10 most influential films of the century by Roger Ebert

December 30, 1999

The motion picture was invented before 1900, but "the movies" as we know them are entirely a 20th century phenomenon, shaping our times and sharing these 100 years with us. This was the first century recorded for the eyes and ears of the future; think what we would give to see even the most trivial film from the year 1000, and consider what a gift we leave.

This list of the 10 most influential films of the century is not to be confused with a selection of the century's best, although a few titles would be on both lists. As film grew into an art form, these were the milestones along the way.

1. The early Chaplin shorts

In 1913, there were no Charlie Chaplin movies. In 1914, he made no fewer than 35, in an astonishing outpouring of energy and creativity that made Chaplin the first great star. Stardom was to become so inseparable from the movies that it is startling to realize that many early films had unbilled performers. In the earliest days just the moving picture was enough; audiences were astonished by moving trains and gunshots. Then Chaplin and his contemporaries demonstrated how completely the movies could capture a unique personality.

2. "Birth of a Nation"

D.W. Griffith's 1915 film is a tarnished masterpiece, a breakthrough in art and craft, linked to a story so racist, it is almost unwatchable. This was the film that defined the film language, that taught audiences and filmmakers all over the world the emerging grammar of the shot, the montage and the camera. At 159 minutes, it tilted Hollywood's balance away from shorts and toward the more evolved features that would become the backbone of the new art form. What a shame that it also glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

3. "Battleship Potemkin"

Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film about a revolutionary uprising of Russian sailors was considered so dangerous that it was still banned decades later in some countries, including its native Soviet Union. It demonstrated Eisenstein's influential theory of montage - of the way images took on new meanings because of the way they were juxtaposed. "Potemkin" also demonstrated the power of film as politics, polemic and propaganda - power that many regimes, not least the Nazis, would use to alter world history.

4. "The Jazz Singer"

"You ain't heard nothin' yet!" Al Jolson promised in 1927, and movies were never the same. The first talkie was released that year (actually, it was a silent with sound passages tacked on), and although silent film survived through 1928 ("the greatest single year in the history of the movies," argues director Peter Bogdanovich), the talkies were the future. Purists argued that sound destroyed the pure art of silent film; others said the movies were a hybrid from the beginning, borrowing whatever they could from every possible art and science.

5. "Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs"

Eisenstein himself called Disney's 1937 animated feature the greatest film in history. Excessive praise, but world audiences were enthralled by the first full-length cartoon. Animation was as old as the movies (the underlying principle was much older), but Disney was the first to take it seriously as a worthy style for complex characters and themes. Disney's annual features continue to win enormous audiences and have grown in artistry and sophistication; audiences, alas, seem resistant to animation by anyone else, despite some recent success by the geniuses of Japanese anime.

6. "Citizen Kane"

If "Birth of a Nation" assembled all the breakthroughs before 1915, Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece was the harvest of the emerging art form. It was not the first to use deep-focus photography, or overlapping dialogue, or interlocking flashbacks, or rotating points of view, or trick photography, or a teasing combination of fact and fiction, or a sampling of genres (newsreel, comedy, drama, musical, biopic), or a charismatic director who was what the French later defined as an auteur. But in the way it assembled the pieces, it dazzled audiences and other filmmakers and so fully exploited its resources that "Kane" is often voted the greatest of all films.

7. "Shadows"

John Cassavetes' 1961 film was a salvo that shook Hollywood to its foundations. Renting a 16mm camera and working with friends on a poverty budget, he made a film totally outside the studio system. That had of course been done before, but "Shadows" was the symbolic standard-bearer of the emerging New American Cinema movement, which gave birth to underground films and to today's booming indie scene. Cassavetes demonstrated that it was not necessary to have studio backing and tons of expensive equipment to make a theatrical film.

8. "Star Wars"

There had been blockbusters before, from "Birth of a Nation" to "Gone With the Wind" to "Lawrence of Arabia." But George Lucas' 1977 space opera changed all the rules. It defined the summer as the prime releasing season, placed a new emphasis on young audiences, used special effects, animation, computers and exhilarating action to speed up the pacing, and grossed so much money that many of the best young directors gave up their quest for the Great American Film and aimed for the box office crown instead. Now most of the top-grossers every year follow in "Star Wars" footsteps, from "Armageddon" to "The Matrix" to "Titanic."

9. "Toy Story"

This delightful 1995 computer-animated feature may have been the first film of the 21st century. It was the first feature made entirely on computers, which allowed more realistic movement of the elements and the point of view, and characters that were more three-dimensional in appearance. Someday, computer-animated movies may be able to re-create "real" human actors and settings. Whether or not that is desirable, "Toy Story" demonstrated that the possibility was on the horizon. If films shift from celluloid and flesh and blood to the digital domain, this one will be seen as the turning point.

10. "The Blair Witch Project"

Important not for its entertainment value, which was considerable, but for what it represented in technical terms. Released last summer, it was the first indie blockbuster, a film made for about $24,000 and shot entirely on inexpensive hand-held cameras (one film, one video), which grossed more than $150 million. The message was inescapable: In the next century, technology will place the capacity for feature filmmaking into the hands of anyone who is sufficiently motivated, and audiences will not demand traditional "production values" before parting with their money.

There is not one conclusion, but two. Films are getting bigger and smaller, cheaper and more expensive, both at once. While mass-marketed blockbusters dominate the market, independent directors have the ability to make their own films almost by hand. Digital techniques are crucial to both trends. Will the future belong to "Star Wars" clones made with "Toy Story" techniques? Or to films made in the tradition of the early Chaplin quickies (some shot in a day), the Cassavetes-inspired independents and the "Blair Witch" technology? It belongs to both, I think. Which will be interesting.

