Essential Film Hit List: Prelude

Very late last year, December 21st to be exact, I finally accomplish something that has been haunting myself during my entire lifetime: I finally got around to watching It's a Wonderful Life. In an old movie theater (complete with a mezzanine), a packed crowd, and even on actual film no less. Of course, this seems really stupid and scandalous for someone like myself, an avid cinephile who praises and berates so many films yet has never seen one of the greatest and most popular films of all time. Hell, I was even in film school and we didn't touched the film hardly at all; one of my classes had it on the schedule towards the end of the semester only to instead just watch a bit of the "Pottersville" sequence and call it a day. I guess we needed more time watching boring and terrible Argentinean films, such as The Hour of the Furnaces and The Holy Girl respectively, than to watch Capra work his magic.


So, instead of finally nixing something off my bucket list and ending it there, I had the bright idea to continue moving forward and make a new year's resolution of 2013: For the rest of the year, I will finally make time and watch many of the highly anticipated works of cinema I have constantly skipped over. These are the types of film that are in many serious film discussions, classes, books, and lists as well as the movies that flood airwaves, DVD racks, casual conversations and recommendations. To make it more interesting, this hit list will feature only one film from each year; it can be of any genre, any language, and any quality. The last one is important to making this project fun for myself, since I could just have a list consisting of nothing but Buñuels, Bergmans, Antonionis and Godards and lose my mind with all of the art. Sometimes a person just wants to watch things blow up real good or examine the best worst film of the year. Also, some of these films are in my video collection and I just want to finally break the seals.


Another rule/goal is the final count at the end of the year: I want to watch a minimum of 40 of the following films, including one entire decade. At different times of the year, I will write up a post of my thoughts after watching a group of them.





1912 - The Musketeers of Pig Alley
1913 - Fantômas
1914 - Cabiria
1915 - The Birth of a Nation
1916 - Intolerance
1917 - The Little American
1918 - The Blue Bird
1919 - Male and Female
1920 - The Mark of Zorro
1921 - The Phantom Carriage
1922 - Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
1923 - The Ten Commandments
1924 - The Thief of Bagdad
1925 - The Phantom of the Opera
1926 - Flesh and the Devil
1927 - The Jazz Singer
1928 - The Passion of Joan of Arc
1929 - Pandora's Box
1930 - Hell's Angels
1931 - M
1932 - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
1933 - Gold Diggers of 1933
1934 - L'Atalante
1935 - A Night at the Opera
1936 - Swing Time
1937 - The Hurricane
1938 - Angels with Dirty Faces
1939 - The Rules of the Game
1940 - The Great Dictator
1941 - How Green Was My Valley
1942 - The Magnificent Ambersons
1943 - The Ox-Bow Incident
1944 - Going My Way
1945 - The Lost Weekend
1946 - Notorious
1947 - The Lady from Shanghai
1948 - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1949 - All the King's Men
1950 - Winchester '73
1951 - The African Queen
1952 - Ikiru
1953 - The Robe
1954 - Godzilla (Gojira)
1955 - Marty
1956 - The Girl Can't Help It
1957 - Wild Strawberries
1958 - Ashes and Diamonds
1959 - Anatomy of a Murder
1960 - The Bellboy
1961 - The Innocents
1962 - Lawrence of Arabia
1963 - 8 1/2
1964 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
1965 - Thunderball
1966 - Persona
1967 - Point Blank
1968 - The Love Bug
1969 - True Grit
1970 - Love Story
1971 - Straw Dogs
1972 - Superfly
1973 - American Graffiti
1974 - Death Wish
1975 - Nashville
1976 - The Man Who Fell to Earth
1977 - Saturday Night Fever
1978 - Five Deadly Venoms
1979 - All That Jazz
1980 - The House on the Edge of the Park
1981 - Pennies From Heaven
1982 - Sophie's Choice
1983 - Risky Business
1984 - Stop Making Sense
1985 - After Hours
1986 - "Crocodile" Dundee
1987 - Opera
1988 - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1989 - The Seventh Continent
1990 - The Grifters
1991 - Whore
1992 - Malcolm X
1993 - Cronos
1994 - Heavenly Creatures
1995 - Showgirls
1996 - Trainspotting
1997 - Taste of Cherry
1998 - Rushmore
1999 - Magnolia
2000 - Snatch
2001 - Millennium Actress
2002 - 25th Hour
2003 - Elephant
2004 - The Passion of the Christ
2005 - Kingdom of Heaven
2006 - United 93
2007 - Gone Baby Gone
2008 - Fireproof
2009 - Where the Wild Things Are
2010 - Alice in Wonderland
2011 - A Separation
2012 - The Master


Of course, due to the rules set forth, some films were overlooked, especially in certain years (1939, 1960, 1995). It was also hard picking out a film in the early years, due to some films being lost or hard to obtain a copy.