CARL THEODOR DREYER: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Carl Theodor Dreyer's 10 Essential Movies

1. The President (1919)

2. The Parson's Widow (1920)

3. Leaves Out of the Book of Satan (1921)

4. Michael (1924)

5. Master of the House (1925)

6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

7. Vampyr (1932)

8. Day of Wrath (1943)

9. Ordet (1955)

10. Gertrud (1964)

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"Dreyer continues to be admired for his visual style, which, despite surface dissimilarities, is recognized as having a basic internal unity and consistency, but the thematic coherence of his work-around issues of the unequal struggle of women and the innocent against repression and social intolerance, the inescapability of fate and death, the power of evil in earthly life-is less widely appreciated."
― The Oxford History of World Cinema, 1999

"Dreyer's pared-down style takes him beyond surface realism to something more mysterious and abstract: sounds or shadows (as in the truly eerie Vampyr) evoke the presence of unseen beings, landscape and architecture are invested, by lighting, design and composition, with supernatural force. Paradoxically, by rejecting anything superfluous to his purposes, this undisputed master of the cinema created some of its richest, most affecting and wondrously beautiful studies of the human condition."
― Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"Dreyer's work is always based on the beauty of the image, which in turn is a record of the luminous conviction and independence of human beings. His films are devoted principally to human emotions, and if they seem relatively subdued, then that may be a proper reason for calling in Danishness. But simplicity and purity of style do not argue against intensity, Dreyer's greatness is in the way that he makes a tranquil picture of overwhelming feelings. His art, and his intelligence, make passion orderly without ever cheating on it."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Carl Theodor Dreyer is the greatest filmmaker in the Danish cinema, where he was always a solitary personality. But he is also among the few international directors who turned films into an art and made them a new means of expression for the artistic genius."
― Ib Monty (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)

"Although he was sometimes austere and ponderous, Dreyer's vision and drive for perfection made him the greatest director Denmark has ever produced. Unfortunately, the commercial failure of most of his films and his own perfectionism meant that his output was extremely limited… Dreyer was a film-maker before his time, even if his habit of using amateur players on occasions could work against his films. Nowadays he would find the world's film climate much more to his liking and would no doubt be allowed the artistic and financial freedom he always desired."
― David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"For all their outward austerity, Dreyer's films are made with deep feeling and sympathy, particularly towards women. He died without realising the project he had in mind for decades - a film on the life of Christ."
― Roger Manvell (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"Man as a social animal is generally the subject of Dreyer's greatest films, which are some of the beacons of the cinema. The director is an antecedent of Bergman through the depiction of human love, anxiety, and spirituality."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

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Carl Theodor Dreyer's 10 Favourite Movies

1. Battleship Potemkin (1925) by Sergei Eisenstein

2. The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D.W. Griffith

3. Brief Encounter (1945) by David Lean

4. The Gold Rush (1925) by Charles Chaplin

5. Henry V (1944) by Laurence Olivier

6. The Petrified Forest (1936) by Archie Mayo

7. Port of Shadows (1938) by Marcel Carné

8. Rome, Open City (1945) by Roberto Rossellini

9. The Treasure of Arne (1919) by Mauritz Stiller

10. Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) by René Clair

*Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952)

FEDERICO FELLINI: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Federico Fellini's 10 Essential Movies

1. I Vitelloni (1953)

2. La Strada (1954)

3. Il Bidone (1955)

4. The Nights of Cabiria (1957)

5. La Dolce Vita (1960)

6. 8½ (1963)

7. Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

8. Roma (1972)

9. Amarcord (1973)

10. And the Ship Sails On (1983)

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"Like Dickens, Fellini was attracted to the theatrical. Both men mined their childhood experiences; both craved an audience. A hallmark of creativity in narrative fiction is the freedom to embroider the past, constructing a scenario which may have little to do with fact so long as it makes a good story. Fellini was blatant in mining his past, so if incidents which are presented as autobiography do not ring true, the audience is entitled to feel cheated. Events need to cohere in a convincing narrative which holds the interest of the audience as much as the creator. Fellini’s diversions verge on self-obsession."
― Philip Gillett (Movie Greats: A Critical Study of Classic Cinema, 2008)

