A quarantine list: 250 of my favourite films
250 of my favourite films, put together just because. I have attempted to limit the list to one film per director, except in the cases where that proved impossible. This then is not ‘my top 250 films’ or anything but just 250 brilliant films, in no real order, and (hopefully) a way to highlight as many great directors as possible.
No real commentary, which would consist only of fawning and superlatives, just a few things about the list. There are no doubt some questionable personal choices (I’m still not sure how I chose Summer with Monika and left out Cries and Whispers) and huge numbers of great films left out, including many that would undoubtedly feature in any ‘top 250 films’ if I ever chose to make one. Some directors have only one film simply because of how much I love that particular film even if they have made a great number of films which I am fond of. So where e.g. Satyajit Ray could have had five or six on the list, he is reduced to one because of the impossibly wonderful Pather Panchali.
Most of the more contemporary directors have been limited to one film. The two directors this has sinned against the most are probably Edward Yang and Hirokazu Kore-eda. Andrea Arnold and Pedro Costa could also have probably had 3+ each. There are not enough horror films, or documentaries probably, too much noir, and more than half the comedies are from before the Second World War, there is also only one classic musical (Meet me in St Louis). I have also had to (mostly) avoid including ‘glorious trash’ or ‘terrible films that I love’ to stop the list becoming 500 or 1000 films.
The biggest geographical deficiencies are Africa and (beyond a few Third Cinema classics) Latin America: these are my deficiencies as a viewer which I am slowly trying to remedy.
Enough rambling.
1. Pather Panchali | S. Ray, 1955
2. Yi Yi | Edward Yang, 2000
3. Yearning | Mikio Naruse, 1964
4. The Man with No Name | Wang Bing, 2010
5. Memories of Murder | Bong Joon Ho, 2003
6. The Aviator’s Wife | Eric Rohmer, 1981
7. The Green Ray | Eric Rohmer, 1986
8. The Mother and the Whore | Jean Eustache, 1973
9. Celine and Julie Go Boating | Jacques Rivette, 1974
10. Out 1 | Jacques Rivette, 1971
11. World on a Wire | R W Fassbinder, 1973
12. Fear Eats the Soul | R W Fassbinder, 1974
13. Germany in Autumn | R W Fassbinder, 1978
14. Le deuxième souffle | Melville, 1966
15. All that Heaven Allows | Douglas Sirk, 1955
16. The Philadelphia Story | George Cukor, 1940
17. The Shop Around the Corner | Lubitsch, 1940
18. Ninotchka | Lubitsch, 1939
19. The House Is Black | Forugh Farrokhzad, 1962
20. Le Feu Follet | Louis Malle, 1963
21. Grand Hotel | Edmund Goulding, 1939
22. Bringing Up Baby | Howard Hawks, 1938
23. The Seventh Continent | Michael Haneke, 1989
24. Chinatown | Roman Polanski, 1974
25. Repulsion | Roman Polanski, 1965
26. Rear Window | Hitchcock, 1954
27. Shadow of a Doubt | Hitchcock, 1943
28. Nobody Knows | Koreeda, 2004
29. Gummo | Harmony Korine, 1997
30. Safe | Todd Haynes, 1995
31. Stalker | Tarkovsky, 1973
32. Andrei Rublev | Tarkovsky, 1966
33. Mirror | Tarkovsky, 1975
34. The Life of Oharu | Mizoguchi, 1952
35. Sansho the Baliff | Mizoguchi, 1954
36. The Crucified Lovers | Mizoguchi, 1954
37. Ecstasy of the Angels | Kôji Wakamatsu, 1972
38. Tree of Wooden Clogs | Olmi, 1978
39. Meshes of the Afternoon | Maya Deren, 1943
40. Nowhere | Gregg Araki, 1997
41. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets | Shuji Terayama, 1971
42. The Human Condition I-III | Kobayashi, 1959–61
43. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty | Jonas Mekas, 2000
44. Dog Star Man | Stan Brakhage, 1961–4
45. The Exterminating Angel | Bunuel, 1962
