More on the List (sorry)

I know this part is totally boring, but I feel the need to be up front and open about my system of choosing films (since I began this project by declaring a need for one), and as I'm still working it out it seems relevant to the blog. Feel free to skip to the next post.

What bothers me about simply consulting a list of the "greatest films ever" is that there is generally no logical progression to them. They're just a list of good uns, and you can't from such a list place each film into its influential role in film history, or say, hey, this one was part of this movement, etc. Yes, I realize that what I'm asking for is for someone else to do the hard work for me--but hell, it's been done, right? These films have been categorized in certain ways, and I'd like to be able to see them in those ways.

So I guess what I'm looking for are two things: 1) a chronological guide to film movements and 2) a comprehensive list of the generally-agreed-upon greatest/most influential movies evah. Armed with these, I can choose a well-rounded queue that covers the big bases, and understand where each movie fits in.

There are two libraries within a reasonable distance of my home, but a search for a general guide to film history has turned up instead about a thousand more specialized books: about 800 of them are on film noir alone for some reason (I've never noticed anything especially hard-boiled about this generally sunny little southern town--what's with the noir zeal?), another bunch on French New Wave, a plethora on adaptations and specific directors, etc. But hell, I'm not trying to get a degree here. I think maybe I'm looking for a coffee table book with big illustrated time lines and "Fun Fact" boxes. Like, oh, something you might find on the Internet. Anyone got an idea?

As far as places to find lists, I've discovered this website that you probably already all know about: It's called They Shoot Pictures Don't They? . From the site's main menu you can visit some really helpful and interesting things, such as director pages all the way from A-Z; an assembled list of the 1,000 Greatest Films, "[a]s voted by 2,041 critics, filmmakers, reviewers, scholars and other likely film types;" a page for the best films of the 21st century; and, get this!--a link to a page for exactly one featured film genre--film noir! The world is going crazy for the stuff!

I'm most interested in this site for it's Big List, but 1,000 is an intimidating number when you've only got one summer and a postal lag between you and your queue. But you can click on the top 200 directors from the list, or view just the top 400 films, and the big list even comes with a PDF companion for people with even lonelier lives than the author of this blog lives. In the PDF doc, the makers of the list boast "a reasonably complicated set of formulas" used to compile it, but as they don't divulge this magical equation, and since I wouldn't understand it if they did, I'm just gonna take their word for it (despite that they don't provide any real reason for declaring some lists too "dubious" to draw from--like Maxim's "100 Greatest Guy Movies Ever Made"--I guess it's the word "Guy" in there that discredits it, because what is a "guy" movie or a "chick flick" anyway, right? Don't label us, Maxim!).

All this to say, I think I've found a suitable list to draw from, but I'm still not clear on how to proceed. Do I tackle the top directors? Start at the top of the top 400 films? Skip every other film? Find my film movements guide and choose one from each? Choose at random?

Thoughts?

For now, I'm still picking rather willy nilly from The Film Club's recommendations, and I've already watched several that I owe--what do I call these things? reviews? overviews? primers?--Twerp's Guides! to. After lunch I may just tackle Murmur of the Heart (1971).

The List

A few words and a call for help about The List I am searching for. The List, of course, is the hypothetical, elusive Best Of film catalog, a sort of Platonic ideal of movie critics' picks. In reality, of course, there is no such thing. There are as many lists of films any self-titled movie know-it-all should see as there are movie know-it-alls. Perhaps what I'm interested in is where they tend to overlap?

Let's be practical. I've got a summer here, and actually I've only got evenings in the summer (during the day I'm mostly planning classes and learning Spanish), and then all hell breaks loose when I start teaching four courses in the fall. I won't be watching many movies then. So I'm not going to watch every great movie ever made in the next few months.

Nor do I just want to hit the cornerstones of each movement and genre, those films that are called most influential. I'd like a little more leeway than that, and I'd like to keep in my selections a bit of the spirit of how we choose movies: we look through titles and descriptions and posters and DVD covers and we land on ones that interest us. I'd like to balance my queue between these two things. How about some rules?

1. I will only choose movies that are generally agreed upon as "great" or "influential" in some way by smarty-pants critics.

2. I will hit each major film movement (aka French New Wave, New Hollywood, Dogme 95, German Expressionism, etc)

3. I'm not going to bother to do so chronologically or by any other logical arrangement (though I began this blog by saying otherwise), as I am bound by certain constraints: I have only the cheapest Netflix subscription, which means that I can only have 1 DVD out at a time. During DVD postal transits, I watch movies from my queue that are available to stream over the Internet, which dictates what I can watch when. Also, I prefer jumping around a bit so as not to get bogged down in any one style of filmmaking for too long. I mean, this isn't a fucking class, people. Cut me some slack.

4. I have trouble sleeping if I watch horror films, because I'm a generally unreasonable person, easily given to supernatural frights due in part to a strange religious upbringing. I may skip this genre altogether, satisfied that I've seen The Exorcist, which scared the living shit out of me and reinforced my old Protestant notion that Catholics are scary.

I guess that's enough for now. I'm off to search some lists and maybe find a history of film book at the library. Feel free to post list or book ideas for me in the comments.

For now, stay tuned for the following:

Bullit (1968)
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
The Rules of the Game (1939)