Films, like all things, come an go. The only way to rate them is how they stand the test of time.
Each decade, starting in 1952, the magazine, Sight and Sound, published by the British Film Institute, declares its top ten films of all time based on extensive polling of international movie critics.
The Bicycle Thief was number one in the first survey. This is Italian director Vittorio DeSica’s 1948 beauty (aka The Bicycle Thieves) set in war ravaged Italy about a poverty-stricken poster hanger (and his young son), whose bike he desperately needs to eke out a living, is stolen. No question, a true classic.
Citizen Kane hadn’t made the Sight and Sound list. Then for every subsequent poll from 1962 to 2002 Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece was ranked number one.
Then, in 2012 Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 beauty, Vertigo, knocked it from first place.
It’s anyone’s guess which films will be listed in 2022.
But since the beginning only one film has been on every list, 1939’s Rules of the Game. Does that make it the best foreign language film ever? It certainly merits another look at this masterpiece.
Jean Renoir directed and played a part in the film about a bunch of French aristocrats heedlessly partying on the eve of World War II. Critics have extolled the picture for decades. Here’s one, British author/critic David Thomson:
‘La Regle’ is still the most dynamic juxtaposition of moods and feelings that cinema has yet achieved….The extraordinary interweaving of laughter and tears is not so much warming as the sort of warning to tread warily in life.
As we said, time to take another look.
And so we come to that film genre FOREIGN or International films, or for most people it’s commonly known as the ARTSY-FARTSY movies…
Now don’t get me wrong and even though I’m not much of a fan, they really are some of the BEST films ever made… More realistic, more stylish, better written, acted and directed…
But somehow, just reading through all those English sub-titles each time, or the bad dubbing was just too much for the general public to accept…
Though the masses loved those same foreign films adapted and re-made by HOLLYWOOD.
As for critics, well they get paid to watch movies don’t they…
With all these lists of the TEN best, the top 100, the best this and that -it’s all subjective and “trending now” when you come down to it… The only thing that matters is what’s on YOUR best list!
You don’t have to be ‘in’ with the in-crowd to like or dislike anything.
But in this case Joe & Frank should be applauded for trying to spark some resemblance of interest from their ‘readers’ with a genre that is well worthy of COMMENT!
My vote goes for the terrifying German film “M”, Peter Lorre was superb!