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VOTING CLOSED. RESULTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

A little over six years ago, our forum embarked on a journey so daring and unique that it had only been attempted two times before. Decade by decade, we trawled through every film we felt like watching and then organized them in lists, as was the style at the time. Occasionally we would even have "discussions" of the films, organizing our opinions about them into paragraph form and exchanging polite barbs one with another in a jovial and free flow of ideas. It was a brave new world, but it couldn't last. We progressed through the decades faster than time could keep up and eventually found ourselves on a collision course with the great unknown. No friends, the world didn't end--we just caught up to it, a little older and worse for the wear perhaps, but hopefully a little wiser as well. And with nothing left to list, the listing collapsed in on itself, demanding to be squeezed one last time into the list that would end all lists, until we presumably decide to do this again...

If you have ever participated before in one of our lists projects, or if you have ever not participated before in one of our lists projects, you are eligible now to participate in this lists project, dedicated to the best films of all time. There are only two catches: 1) For a large part of the existence of the earth film did not exist. 2) You can only vote for the 585 films included on the master list linked to below. These are all of the films that fared well enough during each individual round of this iteration of the lists project (i.e. placing on at least two people's top 10s for the decade) to be deemed eligible for this final round. Does your very favorite film of all time not appear on this list? Too bad. You should have participated when we were doing that decade. Or maybe you did and no one else liked the film as much as you. It doesn't matter. None of this matters, not really.

Please PM me your list of what you believe are the top 50 films from the master list toward the end of the project. I will send confirmation that I have received your list after I have tabulated it. If you haven't heard from me within a day, you should follow up with me to make sure that I received your list. You may feel that you could compile a list of 50 favorite films earlier in the project, but that would be terribly boring. Fill in some gaps. Rewatch some old favorites. Give a film you hated the first time another chance. And above all, talk about it. Let everyone else know what you're watching and what you think of it. If nothing else, just let us know that you're still alive and watching movies. Some of us worry sometimes, you know.

Also, it's not required for you to have seen every film on the master list below in order to submit a ballot for this project, but your mother and I will be so proud of you if you do.


THE RULES (incredibly simple this time!)

1) Each individual list is to comprise no more or less than 50 films, ranked in your order of preference (with no ties).
2) Anything included on the MASTER LIST is eligible. Anything not included on the master list is not eligible. Take a deep breath, you can do this.

For more details about rules and procedures, please refer here.


RESOURCES

Past Forum Discussions
Background discussion for this project
Pre-1920s List / 1920s List / 1930s List / 1940s List / 1950s List / 1960s List / 1970s List / 1980s List / 1990s List / 2000s List / 2010s List

Guides Within This Thread
Do you feel you have an especially informed opinion about the eligible films from a particular director, country, genre, etc.? Many people here would greatly appreciate your taking the time to prepare a guide for navigating through the available options. Past examples: Director Guide, Country Guide, Genre Guide, DVD Availability Guide

AWAITING YOUR GUIDES

External Resources
IMDb list of all eligible films by year and by obscurity (by TMDaines)

AWAITING FURTHER SUGGESTIONS


IMPASSIONED DEFENSES

As a reward for contributing substantive discussion to this thread, I will summarize links here to any post that clocks in above 500 words. If you ask me, this is better than merely naming a film as a spotlight title, and unlike with that, no one will think less of you for being mentioned here a dozen times. On the contrary, in fact.

The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) (domino harvey)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) (Superswede11)
Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) (DarkImbecile)
Body Double (Brian De Palma, 1984) (Superswede11)
Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) (Satori)
The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira, 1995) (knives)
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) (Superswede11)
Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966) (Satori)
Dorian Gray as Represented in the Popular Press (Ulrike Ottinger, 1984) (Satori)
Gueule d'amour (Jean Grémillon, 1937) (knives)
Holiday (George Cukor, 1938) (knives)
Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931) (Satori)
Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936) (matrixschmatrix)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004) (knives)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) (domino harvey)
Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) (matrixschmatrix)
La Petite Lise (Jean Grémillon, 1930) (knives)
The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943) (Satori)
Sir Arne's Treasure (Mauritz Stiller, 1919) (knives)
To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990) (knives)
They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981) (matrixschmatrix)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) (matrixschmatrix)
The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) (matrixschmatrix)
The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988) (colinr0380)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000) (Mr Sausage)


FORUM MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS

In a way, you might consider every film on the master list to constitute a spotlight title. But are you so crazy about an underloved film that my saying that still isn't enough for you? Go ahead, make a spotlight title out of it. Why not? It's not like I have control over anything you do.

