Artistic director, Melbourne International Film Festival
Australia
Voted in the critics’ poll
Voted for
1928 |
Marcel L'Herbier |
|
1974 |
Jacques Rivette |
|
1989 |
Abbas Kiarostami |
|
1986 |
Eric Rohmer |
|
Histoire(s) du cinéma |
Jean-Luc Godard |
|
1950 |
Nicholas Ray |
|
1999 |
Edward Yang |
|
1982 |
Chris Marker |
|
1927 |
F. W. Murnau |
|
1953 |
Ozu Yasujirô |
Comments
I am unable to avoid the usual disclaimers about what couldn’t make the list. Entire bodies of work (Fassbinder, Denis, Garrel, Weeresthakul, Lang) rate among the greatest cinema in my view, yet not one individual film features. I’m also finding myself increasingly drawn to comedy yet I struggle to select a single film of that genre. But there is something monumental in each of the films I list. The more I travel into my glorious love affair with the cinema, the more I realise what constitutes a masterpiece: an entire world, an entire sense of being, with all the weight it entails, all its mystery, represented in one film.