These films are not "the best" but maybe we can call them the most influential, and I don't mean they've influenced other films, but influenced the culture. They've affected the way we speak, see, behave, think, and feel. Sometimes we're aware of it, sometimes we're not; some of them are quoted or referenced so often we've lost touch with the original source.
Citizen
Kane
Look, just put this film at the top of every
"best/most/greatest" film list (except "most overrated"). If you're over
22 years old and haven't seen this, stay away from me. Really, no one should
have to tell you why this film is a cultural touchstone, okay? Just see
it.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Science fiction films up
until 2001 were the domain of b-movies: Cheap effects, lousy
scripts (there are a couple of exceptions, Forbidden Planet comes
to mind), bad science. The makers of science fiction films after 2001
always had the Kubrick film in mind when designing the looks of their
films. The Millennium Falcon's beat up, rusted look was a reaction to the
pristine space ships in 2001. Moon's sets look like they
were taken out of a 2001 storage bin. (Not possible, by the way:
Kubrick destroyed his sets so that just such a thing wouldn't happen.)
But more than that, the film showed us what space exploration was going
to look like. (Except maybe for the monolith bit. And the trippy ending
bit, too.) Sometimes it seems 2001 wasn't a film about the
future, but a film from the future.
Psycho
That
Psycho is the grandfather of cheaply produced slasher films
would be enough (is it responsible for a proliferation of shockingly
violent images? I'd say no, but some might argue otherwise), but I'm
thinking more about the Bernard Hermann score. The staccato
whe-whe-whe-whe has made an indelible impression on our psyche that rivals the first
bars of Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony." Who hasn't mimicked those notes,
accompanied by thrusting imaginary knife? Even people who have no idea
where it came from do it. That riff, which Hermann borrowed from Bartok,
would also influence plenty of music to come: listen to the Beatles'
"Eleanor Rigby."
The Searchers
The crux of the old and
the modern Western is here in possibly the best Western ever. All the
Old West myths are contained in this film, and so are the seeds for the
re-interpretation of the Old West. The portrayal of racism is as complex
as any before or after this film: consider John Wayne shooting the eyes
of a dead Comanche so that he won't be able to find his way to the
afterlife and yet Wayne speaks "Comanch" and knows more about the
culture than any white man around. This is heady, dark stuff.
8
1/2
Possibly the best film about being a filmmaker, but I
include it here because this is the film where Fellini started to become
"Fellini" and dove into an aesthetic that would give birth to the word
"Felliniesque." Can you think of another person whose name became such a
frequently used, and overused, and misused, adjective?
It Happened One Night
Every
romantic comedy you've ever seen is indebted to this film. That's a
heavy weight to bear, I know, and we really shouldn't blame the
existence of Sex and the City on this film, so let's not. Just
watch it and enjoy it for it's
they-hate-each-other-but-really-love-each-other cleverness.
A
Hard Day's Night
A mock-umentary and a music video decades before
Spinal Tap and MTV. And it's the Beatles, who had, one might
say, something of an impact on modern music and culture. This film
taught rock stars how to be rock stars. The one-liners and the
irreverence may have been borne out of the comedy scene happening in
England at the time, but A Hard Day's Night crystallized and
disseminated it.
Thin Blue Line
Documentaries predating
this film have had a social conscious and may have raised awareness,
but this film actually prevented a wrongful execution. I'm not aware of another film before 1988 that could
claim to have literally saved a man's life. It raised the bar mighty
high for what a documentary could aspire to achieve, and that's a good
thing.
Star Wars
Yes, I'm afraid so. This film's
contribution to pop culture is immeasurable. I don't want to think about
it, actually. It gives me a headache.
Rashomon
You didn't think I was NOT
going to include a Japanese film on the list, did you? Here's another
marvel of fractured storytelling, but this one takes up where Citizen
Kane left off. In Kane we get multiple points of view of a
man. He was this, he was that, he was something else, and you are left
to suss out who Kane really was. Rashomon asks not only, "Who is
to be believed?" but also "what did happen?" and "what is moral?" and
"what is reality?" That last "witness," the spirit? Whoa! I don't
know how many times Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary watched Rashomon
when they were writing Pulp Fiction, but I'm guessing a lot!
Some
others that could easily slip into the top ten at any given moment:
The
very first silent films by Edison and the Lumiere Brothers.
King
Kong
The Big Lebowski
Nanuck of the North
Pulp Fiction
Jaws
