Which--or at Least How Many--of Sight and Sound's Top 50 Films Have You Not Seen?

Maybe I'm revealing myself as Captain "All I Know About Cinema I Learned From The Canon," but I truly believe the overwhelming majority of the films on this list are way closer to beautiful than boring.

xpost OK, Stalker is a little bit of both.

Great ending, I'll give it that.

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

So true. For me, this is one of the very worst things about getting older.

A lot of these are beautiful but I mean anyone who actually earnestly thinks La Dole Vita isn't a bloated snoozefest is totally fronting

I did like Stagecoach fwiw

I have never seen Singin' In The Rain! Maybe I should

xp wait until older really kicks in and everything will be new for the second time.

really, I rewatched Solondz's Happiness recently and had forgotten 80% of it.

Did the #51-100 listing appear somewhere? Maybe Lubitsch & Sturges showed up there.

le mépris
jeanne dielman, 23 something something
pierott le fou
histoire(s) du cinéma

I haven't seen Singin' in the Rain yet! TCM has it on the 23rd, will watch.
xposts

Probably won't ever forget Camryn Manheim tearing into that tulip sundae while talking about castrating the rapist doorman.

Or, rather, dismembering him without touching "that."

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

Yeah, that's def one of the ones I haven't seen that I'm most looking forward to.

Seeing these films in theaters is clearly the way to go -- I should probably be more alert to screenings.

Man this list makes me feel terrible about how much I haven't seen! I've only seen 14 of these.

yeah I blocked out Camryn Manheim as much as possible.

Aren't you two guys in Chicago? What are the rep theatres like there?

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

haven't seen 23, don't feel too terrible about it

That's what Toronto's reps used to be like, then they all went out of business in the first half of the 2000s as rental stores ascended, before they started reopening in the past few years as primarily second-run houses. So mostly it's canon-type stuff at the Lightbox now, and documentaries at the Bloor. (xpost)

I love early godard but breathless is not a film I'd recommend to anybody unless they had an interest in film history

some entries on this list just seem like bowing to icons

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

Yeah, I think that's fair. The 11:30 AM weekend screenings at the Music Box are often a good bet, though.

Tbh though, I haven't paid attention since my son was born last year, my chances to go see movies in a theater are much less now.

Have not seen 16 of these.

I was also ready to bitch about the fairly poor state of rep screenings here as opposed to some of the other places cited itt, but looking over the list now I see that many of the films on it I have seen (and some I haven't) I either saw for the first time or had the chance to see or rescreen in a theater over the past several years.

i've seen 31. most of the 19 i haven't are "foreign" films, including a number i'm embarassed to admit i've avoided over the years:

8½
Battleship Potemkin
L’Atalante
Late Spring
Au hasard Balthazar
Mirror
L’avventura
Le Mépris
Ordet
Shoah
Tokyo Story
Bicycle Thieves
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
The 400 Blows
La Règle du jeu
Journey to Italy
Gertrud
Histoire(s) du cinéma
The Battle of Algiers
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Ugetsu monogatari

oh man – what I'd give to watch The Rules of the Game or Sunrise for the first time.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

True but not those two I mentioned.

certainly the case with Tokyo Story though

love a lot of the films people are taking shots at itt. the searchers is fantastic, one of the most visually striking and flat-out entertaining westerns i've ever seen. i prefer bande a part to breathless, but the latter's still pretty damn great. la dolce vita is kind of exhausting, but that's clearly the point, and it's so spectacular, strange and colorful that my attention never wandered.

satantango is a chore though.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

Just looked at the upcoming screenings at the Siskel Film Center and the Music Box, and now I'm excited to catch Celine and Julie Go Boating in a couple of weeks.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

This is a good point -- I'm too hardwired to follow surface-level plot/text, and don't get into subtext, context and interesting technique until repeat viewings, though I'm trying to train myself to be a better film-watcher.

I only became comparatively "meh" on Tokyo Story when I saw some of Ozu's other variations and liked them more.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

Exactly my reaction, I can't see what I'm missing.

I'll take Early Summer over both TS and Late Spring, although I confess to using Wiki to remember which is which.

love a lot of the films people are taking shots at itt

Down low.

satantango is a chore though.

Too slow.

I've had films sneak up me over time, of course, but I do carry around in my head the overwhelming experience of certain first-screenings in my life: Taxi Driver, the two Godfathers back-to-back, the three Apus in a row, Raging Bull, On the Waterfront, Crumb, a few others.

Late Spring is my pick, along with its reboot An Autumn Afternoon. Equinox Flower was another I remember liking a whole lot.

Of the 49 I've seen, by far the one that leaves me cold is Le Mépris. Bad marriage on the Rivieria, zzzzzzzzzzz.

And after 2 viewings of Celine and Julie Go Boating, done with it as well.

and The End of Summer.

As for The Rules of the Game it wears its mastery lightly, so I can see how on first glance it's amiable enough.

This is a good point -- I'm too hardwired to follow surface-level plot/text, and don't get into subtext, context and interesting technique until repeat viewings, though I'm trying to train myself to be a better film-watcher.

My problem is that I so rarely watch things more than once -- I'm sure films I shrugged at would gain something upon repeat viewings, but there are too many movies that I haven't seen at all to catch up with. To preemptively answer clemenza, I'm not a Paulista, just a pragmatist.

I think Paulistas are the Libertarian wing of the Paulettes.

And Armond is a member of the Tea Pauly.

pauly vous paulette?

Paulista!: the legendary unreleased 4-disc concept album about film criticism by The Clash.

what would P.K. have voted for besides The Godfather and The Manchurian Candidate? Is there any record of her participating in '62-92?

Pretty sure she eschewed participation, but surely Nashville and Last Tango would be joined by Shoeshine and Intolerance.

Maybe Rules of the Game too. Can't quite remember if that got the treatment.

she loved L'avventura and Joan of Arc.