Michael Newton
writer
Netherlands
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Seven Samurai | 1954 | Akira Kurosawa |
| Trois couleurs rouge | 1994 | Krzysztof Kieslowski |
| Le notti di Cabiria | 1957 | Federico Fellini |
| Bicycle Thieves | 1948 | Vittorio De Sica |
| Les Enfants du paradis | 1945 | Marcel Carné |
| The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | 1943 | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger |
| Charade | 1963 | Stanley Donen |
| It's a Wonderful Life | 1947 | Frank Capra |
| The Third Man | 1949 | Carol Reed |
| The Apartment | 1960 | Billy Wilder |
Comments
Trois couleurs rouge
Really, I'd like to choose 'Dekalog' here - but that's in ten parts, and a TV series ... and this last film in the trilogy moves me so very much.
Les Enfants du paradis
Love is so simple (to quote a phrase)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
This list of my top ten films could include three or four more by Powell and Pressburger (and another couple more by Fellini) - but this one was my first love, so to speak - and it's a great movie about England's entwinement with Europe.
Charade
Because it stars both Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, the two most beautiful and loveable of all the Hollywood starts. And because, aged ten, this film summed up glamour and elegance (and Paris) - and more than forty years later, it still does.
The Apartment
Shut up and deal.
Further remarks
It sad to have to miss out Rohmer, Tarkovsky, Lubitsch, or Whit Stillman - but it was too hard in each case to narrow their work down to one film. And no 'A Man Escaped', no 'Fanny and Alexander', no 'Tokyo Story'... but the ten films chosen I have loved for years and never tire of watching them. Put together it strikes me how melancholy they all are - and how complex, consoling and joyful too.