Cahiers Catch-All Thread: From Auteur to Z

[Mr Sausage]

Okay, but that's really my point. Why is being "reactionary" and "elitist" a bad thing if the end result is genuinely great art? And besides I think a lot of cinephiles tend to forgot how radical and groundbreaking the "serious" cinema pioneered by Fellini and Bergman was at the time in the 1950s. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, so it was in a sense a watershed for the medium, even if it wasn't the sort of 'materialist' watershed many auteurists fetishize over.

How to deal with art, especially brilliant art, that contains or embodies a politics that you find reprehensible is a complex problem of long standing that has yet to be resolved. Not that you'd know if from the easy dismissals you've given it.

But it's not an issue that has anything to do with Fellini as far as I can see.

[rrenault]

I am such an idiot for getting into an argument with this guy again. Swear to god I didn't realize it was him until just now. The style of the posts should've tipped me off, tho'.

Eliot, Pound, Wyndham Lewis, ect. were the ones criticizing Romantics for narcissism and navel-gazing and demanding a return to the traditions of classicism and anglo-catholicism and the continuities to the past that they offered. They were the enemies of art for art's sake.

Except their yearning for the past has in turn been criticized as reactionary, elitist, and Romantic by others. Teapot calling the kettle black I suppose you could say, since they wanted art to be "art" again by "resucing" it from the "newly educated masses".

Yes, they were reactionary and elitist. The Romantics, however, were radical and egalitarian. This is why no one has ever criticised Eliot, Pound, and Lewis for being Romantics, ever. Because they weren't. You don't know anything that you're talking about. Again. Please just stop.

Well how are we defining 'Romantic' here? I think there's just some semantic confusion, since you seem to be taking my usage of the term to be literally referring to the Romantic movement in 19th century Germany, whereas I'm really just applying it in a broader sense to refer to someone who naively yearns for the idyllic or the unobtainable, and in that sense, yes, the "high modernists" were romantics even if they weren't part of the Romantic movement.

[rrenault]

Okay, but that's really my point. Why is being "reactionary" and "elitist" a bad thing if the end result is genuinely great art? And besides I think a lot of cinephiles tend to forgot how radical and groundbreaking the "serious" cinema pioneered by Fellini and Bergman was at the time in the 1950s. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, so it was in a sense a watershed for the medium, even if it wasn't the sort of 'materialist' watershed many auteurists fetishize over.

How to deal with art, especially brilliant art, that contains or embodies a politics that you find reprehensible is a complex problem of long standing that has yet to be resolved. Not that you'd know if from the easy dismissals you've given it.

But it's not an issue that has anything to do with Fellini as far as I can see.

But that's just it. It's like when people dismiss Godard and Bergman as misogynists. It's ultimately the same idea, even if it's arguably less reprehensible than Pound's antisemitism. You're essentially pulling at strings to try to prove this or that could be construed politically reprehensible or that there may be fascist undertones in the "content" of say Beckett's work, losing sight of the larger picture where it becomes apparent that it's in the radical form that social critique and disruption of the status quo comes through. So what if Godard was a misogynist. He was a human who had faults like all other humans, and he also happened to be a brilliant filmmaker. So maybe Beckett's or Stravinsky's "politics" weren't particular radical or egalitarian, but the form of their work sure as hell was radical. In short, great art transcends "politics", and the left can't accept this.

[Mr Sausage]

Well how are we defining 'Romantic' here? I think there's just some semantic confusion, since you seem to be taking my usage of the term to be literally referring to the Romantic movement in 19th century Germany, whereas I'm really just applying it in a broader sense to refer to someone who naively yearns for the idyllic or the unobtainable, and in that sense, yes, the "high modernists" were romantics even if they weren't part of the Romantic movement.

Er, I was the one who first used the terms Romantics and Romanticism. I also explicitly identified it with the High Romantics (and I was thinking chiefly of the British Romantics as they were the ones Pound and Eliot were rejecting). Since you were taking up my use of it, how could you be confused? There was nothing ambiguous about how I was using those terms.

The high modernists were not naive and they did not yearn for the idyllic (except maybe Yeats, but he was explicitly a high Romantic). No one has ever accused them of romanticism, capital R or no. Has it been a while since you read them or something?

[Tommaso]

Even the High Romantics cannot be accused generally of yearning for the idyllic. There was hardly a more radical and political poet than Shelley in that time. You can lump Blake in, if you want. And while Byron's topics probably fit into the idea of Romanticism, his style is clearly oriented at classicism.

