Shh, My List is Starting

Figured I might as well keep digging my hole of self-referentiality deeper and climb on in. With a movie projector. Here's the favorite foreign films (that means British and Canadian, too--since when Tancredo's president they'll have to get the films over the wall) list I put together in 1999. (Note, unsubtle readers--that means they're aren't any films since 1999.)

I couldn't keep quiet on this subject, now, could I? So, here is a randomly ordered, completely personal, decidedly arbitrary list. Trying to compile it shocked me, once again--there's so much I haven't seen. And then there's so much I just don't get, like Bresson and Dreyer, and my soul, I realize, is poorer for it.

But there are things I left off intentionally, even if others love them; for just three quickies which sure don't feel quick when I watch them, there's Blow-Up, Repulsion, and Cinema Paradiso. And My Life as a Dog. And anything with Gerard Depardieu (although 1900 is campy fun, especially when Donald Sutherland is about killing things). Stop me before I pan again.

• Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 55)
• Dead of Night (Dearden, Cavalcanti, Hamer, Crichton, 45)
• Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 61)
• Wings of Desire (Wenders, 87)
• Ikiru (Kurosawa, 52)
• all the Quay Bros. shorts--especially Street of Crocodiles (Brothers Quay, 84+)
• The Earrings of Madame de... (Ophuls, 53)
• The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 39)
• Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, 80)
• L'Atalante (Vigo, 34)
• Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 72)
• Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 60)
• Stalker (Tarkovsky, 79)
• The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 97)
• The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 35)
• Masculin/Feminin (Godard, 66)
• Breaking the Waves (von Trier, 96)
• Drowning by Numbers (Greenaway, 87)
• The Ladykillers (Mackendrick, 55)
• Irma Vep (Assayas, 97)
• Pandora's Box (Pabst, 29)
• Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, 65)
• Metropolis (Lang, 27)
• Grand Illusion (Renoir, 37)
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog, 72)
• The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 54)
• The Duellists (Scott, 78)
• Tokyo Story (Ozu, 53)
• Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (Tanner, 76)
• Amarcord (Fellini, 73)
• Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 72)
• A Day in the Country (Renoir, 36)
• Un Coeur en Hiver (Sautet, 92)
• Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 66)
• Menilmontant (Kirsanov, 24)
• Ulysses' Gaze (Angelopoulos, 95)
• The Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, 84)
• Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 74)
• Nosferatu (Murnau, 22)
• The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 84)
• Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 45)
• The Road Warrior (Miller, 82)
• Great Expectations (Lean, 46)
• Potemkin (Eisenstein, 25)
• Red (Kieslowski, 94)
• Los Olvidados (Bunuel, 50)
• Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 53)
• Mr. Hulot's Holiday (Tati, 53)
• High Hopes (Leigh, 88)
• The Nasty Girl (M. Verhoeven, 90)
• M (Lang, 31)
• Diva (Beinex, 81)
• Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 65)
• The Conformist (Bertolucci, 70)
• The Story of Qiu Ju (Yimou, 92)
• Henry V (Olivier, 45)
• Bedazzled (Donen, 67)
• Stroszek (Herzog, 77)
• The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 48)
• The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, 75)
• Tampopo (Itami, 86)
• Children of Paradise (Carne, 44)
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 66)
• Boudu Saved from Drowning (Renoir, 32)
• The Smallest Show on Earth (Dearden, 57)
• Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman, 73)
• Europa, Europa (Holland, 91)
• Providence (Resnais, 77)
• Carnival in Flanders (Feyder, 35)
• The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 38)
• Miss Julie (Sjoberg, 51)
• Seven Beauties (Wertmuller, 75)
• Les Visiteurs du Soir (Carne, 42)
• Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 61)
• The Servant (Losey, 63)
• Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 51)
• La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette, 91)
• Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani Bros, 82)
• Smash Palace (Donaldson, 81)
• L'Age D'or (Bunuel, 30)
• 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould (Girard, 93)