If I Had A Sight & Sound Top Ten Film Ballot ...

... it would mean two things: (1) that the apocalypse is upon us in which case I've got more pressing things to do than make top ten lists, and (2) the Sight & Sound top ten movies list is even more random and meaningless that I had presupposed.

If you don't know what the Sight & Sound top ten list is, odds are you have a life, but if you're reading this blog post, obviously it's not much of one. Once a decade for the last seventy years or so, Sight & Sound magazine has polled directors and critics to put together a list of the ten best movies of all time. Citizen Kane topped that list for fifty years running. This year Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo edged it out for the top spot.

Now here's the thing about the top ten list: it's a knowing compromise and probably doesn't reflect the personal top ten lists of anybody voting in it. As Roger Ebert points out, if you want to see your favorite director on the list, you have to vote for the one movie that has emerged among the voters as that director's best. Thus, even though Ebert prefers La Dolce Vita among Fellini's films, he votes for 8½ because that's Fellini's go-to movie among critics. See what I mean?

So if I were actually voting, I'd probably come up with something totally different. But I'm not voting. I'm making a top ten list for the sort of people who read my blog—Who Am Us, Mister Muleboy, Katie-Bar-The-Door, my brothers. Also, I have to knock it out before lunch because this afternoon I'm finishing up a review of Mary Pickford's Daddy-Long-Legs then I'm going to spend the rest of the week working on something other than my blog.

You know, unless I win another Liebster Blog Award.

Okay, so you're all at my house, somebody put a gun to my head and said I have to show you ten movies. Are they the ten best of all time? I don't know. But you'll either leave having had a rousing good time or hating my guts. Or given my anti-social grumpiness, possibly both.

10. It's A Wonderful Life—You know, Buddha once pointed out that man's craving for the ephemeral—wealth, power, fame—is the root cause of his suffering; Jimmy Stewart gives the performance of his very great career as George Bailey, a small-town banker who takes a lifetime and one suicidal evening to learn this bitter lesson. Often dismissed as well-made Capra Corn, It's A Wonderful Life is actually a dark meditation on the emptiness of the American Dream. It's also warm, funny and wistfully sad, much like the holiday season with which it's most associated.


9. Gone With The Wind—For reasons not entirely related to the quality of the movie itself, I've seen this one eight times in a theater. Eight. A personal record. But it is one of the greatest romances ever made and is a cultural touchstone, in America at least. Is its depiction of racial politics in the South accurate? Lord, no. But as I wrote once before, "[Gone With The Wind] never purports to explain the war or its aftermath except in terms of their colossal inconvenience to Scarlett O'Hara. If she could have bedded Ashley Wilkes by freeing all the slaves she would have done it, and if she could have bedded him without freeing any slave she would have done that. Everything else is irrelevant."


8. Duck Soup—You might prefer A Night at the Opera (Katie-Bar-The-Door does), but personally, I think the Marx Brothers were never better than they were in Duck Soup. Simultaneously more streamlined, more disciplined and yet more anarchic than any other film they made, this is my (admittedly, highly personal) pick as the funniest sound picture ever made.


7. North by Northwest—Let's kill two birds with one stone: Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant. North by Northwest is one of Hitchcock's best suspense thrillers with some of the most exciting set pieces of his career. It's also the story of a shallow ad man (Grant at his best) who learns the hard way the consequences of the expedient lie, and in the process discovers he actually gives a damn. If you don't like Hitchcock and/or Cary Grant, you probably won't enjoy watching movies at my house. Go home. No hard feelings. Come back tomorrow.


6. Rio Bravo—I do believe Sight & Sound picked The Searchers as the best western of all time and they're probably right. But Quentin Tarantino and I prefer Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks' classic western starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and a girl with a flowerpot. Ostensibly the taut story of a small band of lawmen besieged by the rich and violently powerful, Rio Bravo is really a buddy comedy about a sheriff, a cripple and a drunk, and Katie-Bar-The-Door and I have seen it so many times, we could probably perform the whole thing as your after-dinner entertainment. Note: Katie looks much better in tights than I do.


5. Seven Samurai—One could argue that from Akira Kurosawa all action movies flow. His movies are so good even the remakes of his movies are good. You like the classic western The Magnificent Seven starring Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen? That's a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Prefer Clint Eastwood in A Fistful Of Dollars? That's Yojimbo. And if you've ever plopped yourself down in front of a little ditty we like to call Star Wars—well, that's The Hidden Fortress. With Rashomon, Ikiru and Ran also to choose from, I think Seven Samurai is his best.


4. Singin' in the Rain—From beginning to end, the best musical of all time. I admit, as I get older, I prefer Astaire and Rogers as a dance team—when I watch them together, I reconsider the possibility that there might be a heaven after all—but Singin' in the Rain is a flawless blend of singing, dancing, comedy and romance, not to mention a pretty insightful look at the earliest age of movie history. As the song says, "What a glorious feeling!"


3. The General—My favorite Buster Keaton, my favorite silent movie, the one I'd show you, along with Chaplin in The Gold Rush, to convince you that you too can safely watch a silent movie. Heck, you've probably seen The Artist by now anyway. Treat yourself and see a truly great silent movie.


2. Citizen Kane—I won an award last year (with actual prizes) explaining why Citizen Kane is worthy of its status as the best movie of all time (read all about it here). Kane has slipped to two on Sight & Sound's all-time list. It slips on mine, too. But it's still great!


1. Casablanca—I don't know what you're hoping to see when you go to the movies, but when I go, I'm hoping to see Casablanca, or something like it: funny, romantic, adventurous, dramatic, quotable and so memorable you walk out of the theater saying, "Wow!" I said the other day I wanted to be Robert Mitchum in The Big Steal. Well, forget that. I want to be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. And so does everybody else.


Anyway, it's a very mainstream list that skews rather old, now that I look at it. But let's face it, I'm a very mainstream guy who also skews rather old, especially if you look at me. What do you want for nothing—rubber biscuit?

Tomorrow: Take two on this same list.

P.S. Want to share your own top ten list? Leave it here as a comment or leave a link to your own blog post. We at the Monkey are interested in you!