I approached this project the exact same way I expect I would’ve handled being given a ballot in the actual Sight & Sound poll: by procrastinating until the very last second and making a lot of spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment rules to dictate how I could possibly whittle down dozens of films into a list of 10. (I know, everyone else probably would’ve said “hundreds of films,” but I’ve always been a little cine-anorexic.)
The list of “obstructions” ought to be familiar to anyone with any exposure to this parlor game: one per decade, one per country, one per genre, one per boyfriend. But having willfully backed myself into the corner of having no more time on hand, I am forced to use a list I’ve already built elsewhere: the list of films I previously designated as favorites on MUBI. I like using that as a starting point because my choices there seem neither too conservative nor too outré (or at least both simultaneously), and I first started ticking them off as an exercise toward building a list of my 50 favorite movies. Plus, I limited myself to one film per director.
The number of “nominees” there now stands at a slightly lower sum than that original goal (how have I still not picked a Bresson?!), but it still seems the best middle ground between favoring my, well, favorites and giving movies I consider to be among “the greatest” their due. The only major wrench in this plan is that, of the 46 movies shortlisted, all but about a dozen of them are from the U.S. And nearly half are from the span between 1966 and 1976.
Well, no point dancing around statistics. A strategy is a strategy, so onward and upward, in chronological order:
Electrocuting an Elephant (Thomas Edison, 1903
Already it feels as though I’m headed down the wrong way of a one-way street. Ten slots and I give one to this minute-minus animal snuff film? Am I just trying to sidestep my misguided temptation to throw a vote Cannibal Holocaust’s way? Well, maybe, but this is one of the only movies on the whole list whose function as part of a canon makes sense to me. It’s one of the earliest examples of a medium being established capable of cataloging mankind’s abject and carnivalesque sense of cruelty.
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934
Stuffed to the point of breaking, Josef von Sternberg’s movies with Marlene Dietrich make 3D hopelessly irrelevant, shame the modern concept of camp with their earnest flair for the theatrical, throw into question the accepted balance of power between directors and stars, terrify the senses with their brazen ripeness. Basically every movie on my list could at least loosely be classified as a horror movie. The look on Dietrich’s face as she assumes power in this film’s coda might top them all.
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
There are three movies I always say feel, when I’m watching them, like they are clearly the most perfect example of popular, American, narrative filmmaking. If Rear Window just barely makes the cut over The Night of the Hunter and Do the Right Thing, it’s probably because the nascent auteurist in me knows Alfred Hitchcock deserves it over the man who made one masterpiece and nothing else and the man who spent the rest of his (underrated and interesting) career trying to top his one clear masterpiece.
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962
My one cheat is to retroactively swap out the Chris Marker film I cited as a favorite on MUBI—Sans Soleil—with his ethereal sci-fi short La Jetée. Watch the Traveller’s paramour awaken from her era-less slumber through a magical series of lap dissolves and try to blame me.
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s perfectionism aside, this is a selection made for autobiographical resonance. Nina Pens Rode, playing the title character, volleys violently inside of herself between the impossibility of reaching total romantic refinement and the insatiable, carnal appetite to indulge in everything that fails to meet that lofty standard. The cock-nitive dissonance leaves her all but incapacitated, a doomed non-starter. Dreyer’s Scandinavian love story hits, quite simply, too close to home. Gertrud wants “amor omnia” inscribed into her solitary headstone. I want the final scene of Gertrud projected in a loveless loop onto mine.
Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel, 1965
Screw screwball. In Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, a handless amputee praying to a pious saint for a pair of new hands and then, upon receiving them in an instant miracle, turns promptly around to smack his kid up with them? Now that’s comedy!
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968
The Sophie’s Choice of the entire enterprise: choosing between the two greatest entries in the great new wave of American horror. My heart says the lurid, grimy, swine-like, hysterically unwell The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but my head—and the convincing argument leveled by Ben Harvey’s superb BFI monograph—chooses the frayed, blunt, dissociative, impressionistic George A. Romero film, Night of the Living Dead, that gave birth to both the filmmaking movement and now also American hipsters’ chosen spirit animal.
Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971
The sense of tokenism fueling this movie’s inclusion (it covers queer, camp, avant-experimental, softcore, and arguably a loose brand of documentary expressionism in one shot) is matched only by the sense of marginalization that, apparently, fueled James Bidgood, Kenneth Anger, John Waters, Derek Jarman, Wakefield Poole, Rosa von Praunheim, Bruce LaBruce, Chi Chi LaRue, and anyone else who shouted, “Hey, we can direct with our dicks too!”
Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994
I wanted to give this slot to Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, but somehow Sátántangó just feels closer to “fin du cinéma.” Where is my cask of fruit brandy? I need to board up this flickering screen for good.
Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995
Would I have dared to include Showgirls on the list were I actually submitting to Sight & Sound? Probably not, I’m sorry to say. This exercise and canonization in Sight & Sound are still, at the end of the day, “different places.” (And, if the publication gave Jacques Rivette his rightful ballot, I’m sure I’m not the only one who would’ve been agonizing over the decision.) Thankfully I’m off the hook, free to ice my nipples, do a pique turn, eat a cheeseburger, and like having this brilliant piece of antagonistic camp in a nice dress or a tight top.
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