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

If you read my “Understanding Screenwriting” column at The House, you may be aware that I generally do not do Top 10 lists.

The Grapes of Wrath
Photo: 20th Century Fox
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.

If you read my “Understanding Screenwriting” column at The House, you may be aware that I generally do not do Top 10 lists (“Top 10 Scripts of the Year,” “Top 10 Scripts Most Likely to be Nominated,” “Top 10 Scripts That Should Have Been Nominated,” etc.), because I try to keep the column an Oscar-hype-free zone. But the idea of going up against the legendary Sight & Sound lists was just too delicious to pass up. Of course, there are more than 10 great films, and any list is bound to change, so this is my list on the days the I wrote this: June 19 and 20, 2012. If I made up a list a month or a year later, some, if not most, of the list would change. Since I have tried to pick films from a range of time periods, the films are listed in chronological order.


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

Variety (E.A. Dupont, 1925)

A simple story: trapeze artist Boss Huller and his wife Berta-Marie (his mistress in the original German version) bring a new partner into their act, who seduces the wife. There is great intensity in E. A. Dupont’s Variety, especially in the performances of Emil Jannings as Huller and Lya De Puti as Berta-Marie, which show how beautiful acting in silent films can be. Karl Freund’s cinematography is spectacular, putting today’s flashy camera movements to shame. Unfortunately, the film is not available on video and has never been restored.


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

Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925)

Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances is the most elegant comedy ever made, not in terms of costumes and sets, but in the precision of its visual flow. Its story, about a man who proposes to many different women to get his inheritance, is one that could only be told silently. We don’t have to hear him each time, but we see that the reactions of the women are different. The comedy builds so effectively in the second half that, at any moment, somebody in the film’s audience is sure to be laughing during the last 20 minutes.


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

His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

The Hecht-MacArthur play The Front Page is brilliantly re-imagined for the screen in Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (read the play to find out how much was changed), with the greatest, fastest dialogue in film. It’s the best of all newspaper comedies, and like most comedies, it is about a lot: love, politics, newspapers, and the importance of charm. The film is filled with a great cast of actors who know what to do with the script, and directed by a filmmaker aware of how to step out of the way of great acting and screenwriting.


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

The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

John Steinbeck said Nunnally Johnson’s script for The Grapes of Wrath was more dramatic in fewer words than the author’s own novel. Directed by John Ford, the film is a great collaboration between producer Darryl Zanuck (who had the guts to make it), writer Johnson (who superbly crafted the script), and a group of actors driven to give their best performances by a director at the top of his powers. Dorris Bowden (Rosasharon) said that Ford was a terrible human being, but a great director. True on both counts.

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

Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Another great collaboration. Remove writer/director/star Orson Welles, co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, or cinematographer Gregg Toland, and the picture is diminished. In one complete and satisfying whole, Citizen Kane is also a film about everything: life, death, love, power, America, the past, and the present. It’s one of the two or three most influential movies of all time—everybody’s been trying to top it, yet no one has. Many argue it is not the greatest film of all time, and my answer to that is: name one that’s better. You can’t. Except maybe the last two on my list…


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

Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

Following man searching for his stolen bicycle, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves is another simple story, filled with brilliant observation of both the characters and the Italian society of its time. For all the rawness of Neorealism, this film is cinematically brilliant. Look at the way the cinematography of the “going to work in the morning” scene captures the Italian light, or the cutting of the final sequence.


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

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

On the Waterfront is perhaps more emotionally powerful than any other American film, but balanced with a focused, if controversial, view of American life in the 1950s. This film will show you everything you need to know about American film of the time: the influence of Neorealism, the impact of the Actors Studio on acting, the Blacklist, and the arrival of widescreen filmmaking. Darryl Zanuck turned this down to make Prince Valiant in CinemaScope.


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

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

Over its brief 30-minute running time, this documentary by Alain Resnais builds to become a devastating look at the Holocaust. Watching the process of building and running concentration camps pulls us in, and then only a minimal amount of atrocity footage overpowers us. With both stills and film, Night and Fog cuts between past and present, ensuring our awareness that, while the events we see have already taken place, that kind of evil lives today, maybe even more so than when the film was made.

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

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

From a witty, brilliantly intelligent script to the stunning cinematography of Freddy Young and the haunting score by Maurice Jarre, David Lean successfully orchestrates all the tools of cinema on a scale that no other film matches. Forget Hitchcock’s insistence that his story-driven films were pure cinema—Lawrence of Arabia shows what that term really means.


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

8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)

How much can you stuff into a film and still have it make sense and be relentlessly entertaining as well? Like several other films on this list, Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is about many things, but it’s more playful about its components than the others. Yes, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a narcissist, but the film recognizes that, a recognition it shows us in very sexual and sensual ways. Fellini always makes you think you know where you are, just before he pulls the rug out from under you.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

Tom Stempel

Tom Stempel is an American film scholar and critic. He is a professor emeritus in film at Los Angeles City College, where he taught from 1971 to 2011.

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