If You Had a Sight & Sound Ballot...

[GeorgeEastman]

I thought about this, and I absolutely loved what @lazarus wrote in one thread re personality. I think the ballot should reflect ones personality, and it got me thinking what defines me as a film watcher. I'm very partial to older films, and in particular American and Japanese cinema. I'm very attached to great writing, if the story ain't there neither am I, and then see that story translated to the screen by superb directing and immaculate actors. I'd also pick films that I would wanna see again and know that I'll see many times more in my life if I grow as old as I hope. I'd say the following ten films would represent my taste, in chronological order.

My Man Godfrey
1936, USA
Directed by Gregory La Cava

Only Angels Have Wings
1939, USA
Directed by Howard Hawks

Gone with the Wind
1939, USA
Directed by Victor Fleming et all

The Shop Around the Corner
1940, USA
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1948, USA
Directed by John Huston

Sunset Boulevard
1950, USA
Directed by Billy Wilder

Twenty-Four Eyes
1954, Japan
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

Imitation of Life
1959, USA
Directed by Douglas Sirk

High and Low
1963, Japan
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Once Upon a Time in the West
1968, Italy/USA
Directed by Sergio Leone

[Cooper]

I thought about this, and I absolutely loved what @lazarus wrote in one thread re personality. I think the ballot should reflect ones personality, and it got me thinking what defines me as a film watcher. I'm very partial to older films, and in particular American and Japanese cinema. I'm very attached to great writing, if the story ain't there neither am I, and then see that story translated to the screen by superb directing and immaculate actors. I'd also pick films that I would wanna see again and know that I'll see many times more in my life if I grow as old as I hope. I'd say the following ten films would represent my taste, in chronological order.

My Man Godfrey
1936, USA
Directed by Gregory La Cava

Only Angels Have Wings
1939, USA
Directed by Howard Hawks

Gone with the Wind
1939, USA
Directed by Victor Fleming et all

The Shop Around the Corner
1940, USA
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1948, USA
Directed by John Huston

Sunset Boulevard
1950, USA
Directed by Billy Wilder

Twenty-Four Eyes
1954, Japan
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

Imitation of Life
1959, USA
Directed by Douglas Sirk

High and Low
1963, Japan
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Once Upon a Time in the West
1968, Italy/USA
Directed by Sergio Leone

Wonderfully stated, Giorgio!

Three blind spots excepted, splendid selections. Mind you, the performances in Godfrey (particularly Alice Brady's) is what I appreciate most about that picture.

[GeorgeEastman]

Wonderfully stated, Giorgio!

Three blind spots excepted, splendid selections. Mind you, the performances in Godfrey (particularly Alice Brady's) is what I appreciate most about that picture.

Give us urs king

[Cooper]

Give us urs king

If I dared, I'd be run out of AW on a rail which probably should've happened two years ago.

Jesting aside, I've given the matter shamefully little thought.

Imitation of Life would make the cut for certain. "Went with the Wind" and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre would receive serious consideration.


ETA: @GeorgeEastman, besides the heart-shattering Sirk, several more definite inclusions in chronological order:

Haxan (Christensen, 1922)

The Scarlet Empress (von Sternberg, 1934)

Children of Paradise (Carne, 1945)

The Ten Commandments (DeMille, 1956)

The Naked Kiss (Fuller, 1964)

I'd limit myself to only one Dame Davis. Either Beyond The Forest (Vidor, 1949) or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962).

[Addison de Witt]

This was damn tough. In chronological order:

All about Eve (1950), Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The Apartment (1960), Billy Wilder
The Last Picture Show (1971), Peter Bogdanovich
The Godfather (1972), Francis Ford Coppola
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Victor Erice
The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Henry Selick
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), Jean-Marc Vallée
Bright Star (2009), Jane Campion
Margaret (2011), Kenneth Lonnergan
The Tree of life (2011), Terrence Malick

[wunncheechoo]

In alphabetical order:

• L'Argent (Bresson)
• Céline and Julie Go Boating (Rivette)
• The Day After (Hong)
• Floating Clouds (Naruse)
• His Girl Friday (Hawks)
• Playtime (Tati)
• The Round-Up (Jancsó)
• A Touch of Zen (Hu)
• The Way We Are (Hui)
• Zorns Lemma (Frampton)

My holy trinity: L'Argent, Floating Clouds, Playtime.
For Naruse, my two absolute favourites are Floating Clouds and Scattered Clouds. I prefer the former simply because of Takamine. Naruse definitely needs to be in the top 100 in 2032 (having two Miyazakis is simply unneccesary). It's clear that Floating Clouds is the consensus pick in Japan, but it's still unclear in the West. Perhaps Scattered Clouds and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs are more popular?

