What the hell is a ‘best film ever made’ film anyway?
The valiant and futile attempts to wrestle some kind of order out of artistic chaos
What’s your favourite film? No seriously, what is it? It could be anything on any given day, right? It’s a deliberately elliptical question where a deluge of titles come to mind, or we go completely blank because our memories love to dick around with us. As soon as we suggest one film as our favourite, someone ruins it by throwing a handful of other, equally valid movies into the mix that we had completely forgotten about. It shifts day to day, mood to mood. It might come down to convenience, to what it means to you, to the state of mind you were in, the event it took place around. You’ll have guilty pleasures, childhood recollections, first loves, so on and so forth. Really, any number of factors.
But what if we threw an object of context into it? What would you consider the best film you’ve ever seen? And really, what does that question even mean? How would you even know what a best film ever would look like? What constitutes such a film? What are the parameters of it? What are the prerequisites on not just the film side, but of the viewer as well? A knowledge of cinematic history and and understanding of film might help, but how critical and calculating must the eye be for such a subjective outlook? What about your age, upbringing and cinematic taste? Do you go by feel? By the achievements and significance of a film? Do you give more weight to classic cinema (movies that are routinely at the pointy end of many lists) or become bold and forward thinking, looking to the future or at left field choices. Will a ranking feel exclusive — a little bourgeoisie so to speak, and thus negating the inherent populism of some other films? Where is the line for that anyway?
It’s a swirling vortex of considerations. How personal would it be? Or should it be? Should it be more an exercise in calculating historic recognition? I guess the root question for this section is — what is the difference between a favourite and most acclaimed, and how much overlap is there?
At the risk of drawing insulting laughs and finger pointing, here are the ten films that I consider the best ever.
- The Lord of The Rings Trilogy (2001–2003)
- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1964)
- The Godfather (1972)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- Casablanca (1942)
- Apocalypse Now (1979)
- Singin’ In The Rain (1951)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
It is a list of contradictions — imperfect, personal, wide-ranging and narrow minded, atrociously incomplete yet somehow well rounded. Immediately I’m riddled with anxiety over it, as if someone arbitrary judge of film is belittling my selections. A true historian and lover of film would never have Raiders of the Lost Ark in their top ten when Vertigo or Tokyo Story don’t even sniff the top twenty, harrumph!! But that is thankfully ludicrous and non-existent. You could laugh and say it’s obvious that it turns into an argument about personal preferences and that the very nature of this exercise allows you the freedom to choose whatever films you want but then that inevitably turns into a morass of confusion and second guessing. We’re here for an appreciation and understanding, not simply a popularity contest.
It can’t ever be set in stone. Just for this article alone, I ended up shifting around some of the titles. And honestly, such rankings can feel disingenuous and slightly embarrassing. How can you truly quantify a great film? Putting one above another like your stumbled upon some kind of equation to differentiate and rank quality. Even now, going over the list, I’m a hesitant to lock it in. Indeed, ever since I started building a list — which I initially was going to publish fully until thinking better of it — the make up of the top ten and the top twenty has changed drastically.
The site, They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) attempts such a thing. It collates a list of the most acclaimed films ever from thousands of other lists such as the Sight and Sound Polls, AFI’s 100… series, and from an innumerable number of critics and other institutions. Each year it’s updated with new films and some re-ordering. It’s by no means perfect or the definitive say on the argument of what a ‘greatest’ film is, but it’s a wonderful jumping off point for anyone who’s serious about their cinema.
The introduction to the list reads:
Film as an art-form continues to flourish (generally-speaking), and hopefully projects like this help us to stop and think, and reflect on some of cinema’s finest moments, finest filmmakers, and ultimately, finest films. The 1,000 Greatest Films, as you would expect from the title of this project, receive the most attention on these pages. However, I urge everyone to look beyond them and delve into the provided starting list of over 17,000 films. Your next favourite cinematic experience is more than likely in there somewhere.
Here are it’s top ten films for comparison (and the list entire can be found here:
Without a doubt these are some of the most influential, powerful and landmark cinematic productions ever made. Whole libraries (remember those?) have been filled with books written that dissect, analyse, bestow greatness, and any other hyperbole you can think of, upon these films. It’s a truly astounding achievement what the site has been able to do. If you’re into film, you’ve seen these ten, and you’d have at least some appreciation for them, to the point where you can have some understanding as to why they are so highly regarded.
And yet….
