END CREDITS.

Well, my list of film masterpieces is complete. Twenty-Five films which are, for me, about as good as it gets. The only limitation I felt while making my choices was, having allowed myself only one film per director, was which film to choose as many of the named directors have more than one masterpiece under their belt. Take, for instance, Powell and Pressburger's THE RED SHOES ? What made me pick it over the duo's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP given that the latter is my favourite of their films. The truth is, I don't know, but I felt it best to go with a gut feeling on the day. Another day, another list. I'm happier with my choices than some seem to be but I think some have totally missed the point of the list. Director John Landis said in an interview that he had an appreciation of high art and low art - he could enjoy both Buster Keaton and Chaplin and still laugh his socks off at The Three Stooges and I think that is the correct attitude. Films can be enjoyed in many ways. My way may not be another person's. My blog is only intended to register my reaction to a movie and hopefully point out things I find interesting in those films. My purely personal view is that there is a natural order to things and some things are genuinely more valuable that others (but as John Landis said that does not mean that the lower orders cannot be entertaining) and the twenty-five films I have picked are, for me, extremely valuable. Feel free to disagree or send me your lists!

THE FILMS

1. VAMPYR (Carl Dreyer 1931)
2. LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (Marcel Carne 1945)
3. L'ATALANTE (Jean Vigo 1934)
4. THE RED SHOES (The Archers 1948)
5. NATTVARDSGASTERNA (Ingmar Bergman 1963)
6. L'ECLISSE (Michelangelo Antonioni 1962)
7. LE GRANDE ILLUSION (Jean Renoir 1937)
8. THE GODFATHER (Frances Coppola 1972)
9. IKIRU (Akira Kurosawa 1952)
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (John Ford 1939)
11. CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles 1941)
12. VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock 1958)
13. METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang 1926)
14. LA BELLE ET LA BETE (Jean Cocteau 1946)
15. TOKYO MONOGATARI (Ozu 1953)
16. WINGS OF DESIRE (Wim Wenders 1987)
17. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (Peter Bogdanovich 1971)
18. NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton 1957)
19. LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR (Henri-Georges Clouzot 1953)
20. CITY LIGHT (Charles Chaplin 1931)
21. PINNOCHIO (Walt Disney 1940)
22. HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks 1940)
23. THE WIZARD OF OZ (Mervyn LeRoy 1939)
24. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Stanley Donen 1952)
25. A STAR IS BORN (George Cukor 1954)