The All-Time List Discussion Thread (Decade Project Vol. 3)

[Werewolf by Night]

And for the record, I DO wish I had participated in the recent round of decades lists. Seems slightly insane that I can vote for Fight Club (which is, you know, fine) but not Scorpio Rising (which would probably rest comfortably in my top 5), or that I can vote for Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but not Alan Clarke's. Let this be a lesson to you youngsters!

[swo17]

If it's any consolation, your participation wouldn't have made any difference for those two films--neither one appeared in anyone's top 10 for their respective decades (though they both placed as high as #12). This should feel liberating, as it frees you up to use some of your 50 precious votes where they will count more. Realistically, many of the eligible films don't stand a chance of making the final top 100, especially the ones that are really well known that barely squeaked onto the list (like Fight Club). I'm hopeful that other squeak-byers like The Good Fairy, The Stone Wedding, Manoël on the Island of Marvels, or The Convent will stand more of a chance since their lower performance at the time was at least somewhat impacted by their relative obscurity, but the final list will still likely be dominated by films that appeared on, let's say, five or more top 10s during each decade project. Unless some of you are able to turn the tide through concerted lobbying efforts...

[dustybooks]

I am stunned at my deficiency -- I've seen barely half of the eligible films. I have been using the old list project masterlists to explore the entire film canon, starting with the silent era, and it's been a wonderful and illuminating experience. Doing it chronologically has made it especially enlightening for me, but seeing how far I am from a working knowledge of the films on this list I think I may disrupt that procedure long enough to fill in all my lamentable gaps here. I'm probably going to opt out of voting if I don't manage to see at least 2/3 of what's listed before the end of January (which sounds like it ought to be a cinch but I have a lot going on!). Thanks for putting this project together, swo.

[Werewolf by Night]

If it's any consolation, your participation wouldn't have made any difference for those two films--neither one appeared in anyone's top 10 for their respective decades (though they both placed as high as #12).

Well that's no consolation at all!

[movielocke]

This is why I was concerned that 50 wouldn't be an adequate number for this project! folks expressed earlier they did not want to go to submitting 75 or 100, but I'd love that. I would suggest 59 (ten percent of the list, plus one) as a good alternate to bumping it much higher. I wish I had time to participate in the decades projects I didn't participate in. :/ Looking forward to this one, though!

Borrowing this idea from Domino:

PROGRESS: 340/585 (58.1%)
(last updated 6/2/16)

[swo17]

Sight & Sound only let people pick ten.

[Werewolf by Night]

Despite my posts above, I don't think individual lists should be more than 50. The process SHOULD involve hard decisions and serious re-evaluation.

[movielocke]

Sight & Sound only let people pick ten.

I've always believed they're wrong on that point.

[Noiradelic]

Sight & Sound only let people pick ten.

But their last all-time poll there had 1200 voters...

[TMDaines]

Started on 201/585. Currently (02/06/16) on 202/585.

Il fuoco (1916) - It's a shame that the Italian silent films of the diva era have not been given any sort of reasonable treatment by home video. This film is decent enough and an enjoyable watch, as Pina Menichelli is extremely charismatic as the seductress. I've not seen a massive amount of film from this period, so I'd love to hear from people why this film was the one diva film that garnered sufficient support to make the shortlist. What would people ascribe to it as great?

If anyone wants help seeing the film, which has never been released, is presumably in the public domain, and is available in a reasonable TV recording (w/ English subtitles), let me know.

[Tommaso]

You almost gave the answer yourself: these diva films in general are all about elegance, often with a 'decadent' touch, and about the female lead either suffering or being a femme fatale (or both at the same time). And Pina Menichelli was simply the most seductive of all the divas. I wouldn't say that this is the single diva film, but it's a very fine one and one that is extremely characteristic of the genre. This is probably a reason why it got more votes than others which are also exceptional, like "Rapsodia Satanica" or "Tigre reale".

I'll try to do some little write-up about diva films when it comes to the next round of the pre-20s list, as more of them have become available in the last few years, but I'll definitely have to rewatch all of them first.