"In an era when Italian cinema means the easy consolations of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, the aesthetic and moral challenges posed by Federico Fellini seem at once important and exotic."
― Richard Armstrong (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"If this Italian film-maker had been restrained by the Hollywood system, one feels that his films might have pleased himself less, but pleased his audiences more. No doubt about it, Fellini was a brilliant creator of unforgettable images, the screen's nearest equivalent to a modern Spanish painter somewhere between Dalí and Miró. What might have happened if this talent had been harnessed, channelled into a recognizable shape?"
― David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"Whether it was the world he loved or simply the fruits of his very public fantasy is open to debate; whatever, while his work was extremely uneven, he evidently saw himself as a great artist, whereas a more accurate assessment might describe him as a magnificent showman."
― Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"In retrospect I Vitelloni (1953) now seems to be his masterpiece, simply because it managed to encapsulate the boredom and the random but natural desire for existential recognition that underlie all his later, more self-consciously contrived films. Fellini remains a master, but a flawed one, capable of raising us briefly on his waxen wings, and making us forget that what we are seeing below us is only make believe and papier-mâché."
― Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

"Federico Fellini, the circus ringmaster of Italian movies, was a giant of world cinema. His deeply autobiographical work brought the European art film on to the world stage, winning the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film four times. His work, informed as it was by his love of comic books, theatre - especially circus - women and food, progressively grew away from realism and storytelling into imaginative flights of fantasy, and his films are sensual and luxurious, revelling in astonishing sights and intoxicating sounds. So well defined and coherent was his world view that his surname has become and adjective, Felliniesque being a watchword for absurd, decadent extravagance."
― Ian Freer (Movie Makers, 2009)

"His international reputation grew throughout the 1950s, culminating in the success of La Dolce vita (1960). His later films became increasingly autobiographical and reflected his love of extravagant fantasy, dreams and the grotesque."
― Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"With roots in Italian neo-realism, Fellini has grown into a brilliant stylist who depicts man's appetites with particular vigor."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"It's absolutely impossible to improvise. Making a movie is a mathematical operation. It is like sending a missile to the moon. It isn't improvised. It is too defined to be called improvisational, too mechanical. Art is a scientific operation, so I can say that what we usually call improvisation is in my case just having an ear and eye for things that sometimes occur during the time we are making the picture."
― Federico Fellini (Directing the Film, 1976)

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Federico Fellini's 10 Favourite Movies

1. The Circus (1928), City Light (1931), Monsieur Ventoux (1947) by Charlie Chaplin

2. All of Marx Brothers & Laurel and Hardy movies

3. Stagecoach (1939) by John Ford

4. Rashomon (1950) by Akira Kurosawa

5. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) by Luis Buñuel

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick

7. Paisan (1946) by Roberto Rossellini

8. The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock

9. Wild Strawberries (1957) by Ingmar Bergman

10. 8½ (1963) by Federico Fellini

*Source: Sight & Sound (1992)

FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

François Truffaut's 10 Essential Movies

1. The 400 Blows (1959)

2. Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

3. Jules and Jim (1962)

4. The Soft Skin (1964)

5. Stolen Kisses (1968)

6. The Wild Child (1970)

7. Day for Night (1973)

8. The Story of Adele H (1975)

9. Small Change (1976)

10. The Last Metro (1980)

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"Truffaut remained true to the Cahiers legacy by inserting into each film references to his favorite periods of film history and his admired directors (Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Renoir). Jules and Jim, set in the early days of cinema, provided an occasion to incorporate silent footage and to employ old -fashioned irises. Truffaut sought not to destroy traditional cinema but to renew it. In the Cahiers spirit he aimed to enrich commercial filmmaking by balancing personal expression with a concern for his audience: "I have to feel I am producing a piece of entertainment."
― Kristin Thompson & David Bordwell (Film History: An Introduction, 2009)

"François Truffaut was one of five young French film critics, writing for André Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema in the early 1950s, who became the leading French filmmakers of their generation... Unlike his friend and contemporary, Jean-Luc Godard, Truffaut remained consistently committed to his highly formal themes of art and life, film and fiction, youth and education, art and education, rather than venturing into radical political critiques of film forms and film imagery."
― Gerald Mast (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"Truffaut’s influence on cinema was international in scope. He conveyed in his films and in his writing an apparently inexhaustible and infectious enthusiasm for the possibility of authentic personal expression in the cinema. Perhaps his most moving film after The 400 Blows, L’Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) stars Truffaut as a scientist who attempts to communicate with an Abandoned autistic child. Throughout his life, Truffaut believed that human communication could transcend language and culture. No doubt, his influence on young filmmakers derives from this faith."
― Hilary Ann Radner (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 2007)

