#24 (tie) – Rashomon (1950), dir. Kurosawa Akira

I might have been lying when I said I was lying. Actress Machiko Kyo takes in the horror of her situation — at least in her version of the story — in Kurosawa Akira’s landmark film Rashomon.

A man lies dead in a forest clearing, his wife has been assaulted, and a bandit has made off with their horse and possessions. This much is known, but everything else is called into question as the bandit, the wife, and the dead man (speaking through a medium) tell drastically different versions of how this came to be. And a story level beyond, three men discuss these testimonies as they take shelter from the pouring rain and, confronted with an apparent web of death and lies, ponder the nature of the human soul. Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950) was a major landmark in world cinema, breaking Japanese film into the global consciousness in a major way (and generally letting the West know that their was more than Europe and Hollywood out there). The film — which essentially tells the same story four times from radically different vantage points — is a remarkable deconstruction of narrative convention and calls into question the supposed impartiality of the camera’s gaze. Endlessly influential — the “Rashomon effect” has even entered standard legal parlance — the film calls into question the nature of truth and examines the urges and self-serving motives that obscure the pure core of our common humanity. (88 min.)

#17 – Seven Samurai (1954), dir. Kurosawa Akira

The Magnificent Seven. The great Toshiro Mifune leads a stellar ensemble cast in the grandest of Japanese epic films, Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai.

These days Ozu Yasujiro is probably considered to be Japan’s greatest filmmaker, but it’s a good bet that more people have gotten their introduction to classic Japanese cinema through Kurosawa Akira. This is perhaps not terribly surprising, given Kurosawa’s eye for spectacle and a well honed populist streak that makes for stellar entertainment. It also doesn’t hurt that Kurosawa’s films frequently draw from Western cultural touchstones like film Westerns, noir detective fiction and Shakespeare, making his work more accessible to Western viewers. Though a versatile filmmaker who did everything from quiet domestic dramas to urban thrillers, Kurosawa is probably most famous for his samurai pictures, and there is no film in the genre as epic and grand as 1954’s Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai). The plot of the film is quite simple: a village hires seven samurai to defend it from bandits. But within that simple framework Kurosawa creates a sprawling epic touching on issues of class and economy, bravery and cowardice, selfishness versus community, and the nature of loss. Exciting and funny, smart but not preachy, Seven Samurai pretty much defined the action film, giving movies an energy they had never previously known. (209 min.)

#15 – Late Spring (1949), dir. Ozu Yasujiro

So happy together. Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara are quietly powerful as a father and daughter living together in post-war Japan in the Ozu Yasujiro masterpiece Late Spring.

This is it for the 1940s at Fan With a Movie Yammer, and we had the pleasure of finishing off this decade of Sight & Sound films on pretty much the highest of high notes. Late Spring (Banshun, 1949) is the second list film from acclaimed director Ozu Yasujiro, and also the first post-war Japanese movie to make the list. Japanese cinema is going to play heavily in our viewing of 1950s films, and it seems singularly appropriate that Ozu would be sending us off into that decade in grand style. Late Spring is a deceptively simple tale of a young woman resisting family and friends who are pushing her to marry. That is basically the whole of the plot, but Ozu and his exceptional cast imbue the scenario with a depth of feeling and provide such intimate shading of the core characters. Precise but never fussy, heartfelt and sad, but hopeful and very funny, Late Spring captures the essence of the human condition with confidence and a generosity of spirit. (107 min.)

#33 – Bicycle Thieves (1948), dir. Vittorio de Sica

I want to ride it where I like. Antonio and his son Bruno suffer the indignity of poverty and desperation — but also enjoy connection and understanding — in the neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves.

