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

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Gillo Pontecorvo's multi-award winning picture 'The Battle of Algiers' has perhaps never been as pertinent as it is now. Set from 1954 to 1962, the movie uses documentary-style black and white photography to recreate real events.

Algerian liberation fighters use terrorist techniques against the French colonial occupiers; the French retaliate with brutal military force. Brilliantly directed set-pieces and remarkable crowd scenes make the film a masterpiece; the ominous familiarity of its subject makes it a must-see" - The Times How to win battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in Cafes. Sounds familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.'' - Pentagon tlyer for their in-house screening of Battle Of Algiers All the armies of the world - including the Pentagon - will never, but never, be able to conquer a country which wants to control its own destiny" - Saadi Yacef

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How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) the answer is: any way he can! His climb to wealth and privilege is the enthralling focus of this sumptuous Stanley Kubrick version of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel.

For this ravishing, slyly satiric winner of four Academy Awards, Kubrick found inspiration in the works of the era's painters. Costumes and sets were crafted in the era's designs and pioneering lenses were developed to shoot interiors and exteriors in natural light. The result? Barry Lyndon endures as a cutting-edge movie that brings a historical period to vivid screen life like no other film before or since.

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With her first and only feature film - a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in - Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of character seldom seen on-screen.

Set amid a soot-choked Pennsylvania landscape, and shot in an intensely intimate verite style, the film takes up with distant and soft-spoken Wanda (Barbara Loden), who has left her husband, lost custody of her children, and now finds herself alone, drifting between dingy bars and motels, where she falls prey to a series of callous men - including a bank robber who ropes her into his next criminal scheme. An until now difficult-to-see masterpiece that has nonetheless exerted an outsize influence on generations of artists and filmmakers, Wanda is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of a woman stranded on society's margins.

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A tale of miraculous resurrection brought about by human love, Ordet is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism without being either sentimental or pious.

Religious intolerance and family tensions lie at the heart of the film, which explores the clash between orthodox religions and true faith. Dreyer achieves its powerful effects in deceptively simple ways, and has produced, in its closing moments, one of the most extraordinary scenes in all cinema.

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13-year-old Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) can't seem to do anything right. His dysfunctional parents yell at him, his spiteful schoolteacher picks on him and luck just never goes his way.

Despite his efforts at patience, one day it all becomes too much and Antoine throws in the towel, choosing to take his chances on the Paris streets. At times joyous and at others bitterly hard, his new life brings a newfound freedom - one that Antoine will follow up to its painful, poignant and beautiful conclusion...

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Ada (Holly Hunter) - mute since birth - her nine year old daughter and her piano arrive to an arranged marriage in the remote bush of nineteenth century New Zealand. Of all her belongings her husband refuses to transport the piano and it is left behind on the beach.

Unable to bear its certain destruction, Ada strikes a bargain with an illiterate tattooed neighbour (Harvey Keitel). She may earn her piano back if she allows him to do certain things while she plays; one black key for every lesson.

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Chantal Akerman, the Belgian filmmaker, lives in New York. Filmed images of the City are accompanied by the texts of Chantal Akerman's loving but manipulative mother back home in Brussels.

The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.

Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a widowed cleaning lady in her sixties, meets Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), a Moroccan immigrant in his thirties. Seeking companionship, the pair marry to the outrage Emmi's family (including Fassbinder himself as her aggressive son-in-law), herfriends and her colleagues.

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C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business...it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hideaway for philandering bosses, the ambitious young employee reaps a series of underserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D.

Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he not only advances his career, but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl... or his job.

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Planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Russian Revolution, this film was developed by the 27 year-old Sergei Eisenstein from less than one page of script from a planned eight-part epic that was intended to

chronicle a large number of revolutionary actions. Starting with the Potemkin's crew's refusal to eat maggot-infested meat, the mutiny develops and their leader Vakulinchuk is shot by a senior officer. The officers are overthrown and when the Potemkin docks at Odessa, crowds appear from all directions to take up the cause of the dead sailor and open rebellion ensues. What became the most celebrated sequence in world cinema history follows as the Czarist soldiers fire on the crowds thronging down the Odessa steps; the broad newsreel-like sequences being inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details. Returning to sea, the Potemkin's crew prepares the guns for action as the ship, flying the flag of freedom, steams to confront the squadron. When they finally meet their worst fears are allayed as, with relief coupled with joy, they are universally acclaimed. This film, which was destined to become such an influential landmark in cinematographic history, opened in Moscow in January 1926. It ran for only four weeks.

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A film projectionist (and amateur detective) offers to solve the case of a missing watch, but is instead framed for the crime himself. Desperate to clear his name, the projectionist dreams of being the great Sherlock Jr.

(Buster Keaton), and in one of cinemas most iconic sequences, literally steps into the screen to bring his fantasies to life.

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Camille falls out of love with her husband Paul while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch.

Just as the director of Prokosch's film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mepris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema industry.

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Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) prowls the steel-and-microchip jungle of 21st century Los Angeles. He's a "Blade Runner" stalking genetically made criminal replicants. His assignment: kill them. Their crime: wanting to be human.

A visual stunner, remastered for improved home presentation, director Ridley Scott's vision of this sci-fi cinema classic intriguingly differs from what 1982 moviegoers saw. This version omits Deckard's voiceover narration, develops in greater detail the romance between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) and removes the "uplifting" finale. Most intriguing of all is a newly included unicorn vision that suggests Deckard may be a humanoid. The result is a heightened emotional impact a great film made greater.

Sans Soleil at #59 - La Jetee at #71

In South Carolina's Sea Islands at the dawn of the 20th century, a multi-generational family of the Gullah community - former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors' Yoruba traditions - struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland and even further from their roots.