A still from Carl Theodor Deryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, the #1 film of TIFF's Essential Cinema list. (Janus Films)

By Chris Berube and Jonathan Doyle, citizen contributors





When TIFF conceived of the Bell Lightbox, it was not just to be a central base camp during the festival itself, but also a focal point for film in Toronto all year long. After the festival's conclusion Sunday, the Lightbox will open its first official program, the ambitious 100 Essential Films, which promises to screen the most necessary-to-see movies ever made.

Coming up with a list of such movies was no mean feat the final list was combined from two polls, one of film "experts" (programmers at TIFF and other festivals, film critics, etc.), and another composed by patrons of the festival. As a result, the final program of movies is an interesting amalgam of unassailable classics (8 1/2, Citizen Kane), popular audience choices (Amelie, Slumdog Millionaire), and critically-appreciated movies that aren't especially well-known to contemporary audiences (Panther Panchali, The 120 Days of Sodom). So what, exactly, does the program accomplish? We weighed in with our thoughts.

Is this list a good idea?

CB: Year-end and all-time lists of movies and music are so generally useless on one level, but so intriguing to me on another. I think the most important function of a list like this is the debate it will start. The introduction to the list written by Noah Cowan even admits that this list is primarily designed to get people out to see movies, and to be introduced to new films, whether through their screenings or from the debates that will emerge among cinephiles.

JD: I've reached the conclusion that, while I agree with the motivation behind the list, I think it might have been more interesting to make a directors list.  This would have allowed them to include a broader variety of filmmaking because they wouldn't have had to devote multiple spots to people like Scorsese, Spielberg and Hitchcock.  Also, this would have been a great opportunity to screen some lesser-known films by highly regarded auteurs, rather than their most popular works. Instead, they opted for more of an Intro to Film flavour, which should help attract the kind of viewers who wouldn't have bothered with the Cinematheque in the past.

CB: Like me!

What's missing from the list?

CB: That's the beauty of this kind of list you can argue for hours and hours about what should be included or omitted. I think the list has been most widely criticized for not including more films by women only Agnes Varda's Cleo de 5 a 7 fits the bill. In this regard, I think Jane Campion's The Piano, or Deepa Mehta's Water could easily be added to help rectify that. Otherwise, with any list like this, single films will often be included to stand in for entire careers or genres for example, Some Like it Hot and Annie Hall are here as representative of comedy as a genre, and the careers of Billy Wilder and Woody Allen, two of America's most accomplished directors. That's kind of a shame, though, as most film historians would probably argue that any "essential cinema" list should include the Wilder films Sunset Boulevard and/or The Apartment. On a personal level, I'm put off that they didn't choose Duck Soup or Dr. Strangelove in terms of comedy.

Should Kubrick's Cold War farce, Dr. Strangelove, be considered among the essential films ever made? (Sony Pictures)

JD: I think there's some confusion in the way the list was put together. Are they picking the best films by these directors or the most crowd-pleasing?  The answer seems to be both for the genre representation reasons you mention.  I can live with Some Like It Hot as the Billy Wilder selection, but I think even the people who put the list together would probably agree that it's not Wilder's best film. Most representative maybe, but not best. As for female directors, I know The Criterion Collection which I bet TIFF thought about when compiling this list has had a similar problem finding female directors to include. If TIFF embraced modern art cinema the way I wished they had, Claire Denis might have been a worthy addition. Or if they wanted to get really adventurous, Chantal Akerman. And yeah, Campion always works. But it's a difficult problem and not really one we can blame TIFF for.

TIFF'S TOP FIVE ESSENTIAL MOVIES

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
2. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
3. L'Avventura (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
4. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
5. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)

1. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
3. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
4. The Earrings of Madame de...(Max Olphus, 1953)
5. (tie) Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1967) + Pickpocket

1. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
2. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
3. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
4. Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978)
5. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)