Personal Top 100 Foreign Language Film Lists (1 Viewer)

[Arman]

v2.0:

1. Stolen Kisses (Truffaut)

2. Breathless (Godard)

3. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)

4. Belle de jour (Bunuel)

5. The Bicycle Thief (De Sica)

6. Blowup (Antonioni)

7. Grand Illusion (Renoir)

8. Children of Paradise (Carne)

9. L'Atalante (Vigo)

10. L'Avventura (Antonioni)

11. Umberto D (De Sica)

12. Rocco & His Brothers (Visconti)

13. In The Mood For Love (Kar-Wai)

14. Open City (Rossellini)

15. Yi yi (Yang)

16. La Notte (Antonioni)

17. Madadayo (Kurosawa)

18. Pickpocket (Bresson)

19. Jules and Jim (Truffaut)

20. That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel)

21. 8 1/2 (Fellini)

22. Ordet (Dreyer)

23. Metropolis (Lang)

24. The World of Apu (Ray)

25. Boyfriends & Girlfriends (Rohmer)

26. Spirited Away (Miyazaki)

27. Talk To Her (Almodovar)

28. City of God (Lund and Meirelles)

29. L’Argent (Bresson)

30. Contempt (Godard)

31. Persona (Bergman)

32. The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)

33. Underground (Kusturica)

34. Pierrot le Fou (Godard)

35. The 400 Blows (Truffaut)

36. Rules of The Game (Renoir)

37. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)

38. Tokyo Story (Ozu)

39. Gertrud (Dreyer)

40. The Last Metro (Truffaut)

41. Rashomon (Kurosowa)

42. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)

44. Nowhere In Africa (Link)

45. A Nous La Liberte (Clair)

46. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)

47. Le Notti di Cabiria (Fellini)

48. Amelie (Jenuet)

49. Babette's Feast (Axel)

50. Central Station (Salles)

51. Amores Perros (Inarritu)

52. Yojimbo (Kurosawa)

53. A Man Escaped (Bresson)

54. La Strada (Fellini)

55. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)

56. Chloe In The Afternoon (Rohmer)

57. Rosetta (Dardenne & Dardenne)

58. Shoot The Piano Player (Truffaut)

59. The Road Home (Zhang)

60. M (Lang)

61. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)

62. Happy Together (Kar-Wai)

63. The Story of Adele H. (Truffaut)

64. Chunhyang (Kwon-taek)

65. Pather Panchali (Ray)

66. The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)

67. Manila in the Claws of Light (Brocka)

68. All About My Mother (Almodovar)

69. Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore)

70. The Bride Wore Black (Truffaut)

71. Indochine (Wargnier)

72. Fury (Lang)

73. Claire’s Knee (Rohmer)

74. La Promesse (Dardenne & Dardenne)

75. Nieve Reinas (Bielinsky)

76. A Night At Maud’s (Rohmer)

77. Lola (Demy)

78. Eat Drink, Man, Woman (Lee)

79. Time Out (Recoing)

80. Akira (Otomo)

81. Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki)

82. Sister Stella L. (De Leon)

83. Autumn Sonata (Bergman)

84. The Dreamlife of Angels (Zonca)

85. A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)

86. Sanjuro (Kurosowa)

87. The King of Masks (Tian-Ming)

88. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Cuaron)

89. The Son’s Room (Moretti)

90. Bread and Tulips (Soldini)

91. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Lee)

92. Atanarjuat (Kunuk)

93. The Seventh Seal (Bergman)

94. Cries and Whispers (Bergman)

95. Ran (Kurosowa)

96. Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein & Vasilyev)

97. Wild Child (Truffaut)

98. No Man’s Land (Tanovic)

99. Amarcord (Fellini)

100. Floating Weeds (Ozu)

Missed the cut:

101. Autumn Tale (Rohmer)

102. The Horseman on The Roof (Rappeneau)

103. Les Mistons (Truffaut)

104. Strawberry and Chocolate (Alea &Tabio)

105. Dr. Mabuse The Gambler (Lang)

106. Wild Reeds (Techine)

107. Devil In The Flesh (Bellocchio)

108. Bob le flambeur (Melville)

109. Tokyo Olympiad (Ichikawa)

110. Metropolis (Rin)

111. Fellini Satyricon (Fellini)

112. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)

