griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, Robert Bresson's 'Au Hasard Balthazar' follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding.

Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson's unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this simple story becomes a moving parable about purity and transcendence.

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To the enigmatic question "Who are Seconds?", the film's original poster responded: "The answer is almost too terrifying for words.... The story of a man who buys for himself a totally new life. A man who lives the age-old dream - If only I could live my life all over again.

" John Frankenheimer directs Rock Hudson as a "second": that is, the newly plastic-surgery altered "reboot" of, in this instance, a listless banker named Arthur Hamilton. Such procedures are carried out by a secret organization known only as "The Company," with the promise of giving an individual a chance at making a fresh start at life... but at what cost? Master lighting cameraman James Wong Howe provides the paranoiac atmosphere to the skewed reality of what came to be widely considered one of Frankenheimer's very best films.

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Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are ideal as malevolent marrieds Martha and George in first-time film director Mike Nichols' searing film of Edward Albee's groundbreaking 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'.

Taylor won her second Academy Award (and New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and British Film Academy Best Actress Awards). Burton matches her as her emotionally spent spouse. And George Segal and Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Sandy Dennis score as another couple straying into their destructive path. The movie won a total of five Academy Awards and remains a taboo-toppling landmark over 40 years later.

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Gillo Pontecorvo's multi-award winning picture 'The Battle of Algiers' has perhaps never been as pertinent as it is now. Set from 1954 to 1962, the movie uses documentary-style black and white photography to recreate real events.

Algerian liberation fighters use terrorist techniques against the French colonial occupiers; the French retaliate with brutal military force. Brilliantly directed set-pieces and remarkable crowd scenes make the film a masterpiece; the ominous familiarity of its subject makes it a must-see" - The Times How to win battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in Cafes. Sounds familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.'' - Pentagon tlyer for their in-house screening of Battle Of Algiers All the armies of the world - including the Pentagon - will never, but never, be able to conquer a country which wants to control its own destiny" - Saadi Yacef

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Received with a combination of bewilderment and outright derision upon its initial release, André Delvaux's first feature film has undergone a critical reevaluation over the years and is now regarded as one of the seminal works of Belgian cinema.

Adapted from a novel by Flemish writer Johan Daisne, this is a story about Govert Miereveld (Senne Rouffaer), a lawyer from a small Flemish town who also teaches in a school for girls. He harbors a secret love for one of his young students, Fran (Beata Tyszkiewicz), whom he loses touch with after her graduation. Some time later, Miereveld has to attend an autopsy, and the shock of the experience deeply affects his mental balance. He finds out - or he believes so - that Fran has become a popular singer. He arranges to meet her to finally reveal his feelings. The film is decidedly ambiguous about the tragic denouement that follows, suggesting that it might be a figment of the protagonist's disturbed mind.

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Bergman's masterpiece of self-doubt, identity and eroticism is an audacious example of cinematic art. The notional story centres on newly mute actor Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) recuperating at her coastal holiday home in the care of a nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson).

As tensions between the pair grow, their very selves seem to blur, chronology becomes uncertain and what is real and unreal loses significance. Yet the true impact of Persona goes beyond mere storytelling, touching, as Bergman said, 'wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover'.

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Milos Hrma, a bumbling dispatcher's apprentice at a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, longs to liberate himself from his virginity.

Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, he embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Milos becomes involved in a plot to blow up a German ammunition train, but when the plan backfires, he is forced to commit the ultimate act of courage.

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Widely regarded as Tarkovsky's finest film, 'Andrei Rublev' charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and Tatar invastions.

Made on an epic scale, it does not flinch from portraying the savagery of the time, from which, almost inexplicably, the serenity of Rublev's art arose. The great set-pieces - the sack of Vladimir, the casting of the bell, the pagan ceremonies of St. John's night and the Russian crucifixion are tours-de-force of visceral film-making.

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Professional photographer Thomas saw nothing. And he saw everything. Enlargements of pictures he secretly took of a romantic couple in the park reveal a murder in progress. Or do they? Blowup is an influential, stylish study of paranoid intrigue and disorientation.

It is also a time capsule of mod London, a mindscape of the era's fashions, free love, parties, music (Herbie Hancock wrote the score and The Yardbirds riff at a club) and hip langour. David Hemmings plays the jaded photog enlivened by the mystery in his photos. Vanessa Redgrave is the elusive woman pictured in them. And the enigma of what you see, what you don't see and what the camera sees is yours to solve.

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Clint Eastwood returns as the invincible "Man With No Name", this time teaming with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) to pursue a fortune in stolen gold.

But teamwork doesn't come naturally to such strong-willed outlaws, and they soon discover that their greatest challenge may be to stay focused - and stay alive - in a country ravaged by war.

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A satirical, subversive, surreal and irreverent story of rebellion, Vera Chytilova's classic film is arguably the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960's.

Two young women, both named Marie (Ivana Karbanová / Jitka Cerhová), revolt against a degenerate and decayed society by attacking symbols of wealth and bourgeois culture in hilarious and mind-warpingly innovative ways. Defiant feminist statement? Nihilistic, avant-garde comedy? Refreshingly uncompromising, Daisies is a riotous, punk-rock poem of a film that remains a cinematic enigma and continues to provoke, stimulate and entertain audiences and influence filmmakers even today.

"Report" is a fragmentary, harrowing attempt to come to terms with the circumstances of the Kennedy assassination, and especially, in light of the infamous Zapruder tape that captured the event, to understand what it means to document or report on an event like this.

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Following on from the success of 'Les Parapluies de Cherbourg' comes 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort' - Jacques Demy's large-scale tribute to the Hollywood musical featuring screen legend Gene Kelly The story centres on twin sisters Delphine and Solange (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve

and Frangoise Dorleac) who, tired of their humdrum existence, dream of finding success and romance in Paris. The superb ensemble, also featuring Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, George Chakiris and Grover Dale, weave and wander around the town, looking for and just missing the love of their lives.

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Inspired by a real article on housewife prostitution, the film examines Godard's theory that if you lived in Paris, at that time, one had to prostitute oneself to survive.

This 'sociological fable' is shot through the eyes of Juliette (Marina Vlady), a housewife who spends one day a week in central Paris selling her body on the street in the hope that she will be able to escape the high rise suburban drudgery, in which she lives with her family, and find happiness.

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In the hypothetical Latin-American country of Eldorado, the idealistic and anarchist poet and journalist Paulo Martins (Jardel Filho) fights against the populist governor, Felipe Vieira (Jose Lewgoy), and the conservative president Porfirio Diaz (Paulo Autran), supported by revolutionary forces.

Paulo is depressed, since the two corrupt politicians were his former friends and have been elected with his moral support-Paulo Martins opposes the two equally corrupt political candidates. Paulo is torn between the madness of the elite and the blind submission of the masses.