We’ve already taken a rather precipitous dive into Italian Neorealism with a trilogy of movies by the genre’s founder, Roberto Rossellini. But the most famous and most highly lauded film from that school of movie-making is director Vittorio de Sica’s deceptively simple masterpiece Bicycle Thieves (Ladri de bicicleta, 1948). So potent was the film’s impact — at least among critics — that it topped the first Sight & Sound list in 1952 — yes, just four years after the movie came out it was hailed as the greatest film ever made. And while Bicycle Thieves no longer hangs about in the vaunted Top 10 of the Sight & Sound list, it is still easy to see how the film captured the hearts and minds of the critical establishment back in the day (and its current rank of 33 is nothing to sneeze at either). Like Rossellini’s Neorealist Trilogy, Bicycle Thieves makes pointed use of location shooting and non-professional actors to tell a story that is grittier and more grounded in the real world than filmic spectacle. But unlike Rossellini’s work, which uses extreme violence or an uncompromising narrative bleakness to make its points, Bicycle Thieves is a simple story about a simple family. It follows a man and his son as they scour Rome looking for the man’s stolen bicycle, which he desperately needs to keep his job. But in sticking with this father/son duo, de Sica offer up a wealth of commentary on poverty, family, the plight of the working class, religion, and Italian society in general but always in a manner that feels organic, funny, and emotional resonant. So let’s go for a ride! (Just make sure you lock up that bike up when we’re done.)

#63 (tie) – Modern Times (1936), dir. Charlie Chaplin

Motormouth. Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp gets a taste of the latest technology in Modern Times, the comedian’s slapstick satire of industry and the plight of the working man.

We’ve previously mentioned on this blog that Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 film City Lights very much went against the grain by being a silent picture at a time when sound had become all the rage in Hollywood. By that measure, the comedian’s next feature — Modern Times (1936) — is positively reactionary. Modern Times was meant to be Chaplin’s first foray into the all-talking movie, but he felt (and rightly so) that his Little Tramp character was essentially a vehicle for silent expression. Modern Times technically isn’t a silent film (we’ll get into that), but in most of the essential ways it is a product of the silent era. “Reactionary” isn’t just applicable to the film’s style, but also potentially its content. Modern Times doesn’t offer a story so much as a satirical broadside against the industrialized world — particularly the dehumanization of mechanized production and the pain and poverty experienced by large swathes of society. So, the film can be seen as reactionary in its insistence on the good old ways in a disturbing new world, but its sympathy for the little man and the worker made it revolutionary enough for Chaplin to be branded a Communist in 1950s Red Scare America. Whatever your take, Modern Times absolutely was the last silent film made in Hollywood, and it is appropriate that the Little Tramp would provide the final word — or intertitle — on the form. (87 min.)

#50 (tie) – City Lights (1931), dir. Charlie Chaplin

The rain, the park, & other things. Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and Virginia Cherrill’s blind flower seller form an unusual couple in the influential romantic comedy City Lights, arguably Chaplin’s finest film and his last totally silent movie.

By 1931, Hollywood had fully embraced the talkie. So it was a big risk for Charlie Chaplin to think audiences would still come out to a silent picture. But this gamble by the silent era’s biggest star paid off, and City Lights ended up being a smash hit for Chaplin, even if it was moving against the times. One often hears of silent stars whose careers went in the toilet because they didn’t have the voices to match their on-screen selves. Chaplin had a fine voice, but perhaps an even greater reason to be wary of sound: his clownish on-screen persona the Little Tramp just wouldn’t work in a sound context. Rather than devise a new persona, Chaplin stuck with the format he new best. The premise of City Lights is simple, the Little Tramp falls for a blind woman who sells flowers on a street corner. She mistakenly believes he is a rich man — a mistake the Tramp is happy to let her make. In seeking to acquire the money needed to restore the woman’s sight, the Little Tramp is cast into a series of misadventures including run-ins with a drunk, suicidal millionaire and a boxing match for the ages. Chaplin trafficks heavily in sentimentality in City Lights, but he achieves a tricky balance of romance, slapstick, and whimsy in what is generally considered his finest film. (87 min.)

#36 (tie) – Metropolis (1927), dir. Fritz Lang

Futurama. The prototypical mad scientist Rotwang shows off his mechanical hand and his mechanical-man to Joh Frederson, the effective ruler of Metropolis, the dystopic society created by director Fritz Lang.

