{"id":1147,"date":"2016-01-10T18:41:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T16:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2016-01-10T18:41:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T16:41:21","slug":"100-years-100-films-an-education-in-cinema-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2016\/01\/10\/100-years-100-films-an-education-in-cinema-history\/","title":{"rendered":"100 YEARS, 100 FILMS: AN EDUCATION IN CINEMA HISTORY <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago a colleague told me it would be nice to have a list of films for our students and for any interested colleague to educate themselves in cinema History. More than 100 years after the brothers Lumi\u00e8re set the foundations for the birth of a new art, cinema is not yet an integral part of everyone\u2019s education, as Literature is supposed to be. This means that in practice any cinema lover\u2013every \u2018cin\u00e9filo\u2019\u2013is self-taught. <\/p>\n

Even so, as I have confirmed to myself by checking the fabulous Filmsite web, edited by Tim Dirks, there is an enormous difference between the generations born before and after the 1980s in Spain. Those of us whose childhood and youth were spent in the Spain of the then monopolistic Televisi\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola were given a wonderful education in cinema History which those of you growing up in the 1990s and later have totally missed. <\/p>\n

The emergence of private television, beginning with the infamous TeleCinco of its early stages, totally destroyed a way of enjoying cinema on tv. Gone were the films more than ten years old, anything filmed in black and white and whatever came from places other than Hollywood. Gone were the film cycles devoted to a period, genre or director. The film critics we were used to seeing on TV, gentlemen as intelligent but as little telegenic as Alfonso S\u00e1nchez, were replaced by idiotic announcers who clearly had no idea what they were presenting at all; one can still see them now and then. La2 continues the good practice of offering a more serious approach with a weekly hour devoted to good cinema, the programme D\u00edas de Cine<\/em>. The rest just offer advertising for the new releases.<\/p>\n

One of my projects for this Christmas break has been going through the list of films I remember seeing (I keep it at www.imdb.com) to find the most glaring gaps in my own cinema education. I must clarify that I\u2019m not a film buff in the sense that I will not go out of my way to praise an obscure Iranian film instead of a reasonably good American production. I will see any new Iranian film that fits my interests and the same applies to any other nationality but I just don\u2019t feel the urge to give myself an education in their film History. Having exposed my philistinism and having warned my reader that I was looking for gaps in my Anglo-American filmography (I don\u2019t really like Spanish cinema much\u2026), I\u2019ll praise again Dirks\u2019 Filmsite. <\/p>\n

I found there a list of \u2018greatest films\u2019 for each year since 1902 (http:\/\/www.filmsite.org\/greatestfilms-byyear.html<\/a>) and went through it with much enjoyment. This was increased as I recalled having seen most films on Spanish television. I mean the films released up to the early 1980s, when I started going to the cinema with my friends and often on my own (as an undergrad student). Since then, and for the reasons concerning the private channels, television is by no means an important film source for me, with the only occasional exception of La2.<\/p>\n

I want, however, to thank here publicly the film programmers of Televisi\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola for having been such wonderful teachers to all kinds of audiences\u2013both the audiences that preferred the more popular genres and the audiences that enjoyed the art-house orientation of the film cycles on what is now on La2. I happened to be a mixture of both and I\u2019m sure I have these anonymous benefactors for this, something that private television will never be able to match.<\/p>\n

Back to the list I never managed to made: you can make your own on the basis of Tim Dirks\u2019 selection (which goes beyond Anglo-American, I must say) or use my own selection of his selection. I have chosen the magic figure of 100 years, 100 films (check IMDB for any further information on them) and here\u2019s the list. There may be films in it I personally don\u2019t like but it is my intention to highlight a certain oblique canon, not even of the best but of the most often remembered or discussed by film aficionados. All films are American, except where the contrary is noted:<\/p>\n