"A passionately romantic humanist like Renoir, Truffaut was also a devout admirer of the skills of Hitchcock, which he attempted to emulate in several of his own thrillers. He published a book of a series of interviews he conducted with Hitchcock, whom he repeatedly identified as his idol, but temperamentally and emotionally his affinity with Renoir seemed to be the stronger side of his split artistic personality."
― The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994

"This distinguished French film-maker was an extraordinary man to pin down, in that he almost never made the same kind of film twice, and his films varied infuriatingly from very good to mediocre. There are autobiographical elements in many of them, which are veined with ideas of childhood, loneliness, women, mothers and obsessional objects;"
― David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"Truffaut made only a few films that are not flawed, several that have serious weaknesses in conception and realization, one or two content to treat the surface of a subject, but none without a youthful enthusiasm for movies. He treated material speculatively, in the way of an idealised Hollywood director in the days of constant production, priding himself on an ability to make any assignment beautiful and entertaining… Whether or how well his films will last remains to be seen. Whatever the answer to that question, for many people who love film, Truffaut will always seem like the most accessible and engaging crest to the New Wave."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Truffaut's work moves, sometimes uncertainly, between the highly personal style of his best films (with their tendency towards episodic structure, diffident heroes, and suggestions of improvisation), and those which seem to reflect American influences."
― Roger Manvell (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"Truffaut was always a committed cineaste, who remained, up to his death from a brain tumour at 52, totally at ease with the revolutionary filmic language he had helped create. His critical reputation may have slipped slightly in some quarters, but the magnitude of his achievements as both theorist and auteur should not be underestimated."
― Lloyd Hughes (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"One of France's most sympathetic film-makers, François Truffaut was closely associated with the nouvelle vague of the late Fifties… Truffaut's films are always marked by a distinctive gentleness, a graceful humour, and a truly personal cinematic sense.."
― The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, 1983

"Enthusiasm, lucidity, and freedom of expression characterise the films of François Truffaut, a leading force in the French new Wave. They are obviously made by someone who wants to retain a certain innocence."
― Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"A seminal director in the French New Wave, Truffaut is a master at illustrating the small joys and sorrows of human existence, with a particular talent for understanding children."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

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François Truffaut's 10 Favourite Movies

1. Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles

2. Day of Wrath (1943) by Carl Theodor Dreyer

3. Johnny Guitar (1954) by Nicholas Ray

4. The Night of the Hunter (1955) by Charles Laughton

5. Ugetsu (1953) by Kenji Mizoguchi

6. Trouble in Paradise (1932) by Ernst Lubitsch

7. L'Atalante (1934) by Jean Vigo

8. Rebecca (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock

9. Notorious (1946) by Alfred Hitchcock

10. The Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir

* Source: Unknown (1979)

INGMAR BERGMAN: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Ingmar Bergman's 10 Essential Movies

1. The Seventh Seal (1957)

2. Wild Strawberries (1957)

3. The Magician (1958)

4. The Virgin Spring (1960)

5. Winter Light (1963)

6. Persona (1966)

7. Cries & Whispers (1972)

8. Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

9. Face to Face (1976)

10. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

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"What, then, is this place that is the human condition? What does this moral landscape look and feel like, what are its most basic features and laws? Bergman’s “reduction” reveals our lives as moral and spiritual beings to be constituted by six fundamental kinds of experience and their interrelationships. These occur throughout Bergman’s films in many variations and combinations. Sometimes all are present, sometimes only a few. They are the seminal moments of judgment, abandonment, passion, turning, shame, and vision. Together they delineate the kind of journey life is and the kind of road it must travel. They are the “plot points” through which all of Bergman’s stories develop, and they provide the framework for understanding Bergman’s films and his achievement as artist and “filmic metaphysician.”"
― Jesse Kalin (The Films of Ingmar Bergman, 2003)