[Lemmy Caution]

A quick provisional cut dropped the list down to 71 for me. It really won't be that hard to cut another 21 films that I really like, but don't love. For me, the harder part will be giving some sort of order to the remaining 50. A top 10 shouldn't be much of a problem, but rankings form 20-40 will be kind of arbitrary.
I was surprised how many I hadn't seen yet. Didn't make a count, but probably around 80, I'd guess.
I don't have access to the silents. There are some films from mid 20thC I think I have the dvd lying around, and should make an effort to see.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I was looking for bona fide classics that I thought must be here but aren't. No SOME LIKE IT HOT?

[Satori]

I'm hopeful that other squeak-byers like The Good Fairy, The Stone Wedding, Manoël on the Island of Marvels, or The Convent will stand more of a chance since their lower performance at the time was at least somewhat impacted by their relative obscurity,

I've been watching unseen films from the master since this list was suggested a couple months ago, and The Good Fairy is probably my favorite that I've seen so far. I'm not sure whether or not it has a chance of making my list, though. I think my biggest problem is that even when I fall in love with a previously unseen film, it still has to compete with 70+ that I've been in love with for awhile and have developed completely personal attachments to. I'd imagine this will be the case for most people.

The masterlist also has a pretty good selection of my all-time favorites, even for decades prior to the 1970s, which is when I started participating (so if you're still around, thanks to the two of you who top 10'd The Seventh Victim!) I never seem to participate in these projects as much as I intend to, but I'll post pleas for some of my personal favorites.

[TMDaines]

I was looking for bona fide classics that I thought must be here but aren't. No SOME LIKE IT HOT?

Edit: For a fuller answer, here is our shortlist cross-referenced against the top 250 of the 2016 revision of TSPDT's 1000 Greatest Films. There's 64 titles after you discount Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958), which is included on our shortlist under a joint entry with the first part.

For the really big hitters, the following are not eligible that appear in the top 100 of TSPDT's 1000 Greatest Films:

• Singin' in the Rain (1952)
• Rashômon (1950)
• Some Like It Hot (1959)
• Gertrud (1964)
• Viaggio in Italia (1954)
• Jules et Jim (1962)
• Jaws (1972)
• Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1975)

[swo17]

I was looking for bona fide classics that I thought must be here but aren't. No SOME LIKE IT HOT?

When we did the 1950s project, 31 people (most of them currently active members) submitted lists and you were the only one to include it in the top 10. It received five other votes, but none of them high enough to suggest that they would translate to votes for this list. There's a similar story for any number of other films that aren't eligible now. Consider Singin' in the Rain, which received 20 votes in the same project, but only one in the top 10, or Rashōmon, which received 10 votes but no top 10 placements. If they were eligible, none of these films would be likely to perform well here.

If you prefer, you might consider the list you'll eventually be sending me as a 50-large cross-section of your own personal top 75 or 100 or whatever, where the 50 have been strategically selected to maximize the power of your vote.

[Tommaso]

These are all of the films that fared well enough during each individual round of this iteration of the lists project (i.e. placing on at least two people's top 10s for the decade) to be deemed eligible for this final round. Does your very favorite film of all time not appear on this list? Too bad. You should have participated when we were doing that decade. Or maybe you did and no one else liked the film as much as you. It doesn't matter. None of this matters, not really.

What perhaps matters, though, is that due to the different numbers of participants for each decade we have now a rather unequally distributed choice of eligible films over the decades. We have 35 eligible films for the 1920s, whereas there are 70 films for the 1930s and 71 for the 1980s. And the main reason for this is that far fewer people participated in the lists dedicated to the pre-20s and 20s (and partly because of the person who assembled these two lists, it seems), and as such an individual film had far lower chances to make the Top10 of two different participants than in later decades. No idea how to solve this problem or whether it is even a problem for people here, but I simply can't see how the 1920s could have been a less important decade in film history than the 1980s. But I fear it might fare unduly bad in the end result. I'd love to stand corrected in January.

[matrixschmatrix]

I mean, the easiest way to counteract that would presumably be to stump for the titles that are on there- particularly since they're the ones most likely to have gone unseen by the majority of the people doing the project. Besides, watching anything pre-20s will count double, since it will be good for the next list as well.

[Satori]

Feeling inspired to jump into this project, I spent some time this morning jotting down some thoughts/ woefully inadequate analysis about the film which will be topping my list: Céline and Julie Go Boating.