113. Solaris (Tarkovsky)

114. Day of Wrath (Dreyer)

115. The Blue Hour (Gisler)

116. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Herzog)

117. The Blue Angel (Von Sternberg)

118. The Wages of Fear (Clouzot)

119. The Piano Teacher (Haneke)

120. Taboo (Oshima)

121. L’homme Blesse (Chereau)

122. Juana la loca (Aranda)

123. Life is Beautiful (Benigni)

124. Malena (Tornatore)

125. Run Lola Run (Tykwer)

126. Loves of A Blond (Forman)

127. The Taste of Others (Jaoui)

128. La Collectionneuse (Rohmer)

129. Ulysses'Gaze (Angelopoulos)

130. The City of Lost Children (Caro & Jeunet)

131. Farewell My Concubine (Chen)

132. Belle Epoque (Trueba)

133. Like Water For Chocolate (Arau)

134. Dona Herlinda and Her Sons (Hermosillo)

135. Jamon Jamon (Luna)

136. Maybe … Maybe Not (Wortmann)

137. Sex and Lucia (Medem)

138. What To Do In Case of Fire (Schnitzler)

 

[Arman]

Under Construction 5/1/05

 

[Arman]

Resurrecting this thread and created new version of my list.

 

[DavidAls]

I cut it well short of 100, realizing that I may not have seen 100 5-star world films. Anyone reading the list will note some serious lapses; I can't pretend to be any kind of authority on global stuff, as I have yet to see a vast number of great European films. Nonetheless, the stuff I've listed I stand by, as great films I'd recommend.
I was made to see some European stuff in college, which perhaps explains this lapse. Since then, I've discovered classic Asian film, by accident mainly, and have developed a great love of postwar Japanese film, some Indian film and the contemporary Iranian & Taiwanese 'new wave.' Thus my list leans hard towards Asia. This will change over time, though working my way through certain directors (Ozu, Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa, Moshen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami) has been quite a treat.
Nonetheless, I'm starting to work my way through varied other Godard, Malle, Bresson, Visconti, Antonioni, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Renoir, Wenders, Herzog, Almodovar, Angelopoulos, Truffaut and other directors (lucky to have - in North Carolina! - an indie video shop near my house with a gigantic foreign film section, including shelves devoted to most of the above), while also catching up on Imamura, Oshima, Kurosawa, Ozu & Ray films I've missed... A year down the road my list might look very different.
1. Sansho The Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1954)
2. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, India, 1955)
3. after life (Hirokazu Kore'eda, Japan, 1999)
4. Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1953)
5. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1958)
6. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1951)
7. Juliet Of The Spirits (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1965)
8. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1959)
9. Diary Of A Country Priest (Robert Bresson, France, 1951)
10. Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, India, 1957)
11. Tokyo Story (Yazujiro Ozu, Japan, 1953)
12. A Story From Chikamatsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1954)
13. Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, 1972)
14. Silence (Moshen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1998)
15. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963)
16. Umberto D (Vittorio DeSica, Italy, 1952)
17. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1954)
18. The World Of Apu (Satyajit Ray, India, 1960)
19. Pyassa (Guru Dutt, India, 1957)
20. The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio DeSica, Italy, 1948)
21. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1952)
22. Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1948)
23. In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 2000)
24. 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, France, 1959)
25. Maborosi (Hirokazu Kore'eda, Japan, 1996)
26. West Beirut (Ziad Douieri, Lebanon, 1998)
27. Rules Of The Game (Jean Renoir, France, 1939)
28. Vive L'amour (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1994)
29. Charulata (Satyajit Ray, India, 1964)
30. Floating Weeds (Yazujiro Ozu, Japan, 1958)
31. When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1960)
32. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1958)
33. Amarcord (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1973)
34. Lower Depths (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1957)
35. Gabbeh (Moshen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1996)
36. Mahanagar (Satyajit Ray, India, 1963)
37. An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1962)
38. Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1939)
39. Where Is The Friend's Home? (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1987)
40. Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai, China, 2001)
41. The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1998)
42. Wild Reeds (Andre Techine, France, 1994)
43. Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1964)
44. The Eel (Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1996)
45. Salaam Bombay (Mira Nair, India, 1989)
46. The Middleman (Satyajit Ray, India, 1976)
47. Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa, 1965)
48. East Palace West Palace (Zhang Yuan, China, 1996)
49. The Road Home (Zhang Yimou, China, 1999)
50. The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 2001)
51. The Tin Drum (Volker Schlondorff, Germany, 1979)
52. Throne Of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1957)
53. Goodbye South Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan, 1996)
54. Mysterious Object At Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2000)
55. The Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung, Vietnam, 1995)
56. Once Upon A Time In China (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, 1991)
57. Zentropa (Lars Von Trier, Germany, 1991)
58. Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, India, 1975)
59. Small Change (Francois Truffaut, France, 1976)
60. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1962)
61. Cure (Kyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 1997)
62. Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy, 1989)
63. Japon (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, 2003)
64. High & Low (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1962)
65. Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki, Japan, 1968)
66. Taira Clan Saga (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1955)
67. Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France, 1992)
68. Ghost Of Yotsuya (Nobuo Nakagawa, Japan, 1959)
69. Good Morning (Yazujiro Ozu, Japan, 1958)
70. Life...and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1992)

