Is The Godfather the greatest American film ever made?

They Shoot Pictures always has great lists. Mostly the further you go into them, as you end up finding films you might not expect or haven't even heard of. That's what I'm always looking for in these things, surprises. Inclusions that catch me off guard and make me want to seek them out. Or give them another chance.


The top 10 of that list is pretty basic though. But isn't that sort of what we want when looking for the supposed best ever? There is a reason some movies always appear in these things, because they truly do feel a cut above most and these 10 movies make sense in the context of the conversation, even if Rules of the Game has always baffled me slightly. Thats a movie I like a lot, but if I didn't constantly keep seeing it pop up on top 10s, it wouldn't even occur to me it might be considered as such a top tier contribution to cinema. I find Grand Illusion to be a much better Renoir, but it seems to have fallen slightly out of favor over the years.

Yeah, I remember some years ago when I brought up their noir/neo noir list.
Lists like tht interest not for their numerical listing but rather why is included for the reasons you’ve given.
I remember searching out lists for top 100 Brazilian films ever made, top 100 Mexican film, top 100 European horror films ever made, top 100 Giallo, top 100 spaghetti westerns, top 100 poliziottesco films, top 100 Japanese yakuza films and more recently a list of Italian cannibal films (for um….research ), and the lesser known euro war/macoroni combat films.
I try to be extensive.

I"m surprised that Death In Venice is not on the list.
It's a film about passion for beauty, and by extension art.
It climaxes with the death scene when Tadzio points at the sky (or maybe the sun) which creates an image of such divine beauty that it cannot be watched by the living.
I think there's a similarity with the Thornbird myth which is about the greatest beauty (the bird's song) which can only be achieved by the ultimate sacrifice.
Apart from that the whole film is like a gorgeous painting, and Dirk Bogarde is almost unrecognisable despite his appearance not being overly enhanced.
The evil that appears in the shape of the plague, threatening to destroy Tadzio's beauty, emphasized by the gypsy's intrusive mockery.

I watched this film on TV when I was a child and of course this is not the kind of film that children love, but I couldn't forget it and when I watched it again as an adult I understood why it had made such a huge impression.

But no, Vertigo had to be on that list.

I've hardly even touched TSPDT. I've mostly used Sight & Sound to determine which films to watch, but I'm curious how TSPDT differentiates.

S&S sends out ballots every decade to a select set of critics to send in their list of top 10 best/favorite movies, and then just lists the movies that get the most votes. So, every movie that gets any type of vote is amongst somebody's favorite movies and it's more of a question of which movie is amongst the most people's top 10 favorite movies.

I don't follow TSPDT, like other people I know, but it's an aggregate of other best of lists. I'm not clear what the weightings are, but my understanding is the S&S polls are heavily weighted (and it includes both current and past ones). But by also pulling in a lot of other "best of lists," it gets a wider range of movies, more data points, so it makes more sense to go further down the results, and you'll get more random stuff showing up higher. At least that's what I understand from what other people who look more at the list sometimes tell me.