For Rivette, my favourite is actually La Belle Noiseuse. But as his consensus pick has proven to be C&J, I'll just go with it and I'm happy to do so (it's my second favourite Rivette).

For Hong, I'll stick with my personal favourite without any strategic voting. I don't see the point of him getting into the canon with an individual film. The Day After is the film that made me a hardcore Hong fan and imo one of his most perfect films in terms of unity of form and content.

Jancsó definitely belongs to the canon for his virtuosic mise-en-scène and mastery of long takes. With the recent release of his films in 4K restorations (and The Round-Up being listed on Barry Jenkins' ballot), I see a very high chance of him getting into top 100 (or at least top 150) in 2032.

The classical Hollywood is an era which I feel the need to explore more. My current pick is His Girl Friday, but it could be a Ray, a Minnelli, or another Hawks.

Zorns Lemma is a recent discovery of mine - a really smart and playful piece of filmmaking. But I've yet to discover more on experimental cinema.

As a cinephile from HK, I feel obliged to provide a more comprehensive picture of the HK film canon outside of WKW (ITMFL being in the top 5 is nonsense to a lot of HK cinephiles, tho I'm quite proud of it tbh). A Touch of Zen (technically a Taiwan-HK co-production) is the pinnacle of the wuxia genre, a cinematic inheritance of the traditional Chinese aesthetics, and a foundational influence on genre auteurs like Tsui Hark, John Woo and Johnnie To. It got 9 votes and ranked 183 in the 2012 critics' poll. Waiting to see how it performed this year. The Way We Are is a rare gem of HK cinema which, in short, is the HK equivalent of Tokyo Story. It's great to see Ann Hui gaining international attention with her getting an Honorary Golden Lion at Venice and Boat People being released by Criterion (and I just saw on Twitter that Song of Exile is listed on someone's ballot).The Way We Are is her masterpiece imo, tho I suspect it hardly appeals to the Western audience as its aesthetics is too low-key (yet subtly profound). Honourable mentions:

• The Arch by Tang Shu-shuen - Probably the first-ever arthouse film of HK. A delicate and sensitive portrait of a widowed woman filled with profound cinematic poetry. Beautifully shot by Subrata Mitra, the frequent cinematographer of Satyajit Ray.
• Ah Ying by Allen Fong - This landmark film of the HK new wave is a social-realist drama with an audacious mix between fiction and real life comparable to Kiarostami. Recently restored, hope it will get a wider audience in the West. (It entered the main competition at the 1984 Berlinale.)

(One point to add: I'm no expert of the pre-70s HK cinema, but there're definitely a lot of hidden gems and masterpieces from that period, like the films of, to name a few, Lee Sun-fung, Chun Kim, Chor Yuen, etc. Unfortunately these films are poorly preserved and probably won't be able to widely circulate in the West due to copyrights issue.)

[Cesky]

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1929, Dreyer)
The Scarlett Empress (1934, Von Sternberg)
All about Eve (1950, Mankiewicz)
Summertime (1955, Lean)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962, Varda)
Harlan County USA (1976, Kopple)
Paris Texas (1984, Wenders)
Thelma and Louise (1991, Scott)
In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong)
Carol (2015, Haynes)

Goes without saying, this is an impossible task!

[lazarus]

For Rivette, my favourite is actually La Belle Noiseuse. But as his consensus pick has proven to be C&J, I'll just go with it and I'm happy to do so (it's my second favourite Rivette).

