Nigel Algar

Senior curator, fiction film, BFI National Archive

Voted in the critics’ poll

Voted for

Blue Velvet	1986	David Lynch
Citizen Kane	1941	Orson Welles
Johnny Guitar	1954	Nicholas Ray
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The	1943	Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Night of the Hunter, The	1955	Charles Laughton
Once Upon a Time in the West	1968	Sergio Leone
Port of Shadows	1938	Marcel Carné
Sunset Blvd.	1950	Billy Wilder
Third Man, The	1949	Carol Reed
Tol'able David	1921	Henry King

Comments

The ‘greatest’? That’s a stretch, but these are all films that have enjoyed an extended life both in the film culture at large and in my own mind, from the first time I saw them until today. What runs through all these films is the sheer pleasure of exploring the expressive possibilities of the medium. The predominant mood seems to be sadness and the spirit of noir hovers over many of them without definitively settling on a single title. Last week I might have chosen other films, tomorrow I could choose a different set, but I suspect that they would all share these characteristics.