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If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Rob Humanick’s Top 10 Films of All Time

To choose only 10 films for this list was a task at once simple and impossible.

The Searchers
Photo: Warner Bros.
Editor’s Note: In light of Sight & Sound’s film poll, which, every decade, queries critics and directors the world over before arriving at a communal Top 10 list, we polled our own writers, who didn’t partake in the project, but have bold, discerning, and provocative lists to share.

To choose only 10 films for this list was a task at once simple and impossible. Had I been given enough time to watch every film ever made, then allowed several decades to narrow down my choices, I would have still bemoaned this challenge. By the time this is published, I’ll have changed my mind. Held at gunpoint, however, the results would probably look something like this, and for my purposes here, know that the difference between “best” and “favorite” is immaterial. Every one of these represents not only a peak of the art form, but an experience I wonder whether I could truly live without. With apologies to Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Steven Spielberg, F.W. Murnau, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang, Abel Gance, Werner Herzog, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Roman Polanski, Terrence Malick, Chuck Jones, Ridley Scott, George A. Romero, and the 1930s, among others.


Broken Blossoms

Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919)

Though far less technically sophisticated than The Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms still represents a greater achievement to these eyes, often cited alongside Intolerance as one of director D.W. Griffith’s apologies for racism, but really a deeper continuation of his generous, if conflicted (and frequently misunderstood), humanitarianism. The tragedy of Lucy (Lillian Gish) and Cheng, a.k.a. the Yellow Man (Richard Barthelmess), transcends the eras (much like their forbidden love transcends petty social expectations) through simple, but not simplistic, storytelling. Griffith’s mastery of basic camera techniques and narrative devices paved the way for every filmmaker who came after.


Strike

Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

More so than any other silent, Sergei Eisenstein’s bombastic feature-length debut always gives me the biggest kick in the gut. His innovative use of montage in Battleship Potemkin typically garners more attention, but his command over the material in Strike is so complete that it often threatens to make his subsequent efforts feel like mere reprisals. The central rallying cry of the proletariat, portrayed here by the First Workers Theatre of Proletkult, sprang from state-mandated propaganda, but rarely has a specific political moment been rendered with such thunderously universal relevance, uniting in spirit the oppressed against the oppressor across all boundaries of time and place.


Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Despite the limitations of the canon to which Citizen Kane has long been assigned, yes, at the end of the day, it’s just that good, and anyone who isn’t enthralled by this most exuberantly crowd-pleasing of masterpieces probably doesn’t deserve the pleasures afforded by the cinema in the first place. Like many a landmark, the unprecedented ambition and creative control behind the film is at least as miraculous as the unlikely circumstances which allowed for its production in the first place. Charles Foster Kane’s ultimately tragic story was a bit too on the nose for one William Randalph Hearst, and for his offenses, the young Orson Welles paid with his swift expulsion from the Hollywood machine. Few films are as worthy of their own legends.


Dumbo

Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941)

Animator Eric Goldberg put it best when he said that, by avoiding the pretenses of great art, the creators at Disney made exactly that with this simple, soulful tale of an innocent pachyderm ostracized from the world for his abnormally large ears—perhaps the most astute visual representation of xenophobia, well, ever. Dumbo remains a sublimely titanic achievement, not the least because it packs a lifetime’s worth of emotions and wisdom into a flawless 64 minutes. Every frame is a work of art unto itself, and one can’t help but wonder if those who consider it “too depressing” have yet lost much of value in this life.

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Ikiru

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

In the overwhelmingly accomplished catalogue of a filmmaker frequently criticized in his homeland for being “too Western,” Ikiru might be the most unwieldy and unrestrained, descriptors fitting for a work about nothing less than the inexorable flow of life and our frequently insufficient efforts to make something meaningful out of it. The ticking time bomb of stomach cancer at first devastates, then motivates, longtime bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe (Kurosawa mainstay Takashi Shimura) to achieve something of value in his final months. The film’s most iconic moment hits with the devastating force of a freight train, at once life-changing and life-affirming.


The Searchers

The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

In hindsight, the fact that The Searchers, arguably the finest hour of a filmmaker too modest to even consider himself an artist, was essentially overlooked by critics during its original run seems to further validate its deceptively understated brilliance, a timeless consideration of love, hate, family, and country. Myth and reality collide in John Ford’s ravishing, larger-than-life widescreen compositions (the frame of a doorway establishes the film as one of perspectives and places), while the Duke himself—as much a monument as the film’s valley location—suggests an entire ecosystem in violent discord with itself. His character’s racism drives the storyline, yes, and remains unforgiven by the end credits, in lieu of the revelation that even the most tormented souls can still be saved.


2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Stanley Kubrick’s oft-touted “ultimate trip” is many things: a warning against the technological dangers ready to befall an irresponsible species, a humbling love letter to the infinite majesty of the heavens, and a testament to what mankind has and (hopefully) will endure in the name of existence. It’s also among the most profound and dazzling considerations of the existence of a higher power yet given voice in the arts. 2001: A Space Odyssey acts like a drag net for great ideas, planting the seeds for more questions than can possibly be answered.


McCabe & Mrs. Miller

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

Robert Altman cared less about telling stories than about expressing feelings, textures, and ideas, and this first of his many masterpieces (adapted from Edmund Naughton’s novel McCabe) offers a striking balance of narrative familiarity and painterly improvisation. The screen may never again see a pairing as soulful and enigmatic as Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, sinners who find mutual solace in each others’ arms amid the genesis of a new civilization. From the windswept opening credits set to Leonard Cohen’s haunting “The Stranger Song” to the snowy finale, it’s as perfect a work of art as has ever been made.

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Assault on Precinct 13

Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)

John Carpenter’s genre masterpiece culls equally from Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead, appropriate inspirations for a work about the meaninglessness of labels in the face of indiscriminate horror and the fallout from social apathy. A senseless act of violence sets into motion the events that see a handful of people—policemen, secretaries, death-row prisoners—facing off against dozens of gang members with no respect for life, even their own. The resulting, fabulous standoff is one of the most empowering and hopeful displays of unity ever put on the screen. Racial and sexual tensions melt away during the film’s protracted onslaught, and it’s a blissful rush of enlightenment when one reaches the light at the end of the tunnel.


The Last Temptation of Christ

The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)

Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel considers the necessarily conflicted existence of he who was of both man and God, and Martin Scorsese’s elemental vision externalizes such to exponentially profound effect. The strictly religious is transcended in a quest of spiritual release, and every image and sound tears onerously at the heart, mind, and soul. The phantasmagorical, unplanned final image is potent enough to restore one’s faith in a higher cause in the universe.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

Rob Humanick

Rob Humanick is the projection manager at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater in Lehighton, Pennsylvania.

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