 

[Gary Tooze]

Wow David... what a great list ! (I guess I say that because you have many of my favorites up there too ).
You are resurrected this thread and I promise to redo my, now ancient, list - could take a while though...
My only query about your selection: #49 - your only Zhang Yimou film (or am I missing another) and often regarded as his weakest film, quite vehemently by some - if not his most sentimental (in a cloying way)... Not saying for you to defend it - just interesting to me...
Overall a fantastic list... thanks for posting it !
Cheers,
Gary

 

[Lew Crippen]

A great and interesting list David. I too would rank the individual films of the Apu trilogy in the same order as you. In fact I really expected just a bit more from The World of Apu[/I}, and IIRC one or two of the guys in the S&S thread felt the same way.

 

[DavidAls]

Thanks to both Lew and Gary.
Zhang Yimou is probably the one Asian director I'm least familiar with thus far; I'm aware of The Road Home's rather low status among his fans. I do think it's a very good film, if it's his weakest I really look forward to the rest. I found the story to be a bit sappier than I usually like, but the cinematography is incredible, and the short running time keeps it on my 'likes' list.
I think the second part of the Apu trilogy (Aparajito) rivals the first in quality; it's actually the first Satyajit Ray film I saw, and I was devastated - very moving, with a very complex story, and the cinematography (the opening scenes at the Ganges) is some of my favorite ever - the flight of the pigeons as a symbolic device isn't all that original, but is very well-used. The World Of Apu is a bit more loose; visually it's quite remarkable, and I think the performances are great, but the story isn't as tight. On VHS/DVD, Ray has (like Mizoguchi) been terribly neglected in the US; I understand that the Academy in Calif. is funding restoration of his films (in conjunction with the Satyajit Ray Society in Calcutta), and several more have been recently completed, so hopefully more of his work will see light of day in the next few years.
My experiences with Japanese film developed more haphazardly - except for Kurosawa I hadn't heard of anything, and the first Kurosawa films I saw (Dodes Ka'den and Dreams, both in college) I didn't care for much. I didn't see anything else until 3-4 years ago, when I picked up two Mizoguchi films while wandering through the video shop, because the descriptions on the boxes sounded interesting. This discovery (at the time I knew nothing of Mizoguchi or Ozu) blew me away; diving into late 40s-mid 60s Japanese film has completely altered how I view film, from anywhere.
With Japanese, and also postwar Italian and French film (and contemporary Iranian) it strikes me that film was used as a way to critique and analyze certain cultural traditions/values that fueled those cultures' most spectacular sucesses, but also their most devastating failures; and that the best of what I've seen often seems to be lent urgency by feeding off the psychological pressures of living and working creatively in a society undergoing rapid, disorienting social change. This is hardly an original observation, but I think this represents a still-valid model for American filmmakers (independent ones at least), and when I think of 'contemporary American films I would like to see,' this is the kind of work that springs to mind...

 

[Lew Crippen]

·I noticed that you have Goodbye South, Goodbye on your list. You might like to check out Flower of Shanghai if you have not already seen the movie.