Another way to look at it is that what TSPDT highlights is an irrevocable chaining to the past. That in nearly 120 years of cinema, it essentially peaked in a roughly 40 year period. There’s a sense of disconnect here. Is this top ten for only academics of film, critics and cinefiles? Has consensus been reached somehow? Must time be given for a film to fully blossom into it’s true critical standing? Certainly, many of the films considered the best ever were treated with a cool reception upon initial release: Citizen Kane for example, the consensus pick for the greatest film ever made, didn’t really gain traction to claim that mantle until a re-evaluation of it came when it was finally shown in Europe after World war II. Going through a lot of these films it seems like an advantage for a lot of them is rediscovery and newfound appreciation after a period of time. As if it was years ahead of it’s time.
For a bit more context, here’s the next 10 on the list:
Once more, you have challenging films, landmark films. One’s that have influenced dozens of movies, directors, artists since release. The vast majority of people may not have seen these films even if they know of them. Yet I would hazard a somewhat confident guess that many have seen references and homages to them in other media.
Just look at Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, where he famously pays tribute to the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. Or the countless imitations, parodies and YouTube videos of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver sneering at himself in the mirror uttering ‘are you talkin’ to me?’. Pretty much every frame from The Godfather has been re-purposed and referenced in a million other pieces of pop culture work to the point where their origins seem superfluous. Check out any episode from The Simpsons and it’ll have at least one sly reference to a film classic. While they don’t quite become relics, they do approach borderline curiosities to the general demographic. That isn’t to say that these films are lessened in stature, instead they take on these alternate lives. Existing across a broader spectrum of our culture.
An intriguing, most likely fruitless question to ask is: what would be the next film that will enter into the conversation to be in the top twenty, or indeed, the top ten, on on any given list? Could a film from the turn of century ever hope to ascend to such a level? On TSPDT the most highly acclaimed films to make into it’s top 100 from the 21st century are In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai and Mulholland Dr. by David Lynch, and even then, both were released at the very beginning of new century. They are both magnetic, endlessly beguiling films — original and daring in construction and execution. And yet it feels like a ceiling for each has already been reached.
So time is a factor: re-evaluation, understanding, the ability for a film to maintain relevance, if not influence, across the years. Demographics and tastes will invariably shift as well — while we will still hold onto a lot of these classics, a new appreciation of more recent films seems like a viable possibility. Films like There Will Be Blood, Brokeback Mountain, Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty, Children of Men, Mad Max: Fury Road to name a few, all have room to grow. Even in this, the danger is clear. While these films are absolutely fantastic and compelling works of cinema, it can feel rather arbitrary to name them as if they’re next in line to the throne. It still comes back down to preferences. We may be waiting 40 or 50 years before we’re seeing films from both sides of the new millennium being discussed seriously alongside Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story and Sunrise as the best films ever.
My personal choice for the top spot in a greatest films list, The Lord of the Rings trilogy (what of it!), might have a chance if more and more people look to it as a single film. While each film is astounding in it’s own way, taken as a whole, it’s a fierce, powerful, stirring and emotional cinematic event that redefined the epic film to the point that it might have scared off any challengers to it, while the media landscape has morphed into franchises, shared universes, and film and television shows that rely on a pop culture heavy sense of nostalgia. With each year that passes, the trilogy becomes a more singular accomplishment, a ‘how on earth did this manage to turn out so well’ kind of deal that by all rights shouldn’t have transcended it’s work or genre the way it did.
A vocal groundswell of support certainly helps in getting a film into the conversation, though it feels dirty to write that, as if you’re championing an election candidate. One can be loud in their favour of a particular film, but it doesn’t mean it’ll catch on. Admittedly the question over what the best film ever is not high on the people’s list that need to be answered. You can’t find a definitive answer to it anyway, yet somehow, the medium of film has turned it into an art form. Critics, film historians and academics, and self-professed obsessives of cinema draw up an endless number of rankings, branching off to cover every style, every genre, every decade, every nation. We humans desire order. Art is paradoxically a manifestation and renouncement of said order, so we utilise these types of lists to simplify what is being created, and to comfort us subconsciously.
So much of the best cinema isn’t instantaneous. It confronts and challenges the viewer. It may be a mesmirising experience that feels more like a hazy dream instead of consuming a piece of work. Revisit a film you may not have quite grasped the first time and it’s depth and layers will unveil themselves. It’s a robust discussion, and also a essential way to preserve the history of cinema. Go out and seek these works from decades past, even if your predilection might be for whatever’s playing at the multiplex. Movies can be more than a distraction if you’re willing to invest a little time into them. We always talk about sitting down a reading a really good book, but it could be just as valid to sit down and experience a really good film. That is ultimately what is so great about film — you may have watched it so many times you’ve lost count, but it can still have the power to conjure up a new experience every time you settle in to be wowed by the magic of the silver screen.
