Toronto Film Festival announces 100 Essential Films

Posted Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 3:35 PM Central

by John Couture

The end of the year is all about "Best Of" lists and it seems to reason that there's always room for one more. /Film reminded us recently of a list that Toronto International Film Festival put together a few months ago.

It's list of 100 Essential Films and they allege that it contains the 100 essential films that every serious film buff must see. While sure it's easy to simply dismiss this as just another list, I thought it would be nice to include it as most lists of this nature seem to be created by Americans and dominated by American films.

I don't mean to belittle Hollywood by any stretch, but sometimes it's good to remember that the world doesn't revolve around the United States. At least, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't.

I was surprised that I've actually seen many of the films on the list and I hope to complete the list soon. How many have you seen?

Here's the top ten from the list and you can see the entire list here.

1. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
3. L'AVVENTURA (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
4. THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola)
5. PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson)
6. SEVEN SAMURAI (Akira Kurosawa)
7. PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray)
8. CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz)
9. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
10. BICYCLE THIEVES (Vittorio De Sica)