Steven Scneider - 1001 Movies

A Quintessence Book

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This eBook first published in 2011
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ISBN-13: 978 184403 697 4
QSS.FIL8

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Only a few years ago, I was a member of a panel for a television show called 50 Films To See Before You Die. Now, fifty is a lovely round numberobviously suited to the constraints of scheduling and to the skittish attention spans of viewers and their itchy fingersbut, as all my co-panelists complained, it was an impossibly painful task.

The biggest pain was realizing that absolutely everyone will have seen at least fifty films in their lifetimeindeed, Im not sure you could survive modern life without having witnessed at least fifty films. (Rather sadly, I fear there are many who now get by without having read fifty books, but thats another argument, another list.) Our show aired nevertheless but it left everyone, viewers included, paraphrasing Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws: Were going to need a bigger list.

So when 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die landed with a mighty thump on my desk, it was if the gods of cinema themselves had been watching the television and responded with an outraged Herculean challenge. 1001now thats what I call a list.

There will, of course, be plenty of people arguing for an even bigger list. The modern movie critic, for example, sees over 500 movies a yearin 2007, the average number of releases per week in the U.K. reached ten for the first time in history, so 1001 doesnt at first appear to be very many.

But how many of these yearly releases merit classic or must see status? Pitiably few. Maybe ten, in a really good year. To be included in a list of movies that must be seen before your death, well, it figures that such a work would have to be one that enriches your life. And movies like that simply dont come along very often.

This, then, is a list that dares, provokes, teases, and shimmers with dark promise. To enter is to embark on a journey where the end may never be reached, a labyrinthine odyssey through love, adventure, despair, triumph, good, evil, tragedy, and comedyin short, a journey through all the things that make life worth living.

Theres a remarkable Russian-doll effect at play with this book. You can open it up on any page and find yourself mid-argument. (Kiss Me Deadly? Surely thats a B-movie? Yes, but its the best one ever made.) Then you flick your eye to the next entry and its The Ladykillers and suddenly youve got a pair of films, from the same year (1955), that stand proudly together, each one feeding and increasing the others credibility, in relief as it were, pillars of achievement that will carry on delighting and influencing new generations of viewers with their different visions of gangsters, greed, and human folly. And then youre hooked, melting into another layer of inquiry, finding yourself wondering, for example, what might be the best year in cinema history?

At a quick flick, 1940 looks a strong contenderHis Girl Friday, Rebecca, The Philadelphia Story, Pinocchio, The Grapes of Wrath, and a W.C. Fields comedy called The Bank Dick that, dammit and note to self, I havent seen-until you turn one more page and realize that 1941 yielded Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, and Sullivans Travels, the Preston Sturges film you first heard about when watching the Coen brothers O Brother, Where Art Thou? Oh, I wonder if that makes the list? And you dash forward to 2000 to find it doesntwell then, which Coen brothers films do make it? Ah, Fargo, of course, and Raising Arizona, and now, in the latest edition, their Oscar winner No Country For Old Menand... now youve no idea where your peregrinations began, nor where you were headed.

Such journeys make for almost picaresque experiences, as familiar faces (Do The Right Thingone my favorites, so good to see you in here, old buddy) sit smiling by impertinent strangers such as Jan Svankmajers Neco z Alenky, the Czech moviemakers version of Alice in Wonderland and a work Ive certainly never seen. And then youre back in reveriemy word, 1989 wasnt a bad year either, just for New York films: Spike Lee was joined by Rob Reiners When Harry Met Sally and Woody Allens Crimes and Misdemeanors, while 1989 also signaled breakthroughs for Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot; U.S. indie cinema with Steven Soderberghs Sex, Lies, and Videotape winning the Golden Palm at Cannes; and the Asian New Wave with the debut of Tawains Hou Hsiao-hsiens A City of Sadness. And Im off again, the very thought of that (for me) forgotten film sparking memories of meeting a beautiful girl in the rain outside the Curzon Mayfair in London.

Deciding to watch all of these 1001 filmsI see theres a handy checklist in this edition so you can tick them off like a shopping list, like so many necessitieswill in itself send you off on life experiences: If you want to relive 1957 with Satyajit Rays Aparajito, Fellinis Le Notti di Cabiria, and the unforgettable Russian masterpiece The Cranes Are Flying, youll have to go browsing in independent DVD stores, scuttling to art cinemas on wet weekend breaks in Paris or Berlin, or vacationing near film festival retrospectives (I eventually saw Sullivans Travels in a sidebar program at the wonderfully public festival in Spains San Sebastian).

All this might, after all, take you a lifetime.

Jason Solomons writes movie columns for U.K. newspapers the Observer and the Mail on Sunday and is a broadcaster on movies for television and radio.

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 motivateto 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.