46. Viridiana | Bunuel, 1961
47. Jeanne Dielman… | Akerman, 1973
48. No Home Movie | Akerman, 2015
49. Spring in a Small Town | Fei Mu, 1948
50. The Eternal Breasts | Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955
51. The Battle of Algiers | Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966
52. A Page of Madness | Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926
53. L’Inferno | Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, 1911
54. Battleship Potemkin | Segei Eisenstein, 1925
55. Out of the Past | Jacques Tourneur, 1947
56. In a Lonely Place | Nicholas Ray, 1950
57. The Passion of Joan of Arc | Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928
58. Ordet | Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955
59. Aguirre, the Wrath of God | Herzog, 1972
60. Greed | Erich von Stroheim, 1924
61. The Gold Rush | Charlie Chaplin, 1925
62. The General | Buster Keaton, 1926
63. Kino-Eye | Vertov, 1928
64. Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom | Pasolini, 1975
65. Day for Night | Truffaut, 1973
66. The Conversation | Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
67. The Godfather | Francis Ford Coppola, 1972
68. Inland Empire | David Lynch, 2006
69. Red Desert | Antonioni, 1970
70. L’Avventura | Antonioni, 1960
71. Paris, Texas | Wim Wenders, 1984
72. Metropolitan | Whit Stillman, 1994
73. Los Angeles Plays Itself | Thom Andersen, 2003
74. Week End | Godard, 1967
75. Killer of Sheep | Charles Burnett, 1978
76. Beau Travail | Claire Denis, 1999
77. Sweet Smell of Success | Alexander Mackendrick, 1957
78. Days of Wine and Roses | Blake Edwards, 1962
79. The Maltese Falcon | John Huston, 1941
80. Red Road | Andrea Arnold, 2006
81. An Angel at my Table | Jane Campion, 1990
82. Picnic at Hanging Rock | Peter Weir, 1975
83. Wendy and Lucy | Kelly Reichardt, 2008
84. Tokyo Story | Ozu, 1953
85. Late Spring | Ozu, 1949
86. Casablanca | Michael Curtiz, 1942
87. Brief Encounter | David Lean, 1945
88. Punishment Park | Peter Watkins, 1971
89. Paranoid Park | Gus Van Sant, 2007
90. Dogville | Lars Von Trier, 2003
91. Festen | Thomas Vinterberg, 1998
92. Laura | Otto Preminger, 1944
93. Anatomy of a Murder | Otto Preminger, 1959
94. Woman of the Dunes | Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964
95. The Face of Another | Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966
96. Eureka | Shinji Aoyama, 2000
97. Mouchette | Bresson, 1967
98. The Devil, Probably | Bresson, 1977
99. Taxi Driver | Martin Scorsese, 1976
100. Zodiac | David Fincher, 2007
101. Les Diaboliques | Clouzot, 1955
102. Barton Fink | The Cohens, 1991
103. The Misfits | John Huston, 1961
104. Sunset Blvd. | Billy Wilder, 1950
105. Double Indemnity | Billy Wilder, 1944
106. The Big Clock | John Farrow, 1948
107. The Night of the Hunter | Charles Laughton, 1955
108. Suspiria | Dario Argento, 1977
109. The Thing | John Carpenter, 1982
110. The Furies | Anthony Mann, 1950
111. Never Look Away | Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018
112. Stella Dallas | King Vidor, 1937
113. El Topo | Jodorowsky, 1970
114. Cleo from 5 to 7 | Agnes Varda, 1962
115. The Searchers | John Ford, 1956
116. Sans Soleil | Chris Marker, 1983
117. Brazil | Terry Gilliam, 1985
118. Raiders of the Lost Ark | Spielberg, 1981
119. Paths of Glory | Kubrick, 1957
120. Harlan County USA | Barbara Kopple, 1976
121. The Matrix | Lilly and Lana Wachowski, 1999
122. Punch Drunk Love | Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002
123. Daisies | Vera Chytilova, 1966
124. Happiness | Todd Solondz, 1998
125. The Leopard | Visconti, 1963
126. Remember the Night | Mitchell Leisen, 1940
127. Nashville | Robert Altman, 1975
128. The Long Goodbye | Robert Altman, 1973
