1001 movies you must see before you die

961 Pages·2017·698.579 MB·English

by  Schneider, Steven Jay;Smith, Ian Haydn

Steven Jay Schneider is a film critic, scholar, and “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die celebrates the most Inside this book is everything you need to know
producer with postgraduate degrees in Philosophy creative and influential voices in film. It is a trusted resource about the movies you simply must see—all 1001
for movie lovers and one that we proudly reference.”
(Harvard University) and Cinema Studies (New York GENERAL EDITOR of them! Whether you’re looking for your favorite
University). He is the author of many books on the —Sundance TV STEVEN JAY SCHNEIDER film or just trying to decide what to watch tonight,
cinematic arts, including 101 Horror Movies You MOVIES 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die will serve
“ . . . packed with all the details movie lovers want to know
Must See Before You Die, available in North America UPDATED BY as your ultimate movie guide.
about the world’s greatest films.”
from Barron’s. IAN HAYDN SMITH Newly revised and updated, this edition includes
—Publisher’s Weekly MOVIES
YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE the most memorable movies that have ever been
Ian Haydn Smith is the update editor for 1001 made, right up to the multi-Oscar-winning La La
“This book is a film lover’s dream. It chronicles the
Movies You Must See Before You Die. He is a London- entire history of cinema, and this updated edition Land, to the blockbuster hit Star Wars: The Force
based writer and the editor of Curzon Magazine. includes new movies . . .” Awakens, to the heartbreaking Moonlight, plus
—Book Page many more. It presents everything you need to
YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE
know about the most magnificent must-see films—
not only the ones you shouldn’t have missed the first
time around, but also all those classics that are worth
seeing again and again.
Open this book to any page and you’ll find
each major film’s vital statistics, plus a few facts that
just might surprise you. If you’re a film connoisseur,
you’ll find this updated volume a must for your
bookshelf—but even if you’re simply a casual
moviegoer, you’re sure to enjoy browsing through
this invaluable movie guide.
For students of cinema, for discerning film
buffs, for enthusiastic fans, and for readers who
enjoy thumbing through and reminiscing over
unforgettable screen memories, here’s the place to
start reading. You’ll find information and reviews
covering more than a century of memorable movies.
So read and relish!

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STEVEN JAY SCHNEIDER
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1001 MOVIES
YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE

1001 MOVIES
YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE
GENERAL EDITOR
STEVEN JAY SCHNEIDER
UPDATED BY
IAN HAYDN SMITH
A Quintessence Book
This edition for the United States and Canada published in 2017
by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
Copyright © 2003, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 Quintessence Editions Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or distributed in any form or by any means without the written
permission of the copyright holder.
ISBN: 978-1-4380-5006-5
Library of Congress Control No.: 2017941245
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Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
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This book was designed and produced by
Quintessence Editions Ltd.
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www.1001beforeyoudie.com
Updated Edition
Senior Editor: Elspeth Beidas
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Designer: Dean Martin
Original Edition
Associate Publisher: Laura Price
Project Editor: Catherine Osborne
Researcher: Richard Guthrie
Designers: Ian Hunt, James Lawrence
Creative Director: Richard Dewing
Editorial Director: Ruth Patrick
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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface 6
Introduction 8
Film Index and Checklist 12
1900 20
1910 24
1920 33
1930 77
1940 158
1950 245
1960 362
1970 502
1980 653
1990 777
2000 883
2010 914
Contributors 944
Genre Index 946
Director Index 956
Picture Acknowledgments 959
Preface By Ian Haydn Smith
Cinema’s transformation over the course of the last century, from a sideshow
curiosity to a vast global industry, witnessed the release of hundreds, then
thousands of films with each passing year. It is impossible to calculate
how many films have been produced since the Lumieres’ collection of
shorts premiered at Le Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on December
28, 1895. Many of them will have faded into obscurity, rarely seen by more
than a small group of people beyond those who were involved in their
production. The films featured in this book not only represent a drop in a
vast cinematic ocean, they aim to cover the breadth of choice that has been
available to audiences since the early days of feature filmmaking—from the
films made to entertain, to those with more aspirational aims.
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was never intended as a “best
of” collection—although a brief scan through the contents finds the
majority of titles featured in Sight and Sound’s Critics Top 250 and Directors’
Top 100 greatest films poll present here. There are likely to be films here
that you hate as much as you love. You may consider some entries to be
insufficiently artful or far too rarefied for mass appeal, depending on your
taste. Yet every film chosen will provoke a reaction, either good or bad, but
never indifferent.
The last decade has seen increased focus and activity in both the
preservation and rediscovery of films. In some cases, unearthed footage has
offered a chance to re-view an already established classic. The discovery of
a complete print of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, previously thought lost forever,
in a museum in Buenos Aires has allowed audiences the opportunity to
enjoy the film in the way that Lang himself envisaged it. (One can only wish
the same for Erich von Stroheim’s Greed, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent
Ambersons, or Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee.) The work of organizations
like The World Cinema Fund has also enabled audiences to see a wealth
of cinema that had only existed in a precarious state. We can now watch
such films as Ahamed El Maanouri’s Trances, Kim Ki-Young’s The Housemaid,
Ritwik Ghatak’s Titash Ekti Nadir Naam, and Mário Peixoto’s Limite in the way
their makers would have wished.
Peixoto’s sublime 1931 film is one of the new additions to this edition,
which is the first extended revision of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You
Die since its original publication in 2003. Although the majority of films
have remained, fifty titles have been added. Some, like Lang’s Metropolis,
have been unearthed. Others have seen their stock rise and more emphasis
placed on their importance in world cinema history. They include Yonggang
Wu’s The Goddess, Kent McKenzie’s The Exiles, Franz Osten’s A Throw of Dice,
Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright, or Herbert Ponting’s The Great White Silence.
Hopefully, audiences unfamiliar with these films will seek them out and
enjoy them just as much as better-known titles.
There is also the issue of changing trends and tastes. Not all films
survive the test of time. In some cases they have been removed to make
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way for another title from the same era or by the same director, one which
might deserve greater recognition or is simply a better example of a
filmmaker’s work. Such is the case with Hitchcock’s Sabotage and The Lady
Vanishes, Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light and Summer with Monika, Luis
Buñuel’s The Young One and The Exterminating Angel, Orson Welles’s The
Stranger and F for Fake, Rogers and Hammerstein’s Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers and Oklahoma, Bill Forsythe’s Housekeeping and Local Hero, and
David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and Dead Ringers. In other instances, films
have been included because their initial omission might now seem odd.
Who could begrudge Rudolf Valentino in The Eagle, The Adventures of Prince
Achmed, Mrs Minniver, Some Came Running, Mary Poppins, Diva, Hana-bi, or
even The Towering Inferno being brought into the fold?
In attempting to balance the survey across the entire spectrum
of cinema’s history, acknowledging the important impact of certain
individuals, as well as the films they made or appeared in, it was occasionally
necessary to trim the presence of certain figures. I Walked with a Zombie is a
fine film, but Val Lewton’s 1940s productions are already well represented.
As for Alfred Hitchcock, there is so much material already available on him,