"The son of a pastor, Ingmar Bergman made films filled with religious imagery, which paradoxically express a godless, loveless universe. Bergman's entire oeuvre can be seen as the autobiography of his psyche. Dividing his time between the stage and screen, Bergman often introduced the theatre into his films as a metaphor for the duality of the personality. At least five of his films take place on an island, a circumscribed area like the stage."
― Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"Bergman has never set out to be less than demanding; and as an artist his greatest achievement is in digesting such unrelenting seriousness until he sees no need to bludgeon us with it... Bergman has seen no reason to abandon his faith in a select audience, prepared and trained for a diligent intellectual and emotional involvement with cinema."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Although he may be faulted for an occasional cold, humourless pessimism that may seem contrived, both his intellectual gravity and his uncompromising devotion to cinema as a serious art form are undeniable."
― Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)

"Although a comparison to Strindberg is far too confining, his films reflect as powerfully the summer fevers and winter darkness of the Swedish character, expressed through a versatile range of moods from the sophisticated comedy of morals (A Lesson in Love, 1954) to the doomed vision of an apocalyptic future (The Shame, 1968)."
― Margaret Hinxman (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"Bergman's unique international status as a filmmaker would seem assured on many grounds; his prolific output of largely notable work; the profoundly personal nature of his best films since the 1950s; the innovative nature of his technique combined with its essential simplicity even when employing surrealistic and dream-like treatments; his creative sensitivity in relation to his players; and his extraordinary capacity to evoke distinguished acting from his regular interpreters."
― Roger Manvell (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"Bergman's childhood, as the son of a rigid Lutheran pastor, may provide a key to the metaphysical and religious speculations in his films. However, Bergman's reputation for melancholy and pretension does no justice to the sheer inventiveness of his visual style and the lyrical beauty of his films."
― The Movie Book, 1999

"Human laughter, sorrow, joy, and anxiety are analyzed and compellingly illustrated by Bergman, one of the great directors."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

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Ingmar Bergman's 10 Favourite Movies

1. Andrei Rublev (1966) by Andrei Tarkovsky

2. The Circus (1928) by Charlie Chaplin

3. Marianne & Juliane (1981) by Margarethe von Trotta

4. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) by Carl Theodor Dreyer

5. The Phantom Carriage (1921) by Victor Sjöström

6. Port of Shadows (1938) by Marcel Carné

7. Raven's End (1963) by Bo Widerberg

8. Rashomon (1950) by Akira Kurosawa

9. La Strada (1954) by Federico Fellini

10. Sunset Boulevard (1950) by Billy Wilder

*Source: Sight & Sound (1992)

AKIRA KUROSAWA: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Akira Kurosawa's 10 Essential Movies

1. Drunken Angel (1948)

2. Rashomon (1950)

3. Ikiru (1952)

4. Seven Samurai (1954)

5. Throne of Blood (1957)

6. The Hidden Fortress (1958)

7. The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

8. High and Low (1963)

9. Stray Dog (1949)

10. Ran (1985)

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"It would be hard to imagine the modern American cinema without Kurosawa’s palpable influence, whether in the action staging of Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, and Martin Scorsese or the distinctive editing patterns that so clearly set off the films of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. And this is no less true of his influence on internationally acclaimed directors ranging from Italy’s Western auteur, Sergio Leone, to Hong Kong’s master of balletic violence, John Woo. The strategic use of slow motion, the transformation of Sergei Eisenstein’s handling of crowd scenes, the use of jump cuts on movement, the intermixing of long takes and montage, have all entered the lexicon of the modern action cinema."
― David Desser (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 2006)

"If in the more deliberately humanist dramas his sentimentality seems sometimes contrived and maudlin, his feel for action and his concern for historical authenticity reveal a talent that both delights in and transcends genre limitations. Certainly, his best work merges psychological precision, narrative subtlety and visual bravura to extraordinary effect."
― Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)

"Like his counterparts and most admired models, Jean Renoir, John Ford, and Kenji Mizoguchi, Kurosawa has taken his cinematic inspirations from the full store of world film, literature, and music. And yet the completely original screenplays of his two greatest films, Ikiru and Seven Samurai, reveal that his natural story-telling ability and humanistic convictions transcend all limitations of genre, period and nationality."
― Audie Bock (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"The current awareness of Japanese cinema in the West began with Kurosawa, even if he has now been surpassed... Despite his appetite for disparate subjects in the 1950s, his period films look insubstantial against Mizoguchi's, just as Rashomon's debate on truth is trite beside Ugetsu. As to the contemporary Japanese experience, Kurosawa now trails behind a new generation."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"A great director of wit, irony, and passion, Kurosawa has lensed some of the greatest Japanese films."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