Above ground, a towering, glittering city filled with a pleasure-seeking elite. Below ground, the tenement colony of workers who operate the massive machines that drive the city above. Metropolis (1927) is the story of a young man and woman who try to break down the divide between the classes in the name of love and common humanity. But little of that matters, because the film is foremost a canvas on which director Fritz Lang creates some of cinema’s most enduring images and characters. The most expensive silent film ever made, Metropolis represents ground zero for cinematic science fiction — even more so than A Trip to the Moon. Every cinematic dystopia from Blade Runner to Akira to The Matrix owes a debt to Metropolis‘ title city. The novel Frankenstein may have created the mad scientist, but it is the performance of Lang regular Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the fiendish inventor Rotwang that serves as the model for every deranged scientist to come. And Metropolis‘ most famous creation, the Machine-Man, was effectively cinema’s first robot (and served as direct model for C-3PO in Star Wars). In all, Metropolis is a simplistic take on class conflict, but one told on a grand scale and with a visual inventiveness that has kept it relevant and eye-popping for over 85 years. (150 min.)

#12 – L’Atalante (1934), dir. Jean Vigo

Fathoms deep. Jean sees visions of his Juliette in the grim waters of the canal in Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, a fantastical story of romance and high emotion grounded in the realities of everyday life.

Juliette and Jean emerge from a church as man and wife, ready to start a new life together aboard the canal-going commercial vessel L’Atalante. The movie L’Atalante (1934) serves as an exploration of love and friendship as the couple and Jean’s crew try to come to grips with the new status quo aboard the cramped ship. Jean has a short temper and business to worry about, first mate Pere Jules is an eccentric cat fancier suspicious of the bride, and Juliette is a provincial girl excited to see the world but feeling oppressed aboard the ship. When described that way it all sounds terribly serious, but L’Atalante allows for wonderful, goofy comedy as well as heartfelt romance and desire, with only a pinch of anger and stubborn pride to spice up the mix. Director Jean Vigo shot the film on location, using real-life canal/industrial settings to create a dreamy, beautifully photographed film that uses movie magic to transport the mundane into the realm of fantasy. Sadly, L’Atalante proved to be Vigo’s first and only feature film, as the young director died of tuberculosis a few months after the film’s premier at the age of 29. But with L’Atalante he left an indelible and beautiful epitaph. (89 min.)

#34 (tie) – The General (1926), dir. Buster Keaton

On a crazy train. You know how sometimes actors make a big deal about doing their own stunts; Buster Keaton could laugh in their faces.

The phrase “they don’t make ’em like they used to” is an over-used and often rather meaningless expression. But when it comes to Buster Keaton’s The General, it is all too apt, if only because studios and insurance companies would never, ever let a major star get away with performing the dozens of life-threatening stunts that Keaton pulls off throughout the movie. No computer imaging, no painting out of safety harnesses, no stand-ins, no problem — just get that massive train rolling right on ahead. The General is an action comedy loosely based on a true event from the American Civil War. Keaton plays a Southern engineer whose engine (The General of the movie’s title) is stolen by Union spies. Keaton races to take his engine back — and maybe rescue the woman he loves — kicking off a series of crazy chases along railroad lines and across the front lines of the war. (75 min.)

#11 – Battleship Potemkin (1925), dir. Sergei Eisenstein

Comrade overboard! Potemkin sailors leap into the water to save the leader of the mutiny against tyrannical Tsarist officers in Eisenstein’s remarkable Soviet propaganda film.

Workers of the world unite! In this entry we discuss Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin), a film that has been considered a major classic pretty much since its premier in 1925. The 2012 Sight & Sound poll represents the first time in the poll’s 60 year history that Potemkin has not been in the Top 10, and it missed out by just one vote. So it carries a lot of critical baggage as an essential film. The movie itself centers on the true story of a mutiny aboard a Russian naval vessel during the revolutionary uprisings of 1905 and the (fictional) brutal reprisal by Tsarist troops against the mutineers’ supporters in the city of Odessa. Like most Russian films made in the aftermath of the Russian civil war (1917-1922), Potemkin is very much a piece of communist propaganda, but its revolutionary use of montage is credited with redefining the way in which stories are told on the silver screen. (69 min.)