Carlos Losilla

Film critic
Spain

Voted for

FilmYearDirector
An Affair to Remember1957Leo McCarey
Red Desert1964Michelangelo Antonioni
DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT1971François Truffaut
Inland Empire2006David Lynch
The Deer Hunter1978Michael Cimino
Le Mépris1963Jean-Luc Godard
Rio Bravo1958Howard Hawks
Cat People1943Jacques Tourneur
The Band Wagon1953Vincente Minnelli
Sans soleil1982Chris Marker

Comments

An Affair to Remember

1957 USA

Despite the scope and color, this may be the most austere movie in film history, a true example of "transcendental style".

Red Desert

1964 Italy, France

A film made of colours and volumes, rhythms and forms. Abstract cinema in its purest form.

DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT

1971 France

Literature as part of cinema. An elegy to life and love and the passing of time.

Inland Empire

2006 USA, France, Poland

The last great picture before the ultimate crisis of cinema. Image on the border of itself.

The Deer Hunter

1978 USA

A synthesis of the New Hollywood of the 70s, but also the definitive epic American movie, beyond Ford, Hawks, Vidor and Peckinpah.

Le Mépris

1963 France, Italy

A film by Godard but also by Fritz Lang. And also, for colours and shots, by Vincente Minnelli and Nicholas Ray. Furthermore, Rossellini got angry with Godard and accused him of imitating Antonioni. Rien ne va plus. The last of the classic films or the first of the very moderns?

Rio Bravo

1958 USA

More than the best of westerns: a camera work, a treatise about moving and stillness, almost a geometrical study of space and bodies.

Cat People

1943 USA

The denial of classical cinema made in the middle of classical cinema. A film about void and absence made of holes and ellipsis.

The Band Wagon

1953 USA

If the musical genre is the essence of cinema, this film is the essence of the genre: a fiction within a fiction, many dreams within a dream.

Sans soleil

1982 France

Not a documentary nor a fiction, this masterpiece creates a new genre: the stream of consciousness of images.

Further remarks

There are films and there are auteurs. This is a list of films, not of auteurs. And that is the reason why it does not include films by Ford, Preminger, Walsh, Ozu, Bergman or Garrel. There is no film by these auteurs better than the rest of their filmographies.

On the other hand, this list could be different tomorrow. There is no list that could entirely enclose the desire of cinema.