129. All the President’s Men | Alan J. Pakula, 1976
130. The Conformist | Bertolucci, 1970
131. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion | Elio Petri, 1970
132. The Manchurian Candidate | John Frankenheimer, 1962
133. The Day of the Jackal | Fred Zinnemann, 1973
134. The Beekeeper | Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1986
135. Diamonds of the Night | Jan Nemec, 1964
136. Persona | Bergman, 1966
137. Summer with Monika | Bergman, 1953
138. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse | Fritz Lang, 1933
139. In the Mood for Love | Wong Kar-Wai, 2000
140. Dazed and Confused | Richard Linklater, 1994
141. Cemetery of Splendour | Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015
142. Spirited Away | Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
143. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia | Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011
144. Like Someone in Love | Abbas Kiarostami, 2012
145. Hiroshima, Mon Amour | Alain Renais, 1959
146. All About My Mother | Pedro Almodovar, 1999
147. Annie Hall | Woody Allen, 1977
148. Z | Costas-Gavras, 1969
149. Black Narcissus | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1947
150. The Innocents | Jack Clayton, 1961
151. Citizen Kane | Orson Welles, 1941
152. Touch of Evil | Orson Welles, 1958
153. A Summer at Grandpa’s | Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1984
154. Badlands | Terrence Malik, 1973
155. Le Boucher | Chabrol, 1970
156. Vive L’Amour | Ming-liang Tsai, 1994
157. Shoah | Claude Lanzmann, 1985
158. Salesman | Albert Maysles, David Maysles, 1969
159. Glengarry Glen Ross | James Foley, 1992
160. Swimming with Sharks | George Huang, 1994
161. Scarecrow | Jerry Schatzberg, 1973
162. Alice | Jan Svankmajer, 1988
163. Leviathan | Andrei Zvyaginstev, 2014
164. Songs from the Second Floor | Roy Andersson, 2000
165. In the White City | Alain Tanner, 1983
166. Love Exposure | Sion Sono, 2008
167. Dogtooth | Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009
168. Black Rain | Shôhei Imamura, 1989
169. Mon Oncle Antoine | Claude Jutra, 1971
170. In the Realm of the Senses | Nagisa Ôshima, 1976
171. The Naked Island | Kaneto Shindo, 1960
172. Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot | Jacques Tati, 1953
173. Black Girl | Ousmane Sembène, 1966
174. Funeral Parade of Roses | Toshio Matsumoto, 1969
175. Alien | Ridley Scott, 1979
176. The French Connection | William Friedkin, 1971
177. Synecdoche, New York | Charlie Kaufman, 2008
178. The League of Gentlemen | Basil Dearden, 1960
179. The Four Feathers | Zoltan Korda, 1939
180. Clerks | Kevin Smith, 1994
181. Bicycle Thieves | Vittorio De Sica, 1948
182. Earth | Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930
183. Confessions | Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010
184. The Hour of the Furnaces | Octavio Getino, Fernando E. Solanas, 1968
185. Colossal Youth | Pedro Costa, 2006
186. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters | Paul Schrader, 1985
187. A Prophet | Jacques Audiard, 2009
188. Twenty-Four Eyes | Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954
189. Godzilla | Ishirô Honda, 1954
190. Primer | Shane Carruth, 2004
191. Hunger | Steve McQueen, 2008
192. Locke | Steven Knight, 2013
193. Holy Motors | Leos Carax, 2012
194. The Battle of Chile: Parts I-III | Patricio Guzmán, 1975–9
195. Yesterday Girl | Alexander Kluge, 1966
196. Sicily! | Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, 1999
197. Happy Hour | Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2015
198. It’s Such a Beautiful Day | Don Hertzfeldt, 2012
199. Two Years at Sea | Ben Rivers, 2011
200. The Ister | David Barison, Daniel Ross, 2004
