The Great Ones

So, the other night I sat down to watch Vertigo for the first time. (I realize this calls into question my earlier claim about having seen most of Hitchcock's films, but I promise that I have! Vertigo was the only really famous film of Hitchcock's that I hadn't seen.) I was already familiar with the plot of the film, I even knew the characters' names, because Vertigo is one of those films often classified as "Great." The "Great" films are the ones in the canon, the ones that get dissected in college courses, the ones that always show up on the "ten best..." lists.

I started thinking, what other "greats" have I missed. First, I thought of the canonical films I had seen: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey... I concluded I had seen most of the obvious titles, so I tried to think of the ones I hadn't seen that are also considered great. The titles that came to mind first were Bride of Frankenstein, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Shining.

Of course, I have reasonable excuses for never watching these movies. Bride of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein for that matter, are so affliated with Halloween that they seem like seasonal films. I never feel like watching them until October, but by then they are checked out from the video store - because apparently everyone else has the same inclination. As for McCabe, well I'm not a big Julie Christie fan, so I've just never been motivated to see it. And The Shining is obviously far too scary for me to actually watch.

There are many places to find a list of great films. Some lists, like AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies or past winners of the Best Picture Academy Award, have slightly more credibility than others like IMDB's Top 250 . I decided to peruse Roger Ebert's The Great Movies because I thought there would be a variety of foreign and American films, as well as old and new films. I was pleased to see that out of the 315 movies on Ebert's list, I had seen 137. While that is a pretty respectable number, I still hadn't seen over half of the list.

It's not quite time for New Year's Resolutions, but I'm making one for 2010. Starting now and throughout next year, I will attempt to watch as many of The Great Movies as I can. Some will be easy - that Apocalypse Now DVD has been sitting on my bookcase for years. Others will be more difficult - I really don't want to watch El Topo. I think the real challenge will be choosing to rent Bergman's Winter Light (Great) when I actually feel like renting Cockfighter (non-Great). There may be almost 200 of Ebert's Greats left for me to choose from, but there are thousands of non-Greats begging to be watched, calling out to me with their Siren song.