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Akira Kurosawa's 10 Favourite Movies

1. The Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin

2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean

3. The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut

4. The Godfather Part II (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola

5. La Grande Illusion (1937) by Jean Renoir

6. The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed

7. Barry Lyndon (1975) by Stanley Kubrick

8. La Strada (1954) by Federico Fellini

9. Fitzcarraldo (1982) by Werner Herzog

10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) by Milos Forman

*Source: Sight & Sound (1992)

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Alfred Hitchcock's 10 Essential Movies

1. Rebecca (1940)

2. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

3. Notorious (1946)

4. Rope (1948)

5. Strangers on a Train (1951)

6. Dial M for Murder (1954)

7. Rear Window (1954)

8. Vertigo (1958)

9. North by Northwest (1959)

10. Psycho (1960)

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"The extreme peculiarity of Hitchcock’s art (if his films do not seem very odd it is only because they are so familiar) can be partly accounted for by the way in which these aesthetic influences from high art and revolutionary socialism were pressed into the service of British middle-class popular entertainment. Combined with Hitchcock’s all-pervasive scepticism (‘‘Everything’s perverted in a different way, isn’t it?’’), this process resulted in an art that at once endorsed (superficially) and undermined (profoundly) the value system of the culture within which it was produced, be that culture British or American."
― Robin Wood (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"Alfred Hitchcock is the supreme technician of the American cinema. Even his many enemies cannot begrudge him that distinction. Like Ford, Hitchcock cuts in his mind, and not in the cutting room with five different setups for every scene. His is the only contemporary style that unites the divergent classical traditions of Murnau (camera movement) and Eisenstein (montage)."
― Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"Although he chose to limit his thematic range to the genre of suspenseful melodrama and has disappointed some high-minded critics with his lack of seriousness or interest in important social issues. Hitchcock is without question among the few most gifted directors who ever worked in the film medium. A supreme technician and stylist with an unmistakable personal imprint and a great visual artists, he is impossible to dismiss as just the "Master of Suspense", as he has been frequently described."
― The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994

"The master of suspense, Hitchcock is a genius at filming the unexpected, from whole scripts to characters and little, insignificant plot elements."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"Though he seemingly cared little if backdrop scenery was obviously artificial, he was a superb technician, expert at orchestrating the irruption of menacing, life-changing chaos into a complacent, deceptively safe and ordered world."
― Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"It is impossible for anyone who has seen even one of his films to deny Hitchcock his place inside the cinema's pantheon of greats, for his was the most 'cinematic' mind of all, and at the same time the most isolated from 'real life' of all the great directors. Cinema made Hitchcock just as surely as the stage made Laurence Olivier, and he was equally in thrall to it, subsuming his unconscious mind, and ours, to its magic."― Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

"He directed Britain's first talking picture, Blackmail (1929), and went on to build a reputation as the Master of Suspense. His impressive body of work is noted for its dark wit, ice-cool blonde heroines and increasing psychological complexity."
― Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"One of the most truly famous names among Hollywood directors, Alfred Hitchcock remained essentially British in his attitudes, sense of humour and low-keyed style of directing throughout his career... The universal, timeless quality of his best work, his themes and preoccupations, is reflected in the work of many followers who imitated him throughout the 60s and 70s, including Polanski, De Palma and François Truffaut."
― Joel W. Finler (The Movie Directors Story, 1985)

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Alfred Hitchcock's 10 Favourite Movies

1. The Enchanted Cottage (1924) by John S. Robertson

2. Forbidden Fruit (1921) by Cecil B. DeMille

3. The Gold Rush (1925) by Charles Chaplin

4. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) by Mervyn LeRoy

5. The Isle of Lost Ships (1923) by Maurice Tourneur

6. The Last Command (1928) by Josef von Sternberg

7. Saturday Night (1922) by Cecil B. DeMille

8. Scaramouche (1923) by Rex Ingram

9. Sentimental Tommy (1921) by John S. Robertson

10 Variety (1925) by E.A. Dupont

 *Source: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan (list is from 1939)

ORSON WELLES: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Orson Welles's 10 Essential Movies