As a cinephile from HK, I feel obliged to provide a more comprehensive picture of the HK film canon outside of WKW (ITMFL being in the top 5 is nonsense to a lot of HK cinephiles, tho I'm quite proud of it tbh). A Touch of Zen (technically a Taiwan-HK co-production) is the pinnacle of the wuxia genre, a cinematic inheritance of the traditional Chinese aesthetics, and a foundational influence on genre auteurs like Tsui Hark, John Woo and Johnnie To. It got 9 votes and ranked 183 in the 2012 critics' poll. Waiting to see how it performed this year. The Way We Are is a rare gem of HK cinema which, in short, is the HK equivalent of Tokyo Story. It's great to see Ann Hui gaining international attention with her getting an Honorary Golden Lion at Venice and Boat People being released by Criterion (and I just saw on Twitter that Song of Exile is listed on someone's ballot).The Way We Are is her masterpiece imo, tho I suspect it hardly appeals to the Western audience as its aesthetics is too low-key (yet subtly profound). Honourable mentions:

• The Arch by Tang Shu-shuen - Probably the first-ever arthouse film of HK. A delicate and sensitive portrait of a widowed woman filled with profound cinematic poetry. Beautifully shot by Subrata Mitra, the frequent cinematographer of Satyajit Ray.

Always great to see another Rivette fan! And I appreciate the strategic vote here; the important thing is getting him on the list to begin with!

Also, thanks for the breakdown about Hong Kong cinema; I wish Ann Hui was someone recognized by Sight and Sound but Criterion still has a lot of work to do in promoting her; hopefully that Boat People release is just the beginning. They don't seem to be doing Eclipse sets anymore but part of me would rather have seen them do a bare-bones release of 4-5 Hui films in that format instead of the standard Criterion treatment with just one; she deserves a wider introduction, perhaps via their Channel.

Not sure if you've browsed the dedicated Chinese film thread in the Criticism subform recently, but both myself and @afilmcionado saw a screening of The Arch last weekend at the Academy Museum, and I wrote about it there:

https://awardsworthy.org/showthread....=1#post5205062

[ldw]

Always changing. This week.

Big Business (1929)
Passing Fancy (1933)
L'Atalante (1934)
House of the Angel (1957)
Red Angel (1966)
Ganja & Hess (1973)
The Apple Game (1977)
The Ties That Bind (1985)
High Tide (1987)
The Handmaiden (2016)

[McTeague]

No Pat Garrett?

[ldw]

No Pat Garrett?

It may be back in there in a few days. Matters my mood and the feel of that day. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It's A Gift. At Sea. Wendy and Lucy. Zama. The Buster Keaton film I feel this week. Just don't have a stable list. More like 30 or 40 I go back and forth between (including the Ozu's - some days I was Born But..., Early Spring, An Autumn Afternoon). That is why when I saw some voters in that poll overhaul their list I thought yes I get that because to me it really does matter how I feel on that day.

[android]

I've just seen that i have zero American directors, only one American film, zero films in English language, and 5/6 French films (La Notte is Italian and French).

Your #1 was one of my favorite discoveries this year

[Lonedroid7]

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Carol (2015)
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Melancholia (2011)
Moon (2009)
Mother (2009) Bong Joon-ho
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Schindler's List (1993)
Seven Samurai (1954)
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

[McTeague]

It may be back in there in a few days. Matters my mood and the feel of that day. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It's A Gift. At Sea. Wendy and Lucy. Zama. The Buster Keaton film I feel this week. Just don't have a stable list. More like 30 or 40 I go back and forth between (including the Ozu's - some days I was Born But..., Early Spring, An Autumn Afternoon). That is why when I saw some voters in that poll overhaul their list I thought yes I get that because to me it really does matter how I feel on that day.

Yeah I assume some people have more fluid faves. I could change my ballot perhaps to push for something in particular (silents, comedies, underrepresented groups...), but I have a core 8/9 faves that I kniow are my faves and they're not very fluid. They've solidified as my faves after many viewings and many years. As others have said, it's a group of movies that represents me very well. The bottom one/2 (Porco Rosso and Sir Arne's Treasure) are the latest additions to that Top 10, but they still were added, the Miyazaki, around 20 years ago, and the Stiller some 10 years ago. They're the only ones I could see PERHAPS being changed by, say Madame de..., My American Uncle, Earth, A Page of Madness, The Apartment, A Hidden Life, Laura, Gertrud... Those are definitely more fluid, but my Top 8 is, at this stage, very little fluid (I may switch the order between them, at most).