[Satori]

But that's just it. It's like when people dismiss Godard and Bergman as misogynists. It's ultimately the same idea, even if it's arguably less reprehensible than Pound's antisemitism. You're essentially pulling at strings to try to prove this or that could be construed politically reprehensible or that there may be fascist undertones in the "content" of say Beckett's work, losing sight of the larger picture where it becomes apparent that it's in the radical form that social critique and disruption of the status quo comes through. So what if Godard was a misogynist. He was a human who had faults like all other humans, and he also happened to be a brilliant filmmaker. So maybe Beckett's or Stravinsky's "politics" weren't particular radical or egalitarian, but the form of their work sure as hell was radical. In short, great art transcends "politics", and the left can't accept this.

I'm not sure exactly who your interlocutors are here, but your argument here seems unnecessarily binaristic. "High art" versus "the left" or, earlier, "cultural Marxists"? You don't have to pick a side: you can be a leftist and still like Fellini. Or what about somebody like Adorno who argued (to greatly simplify a complex argument) that high modernism was the only radical art precisely because it achieved an aesthetic or formal autonomy from the capitalist world? I actually agree with your point that critics need to think more about form when discussing the political implications of "high art," but I have no idea who you are arguing with since I don't know who these cultural Marxists are that are spending their time attacking Bergman and Fellini in 2014.

I also think your straw figure argument about people calling Godard and Bergman misogynists could use some nuance. Surely one can appreciate their artistry and still draw attention to problematic representations of gender? (Mr. Sausage makes a very similar point above about politics in art more generally). You don't have to cosign every single aspect of a film to enjoy and appreciate it. All of this even seems beside the point since I don't think Bergman and Godard are misogynists at all, but there are certainly complex representations of gender in their films that reward close viewing and analysis.

Indeed, it seems to me that in trying to argue against swift dismissals of filmmakers like Fellini who make "art for arts sake," you have yourself suggested a swift dismissal of anyone who would advance a political reading of film. Art doesn't "transcend" politics; it exists in a productive and uneasy tension with politics, history, and life. I think we should embrace the difficulty of keeping this tension alive rather than trying to resolve it one way or the other.

[rrenault]

Well J. Hoberman's review I posted up above is a perfect example of what I'm referring to, or the way Rosenbaum generally speaks of Bergman and Fellini, and mind you, I often find Rosenbaum quite valuable, especially when he writes on people such as Godard, Bresson, and/or Renoir. So no, the cultural Marxists don't necessarily attack them, but the way someone like Hoberman speaks of Bergman, Fellini, or Antonioni often comes across as snark to me. It's a crypto-disdain for art unless it hits you over the head with "social critique". Now Godard and Bunuel certainly "hit you over the head with social critique", but at least they do so brilliantly.

[rrenault]

Indeed, it seems to me that in trying to argue against swift dismissals of filmmakers like Fellini who make "art for arts sake," you have yourself suggested a swift dismissal of anyone who would advance a political reading of film. Art doesn't "transcend" politics; it exists in a productive and uneasy tension with politics, history, and life. I think we should embrace the difficulty of keeping this tension alive rather than trying to resolve it one way or the other.

Well I do think it's problematic when someone dismisses Persona or Stravinsky on such political grounds but then goes on to make a case for Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 or Tony Scott.

What I dislike is when people use work that's vastly inferior on an aesthetic level as a club with which to beat say Persona or Rite of Spring on political grounds. In other words, yes, I do have a problem with vulgar auteurism, as if it were a more noble egalitarian replacement for the traditional notion of "high culture". It's one thing to merely prefer Bunuel or Fassbinder to Bergman, but it's something else entirely to make a case for Tony Scott while suggesting an affection for Bergman or Haneke is indicative of nothing more than pseudo-highbrow bourgeois notions of culture.

Now you could certainly suggest the films of Fellini, Bergman, and even Haneke for that matter aren't all that radical or disruptive from a formal standpoint, but again, I'd say that remains open for debate. Then again, perhaps in spite of my general predilection for the likes of Rivette, Akerman, and such, I just happen to have a huge soft spot for traditional "arthouse" cinema, which I need to address and resolve.

As a comparison to one's affection for traditional "arthouse" cinema, how can one be a Francophile and not love foie gras, even if consuming it in excess may eventually be harmful, even if taking in the flavor in moderation enriches the soul. I don't know.