To inaugurate a film into the spotlight section, just follow these three simple steps:

1. Make a post about the film discussing why you find it so exceptional.
2. Clearly indicate that you wish the film to be one of your spotlight titles.
3. Direct others to where the film can be accessed.

I'll keep track of all the spotlight titles here so that they can be easily referenced. You're welcome to have more than one spotlight title, but bear in mind that the more you have the less people will respect you. Remember: This might be the only time someone goes out on a limb to take one of your recommendations, so make it count!

Everyone is strongly encouraged to give each of these films the same chance that you would hope others would give your own spotlight titles.

Du côté d'Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1973) (domino harvey)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933) (Murdoch)


***Please PM me if you have any suggestions for additions to/deletions from this first post.***

Swo made me a version of the list pre-last round that was alphabetical by title and I hope he will make that version available for others as well, as I can't wrap my head around the other ways of organizing this many films for ease of reference. I've been working on completing the list for the past couple months and I'm pretty close. I'll continue to edit this post to reflect how far along I am (and to reduce the number of masturbatory posts on this kind of thing), but it's my intention to see all of the films on the list by the time I vote, and I already have all of my remaining unseen titles in my possession. It's my goal to revisit all of my eventual Top 50 and provide some write ups here on old favorites and weigh in on the thoughts of others.

PROGRESS: 526/585 (90%)
Last updated 03/04/2017

domino harvey wrote:Swo made me a version of the list pre-last round that was alphabetical by title and I hope he will make that version available for others as well, as I can't wrap my head around the other ways of organizing this many films for ease of reference

You select the header for row A in the spreadsheet and sort A-Z

domino harvey wrote:Swo made me a version of the list pre-last round that was alphabetical by title and I hope he will make that version available for others as well, as I can't wrap my head around the other ways of organizing this many films for ease of reference.

My concern was that people might not see a film listed under one of its known titles and mistake it for being ineligible. (For instance, I have The 400 Blows listed as Les Quatre Cents Coups.) I've gone ahead and added an alphabetical tab though anyway, if that's an easier way for some people to process this information. (I personally prefer the listing by director.) Hopefully everyone will become familiar enough with all of the films on this list that it won't be an issue.

On my IMDb list, where a single film for our purposes is in multiple parts of IMDb, I have only added the first part to the list and made a note of the others. There's only a couple like this, I think. Fantômas is one. Ivan the Terrible is another.

My Spotlight:

Du côté d'Orouët (Jacques Rozier 1973) In my initial response to the film linked here, I floated the possibility that this might be one of the best films I'd ever seen. Time and distance have removed all doubt. As brightly sketched and relayed a film about youth as I've ever witnessed and lived alongside. (R0 Coffret Jacques Rozier, Potempkin [region-free French DVD release with English subs])

Stupid question time, but is the genre masterlist included as eligible or only the decades. Thanks to Daines by the way.

It's only the decades, but I was planning to share what films would also qualify if we included them for all the genre lists I ran (so all but Animation and Docs), just to slake curiosity more than anything else

Okay. Also it seems like a number of films from previous editions aren't in the Google docs such as The Golem. Are we only utilizing the masterlist from V3.0?

Yes, this is a Volume 3 thing. Even if we wanted to include previous volumes, there weren't enough stats being tracked back then to know how many top 10 votes each film received at that time.

Thanks, and sorry I didn't keep up with the criteria for this.

swo17 wrote:If nothing else, just let us know that you're still alive and watching movies. Some of us worry sometimes, you know.

Though I'm sure it wasn't intended to be, this might as well be a reference to me, seeing as how I've sort of dropped off the face of this forum lately (in spite of commitments - I've still got the last notification from the John Ford thread glaring at me from the bottom of the screen whenever I check my email) and even before I did I spent a lot of time not contributing much of value. Well, the truth is, I am alive, but I've only watched about four films in the past three months. This happens periodically with me, where I just get sort of out of practice watching movies (in this instance, I got suddenly overwhelmed with schoolwork and, while I was spending most of my free time catching up, just fell out of the viewing habit). I'm not sure if anyone can relate to this at all. I'm coming off it now (although I'm finding my cinematic cravings to be bizarrely specific - like I've been watching almost exclusively Ozu and Denis lately). I don't know, I'm probably just odd.

In any case, hopefully this project will get me back in the game, particularly since there's nothing I love more than rhapsodizing about things everybody else already knows about.

Yes, that was directed at you.

You didn't confirm whether I'm odd or not.

Only enough to be having this conversation.

