SASY Rank – The 1940s

Another decade down, another SASY Rank mini-post. With the 1940s now behind us it is time for the two of us to scrawl down the films that impressed us the most from the decade. There are 36 films from the 1940s on the Sight & Sound list, but as it happens we are largely on the same page with regard to our selections. Neither of us could resist throwing 11 films into our respective Top 10s and we share nine films. That’s a good indication of how strong these nine films were, because this was a particularly satisfying decade for the both of us. There were quite a few filmmakers boasting multiple list films during the decade (Powell & Pressburger, Howard Hawks, Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Orson Welles) but nobody dominated our Top 10 lists the way that Jean Renoir did in the 1930s. No, we’ve spread the love around on this one and can’t wait to move into the 1950s with our next yammer.

We’ve already yammered about all of the films below, so we’ll leave the lists to speak for themselves. But if you want more, then click on a film title to be magically transported to our conversation.

	S.		J.
1.	Casablanca (1942)	1.	Citizen Kane (1941)
2.	Late Spring (1949)	1.	The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
3.	Brief Encounter (1945)	3.	Late Spring (1949)
4.	Citizen Kane (1941)	4.	Out of the Past (1947)
5.	Out of the Past (1947)	5.	Casablanca (1942)
6.	The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)	6.	Day of Wrath (1943)
7.	The Shop Around the Corner (1940)	7.	Bicycle Thieves (1948)
8.	A Canterbury Tale (1944)	8.	The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
9.	Bicycle Thieves (1948)	9.	My Darling Clementine (1946)
10.	My Darling Clementine (1946)	10.	A Canterbury Tale (1944)
10.	The Third Man (1949)	10.	Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

SASY Rank – The 1930s

Back again with a little mini-post to offer some extra perspective on the films we’ve seen. In our last SASY Rank post we each listed our 10 favorite silent films from the Sight & Sound list of the 250 greatest movies ever made. As we said then, it was an attempt on our part to give some sort of coherent measurement of how we felt about the silent movies we watched for this blog. In this entry we are ranking the films of the 1930s. The Sight & Sound list contains 21 films from the 1930s, some of which we adored and some of which we really didn’t connect with *cough-Gone-With-The-Wind-cough*. As our respective lists show, French director Jean Renoir clearly made an impression, landing three films in both of our top 10s for the decade. But the big, big winners for both of us are L’Atalante and M, two movies we can safely say you should see immediately if you have not yet done so. But that’s enough discussion about the films; we’ve already yammered about them at length, and a simple click on any of the film titles below will whisk you off to our grandiose scribblings for that film. Happy reading and viewing!

S. and J.’s Top 10 Sight & Sound Films of the 1930s

	S.		J.
1.	L’Atalante (1934)	1.	L’Atalante (1934)
2.	M (1931)	2.	M (1931)
3.	I Was Born, But… (1932)	3.	The Rules of the Game (1939)
4.	The Rules of the Game (1939)	4.	Trouble in Paradise (1932)
5.	La Grande Illusion (1937)	5.	La Grande Illusion (1937)
6.	The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939)	6.	Partie de Campagne (1936)
7.	Partie de Campagne (1936)	7.	Duck Soup (1933)
8.	King Kong (1933)	8.	I Was Born, But… (1932)
9.	Only Angels Have Wings (1939)	9.	Vampyr (1932)
10.	Trouble in Paradise (1932)	10.	Earth (1930)

SASY Rank – The Silent Years

We were thinking earlier today that it might be nice to throw up a couple of mini-posts offering our rankings for some related types of Sight & Sound films. We already keep ongoing rankings of our respective 10 favorite films (check out the sidebar), and after we watch a block of 10 films we rank them against each other in our SASY Wrap posts. But this doesn’t seem adequate. For one thing, our Top 10 rankings are ultimately going to leave up to 240 films unaccounted for at the end of this experiment. And while the SASY Wrap rankings are great for gathering our thoughts to do a round-up post, it’s not necessarily fair to be comparing something like 2001: A Space Odyssey to Greed (which we did anyway).

So with that in mind we are offering up a few sets of rankings that we hope will clarify where we stand on different types of films, either by ranking films by genre or time period. This first set of rankings covers both, as it looks at the silent films on the Sight & Sound list. All told, there are 21 silent movies on the list, and below we each present our 10 favorites. We’re not going to discuss any of these films in this post, but hope this serves as a quick way for readers to sort through the flicks from that period that we think worked best. Click on a movie title and you will be whisked off to our yammer about that film. We hope you like the list, and we’ll be back with another mini-post with our favorite Sight & Sound films from the 1930s.

S. and J.’s Top 10 Sight & Sound Films of the Silent Era

	S.		J.
1.	The General (1926)	1.	The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
2.	Man With a Movie Camera (1929)	2.	Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
3.	Battleship Potemkin (1925)	3.	Battleship Potemkin (1925)
4.	The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)	4.	The General (1926)
5.	I Was Born, But… (1932)	5.	Napoleon (1927)
6.	Napoleon (1927)	6.	Metropolis (1927)
7.	Sherlock, Jr. (1924)	7.	I Was Born, But… (1932)
7.	The Last Laugh (1924)	8.	Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
9.	City Lights (1931)	9.	The Last Laugh (1924)
10.	Metropolis (1927)	10.	Earth (1930)