The thing about the high modernists is if they were elitist, reactionary, and so intent on bringing us back to a "better" time where the aristocracy had the final say why would they create such formally radical work? We can't exactly take a work's "content" or an artist's "political" views at face value. Does a 'socially conscious' but formally derivative writer like Arthur Miller honestly disrupt the status quo anymore than Pound or Stravinsky does? Are the Arthur Millers and Diego Riveras a viable solution to the Pounds and Heideggers of the world?

I agree Godard and Bergman were not misogynist, although many people don't. Picasso on the other hand...

[rrenault]

Now on the Adorno note, there's something I've always wondered. I come across people who love Adorno and praise him as a savior of "high art" in the face of capitalist oligarchy, yet they'll dismiss others such as John Simon and Roger Scruton as reactionaries when the views and values of the latter two are in fact quite similar to those of Adorno. Is it a generational thing?

[Satori]

Well I do think it's problematic when someone dismisses Persona or Stravinsky on such political grounds but then goes on to make a case for Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 or Tony Scott.

What I dislike is when people use work that's vastly inferior on an aesthetic level as a club with which to beat say Persona or Rite of Spring on political grounds.

Okay, but I'd suggest the problem is with the word "dismisses;" i.e. the critic isn't actually working through the issues in Persona but uses it as a straw figure to champion some other film. This is basically the Armond White move and I agree that it doesn't do anyone any good. However, that doesn't mean that Ms. 45 isn't also a film that rewards close analysis and discussion. Why should we dismiss Ferrara just because he isn't as aesthetically brilliant as Bergman? Again, I don't think we have to choose sides: I think that both Ferrara and Bergman are worth studying. Just because I think exploitation films should be taken seriously doesn't mean I am implicitly condemning Bergman, et al as "pseudo-highbrow bourgeois notions of culture."

Now on the Adorno note, there's something I've always wondered. I come across people who love Adorno and praise him as a savior of "high art" in the face of capitalist oligarchy, yet they'll dismiss others such as John Simon and Roger Scruton as reactionaries when the views and values of the latter two are in fact quite similar to those of Adorno. Is it a generational thing?

My point was just that there have been Marxists who argue that seemingly apolitical "high art" is radical and who reject mass culture. Adorno needs to be historicized; it's not as if we should just take his arguments and apply them to our current historical situation.

[rrenault]

For the record, I don't think Ms. 45 is awful. I would say it's an okay film that I do, however, feel to be essential viewing for reasons other than "aesthetic brilliance" and Ferrara's a fine filmmaker, so that's not the point. So I'm not suggesting Ferrara shouldn't be discussed. He's a key figure in American independent cinema, but my larger point is where do we draw the line? When does one's examination of exploitation films at the expense of 'canonized' cinema become nothing more than a form of "dead end geekery"? At what point.

Maybe I just feel that if one were to place John Simon's or Roger Scruton's "stodginess" alongside the cultural Marxism of Hoberman, although perhaps he's not the best example, the former winds up seeming the lesser of two evils.

[rrenault]

My point was just that there have been Marxists who argue that seemingly apolitical "high art" is radical and who reject mass culture.

Oh, I agree, and they've come in the form of Godard and Pasolini, but I still don't think that invalidates my overall argument. But even these Marxists can occasionally struggle to put their political biases aside when a work's 'radicalism' isn't so readily apparent at first glance. Read David Walsh at the World Socialist Web Site on Eric Rohmer. They're a different breed from the cultural Marxists I've been discussing, but I still get the sense they need to have "radicalism" and "subversion" shoved right in their face in order to be satisfied.

[Satori]

I don't think that arguing about where to "draw the line" about which exploitation films to study is very productive, so I'll sit that one out. I'm also not sure that a critic on a world socialist website should be expected to put their biases aside when talking about Eric Rohmer since I'd imagine someone reading about Rohmer on that site expects it to be addressed from a left perspective.

But if your argument is just that people should actually do the work of analysis and not automatically dismiss something because it doesn't "shove radicalism in their face," then I suppose I agree with you. I just wanted to address what I saw as a problematic binary between leftwing politics and "high art" in your initial posts.

[Mr Sausage]

Even the High Romantics cannot be accused generally of yearning for the idyllic. There was hardly a more radical and political poet than Shelley in that time. You can lump Blake in, if you want. And while Byron's topics probably fit into the idea of Romanticism, his style is clearly oriented at classicism.

