The Big 25
 

If you knew somebody that has never seen a movie, and you only had a choice of 25 films to teach them as much as possible about film history, technique, evolution etc, to have a wide a range of film knowledge to be a filmmaker... what 25 films would you pick?

Some of my choices

"Sunrise" by Murnau (Representing the silent films)
"Sunset Blvd" by Wilder (Representing old Hollywood)
"Citizen Kane" by Welles (Representing the possibilities of the camera)
"Red River" by Hawks (Representing the Western)
"The Bicycle Thief" by De Sica (Representing Neo Realism)
"Breathless" by Godard (Representing the French New Wave)
"Rashomon" by Kurosawa (Representing unreliable narrative)
"2001" by Kubrick (Representing Science Fiction/technology)
"Raging Bull" by Scorsese (Representing a mixture of the best of all categories, except sound).
"Down By Law" by Jarmusch (Representing the minimalism of camera movement... yeah, yeah, I know about Ozu)
"Pulp Fiction" by Tarantino (Representing dialogue, and script order)
"Gerry" Van Sant (Representing, well... lack of plot needed to make a nice thoughtful film).

Other options being "Buffalo 66" "Trainspotting" or "Run Lola Run".

What's your take on this?

I feel rather stupid replying to myself, but I think the list would also need a film from the awkward mind of David Lynch... not sure which one is the most unique; I'll pick "Mulholland Drive". Though not his best work, it's him at his most twisted... well aside from the too absurd "Lost Highway".

The list would also need the eccentricities of Wong Kar Wai (My favourite being "Chungking Express"), the brutal sadness, and rugged camera work of a Cassavettes film (between "Faces" and "A Woman Under The Influence"... I'm going with the latter.)

Hell, why not even throw in "Gummo" by Harmony Korine... just because it's so different. And "Irreversible" by Gasper Noe... because it perfected the backwards narrative that Memento missed the mark on... and because it's just so damn violent.

"Natural Born Killers" to represent the MTV generation (though the film is only a Satire of that generation, and not a student of it).

"Seven" for the pessimistic ending, and "Sixth Sense" for the possibilities in audience trickery.

Ah... stop me!!!

I like this topic, but I'm going to have think about the 25.

The ones I agree with are;

The Bicycle Thief

Citizen Kane

Raging Bull

I guess I got 22 more to think of.

Nice list, Bickle.
Give me a day and I'll write my own.

I guess something by Antonioni would be in place. Blow Up perhaps. The Seventh Seal or Wild Strawberries by Bergman. Defintately Psycho by Hitchcock and The Seven Samurai by Kurosawa. Festen/The Celebration by Vinterberg (the first Dogme '95 film). Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein. Jaws by Spielberg and The Godfather by Coppola.

Hmm.. Maybe I should just make a list of my own.

The Birth of a Nation, and some of the Lumiere Bros. shorts seem like obvious but overlooked choices.