Naming the best 30 films of the last 30 years may seem a dubious occupation. Why 30 films? Or 30 years? Well, space is a consideration. Symmetry is another. But mainly, it’s because the classics of recent times are often ignored in those best-films-of-all-time compilations.
For the past four decades, Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (from 1941) has won Sight and Sound magazine’s poll and Jean Renoir’s “Rules of the Game” (1939) has been somewhere right behind. I agree. “Kane” and “Rules” are my favorites. But I wanted instead to look at the films of the last three decades–a time of enormous change in movies (vast reorganization in Hollywood, mushrooming budgets and box-office, shifts in the world markets) and in the world outside–the Vietnam War, AIDS, the fall of the Soviet Empire.
Hence, the list. I’ve limited myself to films currently on video (thus eliminating “The Decalogue,” “Au Hasard,” “City of Sadness,” among others). And to one movie per director–which explains the absence of otherwise sure-fire choices like “Persona,” “Nashville” and “GoodFellas.”
The exception: those cases where a movie and its sequels form a recognized unit, as in “The Godfather” Trilogy (No. 1) or the “Star Wars” Trilogy (No. 33).
I also wanted to make 1966 the cutoff point so I could include a Welles movie neglected in all the “Kane” landslides: 1966’s magical “Chimes at Midnight” (No. 3). In fact, five of the top 30 were released in that watershed year.
1. “The Godfather” Trilogy Francis Ford Coppola, director). Coppola and Mario Puzo’s majestic Mafia saga seems within a hair of being the Great American Novel on film.
2. “Fanny and Alexander” (3-hour version; Sweden; 1982; Ingmar Bergman). Bergman’s artistic testament is a rollicking, scary family drama about the war between theater and piety.
3. “Chimes at Midnight” (Britain-Spain; 1966; Orson Welles). Welles’ wondrous compression of the Falstaff scenes in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Pts. 1 & 2” and “Henry V”: a heartbreaking saga of youth and age, crowns and mischief, battlefields and bawdy houses.
4. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (U.S.; 1968; Stanley Kubrick). An austere science-fiction epic which gives us, like no other, the wonders of the unknown.
5. “Raging Bull” (U.S.; 1980; Martin Scorsese). Scorsese and Robert De Niro’s finest hours: the black-and-white passion of mean streets pug Jake LaMotta.
6. “Andrei Roublev” (Russia; 1966; Andrei Tarkovsky). A vast contemplation of spirit, art and flesh, based on the life of the 15th Century religious icon painter.
7. “Roma” (Italy; 1972; Federico Fellini). With 194’s “Amarcord” and 1987’s “Intervista,” this film comprises Fellini’s buoyant autobiography.
8. “The Wild Bunch” (director’s cut; U.S.; 1969; Sam Peckinpah). According to Peckinpah, this is “what happens when outlaws go to Mexico.” The best American action movie and (after 1956’s “The Searchers”) the second-best Western.
9. “Berlin Alexanderplatz” (Germany; 1980; Rainer Werner Fassbinder). The 15-hour adaptation of Alfred Doblin’s low-life Berlin classic.
10. “Playtime” (France; 1967; Jacques Tati). Paris as a huge mechanical toy for Tati, the screen’s silent comedy master after Chaplin and Keaton.
11. “Belle de Jour” (France; 1966; Luis Bunuel). Bunuel at his sliest, star Catherine Deneuve at her most icily beautiful. A great carnal comedy.
12. “Short Cuts” (U.S.; 1993; Robert Altman). A mass portrait of L.A. on the brink drawn from Raymond Carver’s stories. Altman fashions his top ensemble film.
13. “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” (U.S.; 1982; Steven Spielberg). One super-blockbuster that deserved it. The ultimate child’s-eye movie.
14. “Blowup” (Britain; 1966; Michelangelo Antonioni). Swinging London, an egoistic photographer, a quiet park and a stunning display of intellectual suspense.
