Nearing the End of "They Shoot Pictures"

I've been working through the They Shoot Pictures Don't They Top 1000 Films List, henceforth the TSPDT, for the last couple of years to better acquaint myself with world cinema classics. My total currently stands somewhere north of 800 films, heavily weighted toward the top of the list. I've discovered that this usually means I've seen at least half of the films on any similar sized best movie lists with 500-1000 entries, and usually 80-90% of the smaller lists of 100 entries or less. I've spent a lot of time this year hunting down obscurities like Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy and Roberto Rossellini's films with Ingrid Bergman. The highest ranked TSPDT film that I haven't seen is Jean Eustache's "The Mother and the Whore," at #191. It's a three-and-a-half hour French romantic drama starring Jean-Pierre Leaud. After that comes Béla Tarr's seven hour "Sátántangó" at #243. I'm not really in a hurry to tackle either, though there are still quite a few titles further down on the list that I'm curious about.

I've mentioned before that the point of using a list like this isn't to finish the list. Considering the continuous influx of new titles with each new yearly revision, that would be an exercise in futility. The point is to keep exposing myself to new films and directors, which TSPDT has been great for. I can't count the number of wonderful, obscure foreign films I've watched simply because the titles were on the list. In some cases, I've given directors I didn't initially care for, like Alain Renais, enough second chances for them to grow on me and became favorites. However, like all movie lists, TSPDT has its own biases and blind spots, which is why I've found myself going back to it less and less often in recent months. As I've worked my way down to the most obscure and most idiosyncratic entries, the more obvious it's become that their inclusion is often a matter of personal taste or quirks in tabulating the votes. So even as I get closer and closer to actually finished the list, the less interest I have in actually doing so.

Instead I've started looking at other sources for recommendations, including other movie lists. The various American Film Institute lists, for instance, deal only in mainstream American and British films, but they often take cultural impact into consideration, which some of the more pretentious resources don't. Award and festival winners have often been helpful, because they get around the tendency of listmakers to make sure that certain important auteurs are well-represented, which tends to mean they're over-represented. I like looking at older lists, because there's less consensus between them as to which classic films are the most important, whereas it's hard to find a modern list that doesn't namecheck "Citizen Kane," "Vertigo," and "The Rules of the Game." Also, after doing more reading on film history and film theory, I've decided there's really very little point to watching the oldest, pioneering silent films like "Birth of a Nation" or "Cabiria" if you're not adequately armed with all the context and analysis to understand why they were so pioneering in the first place. And vice versa, it's usually pretty dull reading about these films if you haven't had a chance to see them.

I'd like to go back and rewatch some of the titles I saw when I was just starting the TSPDT, because I didn't have nearly the experience or the background to really appreciate them. Maybe I'd like Truffaut's "400 Blows" better this time, having seen Jean-Pierre Leaud grow up through so many other films. However, the urge to keep expanding my breadth of knowledge keeps driving me to seek out new titles, and there's no end to them. As the old saying goes, the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know, and that's certainly true in this case. I'd say I'm more informed about film than the average film fan, but there always seems to be another major director I haven't heard of, or another movement in some far-flung corner of the globe I really should get to know. I love the process, but after 800 TSPDT films, I'm a little worn out mentally.

At this point, there is no way I'm going to be able to keep up the pace that I used to on the TSPDT list. Many of the remaining films are difficult to access or multi-part, multi-hour endurance contests. I'd be very surprised if I make it to 900 films by this time next year. However, I think I'll get by fine without the list, as I've seen enough of its recommended foreign and independent and experimental films now that I think I'll be fine going off and exploring the classics on my own. As huge and intimidating as the TSPDT list is, in many ways it's just a starting point for the serious cineaste.
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