FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE: Getting to a List of the Best Non-English Language Films

Here we go again. It seems there is a group of about 51 bloggers, writers, critics who have decided to give the whole list thing another shot. This time organized by Edward Copeland, the group was asked to compile a non-ranked list of 25 favorite foreign-language films (not best, not all-time anything) in an attempt to come up with a large list, filled with a nice mix of, as Campaspe put it, “warhorses, interesting recent choices and a smattering of wild cards,” from which a final list would be composed. Confesses Edward:

“I see now why lists can sometimes cause such headaches. We had to decide things such as whether Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns were eligible (We decided no, since most people are only familiar with the English dubbed version and the American actors didn't speak in Italian.)… I also originally planned to have the eligible list consist of films that made at least 5% of all ballots, but soon realized that that would make pretty much every film that got at least one vote eligible, so I opted instead for films that appeared on at least three ballots.”

The only real criteria that the voting committee were held to, other than the requirement that the dialogue be in a foreign language, was the length of the film (features only, no shorts, and no documentaries—there went my vote for Tokyo Olympiad) and that it be released no more recently than 2002 (there went my vote for Goodbye, Dragon Inn). Otherwise, each voter came to her/his final 25 by any means necessary. Some voted for the foreign language films they had seen more than any others. Some declined to vote for films in a series (Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy, for example). Some held themselves to one film per director. And most voted for personal favorites over the recognized canonical films, unless, of course, those canonized works were their personal favorites.


When Edward had finally finished doing the heavy lifting last night, 122 films shook out of all those lists of nominees, 122 films that garnered at least three qualifying votes. I was somewhat surprised that, of the 25 I submitted on my original list, 16 actually showed up on that list of 122. However, for me the single most agonizing thing about looking at the lists of nominees I’ve seen, as well as the final list, is the sound of “D’oh!” that rattles in my skull when I’m reminded of a title that I wish I’d remembered but somehow didn’t. How could I have forgotten Roman Polanski’s Repulsion? Or Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil? (It was determined not to be enough of a documentary, I guess, to qualify.) Or George Sluzier’s The Vanishing? And I held back a vote for Suspiria based on the fact that I’d only seen the version that featured English language dubbing.

Other than those titles, though, the thing that is both exciting and embarrassing about participating in this enterprise is facing up to the block of Swiss cheese that is my experience with the history of films that originated in countries that aren’t primarily English-speaking. But rather than run from that, I decided that an essential element of taking part in this exercise, which has so far being enlightening as well as a ton of fun, would be to discover just how lacking I am when it comes to movies that are revered by others that I have not yet, for whatever reason, allowed myself to experience. (And yes, it is “allowed” these days, because most, if not all of the titles in contention are available on DVD.) But it’s not all about the gaps in knowledge—contributing to the list and sorting through also served, as it did for Jim Emerson and Jonathan Lapper and probably everyone, to one degree or other, to jog titles loose, some of which have languished in the memory for 25 or 30 years, and whet the desire to give them a fresh look (at the top of this list: Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road). And the fun has only begun—I was moved enough by Jim’s passion for Le Boucher that I ordered it sight unseen off of a Best Buy card I just got for my birthday. My mind is spinning at the seemingly endless list of films I have yet to see.

What follows then is a series of lists, all connected to Edward’s Foreign Language Film project. First, my own list, submitted for inclusion as part of the compilation of what became the List of 121:


* Amarcord (1974; Federico Fellini; Italy)
* Au Hasard, Balthasar (1966; Robert Bresson; France, Sweden)
* Beauty and the Beast (1946; Jean Cocteau; France)
* Belle de Jour (1966; Luis Bunuel; France, Italy)
Death in Venice (1971; Luchino Visconti; Italy)
* The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972; Luis Bunuel; France)
Fellini Roma (1972; Federico Fellini; Italy)
Going Places (1974; Bertrand Blier; France)
* Ikiru (1952; Akira Kurosawa; Japan)
* In the Mood for Love (1999; Wong Kar-wai; Hong Kong, France)
In the Realm of the Senses (1976; Nagisa Oshima; Japan, France)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989; Hayao Miyazaki; Japan)
La Cage aux Folles II (1980; Edouard Molinaro; France)
* M (1931; Fritz Lang; Germany)
Matador (1986; Pedro Almodovar; Spain)
* Nights of Cabiria (1957; Federico Fellini; Italy)
* Open City (1946; Roberto Rossellini; Italy)
* Pierrot le Fou (1965; Jean-Luc Godard; France, Italy)
Project A Part 2 (1987; Jackie Chan; Hong Kong)
* The Rules of the Game (1939; Jean Renoir; France)
* Seven Samurai (1954; Akira Kurosawa; Japan)
* Sonatine (1994; Takeshi Kitano; Japan)
* Tampopo (1986; Juzo Itami; Japan)
* Tokyo Story (1953; Yasujiro Ozu; Japan)
* Woman in the Dunes (1964; Hiroshi Teshigahara; Japan)

• denotes the titles that made it onto the List of 121

I think I was initially a bit surprised at how heavily the Japanese weighed in on my list, but that surprised waned when I looked at the titles, which are all essential movies for me. Even more surprising was the fact that I found room for three Fellini films, including one (Roma) that has stuck in my craw with far more insistence than I ever expected it would. Had I remembered Repulsion and Sans Soleil, however, it would have meant ciao to Fellini’s remembrance of the big city, as well as to Almodovar’s perversely delightful Matador. And before I get too many comments on the order of “What the fuck is La Cage aux Folles II doing in there?” let me explain that I think the late Michel Serrault’s brilliance in this picture has yet to be truly measured, due to the fact that it’s contained in what can only be described as a routine, programmatic sequel. But even within that starched plot, when Albin and Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) head for the Italian hills to escape from a bunch of hoods (doesn’t matter why), and Albin, living in luxury dressed as a female in France, is faced with the reality of an Italian peasant woman’s existence, and how Renato is exalted merely because his gender, it occasions a bolt of seriocomic empathy for him, and for the audience, that lifts Serrault’s already heavenly portrayal into even headier territory.

