My Canon: Introduction

The list is itself a collection, a sublimated collection. One does not actually have to own the things. To know is to have (luckily, for those without great means). It is already a claim, a species of possession, to think about them in this form, the form of a list: which is to value them, to rank them, to say they are worth remembering or desiring.

– Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

Do I have a favorite movie?... More important, should I have a favorite movie? The question provokes resistance in me even though I recognize it to be intellectually respectable in a way that a similar but (I assume) distinguishable question – What is the greatest movie ever made? – is not. And yet, in some ways, the silly question would be the easier to answer. 

– William S. Pechter, "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things"

In August of last year, when the British Film Institute (through their publication Sight & Sound) released their seventh once-a-decade Greatest Films poll, it instigated a flurry of articles and responses ranging from the fanboy-enthusiastic to the tactfully dubious. The former camp sees the Sight & Sound poll as an invaluable way of charting and cherishing the most treasured works in the history of cinema; Roger Ebert, for example, has described it as by "far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies – the only one most serious movie people take seriously." The latter camp, on the other hand – exemplified by such critics as Raymond Durgnat and David Thomson – see the poll as elitist, unfairly limiting, or a pointless "children's game" that may be momentary fun but hardly establishes an "official" canon of the best movies ever made, a task which may be impossible from the start. Each worthy selection suggests an equally tragic omission, as the polling is always at least somewhat prone to cultural zeitgeists and viewing availability.

The truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in the middle. Yes, polls of this kind are inevitably exclusionary: advising audiences which 50 (or even 250) films should be their viewing priorities unfairly sequesters other titles that might, in fact, end up being those viewers' favorites. On the other hand, semi-official canons are a valuable way to conceive of the entire history of an art form in a synoptic view, offering a shorthand guide to the most culturally vital, artistically innovative, emotionally powerful, and thematically complex works of cinematic art that have been made throughout history. When the majority of mainstream criticism today treats its vocation as a sort of Consumer Reports for moviegoers – judging movies based on the satisfaction they provide to audiences who are merely looking for a good story, as commodities which provide entertainment – this kind of well-intentioned, perspicacious critical overview is incredibly valuable. Furthermore, as Sight & Sound explains, the 2012 poll expanded its breadth to include 846 responses from 73 different countries entailing 2,045 films listed; if you're going to attempt a semi-official canon, it would be difficult to achieve one that's more eclectic and far-reaching than this one.

Which isn't to say there aren't problems: the results are still predominantly Anglocentric, with few female directors listed. Furthermore, as Michael Atkinson points out, the ability to seriously judge every movie in history by our own well-intentioned criteria is becoming increasingly difficult in a digital age, inundated with critical opinion: "As our digital intercourse about all things continues to grow like kudzu, threatening to involve practically every human being on Earth in open conversation, the feedback loops surrounding cultural investigation and appraisal of all kinds will get so pervasive that it may well become impossible, some day soon, to arrive at a truly singular and independent perspective on a film – much less hope that that perspective is attained by others independently as well, and might therefore constitute a valuable consensus about what that film is and how good it actually might be. Is such a questionable thing even possible, or are our poll-taking endeavours destined, in a fondly Camusian way, to long for a singular ‘truth’ that we know cannot exist, under any conditions?"

Andrew Sarris' "ballot" for the 1962 Sight & Sound poll

This being the case, one might assume that it's more valuable to attempt a personal canon – in other words, a list of "favorite" movies rather than "greatest" movies. As William Pechter suggests in one of the epigraphs above, the "favorite" question is more intellectually sound (though difficult to answer) than the "greatest" question, precisely because it depends on one's subjective response rather than a semi-objective range of established criteria. If forming and elucidating a subjective response is increasingly difficult (nigh impossible) given a digital discourse that provides critical and public opinion before many moviegoers even have a chance to see the movie, it becomes all the more valuable to formulate an idiosyncratic canon.

An even more pertinent question: why write about this six months after the poll was released? Am I not entering the fray a little too late? The answer is yes, but in my defense: before starting to build my personal canon, I wanted a little critical distance from the Sight & Sound poll, a little time to ponder its inclusions and exclusions, and needed a while to decide what are my favorite films of all time. This lengthy deliberation process may seem self-defeating: shouldn't a list of favorites be somewhat spontaneous, without an excessive amount of reconsideration? Yes, but the opposite pitfall is also dangerous: selecting films impulsively may reflect a little too strongly the cultural opinions of the critical tastemakers who cobbled together the Sight & Sound poll in the first place.

Hereby, then, is the beginning of a new project: My Canon, or my 100 favorite movies, analyzed one-by-one in alphabetical order. It should be noted that some of these movies I haven't seen in a matter of years, so it's conceivable that, after rewatching them for this project, I might in fact revise my original opinion and regard them with diminished esteem this time around. So be it: if this happens, it will merely prove the point that any kind of subjective list-making is prone to impulse and reformed opinions. At the end of the project, I may have a slightly recalibrated Top 100, and will be able to whittle it down to a Top Ten with more decisiveness (presumably, at least, though Top Tens are even more unfair and impossibly exclusionary than Top 100s). It should also be noted that, while I am attempting to establish my own personal canon, there will be considerable overlap with the Sight & Sound poll; while I don't want to merely regurgitate critical favorites, it's undeniable that some of those titles reappear frequently because they do hold seemingly inexhaustible narrative, aesthetic, emotional, and thematic rewards.

To return, finally, to the first epigraph above: Sontag's insightful remark about list-making seems absolutely appropriate – critics and art-lovers enjoy making lists because it offers an ardent way to "possess" the memories we have of our favorite films. To rank these movies is to remember and desire them, to travel back in time to the overwhelming initial experience I had with them. This might be the significant difference between favorite films and greatest films: favorites continue to exert a resonant hold over our memories, sometimes exuding an emotional power equivalent to our own real-life remembrances. Making a canon like this is, in other words, a way to possess (maybe meekly, desperately) the feelings we initially had about the movies we include.