Back in 2017, I filled out one of those lists where you pick a favorite movie for every year that you've been alive. Now that I've finished off my Top Ten project goals and have watched a lot more older films, I'm ready to pick favorites for all those years, pre 1980, when I wasn't alive. To keep the length reasonable, however, I'll be stopping at 1939, which gives me forty-one years of movies. As with the last list, I stress that this is a list of favorite films. Not top. Not best. Not most worthwhile. Just favorite. And I'm going to cheat. So here we go.
1979 - The Muppet Movie
1978 - Superman
1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1976 - Carrie
1975 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show
1974 - Young Frankenstein
1973 - Robin Hood
1972 - What's Up Doc?
1971 - Bedknobs and Broomsticks
1970 - Little Big Man
1969 - Last Summer
1968 - The Lion in Winter
1967 - Le Samourai
1966 - Daisies
1965 - The Sound of Music
1964 - Mary Poppins
1963 - The Big City
1962 - Lawrence of Arabia
1961 - One Hundred and One Dalmatians
1960 - Psycho
1959 - Some Like it Hot
1958 - Mon Oncle
1957 - Nights of Cabiria
1956 - The Mystery of Picasso
1955 - The Night of the Hunter
1954 - Hobson's Choice
1953 - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1952 - Ikiru
1951 - The African Queen
1950 - Born Yesterday
1949 - Adam's Rib
1948 - Bicycle Thieves
1947 - Record of a Tenement Gentleman
1946 - It's a Wonderful Life
1945 - Christmas in Connecticut
1944 - Arsenic and Old Lace
1943 - Jane Eyre
1942 - Bambi
1941 - Dumbo
1940 - Pinocchio
1939 - The Wizard of Oz
A few notes - I played fair and did this year by year, looking through my data on Letterboxd and Icheckmovies, and going with my gut instead of my pretentious film nerd head. If I had to watch one of these films right now, what would I pick? Most of the time it wasn't a masterpiece, but a piece of entertainment.
As expected, the pickings were very slim in the earlier years, and I mostly stuck to nostalgic old favorites - lots of Disney animation, light comedies, and musicals. I managed to get in a few foreign films and artsier titles in the 50s. It wasn't really until 1967 that I had difficulty picking titles immediately, because suddenly the number of good films I'd seen exploded. I think "Le Samourai" only won that year because we recently lost Alain Delon. Ask me again next week, and it might be "The Graduate" or "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" Some years were far more stacked than others - 1970 barely had any titles I was considering, while 1971 had at least ten, including "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," "A New Leaf," "The Boy Friend," "Harold and Maude," and "Fiddler on the Roof."
I thought I did pretty good job of keeping nostalgia at bay through most of the 50s and 60s - I mean, objectively "Mary Poppins" is the greatest film to have been made in 1964 by any measure, but it really caught up to me the closer and closer I got to the 80s, because these were all the films I grew up watching. I literally watched the 1973 animated "Robin Hood" daily at one point, because it was one of the few movies I had on home video.
I'm surprised that no Stanley Kubrick films made it, but in the end Robert Stevenson was more important to me as a kid. And no matter how many movies I watch, I'm still a kid at heart.
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