Mr Emerson's Little List
On 20 March, film critic Jim Emerson posted a list of 102 "essential films" at RogerEbert.com. Jason Kottke picked it up a bit later, and marked the films that he had seen with an asterisk. I started thinking.
Mr Emerson's list is a strong one. It would be impossible to generate a list that no one would quarrel with, but this one comes close. It's a great place to begin.
To begin what? A sifting experiment conducted on the Internet. If enough people contribute, we might end up with a master list of ten or twenty movies, or more, or less - who knows? - by compiling the films that everybody agrees on.
Here's how it works (say I):
You get to make five changes to the list. You may not remove a film that you haven't seen. When you post your version of the list, insert the text "Emersons102MoviesYouMustSee" in the <meta> tag. In that way, it will be easy to return all the lists with a search engine.
After the jump, you'll find Mr Emerson's list. I've annotated each entry with (V), for "viewed," (P), for "owned," and (N) for "not viewed." I kept the V's and the P's separated in order to facilitate quick searches of the list.
2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
(V)(P)
The 400 Blows
(1959)
Francois Truffaut
(V)
8 1/2 (1963)
Federico Fellini (V)(P)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
(1972)
Werner Herzog (N)
Alien (1979)
Ridley Scott (V)(P)
All About Eve (1950)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (V)(P)
Annie Hall (1977)
Woody Allen (V)(P)
Apocalypse Now
(1979) Francis Ford Coppola (V)(P)
Bambi (1942) Walt Disney (V)
The Battleship Potemkin
(1925)
Sergei Eisenstein (V)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
William Wyler
(N)
The Big Red One (1980)
Samuel Fuller
(N)
The Bicycle Thief (1949)
Vittorio De Sica (V)(P)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Howard Hawks (V)(P)
Blade Runner (1982)
Ridley Scott (V)(P)
Blowup (1966)
Michelangelo Antonioni (V)(P)
Blue Velvet (1986)
David Lynch (V)(P)
Bonnie and Clyde
(1967)
Arthur Penn (V)
Breathless (1959) Jean-Luc Godard (V)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Howard Hawks (V)(P)
Carrie
(1975)
Brian DePalma (V)
Casablanca (1942)
Michael Curtiz (V)(P)
Un Chien Andalou (1928)
Luis Bunuel &
Salvador Dali
(V)
Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) ) (1945)
Marcel Carne (V)
Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski (V)(P)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles (V)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Stanley Kubrick(V)
The Crying Game (1992)
Neil Jordan (V)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise (V)
Days of Heaven (1978)
Terence Malick (N)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Don Siegel (N)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Luis Bunuel (V)(P)
Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee (N)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Federico Fellini (V)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Billy Wilder (V)(P)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Stanley Kubrick (V)
Duck Soup (1933)
Leo McCarey (V)(P)
E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Steven Spielberg (V)
Easy Rider (1969)
Dennis Hopper (N)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Irvin Kershner (V)
The Exorcist (1973)
William Friedkin (V)
Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen (V)(P)
Fight Club (1999)
David Fincher (V)
Frankenstein (1931) James Whale (V)
The General (1927)
Buster Keaton &
Clyde Bruckman (N)
The Godfather,
The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974)
Francis Ford Coppola (V)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Victor Fleming (V)(P)
GoodFellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese (V)(P)
The Graduate (1967)
Mike Nichols (V)
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter (V)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Richard Lester (V)
Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith (N)
It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod (N)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Frank Capra (V)
Jaws (1975)
Steven Spielberg (V)
The Lady Eve (1941)
Preston Sturges (V)(P)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
David Lean (V)
M (1931)
Fritz Lang (V)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
George Miller (V)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
John Huston (V)(P)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
John Frankenheimer (V)(P)
Metropolis (1926)
Fritz Lang (V)
Modern Times (1936)
Charles Chaplin (N)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones &
Terry Gilliam (V)
Nashville (1975)
Robert Altman (V)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Charles Laughton (V)(P)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George Romero (V)
North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock (V)(P)
Nosferatu (1922)
F.W. Murnau (V)
On the Waterfront (1954)
Elia Kazan (V)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Sergio Leone (V)
Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier (V)
Persona (1966)
Ingmar Bergman (V)(P)
Pink Flamingos (1972)
John Waters (V)
Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock (V)(P)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin Tarantino (V)
Rashomon (1950)
Akira Kurosawa (V)(P)
Rear Window (1954)
Alfred Hitchcock (V)(P)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray (V)
Red River (1948)
Howard Hawks (V)
Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski (V)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Jean Renoir (V) (P)
Scarface (1932)
Howard Hawks (V)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
Josef von Sternberg (V)
Schindler's List (1993)
Steven Spielberg (N)
The Searchers (1956)
John Ford (N)
The Seven Samurai (1954)
Akira Kurosawa (V)(P)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Stanley Donen &
Gene Kelly (V)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Billy Wilder (V)(P)
A Star Is Born (1954)
George Cukor (V)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Elia Kazan (V)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Billy Wilder (V)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorsese (V)
The Third Man (1949)
Carol Reed (V)(P)
Tokyo Story (1953)
Yasujiro Ozu (V)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Orson Welles (V)(P)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
John Huston (V)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Ernst Lubitsch (V)(P)
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock (V)(P)
West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise (V)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah (V)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Victor Fleming (V)
Comments
'Now by inspection we can see that ...' and 'Sautee in clarified butter and ...' are phrases that can mystify inexperienced mathematicians and cooks. Also, "insert the text 'Emersons102MoviesYouMustSee' in the tag" might be somewhat daunting for those not familiar with XHTML or HTML. I don't have my copy of Elizabeth Castro's wonderful Html for the World Wide Web Visual Quickstart Guide: With Xhtml and Css, 5th Edition(Illustrated) at hand at the moment, but I think what you want is for the list to begin with
which could be copied from the lines above into the posting. I think that will put what you want in front of the search engines. More help can be found on line atand Now I get to review the list, eh?Posted by: George![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 7, 2006 12:30 PM
I'm not sure I understand. Did you remove five and add five already ? And if so, what did you drop and which are your additions ? And should I be taking Emerson's list or yours as a starting point ? Sorry for being so dense...
Posted by: waterhot![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 8, 2006 05:21 PM
Opening the two lists in adjacent windows they seem to be identical. The goal is, I believe, to make no more than five deletions to the list with the provision that you cannot delete a film you have not seen. RJ will, I suppose, rank order the lists showing how many times each title occured across the lists. Maybe that's what he had in mind but I think he will find the task very difficult due to the restriction on unviewed films. An easier way might be to list the ten or twenty favorites you have seen from the list. We await our moderator's clarification.
Posted by: George![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 8, 2006 06:55 PM