griggs's - Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time 2022 List

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Delphine's travelling companion cancels two weeks before her holiday, so Delphine (Marie Rivière), a Parisian secretary, is at a loose end. She doesn't want to travel by herself, but has no means boyfriend and seems unable to meet new people.

A friend takes her to Cerbourg; after a few days there, the weepy and self pitying Delphine goes back to Paris. She tries the Alps, but returns the same day. Next, it's the beach; once there, she chats with an outgoing Swede, a party girl, and a friendship seems to bud; then suddenly, Delphine bolts, heading back to Paris. On her way, a young man catches her eye; perhaps a sunset and the sun's green ray await.

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Cult director Wong Kar Wai's first film shot outside of Hong Kong is a spellbinding tribute to blind passion that features two of Asian cinema's biggest stars.

Lai (Tony Leung) and Ho (Leslie Cheung) arrive in Argentina as lovers, but while driving south in search of adventures, something goes wrong and Ho leaves for Buenos Aries. Devastated, Lai finds work in a tango bar but is consumed by thoughts of being happy together once more with Ho. A heady cocktail of sound and vision, Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle marry the rythms of Buenos Aries and Frank Zappa's jazz to an astonishing array of images.

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The Jedi Knights have been exterminated and the Empire rules the galaxy with an iron fist. A small group of Rebels have dared to fight back by stealing the secret plans to the Empire's mightiest weapon, the Death Star battle station.

The Emperor's most trusted servant, Darth Vader (David Prowse), must find the plans, and locate the hidden Rebel base. Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), a captive Rebel leader, sends out a distress signal that is intercepted by a simple farm boy, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Seizing his destiny, Luke takes up the challenge to rescue the princess and help the Rebellion overthrow the Empire, along with such unforgettable allies as the wise Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), the cocky Han Solo (Harrison Ford), the loyal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and the droids R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels).

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A courageous personal testimony about his experiences with AIDS, 'Blue' is Derek Jarman's most radical and daring film and was hailed as a masterpiece when it premiered at the Venice Biennale.

A blue screen provides the canvas for the visions of the audience, conjured up from the evocative words and music of the remarkably rich soundtrack by Simon Fisher-Turner.

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Marking a new chapter in the history of one of the world's greatest films, the release of Abel Gance's "Napoleon" is the culmination of a project spanning 50 years.

Digitally restored by the BFI National Archive and Academy Award-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, this cinematic triumph is available to experience on video for the very first time. Originally conceived by Gance as the first of six films about Napoleon, this five-and-a-half-hour epic features full-scale historical recreations of episodes from his personal and political life, that see Bonaparte overcome fierce rivals and political machinations to seal his imperial destiny. Utilising a number of groundbreaking cinematic techniques, 'Napoleon' is accompanied by Carl Davis' monumental score, and offers one of the most thrilling experiences in the entire the history of film.

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After shaking the world with his hugely controversial epic 'The Birth of a Nation', pioneer filmmaker D. W.

Griffith spared no expense in putting together his next project: a powerful examination of intolerance as it has persisted throughout civilisation, set across four parallel storylines that span 2500 years. There is the Babylonian story, depicting nothing less than the fall of Babylon; the Judean story, which revolves around the crucifixion of Christ; the French story, which presents the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in all its horror; and a modern American story of class struggle, crime, and the plight of life in the early 20th century set within urban slums and the prison system. Starring such luminaries as Lillian Gish, Constance Talmadge, and Miriam Cooper, who share screentime with an enormous main cast and some 3,000 extras, Griffith's film - the most expensive motion picture ever produced at the time - went on to become a critical success whose influence has only grown in the decades since.

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An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai "flower houses", where

courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a languorous procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen - even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.

The film diaries of Jonas Mekas, 1970-1999, shot on jittery, mellow 16mm color-reversal stock. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. A celebration of life, nature, friendships, feelings.

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Playing a character far older than herself, Bergman portrays a society woman whose life is in ruins after her son's suicide. Attempting to give her life some purpose, she takes the advice of a leftist friend, and begins working with the ill and destitute of Rome.

Her insensitive husband Alexander Knox finds Bergman's charitable activities distasteful; when the opportunity presents itself, he has her committed to a mental institution.

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Set in Japan during World War II, the film focuses on Seita and his little sister Setsuko. After their mother is killed in an air raid, and with their father serving in the navy, they are forced to fight for survival in the devastated Japanese countryside.

Food and shelter are scarce, and even their own relatives are too concerned with their own survival. All they have is each other and their belief that life must carry on.

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Advertising executive James Ballard (James Spader) and his wife Catherine (Deborah Unger) lead complex, if hollow sexual lives. However, after being involved in a near fatal car crash with Dr.

Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), Ballard finds himself being drawn into a provocative exploration of the connections between danger, sex and death - and, as his involvement deepens, Ballard and Catherine discover new and increasingly disturbing ways of expressing love...

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Divided into three segments, namely 1 Neocolonialism, 2 Act for liberation, 3 Violence and liberation, the documentary lasts more than 4 hours this deals with the defense of the revolution and the revolution of the third world such as the revolt of the students in the United States and Western

Europe, Czech citizens protest against the Soviet Union's State bureaucracy and also the revolution that (probably) is unprecedented in Argentina.

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In rural Sweden around the turn of the century, three sisters reside in a vast manor house with their housekeeper. Agnes (Harriet Andersson) lives out the last days of her life in pain, hoping for companionship and affection.

Surrounded by her sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), Agnes takes comfort in the fact that her remaining time can be spent with those close to her. However, dissatisfaction in their day-to-day-lives, and the estrangement that they feel from one another, causes the sisters to become increasingly self-absorbed.

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Young John Sims (James Murray) weathers the death of his father and travels to New York City in search of success. Instead, he becomes a low-level worker in an enormous office of a nameless corporation.

After he meets a beautiful young woman (Eleanor Boardman), things seem to be looking up, but before long the newlyweds are sullen and bickering, and the arrival of their children leaves John feeling trapped in a dead-end existence. Then tragedy strikes, causing him to reassess his life.

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Chantal Akerman's first narrative feature is a startlingly vulnerable exploration of alienation and the search for connection.

In a performance at once daringly exposed and enigmatic, Akerman plays a young woman who, following a lengthy, self-imposed exile, ventures out into the world, where she has two very different experiences of intimacy: first with a truck driver (Niels Arestrup) who picks her up, and then with a female ex-lover (Claire Wauthion). Culminating in an audacious, real-time carnal encounter that brought lesbian sexuality to the screen with a new frankness, Je tu il elle finds Akerman wielding her radical minimalism with a newfound emotional and psychological precision.