it was decided to reduce his presence slightly. (I hope no one will resent the
removal of Hitchcock’s flawed psychological thriller Spellbound in favor of
Henry Hathaway’s ludicrously entertaining and under-appreciated drama
Peter Ibbertson, which André Breton himself described as a “triumph of
surrealist thought.”)
Some removals were tough. One Eyed Jacks, The Man From Laramie,
Angel Face, and Utu are fine films. The inclusion of The Devils, The Hired
Hand, Distant Voices, Still Lives, and Sleeping Dogs is not meant to suggest
they are better. Their addition, like all the other titles in this book, both new
and old, are a provocation—throwing down the gauntlet for you to choose
your own movies to die for.
Ian Haydn Smith is the update editor for the revised tenth anniversary edition
of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. He is a London-based writer
and the editor of Curzon Magazine.
7
Introduction By Steven Jay Schneider
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is, as the title suggests, a book that
seeks not just to inform and to prescribe, but also to motivate—to turn its
curious readers into ardent viewers and to make it obvious that the pressure
is on, that time is short, and that the number of films eminently worth
watching has become very long indeed.
Nowadays, “Top 10 Movie” lists survive almost exclusively as annual
critics’ polls; and talk of “The 100 Greatest Films” tends to be restricted either
to specific genres, such as comedy, horror, sci-fi, romance, or the Western, or
to particular national cinemas, such as France, China, Italy, Japan, the U.K, or
the U.S. All of this points to the impossibility, or at least the irresponsibility,
of selecting a number less than (oh let’s just say) a grand to work with when
it comes to preparing a list of “best,” or most valuable, or most important, or
most unforgettable movies—a list that aims to do justice and give coverage
to the entire history of the medium.
With this latter goal in mind, even 1001 can quickly start to seem like
way too small a number. Maybe not so small if silent movies were kept off
the list; or avant-garde films; or Middle Eastern films; or animated movies;
or documentaries; or shorts. . . . But these strategies of exclusion are in
the end all just ways of taking the pressure off, of drawing arbitrary lines
in the cinematic sand and refusing to make the heap of difficult decisions
necessary to end up with a limited selection of films that treats all the
heterogeneous types and traditions comprising motion picture art with
equal and all due respect. The book you are holding in your hands takes a
great risk in offering up an all-time, all-genre, all-world, must-see films list.
But it is a risk well worth taking, and if you make the effort to go and see the
films discussed herein, you can be sure to die a happy moviegoer. In short:
The more you see, the better off you’ll be.
So how to determine which 1001 movies must be seen before dying?
How much easier (and less controversial) it would be to come up with 1001
movies that should be avoided at all costs! It is no surprise to learn that
film criticism hardly qualifies as an exact science—Roger Ebert’s infamous
formula “Two thumbs up, way, way up!” notwithstanding—and it is hardly
an exaggeration to claim that one person’s Midnight Cowboy may well be
another one’s Ishtar. Perhaps there are ways of objectively comparing,
even ranking, highly codified and historically specific cycles, movements,
or subgenres, such as the 1970s Italian thriller—in this case on the basis of
the form’s aestheticized violence, labyrinthine narratives, and psychological
resonance. And maybe it really is legitimate to separate out Hitchcock’s
indisputable classics (North By Northwest, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho,
The Birds, and so on) from what are often held to be the director’s weaker
efforts (Torn Curtain, Family Plot, Topaz, The Paradine Case). But what basis
could there possibly be for deciding between Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is
It There? and Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Or between
George Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon and Marleen Gorris’s A Question of Silence?
If the goal of this book is indeed to include a little bit of everything, then
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what is to prevent the resulting list of 1001 films from being just a cinematic
smorgasbord—a case of mere variety taking precedence over true value?
Good questions all. The first step in determining the 1001 movies to be
included here involved taking a close look at a number of existing “greatest,”
“top,” “favorite,” and “best” film lists, and prioritizing titles based on the
frequency with which they appeared. This allowed us to identify something
like a canon of classics (including modern and contemporary films) that we
felt confident warranted a spot in this book on the joint basis of quality and
reputation. By no means did every film that turned up on these shorter,
occasionally idiosyncratic lists make our cut of 1001, but the exercise
at least gave us some key reference points and significantly reduced the
unavoidably subjective nature of the selection process.
After we tentatively settled on an initial batch of around 1,300 titles,
we proceeded to go through the list again (and again, and again, and
again) with the dual—and conflicting—aim of reducing the overall number
while still achieving sufficient coverage of the medium’s various periods,
national cinemas, genres, movements, traditions, and notable auteurs.
With respect to the latter, we took the notion of an “auteur” in the loosest
possible sense to include not only directors (Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman,
John Cassavetes, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami,
Satyajit Ray, among others), but also actors (Humphrey Bogart, Marlene
Dietrich, Toshiro Mifune), producers (David O. Selznick, Sam Spiegel, Irving
Thalberg), screenwriters (Ernest Lehman, Preston Sturges, Cesare Zavattini),
cinematographers (Gregg Toland, Gordon Willis, Freddie Young), composers
(Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota), and others.
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