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TCM's 15 most influential films of all time

April 13, 2009

by Roger Ebert

To celebrate its 25th anniversary Turner Classic Movies has selected the 15 most influential films of all time. It's a good list. As much as I think all such lists are debatable rankings of apples and oranges, that didn't prevent me from selecting my own ten best films of the century at the turn of the millennium.

The TCM list was assembled "under the guidance of many experts," the network explains somewhat vaguely, including its host, Robert Osborne, who knows his movies. Here is the list of 15 and their reasoning, accompanied by a link to my own list of ten. I've put an asterisk before th four titles that appear on both lists.

* "The Birth of a Nation" (1915)

During a time when Europe seemed to have a monopoly on feature films, D.W. Griffith struck out to make an epic that would help define American cinema. "The Birth of a Nation" also became one of the greatest outrages in film history, introducing destructive stereotypes of black men and women and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.

* "Battleship Potemkin" (1925)

The “Odessa Steps” sequence in "Battleship Potemkin" may be the most influential scene in film history. Drawing on montages in "The Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance," Sergei Eisenstein used mini-stories and repeated shots of specific characters and groups to humanize his story.

"Metropolis" (1927)

Arguably the most influential science-fiction film ever made, "Metropolis" has inspired everything from video games to rock videos to comic books. The film’s futuristic sets helped spread the popularity of art deco, while the gadget-filled lab of mad scientist Rotwang became a sci-fi staple.

"42nd Street" (1933)

Although musicals helped launch talkies, the genre was box office poison by 1933. Visionary producer Darryl F. Zanuck had the idea for a backstage story that would capture the effect of the Depression on hard-working chorus girls. He was smart enough to put Busby Berkeley in charge of the dance routines, and his geometric patterns and dazzling camera movements both revitalized musicals and saved Warner Bros. from bankruptcy.

"It Happened One Night" (1934)

The surprise success of "It Happened One Night" made Frank Capra one of the screen’s top directors and provided the prototype for a decade of screwball comedies. Romantic comedies like "When Harry Met Sally" and "The Sure Thing" draw on the rapid banter, outrageous comic situations and sexy road trip of "It Happened One Night." The movie even provided inspiration for one of the screen’s most enduring characters, Bugs Bunny.

* "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937)

“Disney’s Folly” was the name most Hollywood insiders gave to the dream of producing the nation’s first animated feature. But "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" didn’t just look better than any previous Disney film. It looked better than most major studio productions. For better or worse, "Snow White" set U.S. animation in pursuit of a more realistic look for decades to come.

"Gone with the Wind" (1939)

If one film epitomizes the Hollywood blockbuster, it is "Gone with the Wind." Scarlett O’Hara has inspired a legion fiery females caught in the sweep of history, most notably Kate Winslet in "Titanic." For decades, filmmakers have drawn on David O. Selznick’s work to create and sell romantic dreams writ large on the screen.

"Stagecoach" (1939)

John Ford’s mixture of character depth and hard-riding action reminded audiences that the winning of the West was more than just popcorn fodder. Ford’s work inspired Orson Welles, who screened the film 40 times while shooting "Citizen Kane."

* "Citizen Kane" (1941)

Working with a level of control rare in Hollywood, Orson Welles paved the way for director-centric cinema that has produced some of the screen’s greatest achievements and worst excesses. By combining deep-focus photography, directional sound, overlapping dialogue and a fragmented narrative assembled from several different viewpoints, he created a film audiences experienced as they did the real world.

"Bicycle Thieves" (1947)

Director Vittorio De Sica was part of a movement to take cinema back to the streets. Shot on real locations with a factory worker in the leading role, "Bicycle Thieves" (also widely known as "The Bicycle Thief") was among several post-war Italian films that provided an alternative to Hollywood’s big-budget studio productions.

"Rashomon" (1950)

Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking film put Japanese cinema on the international map. His editing techniques gave it a sensual power that attracted audiences to the emotionally charged story. Kurosawa transcended the challenges of a low budget and censorship to create a new cinematic world that would inspire filmmakers like George Lucas and Martin Scorsese.

"The Searchers" (1956)

Almost 20 years after revitalizing Westerns with "Stagecoach," director John Ford pointed the genre in a new direction. "The Searchers" offers one of the screen’s first attempts to depict racism underlying U.S.-native relations. Ford views the problem from both sides, showing how John Wayne’s obsessed Indian hunter Ethan Edwards and the equally obsessed Comanche chief, Scar, have been shaped by violent acts of the past.

"Breathless" (1959)

With jarring cuts between scenes, jump cuts within them and long takes filled with dizzying camera movements, "Breathless" made the movies move as never before. Director Jean-Luc Godard created a cinema of reinvention, shooting as if the medium had only just popped into existence.

"Psycho" (1960)

Following big-budget productions like "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock found inspiration in a low-budget, black-and-white horror. "Psycho" re-defined the genre with major surprises, like killing star Janet Leigh a third of the way into the movie. The crazed-killer character became a horror film staple, leading to slasher flicks like "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th."

"Star Wars" (1977)

With Star Wars, Hollywood discovered new markets for merchandising – not just toys, but novels, comics, television series and eventually video games. These constituted the “Star Wars Expanded Universe,” which included a series of sequels unlike any ever seen. Lucas later re-titled the film "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope."

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