Introduction

I love watching films, but there are still some fairly big holes in my cinema catalogue. This was sparked recently when I discovered the Sight and Sound Top 10 which is apparently the most highly regarded of the film lists. The 2002 edition was as follows:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Vertigo
3. La Règle du jeu
4. The Godfather/The Godfather Part II
5. Tokyo Story
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. The Battleship Potemkin
8. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
9. 8½
10. Singin' in the Rain

I've seen quite a lot of films, and I try to catch the good ones when they come on. I'd seen pretty much all of the Channel Four Top 50, for example, so when I realised I'd only seen five of these I felt a bit disconcerted. Then when I realised that I'd never even heard of Sunrise before I was beginning to think that my proud persona as the annoying but lovable bloke who has seen all the films and is good in the pub quiz wasn't really holding up.

I googled Sunrise, found it was available on Youtube and watched it straight through. It was mesmerising and I loved it completely but I'll write about that later. I decided to try and hunt down the other four films on the list and watch them too.

I should have stopped there, but curiosity and Wikipedia got the better of me and soon I'd discovered the Village Voice Top 250 Films of the 20th Century. It was littered with films I'd never heard of and when I counted them up I found I'd barely seen a fifth of them. This wouldn't do.

I don't think this will turn out to be the account of a quest to watch all the films on the list. I doubt if I can hunt them all out, let alone find the time or inclination to watch them. But it would be nice to see more of these films and I think I'll enjoy logging them on this blog and writing about them. You can see the list on the right, with the films I've seen marked in green and the films I've written about underlined. I'd seen 57 films before starting out.