It's debatable I guess. Revolutionaries tend to have idealistic longings, and there was definitely both a strong pastoral element in Romanticism and a visionary impulse that sought an earthly paradise. But the Romantics tended to understand that their project to create a more natural human with an unfettered, regenerating imagination was doomed to failure, hence despairing later poems like Wordsworth's Peele Castle, Shelley's The Triumph of Life, or Keats' The Fall of Hyperion.

Pound and Eliot could not have been more wrong about the Romantics.

[domino harvey]

Not sure where else to put this, but since he wrote for Cahiers I'll mention it here: Somewhat randomly, Pierre Kast's 1960 film La morte saison des amours is up on Amazon Prime for free with English subs. There are no circulating copies of this title, with or without subs, that I'm aware of

[domino harvey]

Emilie Bickerton’s A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema gets a big thumbs down from me. The book proposes to trace the various reinventions and manifestations of the influential film journal, but it becomes apparent early on that Bickerton is coming to the project with some serious critical deficiencies. Her thesis is hinged on the idea that the journal began apolitically and only developed a political bent starting in the sixties, with its increased political focus becoming responsible for its eventual irrelevancy. She bases this on taking the Cahiers critics' word on it that they weren't political instead of actually looking at the films they collectively praise or looking for recurring patterns and shared attributes. The notion that Cahiers and the auteur theory was ever not politically motivated and instead was born out of pure aesthetic praise is not only nonsense, it’s ignorant to the point of delusion. Given how rarely Bickerton engages with the films championed by the journal in its first two decades, and even then how all her examples are the most well-known and over-trodden, I propose that Bickerton hasn’t actually seen many of the movies bolstered or torn down by the journal in its seminal years, and this results in her gravely misunderstanding the journal’s initial function. Though I admittedly know less about the latter years which form the rest of her book, it’s hard to trust her take on them given how spectacularly she bungles the years I know well.

The film that gets the most coverage in the book, Rene Allio’s I, Pierre Reviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother… (unseen by me, but what a great title), is positioned as a film that radically shaped Cahiers’ critical approach in mid-70s. But I suspect from how it sticks out in the text that this just happened to be one of the few films under discussion that the author had actually seen, and so it was granted a disproportionate sense of importance overall. Bickerton really only seems to talk about films, fleetingly, in the later chapters, often only to disparage them. She mocks Cahiers for praising two of Pialat’s widely accepted masterpieces, Under the Sun of Satan and Van Gogh. She repeatedly laughs at the idea of Assayas and Carax as important filmmakers worthy of praise (I’m no Carax booster either, but I wouldn’t go as far as she does here because it just looks infantile to be this negatively contrary), among others. Even putting Isabelle Huppert on the cover is cause for derision. But gee, Michael Haneke is a genius.

The negativity is pervasive, and exhausting. Bickerton is an editor for New Left Review and her definition of the Left precludes all political leanings not conjoined to anti-Capitalism, and so her affinity for the more militantly leftist periods of the journal become glaringly mistreated with kid gloves. Bickerton agrees that Cahiers in the 70s eventually became bogged down in academic “legalese,” yet she seems far more at home in these concepts than film in general. She derides all American auteurs of the seventies out of hand as being false auteurs. All of them. No attempts are made to explore how Cahiers approached mainstream film in its later years, only that by doing so it had sold out. This is the punk rock fan of film books, with authenticity made more important than insight, and like most sullen teenagers hankering for the good ol’ days, Bickerton has little concept of what those days even were. A worthless book and, what’s worse, a great squandering of an interesting and still relevant topic, that of Caheirs du Cinema’s legacy versus its actual output.

[zedz]

The film that gets the most coverage in the book, Rene Allio’s I, Pierre Reviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother… (unseen by me, but what a great title), is positioned as a film that radically shaped Cahiers’ critical approach in mid-70s.

It's a great film, and it's available with English subs from Artificial Eye. It's part of that post-New Wave era of very challenging French filmmaking from the 70s (e.g. Pialat, Akerman, Garrel, Queysanne).

[domino harvey]

I will definitely check it out despite its presence here! Here's a good, on-point critique of the book from Bright Lights Film Journal

EDIT: This review's even better

[swo17]

The film that gets the most coverage in the book, Rene Allio’s I, Pierre Reviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother… (unseen by me, but what a great title), is positioned as a film that radically shaped Cahiers’ critical approach in mid-70s.