15. “Manhattan” (U.S.; 1979; Woody Allen). Allen’s comic/romantic poem to the borough he loves best. A high point of American sound comedy.
16. “A Woman Under the Influence” (U.S.; 1974; John Cassavetes). Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk as a couple at war. A high-water mark of American movie acting.
17. “Ran” (Japan; 1985; Akira Kurosawa). The poet of cinema action makes a searing, tragic Japanese “King Lear.”
18. “Once Upon a Time in America” (director’s cut; U.S.; 1984; Sergio Leone). A different kind of gangster epic–Jacobean, lush and vulgarly violent.
19. “Landscape in the Mist” (Greece; 1988; Theo Angelopoulos). The saddest and most poetic road movie–two Greek children search for their mythical paternity across a landscape of pain.
20. “War and Peace” (9-hour version; Russia; 1966-6; Sergei Bondarchuk). Despite its Oscar (for the 6-hour version), severely underrated. It lacks Tolstoy’s subtleties and breadth, but the ballroom and battle canvases are staggering, unequaled.
21. “The Go-Between” (Britain; 1971; Joseph Losey). A hypnotic film of L.P. Hartley’s tale of forbidden romance in that “foreign country,” the past.
22. “Days of Heaven” (U.S.; 198; Terrence Malick). A girl’s-view, love-on-the-run tale of shattering beauty.
23. “Blade Runner” (director’s cut; U.S.; 1982; Ridley Scott). Future L.A.–the peak of sci-fi noir, from, inevitably, a Philip K. Dick book.
24. “The Tree of Wooden Clogs” (Italy; 1978; Ermanno Olmi). A moving provincial neo-realist epic of 19th Century Lombardy peasantry.
25. “Heimat” (Germany; 1983; Edgar Reitz). A great original screen novel–Reitz’s 15-hour portrait of a German village from 1919 to 1982.
26. “Chinatown” U.S.; Roman Polanski). The plush ’30s L.A. thriller about dirty water, with Jack Nicholson as shamus J.J. Gittes. As much a noir classic as “The Maltese Falcon.”
27. “1900” (5-hour version; Italy; 1977; Bernardo Bertolucci). History gone operatically mad. The twin biography of worker (Gerard Depardieu) and landowner (Robert De Niro), from Verdi’s death to WW II’s aftermath.
28. “Brazil” (U.S.; 1985; Terry Gilliam). Mad magazine, Orwell’s “1984” and German Expressionism collide in this futuristic stew of wild suspense and satire.
29. “Unforgiven” (U.S.; 1992; Clint Eastwood). America’s top modern movie icon-hero exposes the flip side of his killer image in the definitive dark Western.
30. “To Live” (China; 1994; Zhang Yimou). Remarkable politically and artistically: Zhang’s counter-history of China’s Communist era.
Runners-up
31. “Bonnie and Clyde” (196).
32. Three Colors Trilogy: “Blue,” “White,” “Red” (1993-’94).
33. The “Star Wars” Trilogy (1977, ’80, ’83).
34. “El Dorado” (196).
35. The “Mad Max” Trilogy (1979, ’81,’85).
36. “The Fortune Cookie” (1966).
37. “The Story of Adele H.” (1975).
38. “Lamerica” (1995).
39. “Prenom: Carmen” (1982).
40. “Vengeance Is Mine” (1979).
41. “Kes” (1969). 42. “Claire’s Knee” (1972).
43. “Distant Thunder” (India, 1973).
44. “Do the Right Thing” (1989).
45. “The Three Musketeers”/”The Four Musketeers” (1974-5).
46. “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989). 4. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (195).
48. “An Angel at My Table” (1990).
49. “The Man Who Would be King” (1976).
50. The Kiarostami Trilogy: “Where Is the Friend’s Home?” “And Life Goes On,” “Through the Olive Trees” (1987, ’92, ’94).
