Barrett Hodsdon

Film Scholar /Author/Researcher
Australia

Voted for

FilmYearDirector
Die NIBELUNGEN 1 TEIL: SIEGFRIED1924Fritz Lang
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans1927F.W. Murnau
Man with a Movie Camera1929Dziga Vertov
The Scarlet Empress1934Josef von Sternberg
White Heat1949Raoul Walsh
Madame de...1953Max Ophuls
Imitation of Life1959Douglas Sirk
Psycho1960Alfred Hitchcock
Persona1966Ingmar Bergman
Au hasard Balthazar1966Robert Bresson

Comments

Die NIBELUNGEN 1 TEIL: SIEGFRIED

1924 Germany

Early model of monumental mythic drama of extreme static intensity.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

1927 USA

Summation of a pure poetic mode of silent narrative imagery.

Man with a Movie Camera

1929 Ukrainian SSR, USSR

Precursor case of the filmic investigation of everyday reality replete with the pleasure of curiosity and reflexivity.

The Scarlet Empress

1934 USA

Deification of the star image via Dietrich's ecstatic triumphalism.

White Heat

1949 USA

A genre apotheosis through the vigour of Cagney's exultant performance via a fable of gangster annihilation,

Madame de...

1953 France, Italy

The peak of elegance of camera mobility, precision, and subtle density,

Imitation of Life

1959 USA

A synthesis of 1950s America's social tensions through masterful fusion of tragedy, full-blown melodrama and ironic undercurrent.

Psycho

1960 USA

The zenith of narrative manipulation and audience assault as a challenge to prevailing censorship.

Persona

1966 Sweden

A masterwork of 1960s modernists and intense self-reflection, as well as probing formal reflexivity.

Au hasard Balthazar

1966 France, Sweden

The reverse of Disneyfication: a parable of animal sacrifice and the price of human foibles.

Further remarks

NUMBER 11

I have one addition to at least cover the avant-garde, Michael Snow's La Région Centrale (1971), which is outside the mainstream arena.

An hallucinatory exercise of the limits of camera perception tolerance.

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FURTHER COMMENTS

The term "greatest films" embraces a spectrum of possible definitions. I have chosen moments of high expressivity cum innovation, mapping a chronological path to 1970. After this date and the dissolution of filmic classicism, cinema is subject to ever increasing global dispersion and experimentation alongside commercial confinement.