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Many experts on cinematography credit Eisenstein's movie "Alexander Nevsky" as the best movie ever made. I've never seen it on "the big screen" only on video tape on a television set. The movie has to do with the repulsion of the Order of the Teutonic Knights from Russia culminating in one of the most titanic battle scenes ever filmed. The battle was fought on frozen Lake Chud in 1242 near Pskov. The original movie was filmed in the 1930s in black and whilte in Russian and is available with English subtitles. It was released in 1938 some say as a warning to the Germans not to invade Russia. The musical score written by Prokofiev is easily the best music ever written for a film and was rewrittten as a stand alone Symphonic Cantata. I like the Deutche Gramaphone recording of it. When sung in English on another version I have it loses a lot IMO. I have not seen the re-release with much improved sound. The original's sound is poor quality unfortunately.

By greatest do we mean most influential? Thought provoking? Artistically constructed? Or Favourite?

Lemme see.

Favourites: "The Mission"; "The Wrong Man"; "Hannah and her Sisters"; "Jaws"; "Night of the Hunter"; "The Big Sleep"(1946); "Brick"

Construction: "The Mission";"The Birds"; "Days of Heaven";

Thought Provoking:"The Mission"; "Se7en"; "Crimes and Misdemeanours"; "BladeRunner";"12 Monkeys"; "S1mone"; "The Truman Show"

Influential: Not a clue; but Robert McKee *hates* "Citizen Kane".

Ghostbusters?

Helio,

Don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing as ghosts.

"Shenandoah" is the best western or war or family film. Best horror - really like Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Sutherland version. Best love story - Waterloo Bridge or Random Harvest. Best film to happen upon of an afternoon when you should be studying - Goodbye Mr Chips. Best obviously Catholic film - The Cardinal or the first hour of The Shoes of the Fisherman.

If you are interested in religion and film check out

www.mccamley.org

I think Citizen Kane gets the nod because it's good AND it's old. But films are much better now than they were in the earlier years of filmmaking. If we were to be fair about it, we'd want to look at Shawshank Redemption, Star Wars, The Godfather... films which, 50 years from now, will be both good AND old and regarded in the same way some view Citizen Kane today.

JW #6

I disagree. Most films made in recent decades IMO are awful. The art of filmmaking is essentially dead. Stories are trite, screenwriting stinks, acting stinks, plots poorly developed, special effects substituted for substance. Little character development. If Hollywood depended on me to survive, MacDonalds would be a big night out for them. Star Wars was nothing more than a cowboys and indians movie. When I'm forced by circumstances to view these films, I always root for the bad guys. How angry my friends were when being forced to watch Jurassic Park, I rooted for the dinosaurs to eat the children. Once I sat through Field of Dreams because I couldn't imagine how an ending could be written for such a weak story. Most movies I've seen in the last 20 years or so, I've seen on cruise ships on rainy afternoons or evenings when there's nothing better to do. Even for free, often I'll walk out after a few minutes. I can almost always guess the entire plot within the first five minutes anyway they are so transparent. I don't even watch them on planes anymore when they give you the headphones for free. One of the few movies I enjoyed in the last 30 years was The Red Violin. Remined me of the novel Coronet. BTW, a movie I did enjoy made many years ago was Kind Hearts and Coronets when Alec Guinness was very young.

Citizen Kane is one of those few good old movies whose plot is brilliantly crafted. Sadly, movies of today are so boring you can predict how the story would end even before getting to that part. -Bowe

