Yoel Meranda

Ways of Seeing

This is my list of 100 greatest films "Beyond the Canon". Since it is impossible to decide/define what is "the canon", I decided to strictly follow the rules below:

  1. The films in Iain Stott's "canon" list are not allowed (because the main purpose is to go beyond the accepted canon).
  2. The films already on my 50 greatest films list are not allowed (because it would be too repetitive otherwise).
  3. One film per filmmaker (because I'd like to leave room for less known filmmakers).

This list tells nothing about which directors I like more since it depended a lot on the two lists mentioned above. I tried to order the films according to their own value and not the overall quality of the director's work. For example, Mizoguchi is one of my five favorite directors but here his film is sixteenth. When I wasn't so sure between two films by the same filmmaker, I tried to choose the film that's less well known (i.e. "The Family Plot" over "Marnie", or "Man in a Bubble" over "The Lead Shoes", or "Mouse Wreckers" over "Duck Amuck").

Some incredible directors such as Carl Dreyer, D.W. Griffith, Joseph Mankiewicz, Leo McCarey, Dziga Vertov and Louis Feuillade are not listed, I assume because I haven't seen their non-cannonized works.

My list of 50 Greatest Films, along with its introduction, lists all the filmmakers I consider to be truly great.

A comment I'd like to make about "the canon" and its worst myth:
I firmly disagree that Orson Welles had his artistic climax with "Citizen Kane". "Citizen Kane" is a very great film, that's true, but all of the films I've seen that he made after that, starting from "The Magnificent Ambersons", are better works. I can think of nine films directed by this great genius, all of them being better than "Citizen Kane". My personal favorite is "Chimes at Midnight" but there are many I haven't seen.

I think all the movies below are better than "The Godfather" (or many other much-acclaimed and cannonized movies I don't want to list).

The order is more or less arbitrary. I compiled the list on September 2009.

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