1. Citizen Kane (1941)

2. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

3. The Stranger (1946)

4. The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

5. Confidential Report (1955)

6. Touch of Evil (1958)

7. The Trial (1962)

8. Chimes at Midnight (1965)

9. F for Fake (1973)

10. The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

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"If we have dwelt at some length on Orson Welles it is because the date of his appearance in the filmic firmament (1941) marks more or less the beginning of a new period and also because his case is the most spectacular and, by virtue of his very excesses, the most significant. Yet Citizen Kane is part of a general movement, of a vast stirring of the geological bed of cinema, confirming that everywhere up to a point there had been a revolution in the language of the screen."
― André Bazin (What is Cinema? Volume 1, 1967)

"Like von Stroheim and von Sternberg, although otherwise hardly in similar mould, Wisconsin-born Welles was one of Hollywood's enfants terribles, beginning with brilliance but soon falling out with the studio, having his work hacked down and setting off on wanderings round the world, forever in search of another masterpiece and the money to make one."
― David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"It is almost tragically ironic that George Orson Welles, without doubt one of the greatest filmmakers ever, was forced to work for most of his career under the most adverse of conditions. Such were his genius and ambition that his films, years ahead of their time, still astonish by their inventiveness, stylistic virtuosity and freshness; while the widely held view that he never fulfilled his early promise fails to take account of the thematic and moral consistency of his work, not to say its restless experimentalism."
― Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)

"Welles’s outsider status in connection with the American film industry is an interesting part of cinema history in itself, but his importance as a director is due to the innovations he introduced through his films and the influence they have had on filmmaking and film theory. Considering the turbulent relationship Welles experienced with Hollywood and the circumstances under which his films were made in Europe, it is surprising there is any thematic and stylistic consistency in his work at all."
― Susan Doll (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"One of the most important filmmakers to emerge since the advent of the talkie. Welles was one of the first in Hollywood to realize the potential of elliptical narratives and deep focus in the construction of camera angles. His oeuvre consists of complex tales with themes of truth and illusion (Citizen Kane, 41; The Magnificent Ambersons, 42; Touch of Evil, 58; Chimes at Midnight, 66). Welles is also one of the few commercial filmmakers to experiment with the soundtrack of a film."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

“I started at the top,” Orson Welles said, “and worked down.” For his first film, he was swept into Hollywood on a wave of success that had been rising since his childhood. Studio doors and coffers stood open to him. But for his last film, unfinished when he died, he had to beg, borrow, and sell himself.”
―Dian G. Smith (Great American Film Directors, 1987)

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Orson Welles's 10 Favourite Movies

1. The Baker's Wife (1938) by Marcel Pagnol

2. Battleship Potemkin (1925) by Sergei Eisenstein

3. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) by William Wyler

4. Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica

5. City Lights (1931) by Charles Chaplin

6. La Grande illusion (1937) by Jean Renoir

7. Greed (1924) by Erich von Stroheim

8. Intolerance (1916) by D.W. Griffith

9. Shoeshine (1946) by Vittorio De Sica

10. Stagecoach (1939) by John Ford

*Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952)

STANLEY KUBRICK: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Stanley Kubrick's 10 Essential Movies

1. The Killing (1956)

2. Paths of Glory (1957)

3. Spartacus (1960)

4. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

6. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

7. Barry Lyndon (1975)

8. The Shining (1980)

9. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

10. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

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"Looking back on this remarkable filmography, it is clear that it has the distinctly architectonic quality of any great philosophical system: it says something about everything. All the facets of human nature are revealed in their wide-ranging diversity: high and low culture, love and sex, history, war, crime, madness, space travel, social conditioning, and technology. Yet, as internally diverse as Kubrick’s filmography is, taken as a whole, it is also quite coherent. It takes all the differentiated sides of reality and unifies them into one rich, complex philosophical vision that happens to be very close to existentialism."
― Jerold J. Abrams (The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick, 2009)

"Few American directors have been able to work within the studio system of the American film industry with the independence which Stanley Kubrick has achieved. By steadily building a reputation as a filmmaker of international importance, he has gained full artistic control over his films, guiding the production of each of them from the earliest stages of planning and scripting through post-production."
― Gene D. Phillips (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