Citizen Kane was a great movie. It chronicled in a somewhat fictional way the life of William Randolph Hearst who may have almost single handedly started the Spanish American War. He tried to have it quashed but failed. BTW, ´óÏó´«Ã½ credited that war in its 6 part series "America Age of Empire" as the beginning of America's rise to becoming the dominant world power. (Personally I think that's bunk, it started on July 4, 1776 but that's another story.) There were tons of great movies. A few years ago I'd seen one I'd only seen once before 35 years earlier but hadn't forgotten it because I liked it so much, David Selznick's controversial movie "Portrait of Jenny" starring Jenifer Jones. How may times have I enjoyed the Maltese Falcon, all those Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies (he was the only real Sherlock Holmes as far as I am concerned.) Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula and Boris Karloff's portrayal of Frankenstein beat all the horror movies of recent decades. (The German silent Nosferatu was a great movie too.) The Ten Commandments was a spectacular epic....if you've got four hours to sit through it. And what about all those great musicals like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oklahoma, and West Side Story? What about all those great Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies and who could forget Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain and American in Paris. What about the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy? You never see anything like those movies made today. What About all those great Betty Davis and Joan Crawford movies like "What ever happened to Baby Jane." King Kong was another and so was Godzilla. It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed was very memorable. I know more than one person whose favorite is "A Christmas Story" about the childhood of Jean Shepherd growing up in Indiana during the depression as told in his book "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." I also like "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne. There were great adventure stories too like the Disney production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. I could go on all day. Remakes of these movies in later years usually are far inferior to the originals. The golden age of moviemaking mostly under the Hollywood Studio System is dead. Talent is all but dead in most of the arts. Mediocrity is more than acceptable because the target audience is mostly children and adolescents whose tastes generally run to simpleminded fare. As long is there are a few good chase scenes and some special effects they're happy.

Citizen Kane is technically brilliant, but it leaves me cold. I would list:

ON RELIGION

Viridiana: Bunuel's great anti-clerical masterpiece in which religion is portrayed as powerless in the face of poverty and passion

Andrei Roublev: Tarkovsky's visually stunning epic exploration of the relationship between art, suffering and religious faith

The Seventh Seal, Bergman's bleak masterpiece about a medieval knight's search for meaning in a mad world

The life of Brian, the Pythons' daring satire on absolutist belief systems, definitely heretical (Terry Jomnes, the director, though Cleese disagrees)


BROADLY HUMANIST

Schindler's List, Spielberg's shattering epic about the Holocaust: the most powerful film ever made

Cinema Paradiso, Tornatore's heart-warming paean to the lost world of childhood and the golden age of cinema

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dieterle's wonderful evocation of late medieval life, with a cast of great performances headed by Charles Laughton as Quasimodo - one of the greatest performances in cinema history

Once upon a Time in America, Leone's mesmerising onslaught on the hollowness of the American dream

Almost anything by Fellini

I'm Not Scared, an underrated philosophy film which brilliantly evokes through the actions of a 10-year-old boy the five pillars of humanism: existentialism, freethought, reason, compassion and love. The film is also stunningly acted and visually beautiful.

When you say "broadly humanist" you were referring to the Nazis I presume

mccamleyc:

Many Humanists historically were pacifists. Erasmus, a leading Dutch Humanist of the Renaissance, wrote an attack on war called Querela Pacis. Russell and Einstein drew up a manifesto in 1955 condemning nuclear weapons. The Nazis were not pacifists.

Many Humanist such as Erasmus, Mill, Russell, Grayling, Todorov, and Hitchens have written impassioned defences of freedom of expression. The Nazis burned books.

Many Humanists were/are ex-Jews, including Spielberg, director of Schindler's List, and some members of the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland. The Nazis did not like Jews.

So, no, I was not referring to the Nazis.

I don't do 'greatest' but here are a few favourites in no particular order: "2001, A Space Oddessy", "King and Country", "If....", "Kes", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Quadrophenia". Showing my age I'm afraid - there are undoubtedly a few more I don't remember.

The greatest movies of all time....
All quiet on the western front...1930
The Shawshank Redemption
Once upon a time in the west
Godfather
Schindler's list

Citizen Kane is a great movie but not the greatest...

"Shawshank"?
Oh, come on...

Yes why not... "Shawshank Redemption" is indeed a great movie...well it is not a larger than life picture like Citizen Kane but what makes it great is it's simplicity and someone has rightly said "The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity"

Yes. All sorts of themes have been read into it: obviously redemption but also integrity, freedom etc. But at heart it is about an enduring male friendship, and I suspect that this is why it is so popular.