It's a great film, and it's available with English subs from Artificial Eye. It's part of that post-New Wave era of very challenging French filmmaking from the 70s (e.g. Pialat, Akerman, Garrel, Queysanne).

For what it's worth, it made my '70s list.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I will definitely check it out despite its presence here! Here's a good, on-point critique of the book from Bright Lights Film Journal

EDIT: This review's even better

That Bill Krohn piece (the second link) pretty much says it all, its main value being to expose how little acquaintance she seems to have with the magazine she's writing about. I honestly believe a lot of her "research" involved looking at a table of contents and then moving on to the next issue, which means not only howlers like the Pinocchio confusion, but also missing out on films and filmmakers discussed only as part of larger pieces (e.g. festival coverage), or in columns and capsule reviews.

For example: a big part of her case for the prosecution is that the "Hitchcocko-Hawksians" of the '50s were obsessed with Hollywood and it was only later that Cahiers really started to turn its attention elsewhere. The charge against the Hitchcocko-Hawksians is dubious to begin with and only becomes moreso when she cites Bergman and Kurosawa as two examples of filmmakers within this expanded "cinematic horizon" of the '60s, which again suggests she didn't spend much time with the magazine—or even with Godard on Godard, which has his "Bergmanorama" article from 1958 and a (negative) take on Kurosawa that appeared as part of a longer article in 1954. The February 1957 "Petit journal du cinéma" column was a mini-roundtable on Kurosawa and Mizoguchi between Moullet, Rivette, and Bazin (Bazin had some faint praise for Kurosawa, Moullet and Rivette none). Cahiers in the '50s didn't give Kurosawa a fair shake, though Moullet eventually liked The Hidden Fortress enough to put it in his top ten of 1964, but the idea that they were too busy slobbering over Fuller and Ray to notice filmmakers in Sweden and Japan is tendentious to the extreme.

[domino harvey]

So, many of you may be familiar with the Cahiers top tens disseminated online here and elsewhere. Like so much of lore surrounding Cahiers du Cinema, these too paint in incomplete picture, as it turns out the lists for every year extended well-past ten films. Why did this ancient site only pick the top ten and then regurgitate it to others, where it has long since been carried over elsewhere? Dunno, but I spent entirely too long going through every issue of Cahiers to compile the full lists, only to discover afterwards when trying to ID two films I couldn't translate that the editor of the Harvard University Press comps already did the same. Ah well, to the best of my knowledge these full lists still aren’t available online, so here you go, world:


1951

01 the River
02 Le journal d’un cure de campagne
03 Miracle in Milan
04 Los Olvidados
05 All About Eve
06 Miss Julie
07 Conaca di un amore
08 Sunset Boulevard
09 Edouard et Caroline
10 Francesco giullare di dio
11 Les Miracles n’ont lieu qu’une fois
12 Il Cristo proibito
13 A Walk in the Sun
14 Christ in Concrete
15 La Course de taureaux


1955

01 Voyage to Italy
02 Ordet
03 the Big Knife
04 Lola Montes
05 Rear Window
06 Les mauvis recontres
07 La strada
08 the Barefoot Contessa
09 Johnny Guitar
10 Kiss Me Deadly
(Next dozen are unnumbered)
Death of a Cyclist
To Catch a Thief
Rififi
Salt of the Earth
Raices
Apache
French Cancan
Blackboard Jungle
the White Sheik
Lourdes et ses miracles
(Hey, it was all worth the independent research, as the editor left out the last two films:)
East of Eden
L'oro di Napoli


1956

01 Un condamné à mort s'est échappé
02 Elena et les hommes
03 Rebel Without a Cause
04 Confidential Report
05 Senso
06 Smiles of a Summer Night
07 Il Bidone
08 L’Amore
09 Picnic
10 La Paura
11 While the City Sleeps
11 It’s Always Fair Weather
13 Bus Stop
13 the Man Who Knew Too Much
13 La Traversée de Paris
hors conqours Nuit et brouillard


1957

01 A King in New York
02 Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
03 Nights of Cabiria
04 the Wrong Man
05 the Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz
06 Sawdust and Tinsel
07 Bigger Than Life
08 the Girl Can’t Help It
09 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
10 Twelve Angry Men
11 A Face in the Crowd
12 Bitter Victory
13 La casa del angel
14 the Bridge on the River Kwai
15 Sait-on jamais
15 the Crucified Lovers
17 Porte des Lilas
18 Written on the Wind
18 Hollywood or Bust!
20 Toro (Velo)


