OSCARS 2008: THE 100 BEST FILMS – DOCUMENTARY AND WORLD CINEMA
Daily Telegraph
12:01am GMT 21/02/2008
UK
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Or you may angrily demand to know why
we’ve snubbed Meg Ryan. In honour of next week’s Oscars we present
our own highly subjective, yet infinitely debatable nominations for
the greatest films of all time
100 best films: Drama and thriller / action
100 best films: Comedy and horror
100 best films: Kids and musicals
100 best films: Romance and animation Oscars coverage in full
Documentary
1. American Splendor (2003)
Fact and fiction are deftly muddled in this character study of
doomy cartoonist Harvey Pekar, directed by Robert Pulcini. Half a
dramatisation of his graphic novel Our Cancer Year, with Paul Giamatti
(pre Sideways) as Pekar and Hope Davis as his wife, Joyce, the film
also devotes screentime to interviews with the real-life Mrs and
Mrs Pekar.
American Splendor (2003) 2. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Four hours on the Vichy government’s involvement in Nazi
atrocities. Marcel Ophuls’s mix of newsreel and interview makes for
a film of rare intelligence and integrity.
3. American Movie (1999)
Movies about making movies tend to be overrated. Not this one, perhaps
because it doesn’t follow the production of a classic. Instead, it
tracks the ups and downs on Coven, a grubby horror shot by redneck
auteur Mark Borchardt, funded by his wonderfully crusty father.
4. Touching the Void (2003)
Superlative reconstruction of Joe Simpson’s and Simon Yates’s perilous
trek up, and particularly down, an unforgiving Andean peak.
5. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Queasy investigation into the case of a middle-class Jewish family
whose father and son were charged with child abuse in the mid-1980s.
6. Spellbound (2002)
Jeffrey Blitz’s Spelling Bee crowdpleaser is gripping and revealing.
7. Ã~Jtre et Avoir (2002)
More disarming tots in Nicolas Philibert’s sophisticated look at a
year in the life of an infant school in rural France.
8. Hearts and Minds (1974)
Peter Davis’s Vietnam documentary cuts together talking heads and
eyewitness footage to difficult, brilliant effect.
9. My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
Another documentary in which the director, Amir Bar-Lev, finds himself
unhappily involved. This one starts as the story of a four-year-old
painting prodigy in New York, but gets interesting after allegations
that Marla may have received more than encouragement from her amateur
artist father.
10. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)
Exactly what a concert film should be: the concert, and nothing
else. This one, directed by Jonathan Demme, records a performance in
Nashville of Young’s 2005 album Prairie Wind, taped days before his
op to remove a brain tumour.
World
1. The Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925)
The film that introduced an astonished world to Sergei Eisenstein’s
theory of montage (dynamic editing for political effect). The story
of the abortive Russian revolution of 1905 still has immense impact,
thanks to the unforgettable ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence.
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (France, 1928)
Made in France by the Danish director Carl Dreyer, this was one of
the greatest silent films. It depicts the trial and execution through
close-ups resembling medieval portraits. And the spiritual quality
of Maria Falconetti’s Joan seems beyond acting.
3. La Règle du Jeu (France, 1939)
All French society gathers for a country-house party that proves to
be on the eve of the war. Time has lent Jean Renoir’s film an extra
dimension, but it always seemed the quintessence of art.
4. Tokyo Story (Japan, 1953)
Yasujiro Ozu’s study of family relations and the irreconcilable
differences between generations is one of the most moving of all
pictures. It offers universal truths, a spare, almost ascetic camera
style and matchless acting from Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara.
5. Seven Samurai (Japan, 1954)
Akira Kurosawa’s medieval epic achieves an almost Shakespearean range,
embracing personal pride, professional skill and social distinctions.
There’s Falstaffian humour, spectacular battles in the rain and the
sense of a master film-maker at the peak of his powers.
6. Pather Panchali (India, 1955)
Another film about generations – the very old and the very young. Set
in Bengal, it was Satyajit Ray’s first film, establishing him as a
director in the great humanist tradition, with a superb pictorial
sense.
7. Smiles of a Summer Night (Sweden, 1955)
This apparently frivolous comedy is Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece
because, like Mozart’s operas or Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, it
says something profound about love. It’s taken 50 years for the penny
to drop.
8. Un Condamné a Mort s’est échappé (France, 1956)
In Robert Bresson’s austere account of the wartime escape of André
Devigny, the soundtrack is Mozart’s C Minor Mass, the alternative
title is ‘The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth’. It might as easily have
been called ‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’.
9. Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1966)
Not a conventional biography of the 15th-century icon painter, but
eight imaginary episodes from his life, evoking his spirituality
and symbolic importance at the time of the Tartar invasions. Andrei
Tarkovsky’s troubled epic looks to God as saviour rather than Lenin.
10. The Color of Pomegranates (USSR, 1969)
Sergei Parajanov was imprisoned in Russia for this intensely visual
film about the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. It delivers a
torrent of breathtaking images.
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