From the top ten,
8 1/2,
Stalker and
Persona were on my list.
All in all, I've not seen five films from the list (
The Return, La Trou, Sundays & Cybele, Shoplifters and
The Hunt)
From the rest of my list...
I chose Bergman's
Hour of the Wolf alongside
The Silence and
Persona, giving him a triple selection that I only also granted to Kurosawa. I think that all of these represent Bergman at the height of his experimentation.
Persona is most successful and gets the praise, but the other two are jaw-dropping in their own right. Although these films get lumped into different groups, but they were shot mostly one after another between 1963-1968 (only the comic misstep
All These Women was also made during that time), and since the theoretical grouping of 'trilogy' is kinda loose, I would say that these three films could also make a trilogy of sorts, with lots of recurring imagery between them. The child in
Silence may be the same child from
Persona and the child from
Wolf.
Pickpocket was my choice for Bresson, and
Weekend was my Godard. Clearly there are several options here, but I am a little disappointed that Godard didn't have a stronger showing.
My Life to Live, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou and
Two or Three Things I know About Her are all worthy candidates of placing on this list.
I don't think I saw any Czech New Wave films place either and many are also worthy -
The Cremator, The Fireman's Ball, Daisies, Closely Watched Trains, Intimate Lighting, The Joke, Lemonade Joe, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, etc. At least
Witchhammer got a point! My selection was a film I only got over the holidays last year, Karel Zeman's
Fabulous Baron Munchausen, a film I've fallen giddy for.
Belladonna of Sadness is another more recent love interest (first watched and acquired in 2017) and it's a singular animated experience, minimalist and stark, expressionistic and bold, a Japanese animation that is not anime. This beat out all of the Miyazaki I was considering.
Haxan is similar in occult themes as
Sadness, a quasi-documentary about witchcraft as being an abscess of religious (sexual) superstition. With its documentary aspects, it may be a little too on-the-nose compared to the more psychologically suggestive German Expressionism (ok, it's Danish, but Denmark is just the Florida of Germany), but still it's one of the frankest demonstrations of the blind gulf between magic and imagination prior to
Rashomon. As an extra, it's also irresistable to watch the version with that old witch, William Burroughs, narrating to free jazz.
I'm glad that Satyajit Ray made the list, but I chose
Music Room instead. I could have calculated to give Panchali a higher boost, but I went with the one I slighter prefer instead.
My other silent choice was
The Last Laugh from Murnau, a film that's proably more influential than anyone can realize. I could have made a 25 list strictly of Euro-silents, and despite the five on my list I did try to keep them to a minimum.
Fallen Angels is the most recent film on my list, and my preferred Wong Kar-Wei. I'm also happy to see
Chungking here, as it was filmed along with
Angels before he decided to break them into two films. They have similar charms, but they work better for me in
Angels. Wong can make visual poetry out of the simplest in-camera effects and happy accidents, like life blown into a plastic bag in some lesser movie. He finds romance in the mundane and missed, and can blur his lens like a soprano saxophone. He makes the kind of movies that Harmony Korine could if Harmony had any soul and grace.
There are a handful that I genuinely regret for not even thinking of them when I filled out my list: Gance's
Napoleon, Cocteau's
Beauty and the Beast, Pasolini's
Gospel According to St. Matthew, Kieslewski's
Double Life of Veronique. If I were wiser, I would have found a way to squeeze, eh, a couple of them on there.