British-made films was “striking” but not part of any Gallic conspiracy:
“It does not reflect an anti-British bias. It is simply the result of the individual choices of 76 people in the French industry. Each was asked to name their 100 best films and this was the result.
Yes, it is surprising, maybe, that there is no Lawrence of Arabia, or no film by Ken Loach or Stephen Frears (The Queen).
But there are many other national film industries which are also missing. There are no Brazilian films, for instance.”
Some British films that should have made the list would surely include:
That said, if you were to ask me what are the truly great British films of the last 20 years, then I would struggle to come up with one.
In May 1957 a former editor of Cahiers (and later director) Francois Truffaut once remarked:
“The British cinema is made of dullness and reflects a submissive lifestyle, where enthusiasm, warmth, and zest are nipped in the bud. A film is a born loser just because it is English.“
Maybe nothing has changed in 50 years.
> The Telegraph on the list
> Official site for Cahiers du Cinema
> Geoffrey MacNab of The Guardian in 2001 on Cahiers du Cinema