201. The Spirit of the Beehive | Víctor Erice, 1973
202. Cinema Paradiso | Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988
203. High Plains Drifter | Clint Eastwood, 1975
204. The Great Silence | Sergio Corbucci, 1968
205. The Dreamed Ones | Ruth Beckermann, 2016
206. Detour | Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945
207. Rashomon | Akira Kurosawa, 1950
208. Gilda | Charles Vidor, 1946
209. Museum Hours | Jem Cohen 2012
210. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm | William Greaves, 1968
211. The Fifth Element | Luc Besson, 1997
212. Portrait of a Lady on Fire | Céline Sciamma, 2019
213. Portrait of Jason | Shirley Clarke, 1967
214. Don’t Look Now | Nicholas Roeg, 1973
215. Man of Aran | Robert J. Flaherty, 1934
216. Gregory’s Girl | Bill Forsyth, 1980
217. Meet Me in St Louis | Vincente Minnelli, 1944
218. Love Letter | Shunji Iwai, 1995
219. The Devil and Daniel Johnston | Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005
220. À Flor do Mar | João César Monteiro, 1986
221. The Act of Killing | John Oppenheimer, 2012
222. Honey | Semih Kaplanoğlu, 2010
223. La Grande Bouffe | Marco Ferreri, 1973
224. In the Heat of the Night | Norman Jewison, 1967
225. Shock Corridor | Samuel Fuller, 1963
226. eXistenZ | David Cronenberg, 1999
227. Network | Sidney Lumet, 1976
228. A Face in the Crowd | Elia Kazan, 1957
229. Dawn of the Dead | George A. Romero, 1978
230. The Evil Dead | Sam Raimi, 1981
231. All About Eve | Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950
232. Clean, Shaven | Lodge Kerrigan, 1993
233. Man Bites Dog | Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, 1992
234. The Swimmer | Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack, 1968
235. Persepolis | Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi, 2007
236. The Vanishing | George Sluizer, 1988
237. The Woman Who Left | Lav Diaz, 2016
238. Werckmeister Harmonies | Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000
239. Amadeus | Milos Forman, 1984
240. Freaks | Todd Browning, 1932
241. Kids | Larry Clark, 1995
242. Illustrious Corpses | Francesco Rosi, 1976
243. The Cow | Dariush Mehrjui, 1969
244. Leaving Las Vegas | Mike Figgis, 1995
245. The Wicker Man | Robin Hardy, 1973
246. The Curlew’s Cry | Hinri Barakat, 1959
247. Pink Flamingos | John Waters, 1972
248. True Romance | Tony Scott, 1993
249. Robocop | Paul Verhoeven, 1987
250. Plein Soleil | René Clément, 1960
I failed:
251. The Naked Prey | Cornell Wilde, 1965
252. Heavenly Creatures | Peter Jackson, 1994
253. Summer Hours | Olivier Assayas, 2008
254. An Affair to Remember | Leo McCarey, 1957
Failed terribly:
255. The Red Balloon | Albert Lamorisse, 1956
256. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology | Sophie Fiennes, 2012
257. Orphée | Jean Cocteau, 1950
258. I, Tonya | Craig Gillespie, 2017
259. Silkwood | Mike Nichols, 1983
260. Tangerine | Sean Baker, 2015
261. The Woodmans | Scott Willis, 2010
262. The Hands of Orlac | Robert Weine, 1924
263. Harun Farocki | The Inextinguishable Fire, 1969
264. The Silence of the Lambs | Jonathan Demme, 1991
265. Manhunter | Michael Mann, 1982
266. Seconds | John Frankenheimer, 1966
267. Threads | Mick Jackson 1984
268. La Haine | Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995
Posting this now before I change my mind or any more creeping dread about what’s missing sets in…
[Creeping dread edit:
Apologies to Abel Gance, Masao Adachi, Louis Feuillade, Peter Greenaway, Jean Epstein, Mario Peixoto, Hiroshi Shimizu, Ken Russell, René Viénet, Alan Schneider, Jia Zhangke, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Raúl Ruiz, John Cassavetes, Marguerite Duras and probably a lot more.]
