Colour or Black and White
150 out of the 248 are Black and White films (60%).Silent or Talkie
40 are silent films (16%).Countries Represented
This is slightly difficult as a lot of films have multiple nationalities. I tried where I could to pick the primary country of origin, which is usually the language spoken or the nationality of the director.| USA | 116 |
| France | 41 |
| Italy | 17 |
| Japan | 16 |
| Germany | 15 |
| USSR | 9 |
| UK | 9 |
| Denmark | 4 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Poland | 3 |
| Belgium | 2 |
| India | 2 |
| Canada | 2 |
| Iran | 1 |
| Mexico | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 |
| Senegal | 1 |
| Hong Kong | 1 |
| Taiwan | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Brazil | 1 |
Not a big shock that USA and France lead the way, but perhaps a bit surprising that Italy and Germany are so high up. The poor old UK doesn't fare well at all and seems to be absent a lot of key works — where's David Lean? I suppose we should be consoled that there are a lot of British directors in the list.
Directors
Here are the directors with two or more films to their name:| Jean-Luc Godard | 9 |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 7 |
| Robert Bresson | 6 |
| Buster Keaton | 6 |
| Akira Kurosawa | 6 |
| Yasujiro Ozu | 5 |
| Orson Welles | 5 |
| DW Griffith | 5 |
| Carl Theodor Dreyer | 5 |
| Stanley Kubrick | 4 |
| Stan Brakhage | 4 |
| Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 4 |
| John Ford | 4 |
| Howard Hawks | 4 |
| Charlie Chaplin | 4 |
| Sergei Eisenstein | 3 |
| Roberto Rossellini | 3 |
| Preston Sturges | 3 |
| Michelangelo Antonioni | 3 |
| Martin Scorsese | 3 |
| Jean Renoir | 3 |
| Ingmar Bergman | 3 |
| Federico Fellini | 3 |
| F W Murnau | 3 |
| William A Wellman | 2 |
| Werner Herzog | 2 |
| Vittorio de Sica | 2 |
| Satyajit Ray | 2 |
| Andrei Tarkovsky | 2 |
| Robert Altman | 2 |
| Douglas Sirk | 2 |
| Pier Paolo Pasolini | 2 |
| Oliver Stone | 2 |
| Nicholas Ray | 2 |
| Michael Powell | 2 |
| Max Ophüls | 2 |
| Chantal Akerman | 2 |
| Francis Ford Coppola | 2 |
| François Truffaut | 2 |
| Luis Buñuel | 2 |
| Louis Feuillade | 2 |
| Kenji Mizoguchi | 2 |
| John Cassavetes | 2 |
| Fritz Lang | 2 |
| James Cameron | 2 |
| Bernardo Bertolucci | 2 |
| Georges Méliès | 2 |
So Godard wins it with 9 (which should probably be 8) ahead of crowd favourite Hitchcock. Interesting that there are only 3 American directors in the top ten, two of whom were from the silent era.
Decades
Finally, a look at when these films were made:| 1900s | 2 |
| 1910s | 6 |
| 1920s | 28 |
| 1930s | 26 |
| 1940s | 28 |
| 1950s | 43 |
| 1960s | 48 |
| 1970s | 36 |
| 1980s | 19 |
| 1990s | 12 |
An indication that cinema has declined in the past thirty years, or just that it takes time to recognise a great film for what it is?
By my reckoning, the UK does even worse, with just 5 films:
ReplyDeleteThe 39 Steps
The Third Man
A Matter of Life and Death
Peeping Tom
Performance
What did you add to those, given that Chaplin's work and later Hitchcocks etc were all made in Hollywood? (There may be co-productions that I didn't factor in)
I had:
ReplyDeleteBarry Lyndon
Safe
Trog
Portrait of a Lady
Barry Lyndon and Trog seem uncontroversial. Safe and Portrait of a Lady both had UK listed first on IMDB but reading further it does seem they're mostly American productions and should probably go under USA instead.
Ah, right, I'd assumed Trog was American because of Joan C, so didn't check it.
ReplyDeleteIs Barry Lyndon ususally thought of as British though? I know Kubrick made all his later films in the UK, but I'm sure the money came from the States.
It's not always easy to neatly compartmentalise these things, but it seems to be listed as British on both Wikipedia and IMDB. It does have an American star, but the rest of it is British at heart, if not in pocket.
ReplyDelete