1958

01 Touch of Evil
02 the Seventh Seal
03 La notti bianche
04 Il Grido
05 Bonjour Tristesse
06 Dreams
07 Une Vie
08 Mon Oncle
09 the Quiet American
10 Summer Interlude
11 Les Girls
12 Les Amants
13 Kanal
14 Montparnasse 19
15 Waiting Women


1959

01 Ugetsu Monogatari
02 Hiroshima mon amour
03 Ivan the Terrible
04 Pickpocket
05 Les Quatre cents coups
06 Rio Bravo
07 Wild Strawberries
08 Vertigo
09 Princess Yang Kwei Fei
10 the Tiger of Eschnapur
11 Moi, un Noir
12 Anatomy of a Murder
13 Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
14 La Tête contre les murs
15 Il Generale Della Rovere
16 Run of the Arrow
17 Les Cousins
18 Big Deal on Madonna Street
19 Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!
20 Deux hommes dans Manhattan
21 Wind Across the Everglades


1960

01 Sansho the Bailiff
02 L’Avventura
03 Breathless
04 Shoot the Piano Player
05 Poem of the Sea
06 Les bonnes femmes
07 Nazarin
08 Moonfleet
09 Psycho
10 Le trou
11 Zazie dans le metro
12 Party Girl
13 Le testament d’Orphee
14 Pather Pachali
15 Time Without Pity
15 Eyes Without a Face
17 La dolce vita
18 Heller in Pink Tights
18 Bells are Ringing
18 Suddenly, Last Summer


1961

01 Lola
02 Une femme est une femme
03 Paris nous appartient
04 Rocco and His Brothers
05 Shin Heike Monogotari
06 At Great Cost
07 La notte
08 L’Annee darniere a Marienbad
09 Elmer Gantry
10 Two Rode Together
11 Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier
12 Exodus
13 the Criminal (Losey)
14 La Pyramide humaine
15 Shadows
16 the Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse
17 the Young One
18 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
19 Une aussi longue absence
20 the Lady With the Dog (Kheifits)
21 the Naked Island
22 Les Godelureaux
23 the Bellboy
24 Léon Morin, prêtre
25 Blind Date (Losey)
26 Pickup on South Street
27 Description d’un combat
28 Mother Joan of the Angels
29 Black Sunday
30 Era notte a Roma
31 Dov'è la libertà?
32 Underworld USA
33 Judgment at Nuremberg
34 L'enclos
35 Chronique d’un été


1962

01 Vivre sa vie
02 Jules et Jim
03 Hatari!
04 Viridiana
05 Le Signe du Lion
06 Wild River
07 the Trial
08 Through a Glass Darkly
09 Le Caporal épinglé
10 Vanina Vanini
11 Advise & Consent
12 Cléo de 5 à 7
13 Ride the High Country
14 Education sentimentale
15 the Ladies’ Man
15 the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
17 West Side Story
18 L’eclisse
19 Splendor in the Grass
20 the Flaming Years
21 Merrill’s Marauders
22 Il lavoro (Visconti’s segment of Boccaccio 70)
23 the Miracle Worker
24 Adorable menteuse
25 the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
26 Un cœur gros comme ça
27 Le Rendez-vous de minuit
28 Primary
29 Les Honneurs de la guerre
30 Too Late Blues


1963

01 Le Mépris
02 the Birds
03 the Exterminating Angel
04 Adieu Philippine
05 Procès de Jeanne d’Arc
06 Muriel
07 the Nutty Professor
08 Les Carabiniers
09 Salvator Giuliano
10 8 /12
11 Banditi a Orgosolo
11 Il gattopardo
13 Donovan’s Reef
14 the Chapman Report
15 Harakiri
16 the World of Apu
17 Cronaca familiare
18 Hands Over the City
19 Cleopatra
20 the Cardinal
21 Two Weeks in Another Town
21 Le Petit Soldat
23 Le Feu follet
24 Nine Days of One Year
25 Les Abysses
25 Il posto
27 This Sporting Life
28 La Baie des Anges
28 Tom Jones
30 Irma la douce
31 Knife in the Water
32 Il sorpasso
33 the Errand Boy
34 La Joli Mai
35 Vacances portugaises


