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

I’m a compulsive. It’s no surprise that my list is full of movies about compulsion.

If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Odie Odienator Henderson's Top 10 Films of All Time
Photo: Universal Pictures
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.

I’m a compulsive. It’s no surprise that my list is full of movies about compulsion. Whether it’s a man who must play God in his relationship, casting his beloved in an image of his design, or a guy who can’t stop working, whoring, and drugging, I find myself drawn to depictions of people trying to find order in chaos. I’ve discovered this has only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. When I dug up my 2002 list of this type, I shuffled the order and kept eight of the titles. I dropped the most emotional and the most rigorously organized movies, replacing them with films that were twice as organized and emotional. By this rationale, I’ll drop four movies in 2022 and be driven bat-shit insane looking for replacements.

This isn’t a list of my favorite movies, though two of these would appear on that list. This is a list of movies that profoundly affected me more than any others. With that said, a caveat is in order: Movie lists always inspire grouchy comments reflecting what a person felt should have been on them. Let me stop you now. You have no say in what should or shouldn’t be here because you are not me. Thank your lucky stars for that.


All That Jazz

10. All That Jazz(Bob Fosse, 1979)

Bob Fosse shaped 8 ½ to his specifications, but for me, what elevates this over Federico Fellini’s classic is that it’s a musical. All That Jazz is alive with music, and not just on the soundtrack. Its Oscar-winning edits riff like the jazz of its title, its pace as offbeat as its subject’s choreography. Joe Gideon is a brilliant creation. He’s frustrating, egotistical, and compulsively leaning toward self-destruction—just like Fosse. There’s beauty in his chaos, but also a dire warning that Gideon’’s doppelganger didn’t heed: You can work yourself to death for art, but sometimes it’s better if the show does not go on.


Vertigo

9. Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Aflred Hitchcock’s cruelest trick on the audience wasn’t a flock of birds pecking out children’s eyes or Mrs. Bates impaling a famous actress. It was turning James Stewart into a raving, sexually obsessed control freak who destroys the woman he loves—not once, but twice. Vertigo pulls no punches depicting one man’s descent into his own stylish heart of darkness. Stewart’s transformation of his new love into his old flame just begs for karmic punishment; he’s aware of this, but in thrall to his own compulsions. I identified with this feeling way too much for comfort.


Playtime

8. Playtime(Jacques Tati, 1967)

A visual feast by Jacques Tati, Playtime is so rich with on-screen activity that every viewing is like seeing it for the first time. It makes me want to climb into the screen and make snow angels on its canvas of images. A must-see in its 70mm print, Playtime is the cinematic embodiment of creative compulsion. It’s overwhelming how much effort went into this film, and its rewards are endless. This is a live-action Where’s Waldo?, where Waldo is sometimes a person, like Tati’s Mr. Hulot, or an action we observe in the corners of the screen. I can’t watch it enough.

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Citizen Kane

7. Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)

Kane’s tale is epic and masterfully handled by Orson Welles and his cast, but Citizen Kane’s inclusion here is for how it changed my favorite technical aspect of movies. Gregg Toland’s groundbreaking cinematography showed things I’d never seen before in a movie. During my first viewing, I was awestruck by the visual way it told its story. As I got older, the story itself became more relevant, telling me that no matter how powerful a man becomes in life, his final thought could be a feeling of childhood innocence shared and understood by even the poorest Joe Schmo. Death is indeed the great equalizer.


Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

6. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Proof that a comedy could be made from even the most morbid of topics. Stanley Kubrick fashions a true satire on the Cold War and is aided and abetted by three Peter Sellers, one George C. Scott, and one Vera Lynn. From the “precious bodily fluids” dialogue to Slim Pickens straddling the means to our demise, Dr. Strangelove is full of phallic symbolism. It’s as if Kubrick is saying that nuclear war will be brought about because the men in power have penis envy. Contains the single funniest line ever uttered in a movie, and also the greatest phone conversation.


Do the Right Thing

5. Do the Right Thing(Spike Lee, 1989)

Spike Lee’s masterpiece is the first and only film I’ve seen thus far which honestly addresses the issue of race in America. It is an even-handed treatment, addressing all sides with a surprising amount of humor, terror, and grace. Unlike far too many Hollywood movies, Do the Right Thing leaves us with no easy answers and little hope for a resolution to the country’s race problems. It succeeds by holding a mirror for us to reflect and review the way we feel about, and deal with, our own personal prejudices. A movie this deep has no right to be as colorful and funny as it is, yet Lee finds the right balance between message-movie and entertainment.


Chinatown

4. Chinatown(Roman Polanski, 1974)

I was way too young (age five) when I first saw Chinatown, which is why it changed my life more than any other film on this list. As a kid, I thought all movies had happy endings. I didn’t understand the plot at the time, but I knew that the bad guys won, and the good guys were told to forget their loss. It was devastating. Chinatown’s powerful ending still packs the appropriate jolt today. But it was that initial viewing that drove home one of the most important lessons I’d learn from a movie: Life isn’t fair.

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Imitation of Life

3. Imitation of Life(Douglas Sirk, 1959)

I chose Imitation of Life to represent my love of Douglas Sirk, not for its mastery of symbolic mirror imagery or the brilliant bait and switch that subtly and subversively makes its black storyline the center of attention. I chose it because, as I’ve written before, it reminds me of my grandmother. She told me about this film years before I saw it, making it a cautionary tale about why I should love my mother. This is my only memory of her before she died, and as such it rings with an emotional resonance that surpasses the tearjerking response Sirk sadistically wrings from viewers. I never got to know my grandmother (she died when I was four), yet the tie I feel to her is tethered to this picture, which destroys me every time I see it.


Sunset Boulevard

2. Sunset Boulevard(Billy Wilder, 1950)

Sunset Boulevard is the meanest, scariest comedy ever made. Its star, Gloria Swanson, gives the greatest performance by an actress in film history. A lacerating tale of Hollywood ambition and madness, it outplays Robert Altman’s The Player for sheer, unforgiving savagery. Billy Wilder’s genius was his knack for seeing the tragedy in humor and vice versa. Sunset Boulevard so blurs the lines between fiction and reality that it begins to exist on a different plane; it was meta before everything was meta. And it taught me to wink at my readers who are “in the know.” To this day, there’s some allusion for film buffs in everything I do.


All About Eve

1. All About Eve(Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

I worship at the altar of All About Eve’s script. It is my heaven, paved with streets of golden dialogue. Its non-stop bitchery and backstabbing, with nearly every line fired like a poison dart from the mouths of those who know how to draw blood with their delivery. George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Anne Baxter, and, of course, Bette Davis take a verbal chainsaw to the theater industry. And the man responsible for all this cat-fighting, Joe Mankiewicz, somehow manages to make all this cattiness service the deceptively simple plot about climbing the ladder of success and burning the steps as you leave them. This is my all-time favorite movie.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

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Odie Henderson

Odie Henderson's work has also appeared in The Village Voice, Vulture, Cineaste Magazine, MovieMezzanine, Salon, and RogerEbert.com.

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