In hindsight, that post does read like self-promotion. My apologies for that. I just wanted to check in and originally meant to ask if, on top of doing spotlights, other posters were planning on announcing their number one choices in advance of submitting a list (just because I thought there might be some interest in knowing how others were approaching this - to my mind, at least, basing the project on a master list makes it seem less like we'd all be submitting a list of favorites and more like we'd each be tailoring the canon to fit our own tastes, but I'd be interested to know if others see it differently, and I would think their top choices would reflect that). I left the question out of the post because I thought that, in asking, it would only be fair for me to name the film I had in mind for number one and my reasoning behind it, and I'm not quite prepared to do that at the moment. Looking back now, I see that the whole post...doesn't really have a purpose without it and just reads like an ego trip. I should've waited to make the post. Sorry about that.

My favorite film is eligible, so I can't imagine not voting for They All Laughed in the number one spot. The Apartment, the Band Wagon, Breathless, Du côté d'Orouët, Fucking Åmål, Man of the West, Moonrise Kingdom, Out of the Past, Pierrot le fou, Rebel Without a Cause, Red Desert, Stagecoach, Whirlpool, and all of the eligible Hitchcocks save the Lady Vanishes could all make my personal All Time Top Ten List on any given day depending on my whims, so it's not like this list causes me to go slumming!

I would do the same thing, if I felt I could point to any particular film and call it my all-time favorite. I have a handful that are very close to me for different reasons, and I don't know I could call any one my definitive favorite. I'm leaning strongly towards Notorious, mainly because it's the one that seems to encompass the most of what I love most about film, of what resonates the most with me, and because my first time seeing it was one of my all time greatest viewing experiences (obviously I'll try to talk more in detail about it later). But I could pretty easily say all those things about Man of the West too, and there are a few more that I'm really attached to that I wasn't introduced to under ideal circumstances. I'm just curious what criteria others are using.

Ranking anything is ultimately silly, of course, so you just go with your gut when submitting. Part of me says I should be voting for Breathless, already surely number two on my list, as number one just for the profound impact it had on changing my life towards a love of film, but ranking it at one or forty-seven doesn't change how great a film it is or its importance to me. A true rank of important or favorite films for any of us would no doubt be hundreds if not thousands of titles long, but this is the nature of the beast. Treat it as a fun viewing/re-viewing exercise if nothing else!

mizoguchi5354 wrote:I just wanted to check in and originally meant to ask if, on top of doing spotlights, other posters were planning on announcing their number one choices in advance of submitting a list

Better than announcing would be explaining why something is going to rank highly for you (or at least linking to where you've done so previously). You've all heard of Sherlock Jr. and I could tell you that it's a perfect film and my likely #1, but if you don't already share that sentiment, what have I really accomplished--reminding you of its existence? The master list already does that.

I helped to make 74 films eligible through my own top 10 votes, so I won't even be able to include all of those on my list! I've already seen almost all the other eligible films, and if seeing them in the first place wasn't enough to vault them into contention for me, a passing mention in this thread certainly won't do it either. But perhaps a really persuasive argument could win me over. There are far too many sacred cows here to assume that anyone is going to vote for anything you love just because it's generally highly regarded.

Which is why I want to revisit and explore my picks with more depth than I usually afford my typical capsule write ups, as first and foremost this is a good excuse to rewatch some of my favorite films and contribute something new to the discussion. I will also continue to explore the myriad tastes of the board by working through the remaining unseen films (I wish I could tell you I've seen a lot of new classics since I started making my way through the unseen cracks of this list, but the honest truth is I haven't, though I have seen many good films along with all the mediocre or worse ones), but I don't particularly want to dwell too heavily on first impressions as much as I do on the films I love and have lived with

mizoguchi5354 wrote: I'm leaning strongly towards Notorious, mainly because it's the one that seems to encompass the most of what I love most about film, of what resonates the most with me, and because my first time seeing it was one of my all time greatest viewing experiences (obviously I'll try to talk more in detail about it later).

It's my favorite Hitchcock film and one of my all-time favorites. It will certainly rank high on my list. As you say, Notorious encompasses and embodies so much of what there is to love about film.

Just looked through the list are there are around 40 films that I can't believe won't be in my list - so a few hundred films duking it out for 10 or so spots. Can't even begin to imagine ranking them besides say the first five.

I just did a quick run-down of "favorites that absolutely must be on my list" : 71. I do have a few gaps to fill in, but those are going to have to be some amazing films to find a place on my final list.

Just did the same and came to almost the same number, 70. Had to do a hard cull just to get to fifty, and I guess it's always possible a film or two unseen by me yet could topple even those on the tail end of the hard cut fifty