"After 1961, Kubrick was based in England, with some of the precious decorousness of the writer in A Clockwork Orange who is broken in on by Alex and the Droogs. Five films were passed out to the world from that retreat, which took an increasingly sententious and nihilistic view of our social and moral ethics, but which are devoid of artistic personality as the worlds that Kubrick elegantly extrapolates."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Immensely talented American filmmaker with a sure visual sense. Perhaps, though, led astray by the (deserved) success of Spartacus, Kubrick's later films are the best possible proof that bigger does not necessarily mean better. Since the mid-1960s, Kubrick has become a maker of films for effect and has lost much of the narrative drive that once distinguished his work."
― David Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1983)

"With an astonishing knowledge of cinema history, and a fastidious nature that involved him in frenzied and lengthy preparations for all his films, it is something of a miracle that he left us a filmography quite so rich and varied in its content."
― Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

"Clearly, the memorably vivid images he created are those of a superb craftsman; sadly, they tend to shout rather than speak, so that overall the exact meaning of his films often lacks subtlety and clarity."
― Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"As a social satirist (Dr. Strangelove, 64; A Clockwork Orange, 71), Kubrick is a master. As a maker of mood pieces which outline man's place in society and civilization (2001, 68; Barry Lyndon, 76), he is interested more in the workings of various mechanical and social machines than in man. Kubrick is one of America's finest post-World War II filmmakers."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

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Stanley Kubrick's 10 Favourite Movies

1. I Vitelloni (1953) by Federico Fellini

2. Wild Strawberries (1957) by Ingmar Bergman

3. Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles

4. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) by John Huston

5. City Lights (1931) by Charlie Chaplin

6. Henry V (1944) by Laurence Olivier

7. La notte (1961) by Michelangelo Antonioni

8. The Bank Dick (1940) by Edward F. Cline

9. Roxie Hart (1942) by William A. Wellman

10. Hell’s Angels (1930) by Howard Hughes

*Source: Cinema (1963)

FRITZ LANG: 10 ESSENTIAL MOVIES

Fritz Lang's 10 Essential Movies

1. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

2. Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924)

3. Metropolis (1927)

4. M (1931)

5. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

6. Fury (1936)

7. You Only Live Once (1937)

8. The Woman in the Window (1944)

9. Scarlet Street (1945)

10. The Big Heat (1953)

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"While many associate him, because of Metropolis, with German expressionism, Lang’s visual style became more pared down in his American films, but he remained a strong believer in the power of visual material (especially mise-en-scène). Among his recurrent themes were notions of people being entrapped and of the unforeseen consequences of chance encounters. These can be detected in such films as The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). He also explored the subtleties and ramifications of revenge in his fine police thriller The Big Heat (1953), among other movies."
― Brian McDonnell (Encyclopedia of Film Noir, 2007)

"Fritz Lang's cinema is the cinema of the nightmare, the fable, and the philosophical dissertation. Lang's apparent weaknesses are the consequences of his virtues... His characters never develop with any psychological precision, and his world lacks the details of verisimilitude that are so important to realistic critics. However, Lang's vision of the world is profoundly expressed by his visual forms."
― Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"Few directors can have created so many images of entrapment as did Lang during his long, distinguished career. Repeatedly, his protagonists are imprisoned not only by an uncaring society or by their own flawed nature, but by Destiny itself: Lang's stories, which regularly return to the theme of crime and punishment, have the rigorous logic of a philosophical theorem."
― Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"Lang's continuing obsession with the psychology of human weakness made him the ideal thriller and film noir director, with masterpieces such as The Big Heat (1953), Clash by Night (1953), and While the City Sleeps (1956) to his credit."
― Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

"Looking upon the world with grim detachment and a strong moral sense, Fritz Lang worked through two careers: in Germany (1919 to 1932) and Hollywood (1936 to 1956)."
― Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"Fascinated by violence, cruelty and the criminal mind, he produced memorable silent epics; after fleeing Nazi germany, he settled in California to direct westerns, thrillers and social dramas with equal distinction."
― Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"A world of paranoia, fear and evil fills the work of Fritz Lang. His early German films (Dr. Mabuse, 22; Metropolis, 26; M, 31) are subtle, yet striking illustrations of those preoccupations, while later American works (Man Hunt, 41; The Big Heat, 53) are more explosive."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

“Fritz Lang brought to the screen a vision of a world largely populated by criminals, psychopaths, prostitutes, and maladjusted personalities, ruled by the inevitability of fate. It was the fascinating visual means with which he chose to express that made him one of the creative giants in the history of both the German and American cinema.”
― The Virgin International Encyclopedia of Film, 1992