No, I was not surprised that La Cage aux Folles II did not make the cut. But in the spirit of creating as idiosyncratic a list as possible, and thereby creating a list that would inspire those of us who worked on it as well as those who might read it, I felt like it was a vote worth casting. Otherwise, my own list, while by no means even close to comprehensive (I forced myself to leave off The Seventh Seal, The Leopard, Breathless and a dozen other film-school friendly titles out of sheer familiarity and, and I said before, it’d just been too long since I’d seen some of them), strikes me as one of many reasonable places to start down the road toward appreciating the non-English language cinema.

And now, Monty, the I Confess portion of our program. Here are the titles that made the list of 122 that I have not seen. (Draw whatever conclusions about me based on this information that you will.)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Amores Perros
Andrei Rublev
Army of Shadows
Ashes and Diamonds
Band of Outsiders
The Battle of Algiers
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Black Orpheus
Celine and Julie Go Boating
City of God
Cleo From 5 to 7
Come and See
The Conformist
The Cranes Are Flying
Cries and Whispers
Day of Wrath
The Decalogue
The Earrings of Madame De...
Exterminating Angel
Eyes Without a Face
Forbidden Games
The 400 Blows
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
The Great Silence
Jules and Jim
La Dolce Vita
L'Atalante
Late Spring
Le Samourai
Lola Montes
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Masculin-Feminin
My Night at Maud's
Ordet
Orpheus
Pickpocket
Playtime
Raise the Red Lantern
Rififi
Rocco and His Brothers
Sansho the Bailiff
Satantango
Stolen Kisses
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
The Tin Drum
To Live
Umberto D
The Wages of Fear
Wild Strawberries
Yi Yi: A One and a Two

That’s 51 movies! Jesus, it’s clear enough to me that I need to take about six months off and do some serious studying. Just at first glance, it seems that my experience with Truffaut’s films is the one most lacking, but really, it’s painful to look at any of those titles and think of the wonders I’ve so far denied myself. And in the case of Army of Shadows, The Conformist, The Decalogue and Pickpocket, these are movies that are sitting on my own DVD shelf—I have yet to make time for any of them.

And then there’s the list of movies I would, if I could, cherry-pick right off the list and flick to the wayside:

All About My Mother (not top drawer Almodovar, in my book)
Amelie (I’m not a hater, but really…)
Chungking Express (the movie that kept me at arm’s length from Wong Kar-wai for 10 years, and nearly ruined California Dreamin’ for me too)
Cinema Paradiso (I’m this movie’s prime demographic, and even I thought it was too much)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (A movie I love, but I had no problem leaving it off my list)
Das Boot (another one I like, but consider wildly overrated)
Dersu Uzala (This appealed to me as a college student more than some of Kurosawa’s other titles—20 years later, it seemed soggy and obvious)
8 ½ (I need to see this again, but I’ve remained unconvinced for a long time)
Farewell My Concubine (I honestly barely even remember this movie, outside of Gong Li)
Last Year at Marienbad (This movie was absolutely forbidding to me when I saw it in college; I need to see it again)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (I liked this movie, but I would have rather voted for Murnau)
The Red Desert (Antonioni begins to run awfully dry for me here)
Run Lola Run (I said this when it landed on the OFC Top 100—Whaaaat?!!)
Seven Beauties (I loved this in college, but I suspect I would think it was a piece of shit now—a good candidate for re-viewing!)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (I just don’t get it…)

And just in case the taste for masochism is getting as good for you as it is for me, here’s 20 other foreign-language films that I haven’t seen, that didn’t make the list, that I would love to see right now, in the order they came floating off the top of my head:

Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica)
The Truck (Marguerite Duras)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quoi du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
Strozsek (Werner Herzog)
Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu)
Lola Montes (Max Ophuls)
The River (Jean Renoir)
French Cancan (Jean Renoir)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Confidentially Yours (Francois Truffaut)
Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle)
Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)
Police (Maurice Pialat)
Shame (Ingmar Bergman)
La Femme infidele (Claude Chabrol)
Femmes fatales (Bertrand Blier)
The Night of the Shooting Stars (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
Pepe le Moko (Julien Duvivier)

Okay, quite enough masochism from me. Here’s list of 122 nominees that you and I will be choosing from. If you want to cast your vote, choose 25 of the titles from the List of 122 and send them to copesurvey@yahoo.com before midnight CST, Sunday, September 16.

Be sure to check out the names that made up the nominating committee. And if you have a list of your own 25 and are looking for a place to post it, Jim Emerson is taking submissions, and please feel free to deposit them below for further discussion and fun!

Remember, the deadline is Sunday, September 16, midnight CST!