[BraveSirRobin]

Just trying to think how I'd even approach this have been making my head hurt. As every sane person said, the number of spots on the ballot should be expanded. Also, I'd first need to rewatch a ton of things, before submitting, especially if I wanted to send an honest non-strategic ballot. Ughhh, idk, let's say right now I'd go with

- Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
- To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch, 1942)
- Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)
- The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)
- PlayTime (Tati, 1967)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Jones & Gilliam, 1975)
- Vive L'Amour (Tsai, 1994)
- Beau Travail (Denis, 1999)
- Paprika (Kon, 2006)

I really should have a Hong Kong movie in there. Tsai at least counts for some Sinophone representation, but I wish I could also find a spot for a HK film. Obviously, In the Mood for Love, but also maybe Kwan's Rouge or a To (Sparrow or Romancing in Thin Air), or a Tsui (Shanghai Blues or Green Snake).

Also killing me not to have a Hawks on the list (probably Only Angels Have Wings) or a Sirk (Imitation of Life), or a Minnelli (either Meet Me in St. Louis or Tea and Sympathy), or a Welles (F for Fake), but I'm already overstuffing the list with American cinema as is, idk.

Point is, rewatches are truly key, and I haven't done nearly enough of them. That's my biggest takeaway from this exercise. I'm actually in dire need of rewatching/reassessing most of my faves (all the aforementioned and more) at least to be able to properly rank them or even pick a core ~10.

[brit8]

There are so many other films that I debated and switched out, but here is a rough ten:

The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)
All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955)
War and Peace (Bondarchuk, 1965)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1968)
The Girls (Zetterling, 1968)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
The Watermelon Woman (Dunye, 1996)
Mommy (Dolan, 2014)

[jimbob]

Beau Travail (Denis, 1999)
The Texas Chainsaw Massaccre (Hooper, 1974)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990)
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1978)
Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983)
Silence Has No Wings (Kuroki, 1966)
One Day Before the Rainy Season (Kaul, 1971)
Wanda (Loden, 1970)

This is where I've landed for now.

[ldw]

Yeah I assume some people have more fluid faves. I could change my ballot perhaps to push for something in particular (silents, comedies, underrepresented groups...), but I have a core 8/9 faves that I kniow are my faves and they're not very fluid. They've solidified as my faves after many viewings and many years. As others have said, it's a group of movies that represents me very well. The bottom one/2 (Porco Rosso and Sir Arne's Treasure) are the latest additions to that Top 10, but they still were added, the Miyazaki, around 20 years ago, and the Stiller some 10 years ago. They're the only ones I could see PERHAPS being changed by, say Madame de..., My American Uncle, Earth, A Page of Madness, The Apartment, A Hidden Life, Laura, Gertrud... Those are definitely more fluid, but my Top 8 is, at this stage, very little fluid (I may switch the order between them, at most).

Those are a lot of a good movies. I remember when you posted your first reaction to Sir Arne's Treasure.

You know the other day I was thinking To Be Or Not To Be is in my top 10. Then when I was coming up for this list I thought emotionally I am in the mood for as straightforward going for big laughs nonstop movie as possible. So I thought It's A Gift, Duck Soup or Sons of the Desert. But then I thought no a comedy short - a situation where it can't be more than 20 minutes because one is laughing so hard. And I thought of One AM and The Dentist and some WB cartoons (maybe like 6 or 7 minutes). But I went back to Sons of the Desert and thought well Big Business. Not sure if you have seen that Laurel and Hardy one. It is silent too so no funny lines. Just Laurel and Hardy destroying James Finlayson's house while he destroys their car. And it is not for everyone. It really is slapstick destruction from a few minutes in until the end. But that makes me laugh so hard. Next week I will likely be back to To Be Or Not To Be.

[BanZai]

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)
Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988)
Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2013)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

[indefiniteness]

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972)
Fargo (Coen & Coen, 1996)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
The Kid (Chaplin, 1921)
Under the Skin (Glazer, 2014)