Noël Carroll
Professor
USA
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| La Règle du jeu | 1939 | Jean Renoir |
| Vertigo | 1958 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Citizen Kane | 1941 | Orson Welles |
| Tokyo Story | 1953 | Yasujirō Ozu |
| M | 1931 | Fritz Lang |
| The General | 1926 | Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman |
| Man with a Movie Camera | 1929 | Dziga Vertov |
| Un chien andalou | 1928 | Luis Buñuel |
| Shoah | 1985 | Claude Lanzmann |
| Meshes of the Afternoon | 1943 | Maya Deren, Alexander Hackenschmied |
Comments
La Règle du jeu
With multi-planar compositions for a multi-layered comedy-drama with psychological and social insight, the film is a triumph of nuance.
Vertigo
A philosophically penetrating portrayal of falling in love, obsession, and portrayal.
Citizen Kane
A towering study in the private life of a public man that probes the nature of personal identity.
Tokyo Story
A perfect, subtly but appropriately understated portrayal of the lives and issues of ordinary people.
M
Magnificent use of offscreen space in the finest police procedural cum political insight in the history of film.
The General
Breathtaking comic episodes elegantly composed and edited by an auteur with the mind of a civil engineer commited to disclosing the mechanics or physics of the material world. Proof positive that Buster Keaton was not only an unparalleled comic performer but a director who could have been a success in any genre of filmmaking.
Man with a Movie Camera
The greatest exercise in the practice of intellectual montage ever.
Un chien andalou
Still the finest Surrealist film.
Shoah
A monumental, unrivaled documentary of a defining atrocity of the twentieth century.
Meshes of the Afternoon
A psychologically powerful, imagistically compelling exploration of a woman's passage-of-life experience. Mesmerising.
Further remarks
My choices all fall before the advent of the 21st century because I have tried to choose works that have already passed the test of time.