Required Viewing

Jim Emerson, the film critic who writes on RogerEbert.com, put together an interesting list.

This isn't like Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" series. It's not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there's some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're what I like to think of as the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate." I hope I can assume these movies are experiences we can all assume we share.

I try to explain to people why movies and music mean so much to me, but I'm beginning to think that, for those who already get it, there's no need to explain and, for those who don't get it, they won't really get it anyway.  Pop culture is more than just fun facts, it's a sort of communal language that those who understand can speak with one another.  Sometimes, watching a movie isn't about burning a couple of hours or providing myself with entertainment as much as it's about connecting myself to a collective consciousness.  The more I've seen, the more connected I'll be.

So, here's the list, I've added asterisks next to the ones that I've seen.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick ***
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini ***
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog ***
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott ***
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen ***
"Apocalypse Now" (1979) Francis Ford Coppola ***
"Bambi" (1942) Disney ***
"The Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott ***
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch ***
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn ***
"Breathless" (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma ***
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz ***
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski ***
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles ***
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick ***
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan ***
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick ***
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel ***
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989 Spike Lee ***
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder ***
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964) Stanley Kubrick ***
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg ***
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner ***
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin ***
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen ***
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher ***
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale ***
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola ***
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming ***
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese ***
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols ***
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter ***
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester ***
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's a Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg ***
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean ***
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer ***
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang ***
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam ***
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman ***
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock ***
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan ***
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters ***
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock ***
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino ***
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa ***
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock ***
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray ***
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"The Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg ***
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford ***
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa ***
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly ***
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder ***
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese ***
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise ***
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming ***

56 out of 102 for me.  That's a little better than I expected to do.  I'd be interested in seeing how many my readers have seen.  Do this on your blogs and trackback here, if you feel so inclined.

Comments

[Kathleen]

Can't believe you've never seen It's a Wonderful Life. Good old fashioned Christmas Spirit.