Latest:

17:12 Halfpenny leads Wales to victory
16:42 Goode boots Sarries to victory
16:32 United accept Liverpool apologies
16:12 Dentists plan to cut staff - survey
16:02 O'Connell reflects on 'bizarre' day
16:02 Dalglish issues apology
16:02 Greek MPs begin vital cuts debate
15:52 Odemwingie stars in derby victory

Movie heaven: Anthony Quinn's 100 Best Films

Saturday, 26 September 2009

100. Army In The Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville) This tense thriller about French resistance fighters portrays courage as shrugging fatalism and grips tighter than a pair of Gestapo handcuffs.

More pictures

Fed up with formulaic ‘blockbusters’ and overhyped cinematic turkeys? Movie critic Anthony Quinn selects 100 timeless movie classics that never disappoint.

Click image above for Top 100

When I was a kid I made lists all the time – favourite footballers, favourite singles, favourite bands – though I don’t recall anyone being interested enough to ask me about them. They were oddly comforting, all the same, those lists, and I would check them regularly as a way of imposing order on chaos.

Later I would make lists of favourite films, but they tended to be inside my head rather than in a lined exercise book. I have a sense that most people who love cinema make such lists. What is it about film that brings out the taxonomist in us? Why is it important to have a running order of preference in our heads? It’s perhaps because our choice of top five comedies, or top 10 thrillers, or whatever, becomes a sort of defining characteristic. An allegiance to this or that movie says something – something quite profound, we hope – about our view of the world. Our favourite films are an invisible badge of taste, and to discover someone else who wears that badge might be, in a famous movie phrase, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Two questions I am most often asked as a film critic: (1) Do you use one of those pens that have a light on the tip? (2) What’s your favourite film? The answer to (1) is no, I just scrawl away in the dark. As for (2), it keeps changing. Before I started compiling this list of my top 100 movies I honestly didn’t know what would end up at number one. I enjoyed finding out.

Note that “my” top 100. This isn’t a list of the 100 Greatest Movies Ever Made, and never could be. Even if that list were collated from the leading film critics of the world, it would be no more definitive than any other. “Greatest” cannot be scientifically calculated. “Most Successful” obviously can be, but a list of the highest-grossing top 100 would be perfect tedium.

My credentials are only these: I saw an awful lot of movies as a youth in repertory cinemas (The Penultimate Picture Palace and the Phoenix in Oxford, later the Scala in King’s Cross and the Hampstead Everyman), and I’ve seen an awful lot of movies in the last 20-odd years as a film critic. That volume is important. It’s not that critics are smarter than the ticket-buying public, it’s just that they see about 30 films in a month while the average cinemagoer sees maybe three. The critics are drawing from a deeper pool of movie memories.

Nowadays, the films I used to watch are available through other media – DVDs, lovefilm.com, late-night movie channels – though I wonder how dedicated people still are to immersing themselves in the classics. There’s something different about the experience of seeking out an old movie in a flea-pit cinema, as opposed to kicking back in front of the TV. You form stronger attachments. All of which is a roundabout way of admitting the absolute partiality of my 100. You will notice a marked preference for American cinema; for movies of the 1940s (a Golden Age) and the 1970s (a Silver Age); for movies by Hitchcock, Hawks and Wilder; for movies starring Barbara Stanwyck.

You will also notice a perhaps surprising negligence of whole swathes of world cinema, of British movies fromthe last 25 years, of Disney, of documentary, of women directors. This last I found particularly troubling – but there just aren’t that many out there. Maybe in five or 10 years’ time my deep regard for Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker will bag them a slot.

And I’m sorry if your favourite doesn’t appear on the list. When I mentioned to friends that I was doing a Top 100 their eyes would light up and the interrogation would begin. “Have you got The Railway Children?” “Have you got Witness?” “Have you got i?” “Have you got Notting Hill?” I’m afraid the answer to the first three is no. To the fourth (from a younger person) the answer was along the lines of “Over my dead body”.

But the great thing about this was how passionately people engaged with the idea of a top 100. We love lists. At dinner with friends last Saturday the whole evening became consumed by what could, should – must – be on there. The debate was still going strong at 1am.