In Rivette’s essay “The Genius of Howard Hawks,” he begins by writing “the evidence on the screen is the proof of Hawk’s genius. You only have to watch Monkey Business to know it is a brilliant film. Some people refuse to admit this, however; they refuse to be satisfied by proof.” I have always loved this essay because Rivette butts up against the ultimate barrier of film criticism: how do you convince someone that a film is great when you don’t know how to express what makes it great? All you can do is point at the screen and hope that they see a flicker of what you see.

I feel exactly the same way with Céline and Julie Go Boating, my favorite film, and one that I have absolutely no idea how to talk about. Perhaps I could talk about how the film itself gives us an allegory of what cinema can be, with the melodrama in the house an example of the flat, constricted, and repetitious staging of the same film over and over while the scenes outside with Céline and Julie give us a vision of the cinema as freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of narrative, freedom of the audience to construct their own stories. How Céline and Julie’s liberation of young Madlyn and their disruption of the repetitions of the house are symbolic of Rivette’s liberation of the language and time of cinema.

Or, alternatively, I might discuss how the film is a brilliant feminist parable of women taking control of their own narratives, taking what they need from the past—like the monologue in Dance, Girl, Dance—and rejecting what they don’t, like the romantic triangles of the Henry James story endlessly replaying in the house.

Both of these are crucial components of the film, and yet it makes the film sound so overdetermined when I make these kinds of inadequate interpretations.

So perhaps the way to approach the film is by looking at specific moments which exemplify the film’s genius. One which immediately comes to mind is late in the film when the pair are creating a magic potion—consisting of the four basic elements—which will allow them to “see” more of the house story. After pouring in a bottle of water, Céline pours part of an empty bottle of “air” into the potion, quickly stopping it back up. “You can pour it all,” Julie tells her, and Céline quickly finishes off the bottle of air before moving on to the next ingredient. Something about this moment—a combination of complete absurdity with a kind of childhood earnestness—perfectly encapsulates the joy of the film as a whole. There are another two dozen such perfect moments: the way Julie tends to Céline both times she is ejected from the house and the women take a cab back to Julie’s apartment; the roller skating reference to Feuillade, etc.

But my words will necessarily be inadequate; all I can do is try to helplessly point at the film, because it is the only proof of its genius.

[swo17]

These are all of the films that fared well enough during each individual round of this iteration of the lists project (i.e. placing on at least two people's top 10s for the decade) to be deemed eligible for this final round. Does your very favorite film of all time not appear on this list? Too bad. You should have participated when we were doing that decade. Or maybe you did and no one else liked the film as much as you. It doesn't matter. None of this matters, not really.

What perhaps matters, though, is that due to the different numbers of participants for each decade we have now a rather unequally distributed choice of eligible films over the decades. We have 35 eligible films for the 1920s, whereas there are 70 films for the 1930s and 71 for the 1980s. And the main reason for this is that far fewer people participated in the lists dedicated to the pre-20s and 20s (and partly because of the person who assembled these two lists, it seems), and as such an individual film had far lower chances to make the Top10 of two different participants than in later decades. No idea how to solve this problem or whether it is even a problem for people here, but I simply can't see how the 1920s could have been a less important decade in film history than the 1980s. But I fear it might fare unduly bad in the end result. I'd love to stand corrected in January.

It may actually help the '20s films perform better on the overall list, since there will be less "vote splitting" in a sense. Who knows? Any fancy math I could do to accommodate this issue would sacrifice the simplicity of the "two top 10 mentions" idea. In fact, 17 of the 20 films that made my top 10s for those first two periods are eligible now. I've got as much or more to choose from there as I do for any other period.

It might have been better in some respects to have set the bar at three top 10 mentions, which would have cut the list of eligible titles about in half, but somehow that seems less fun to me.

[Trees]

My face when I spent about a week last month making a new all-time top ten list and now I can't find the file anywhere on my computer. #-o

[domino harvey]

You can't remember the ten films you like best?

[Trees]

You can't remember the ten films you like best?

Not the exact order and all that.

It took quite bit of shuffling things around and double checking other lists to finalize it last month. I'll probably try to redo it today.

[swo17]

How will your face look when something actually traumatic happens?

[Trees]

MFW moderators trolling me during these dark times of the lost top 10.