1964

01 Bande à part
02 Gertrud
03 Marnie
04 Une femme mariee
05 Man’s Favorite Sport?
06 Red Desert
07 America, America
08 the Silence
09 All These Women
10 the Servant
11 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
12 La Peau douce
13 Wagon Master
14 Passenger (Munk)
15 the Patsy
16 A Distant Trumpet
17 I promessi sposi
18 Forma Gordeev
19 Dr Strangelove
20 the Damned (Losey)
21 Pour la suite du monde
22 La Jetée
23 My Fair Lady
24 Il Terrorista
25 David and Lisa
26 La Punition (Rouch)
27 Le Journal d’une femme de chambre
28 Il tempo si è fermato
29 the Cool World
30 La Bataille de France
31 Woman in the Dunes
32 Cheyenne Autumn
33 Cyrano et d’Artagnan
34 A Hard Day’s Night
35 the Hidden Fortress


1965

01 Pierrot le fou
02 Sandra
03 Winter Light
04 Gare du Nord (Jean Rouch’s Paris vu par… segment)
05 Alphaville
06 Lilith
07 Shock Corridor
08 the Family Jewels
09 the Gospel According to St Matthew
10 Le Bonheur
11 L’Amour à la chaîne
12 Black Peter
13 Zacharovannaya Desna
14 La Vieille Dame indigne
15 Kiss Me, Stupid
16 Place de l'Etoile (Eric Rohmer’s Paris vu par… segment)
17 A High Wind in Jamaica
18 La 317eme Section
19 Young Cassidy
20 the Disorderly Orderly
21 La Muette (Claude Chabrol’s Paris vu par… segment)
22 In Harm’s Way
23 Juliet of the Spirits
24 Metel
25 Vidas Secas
26 the Sandpiper
27 King and Country
28 Montparnasse-Levallois (Jean-Luc Godard’s Paris vu par… segment)
29 Le journal d'une femme en blanc
30 A Shot in the Dark


1966

01 Au hasard Balthazar
02 Walkover
03 Not Reconciled
04 Masculin feminin
05 L’Homme au crâne rasé
06 7 Women
07 the Rise to Power of Louis XIV
08 Torn Curtain
09 Red Line 7000
10 Fists in the Pocket
11 Chimes at Midnight
12 La Guerre est finie
13 the Naked Kiss
14 Fahrenheit 451
15 Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
16 Marie Soleil
17 Something Different
18 Loves of a Blonde
19 La chat dans le sac
20 Brigitte et Brigitte


1967

01 Persona
02 Belle de jour
03 Week-End
04 La Chasse au lion a l’arc
05 Playtime
06 the Big Mouth
07 Daisies
07 La Religieuse
09 Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle
10 La Chinoise
11 Made in USA
12 Shakespeare Wallah
13 Os Fuzis
14 Méditerranée (Pollet)
15 A Countess from Hong Kong
16 the First Teacher
17 Le Départ
18 La Collectionneuse
19 Blowup
19 Les Demoiselles de Rochefort


1968

01 Chronicle of Anna-Magdalena Bach
02 Before the Revolution
03 the Edge
04 Toby Damnit
05 II ne faut pas mourir pour ça
06 Le Regne du jour
07 Barrier
08 Baisers voles
09 Ride in the Whirlwind
10 La Mariée était en noir
10 Les Contrebandieres
12 Oedipus Rex
13 2001: A Space Odyssey
14 Hour of the Wolf
15 Rosemary’s Baby
16 Point Blank
16 Les Idoles
18 Un soir, un train
19 Reflections in a Golden Eye
20 Bonnie and Clyde

[knives]

The Chabrol segment made it? That's probably the biggest surprise of the list.

[domino harvey]

The Godard segment is his worst film from this period, so it even eking by is ridic. For me seeing West Side Story was better liked than L'Eclisse is the game-changing stunner.

Worth emphasizing that these lists are compiled the same way we do list threads: These are based on the yearly top tens submitted by Cahiers critics. Each listed film thus gets ten votes per year and the final lists are the ranked results of all lists. However, every year's round-up (and thus the final tally) also hosts some special guests' lists (filmmakers, fellow critics from other journals), some of which are not always aligned with Cahiers' hardline, which explains a few of the uncharacteristic choices the further down each year's list you go.

[Rayon Vert]

Godard gets his 4 films of '67 in the top 11! And he nails the top spot four years in a row. (Can't understand that level of admiration for Bande à part, though.)

[Rayon Vert]

Can't see North by Northwest in there.