1915 The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith
\n1916 Intolerance, D. W. Griffith
\n1917 The Unfortunate Marriage, Ernest C. Warde [Dirk includes no film for 1917, I have chosen this one based on IMDB ratings]
\n1918 Shifting Sands, Albert Parker [ditto\u2026]
\n1919 Broken Blossoms, D.W. Griffith
\n1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (original German title: Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari), Robert Wiene
\n1921 The Kid, Charles Chaplin
\n1922 Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror\/Horror (original German title: Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens), F.W. Murnau
\n1923 Safety Last, Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
\n1924 Greed, Erich von Stroheim
\n1925 Battleship Potemkin (original Russian title: Bronenosets Potyomkin), Sergei Eisenstein
\n1926 The Son of the Sheik, George Fitzmaurice
\n1927 Metropolis, Fritz Lang [the sound period starts here in 1927 with The Jazz Singer]
\n1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc (original title: La Passion De Jeanne D’Arc), Carl Theodor Dreyer; silent film
\n1929 Pandora\u2019s Box (original German title: Die B\u00fcchse der Pandora), Georg W. Pabst
\n1930 All Quiet on the Western Front, Lewis Milestone
\n1931 Frankenstein, James Whale
\n1932 Freaks, Tod Browning
\n1933 King Kong, Merian C. Cooper
\n1934 It Happened One Night, Frank Capra
\n1935 A Night at the Opera, Sam Wood
\n1936 Modern Times, Charles Chaplin
\n1937 Grand Illusion (original French title: La Grande Illusion), Jean Renoir
\n1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood, Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
\n1939 Gone With the Wind, Victor Fleming, George Cukor, and Sam Wood
\n1940 The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford
\n1941 Citizen Kane, Orson Welles
\n1942 Casablanca, Michael Curtiz
\n1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (UK), Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
\n1944 Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder
\n1945 The Children of Paradise (original French title: Les Enfants Du Paradis), Marcel Carne
\n1946 The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler
\n1947 Miracle on 34th Street, George Seaton
\n1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, John Huston
\n1949 The Third Man (UK), Carol Reed
\n1950 All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
\n1951 A Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan
\n1952 Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
\n1953 From Here to Eternity, Fred Zinnemann
\n1954 On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan
\n1955 Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray
\n1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel
\n1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai, David Lean
\n1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Richard Brooks
\n1959 Ben-Hur, William Wyler
\n1960 Psycho, Alfred Hithcock
\n1961 West Side Story, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
\n1962 Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean
\n1963 The Leopard (original Italian title: Il Gattopardo), Luchino Visconti
\n1964 My Fair Lady, George Cukor
\n1965 The Sound of Music, Robert Wise
\n1966 Blow-Up (UK), Michelangelo Antonioni
\n1967 The Graduate, Mike Nichols
\n1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (UK), Stanley Kubrick
\n1969 Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper
\n1970 M*A*S*H, Robert Altman
\n1971 A Clockwork Orange (UK), Stanley Kubrick
\n1972 The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola
\n1973 The Exorcist, William Friedkin
\n1974 Chinatown, Roman Polanski
\n1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (UK), Jim Sharman
\n1976 Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese
\n1977 Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope, George Lucas
\n1978 The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino
\n1979 Alien, Ridley Scott
\n1980 The Elephant Man, David Lynch
\n1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg
\n1982 Blade Runner, Ridley Scott
\n1983 Local Hero (UK), Bill Forsyth
\n1984 Amadeus, Milos Forman
\n1985 Brazil (UK), Terry Gilliam
\n1986 Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody Allen
\n1987 The Last Emperor (UK\/It.\/China\/HK), Bernardo Bertolucci
\n1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Original Spanish title: Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios), Pedro Almod\u00f3var
\n1989 Born on the Fourth of July, Oliver Stone
\n1990 Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton
\n1991 Beauty and the Beast, Kirk Wise
\n1992 Basic Instinct, Paul Verhoeven
\n1993 Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg
\n1994 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino
\n1995 The Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer
\n1996 Trainspotting (UK), Danny Boyle
\n1997 Titanic, James Cameron
\n1998 Shakespeare in Love (US\/UK), John Madden
\n1999 The Matrix, Andy and Larry Wachowski
\n2000 Billy Elliot (UK), Stephen Daldry
\n2001 Amelie (original French title: Le Fabuleux Destin d’Am\u00e9lie Poulain), Jean-Pierre Jeunet
\n2002 Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore
\n2003 Lost in Translation (US\/Japan), Sofia Coppola
\n2004 Downfall (original German title: Der Untergang), Oliver Hirschbiegel
\n2005 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee
\n2006 The Lives of Others (original German title: Das Leben der Anderen), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
\n2007 Into the Wilde, Sean Penn
\n2008 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan
\n2009 Up, Pete Docter
\n2010 The Social Network, David Fincher
\n2011 Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn
\n2012 Amour (France), Michael Haneke
\n2013 Gravity, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n
\n2014 Boyhood, Richard Linklater
\n2015 Carol (UK\/US), Todd Haynes<\/p>\n

This list, I insist, is not meant to be anything but a starting point: it\u2019s not a list of the best, not even within the same year\u2013how can one choose between Lawrence of Arabia<\/em> and To Kill a Mockingbirg<\/em>, both 1962 films, or between Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> and Groundhog Day<\/em>, both released in 1993? Navigate it as you wish, but do give yourself an education in film History\u2026<\/p>\n

Enjoy!!<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. You may download the yearly volumes from http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328. See my publications and activities on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/
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