A Note on Lists

With the awards season all wrapped up, I've been thinking a lot about the ranking of films, or really, anything that we respond to on a subjective level.

I've been reading a book about the midnight movie phenomenon, and one of the earlier chapters, the authors are discussing the dedication many self-described "film freaks" put into going to these movies every week, over and over, even going so far as to dress like their favorite characters or actors.

In discussing people's obsessive response to these films, and how close friends can have heated arguments about their favorite films, the book quotes Paul Hammond, quoting Gerard Legrand (this is a book with a lot of footnotes): "The intensity of feeling, the desire to be right in an argument where reason must play second fiddle, he [Legrand] likens to the public revelation of one's most secret sexual preferences." So much of our personal response to movie is rooted deeply in the subconscious that, really, any list of films says a lot more about the person that wrote it than any of the films on it.

Roger Ebert recently posted a link to an article called "The Top Ten Worst Top Tens of All Time", by Scott Jordan Harris of The Spectator. The lists referred to were published in the Sunday Times of the UK, and they include such titles as "The Top-Ten Most Baffling Films", "The Top Ten Best Weepies", and "The Top Ten Most Boring Films". The selections are not surprising, and consist in large part of classics that even casual moviegoers have already heard of, and movies made in the last ten years or so.

In the article, Harris takes the most issue with the list entitled "The Top-Ten Must-See Films". Here's an excerpt from the article, regarding the very concept of a list of "must-see" movies:

"There are no must-see films. No one’s experience of life – or even of cinema – is invalidated by not having seen Citizen Kane or Le Règle du Jeu, monumental and enriching as they are. Even as a film critic, I wouldn’t expect an intelligent person to listen to me if I handed them a list of 100 films they absolutely must see, anymore than I’d feel it necessary to suspend my usual lifestyle and follow the guidance of the authors of a list of ‘The 100 Video Games You Must Play’ or ‘The 100 Theme Parks You Must Visit’. What’s more, the idea that anyone, alone or in committee, could create a definitive list of must-see movies is as absurd as the idea of must-see movies themselves."

He goes on to say that, within a certain context, lists can indeed be useful:

"If a student is researching an essay on the impact of the biggest-grossing films in Hollywood history, then he could put together a list of the top ten must-see films for it, based on what the top ten biggest-grossing films in Hollywood history are.

Less objectively, if a critic wants to list the top ten films her readers must see to appreciate her evolution from film fan to film critic, based upon which films she feels had the most impact upon the development of her critical instincts, then that, too, could reasonably be called a list of must-see movies."

I decided this post needed a picture, so here is the Japanese poster for my favorite film of 2010.

I don't mean to say that all lists of films are worthless. In fact, I love a good movie list. I just bought a book called 10 Bad Dates with De Niro. In addition to the titular list, it contains other gems such as "Ten Shining Examples of Notable Nail Varnish", "Ten Dodgy Robots", and "Ten Places You Wouldn't Expect To Find A Severed Head". A paragraph or two accompanies each selection. These are the kinds of lists I can get behind, not only because of their esoteric subjects, but because they include films I've never seen, and they let me look at old favorites in a new light.

I think another reason I've had lists on the brain is that I finally watched the last movie I hadn't seen on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies... list (Swing Time, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers). Again it's a fairly arbitrary list, with all of the usual suspects, (but not The Usual Suspects), but at least it isn't claiming to be THE definitive list. I remember sitting down and watching the special when it was first on in 1998, and at the time, it introduced me to a lot of movies I wasn't familiar with. My tastes have since changed and expanded, but I'm glad to have seen every movie on that list, because even if some of the choices are questionable at best (and the exclusion of Buster Keaton from the initial list is totally inexcusable) each movie gave me an insight into a particular time in American film.

Now I've got to get cracking on this thing.