_{Source: Independent}

Print
Text Size
- Normal
- Large
- Extra Large

Having had permanent access to most of these films, how about a few more ones that got away in no particular order.
Les Quatre Cent Coups
The Damned
Killer Elite
The Swimmer
Night Porter
A Man For All Seasons
Apocalypse Now
The Collector
Apache
Solaris
2001 A Space Odyssey
Brighton Rock
Motorcycle Diaries
The Party
A Streetcar Named Desire
Remains Of The Day
12 Angry Men
Blow Up
Patton
To Kill A Mockingbird
Black Narcissus
Kes
Hope And Glory
North By Northwest
Dial M For Murder
Laura
Force Of Evil
The Great Gatsby
Bonnie And Clyde
Fargo
The Bicycle Thieves
Days Of Heaven
Cape Fear (1961)
Night Of The Iguana
They're all up there somewhere.

Posted by Ian | 19.04.10, 21:03 GMT

A really good list but IMHO some ommissions which I could not live without:

Jean de Florette
Manon des Sources
Cyrano
A Matter of Life and Death
Napoleon
The Gold Rush
Seven Samurai
Ran
Monsoon Wedding

But hey I wouldn't take any of those out of my DVD

Posted by Ian Butler | 17.03.10, 09:23 GMT

the deer hunter

Posted by SHAUN | 02.03.10, 12:42 GMT

Neal - I am a huge movie buff and have many in my collection so it is hard for me to create a top 100 as there are so many I like. From your list however, I have to say that I like the following:

Taxi Driver - A De Niro classic that unfortunately many get bored by. I love anything with De Niro
The Godfather Trilogy
Reservoir Dogs - I am a massive Tarantino fan
The Blues Brothers
A night at the Opera - Love the Marx Brothers
Airplane - In fact most stuff with Leslie Nielsen
The Big Lebowski
Rocky
Scarface - Anything with Al Pacino
The Meaning of Life - anything Monty Python
Predator
Pulp Fiction
Pink Panther - Peter Sellers was a genius so anything with him
This is Spinal Tap
Star Wars

To add -
Inglourious Basterds
Heat
The Usual Suspects
Old School - anything Will Ferrell
L.A Confidential
Faceoff
Swordfish
The Hangover
The 'Scary Movie's
Gladiator
Kindom of Heaven
Lord of the Rings
Dumb and Dumber

but there are SO many...you can't nail a top 100

Posted by Mike Bradford | 19.02.10, 16:07 GMT

Heres a few of mine Mike, now show me yours!
Raging bull
A night at the Opera
The third man
Jaws
Rear window
Taxi driver
Citizen Caine
Quadrophenia
reservior dogs
Cool hand Luke
The Pope of Greenwich Village
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Alfie
Young Frankenstein
True Romance
The Odd couple
The Godfather1/2
The Blues Brothers
Airplane
Enter the dragon
Singin in the Rain
Rocky
The big Lebowski
scarface
The Maltese Falcon
The public enemy
Sweet and lowdown
The Meaning of Life
Manhattan
Deerhunter
Citizen Caine
The empire strikes back
'Amores Perros'
Duck Soup
Pulp Fiction
Swingers
This is Spinal tap
Once Upon a Time in America
The Pink Panther
Predator
The Rocky horror picture show
On the Waterfront
The hustler
An American Werewolf in London
Butch and Sundance

Posted by neal | 18.02.10, 09:12 GMT

I thought your article was both good and accurate - better than the list but that's your own personal choice. It's just a pity about the ignorant few who believe there opinions are important and right worthless comments such as those below.

Look forward to more from you!

Posted by Mike Bradford | 13.02.10, 01:02 GMT

Lists dont mean a lot when I'm in a certain mood I want the film to address the mood, e.g. humour 'Fish called Wanda' grievance 'Come and See' being uplifted 'Land and Freedom' or remiscing 'Across the Universe'.
Many of Quinn's Top 100 deserve to be there. Ommissions include Badlands, Counterfeiters, Lacombe Lucien, Seventh Seal and that beautiful curio of war-time England 'A Canterbury Tale'

Posted by Andrew Cathcart | 22.01.10, 21:35 GMT

The lives of others at number 78 and the Deer Hunter at 76????

Both these films would be in my top ten or at LEAST top 15/20 and I challenge you to find anyone who would differ!

Posted by P Wilson | 03.01.10, 10:39 GMT

You mean they are your favourite 100 films. Most of them I wouldn't or didn't want to watch. So all a matter of taste isn't it.

Posted by Jenni | 18.12.09, 17:01 GMT

How about these 4 for the one's that were missed: # 29 & # 33 are also missing.

Cinema Paradiso
Der Tunnel
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Requiem for a Dream

and Sophie Scholl instead of the Lives of Others

Posted by Lizmarger | 26.11.09, 04:38 GMT