I don’t care about “Vertigo”, “Citizen Kane” or the greatest movies of all time: that’s why all-time lists should be personal

The idea for this article goes back to my master’s degree in film studies. In a seminar with guest lecturer and film journalist Verena Lueken, I and my fellow students were asked about our favorite films. We need to record and present our top 10 by the next meeting. It’s actually an exciting task because choosing your favorite movies can reveal a lot about a person’s taste in movies and their personality. There’s a reason why when I first visit new acquaintances, I first look at the collection of movies (and other media) in the apartment.

Unfortunately, the presentation of the selected top films turned out to be an extremely boring event: Again and again “Fear of heights“, at least one film by a virtuoso director Stanley Kubrick and then of course “Citizen Kane“massively. The best lists of aspiring film scholars are a real snore and for the most part they all read the same way – and that is completely understandable, because after all, all seminar participants want to show that they know and appreciate the great classics of film history . A “Fast & Furious” would be quite out of step and such a choice would probably get some strange looks.

Classics also have their place

Don’t get me wrong, classics certainly have their place in lists like this. There will almost certainly be a Kubrick in my top 10 as well. For me it’s probably “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the first copy of which I bought as a teenager from my hairdresser (who also had a small junk corner in his shop). To this day, my mother’s words ring in my ears when she said to me, “Very boring movie, but you can watch it sometime.” Since that day, I’ve probably seen the film dozens of times, and I’ve been to the Schauburg Film Theater in Karlsruhe to enjoy a historic 70mm premiere copy of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” on a Cinerama screen and attended a seminar about this beautiful science-fi classic.

However, such lists should leave room for simplicity, personality and stories. At best, I could tell from the lists of my fellow students that they were at least fundamentally concerned with film history and recognized craftsmanship. This doesn’t make a leaderboard exciting.

All-time lists should be personal!

Therefore my call: Dare to put a few films on your list that have had a personal impact on you and have had a major influence on your interest in the medium. Perhaps you have an emotional, very personal connection to a work without considering the film to be technically perfect. Don’t be afraid that someone else will be offended by your choice. The best part is when it invites discussion. And if such a list is ultimately not intended to stimulate conversations, then what is the point of such lists?

For example, a film that will always have a place on my list is The Lion King. Because the animated classic is not only my first cinema experience (somewhere in an improvised cinema tent on Rügen), but also my first introduction to the emotional power of flickering images. Mufasa’s death upset me so much as a little boy that we unfortunately had to leave the performance early. To this day, this experience has burned itself deeply into my personality and played a major role in shaping the path of my life. Scar is indirectly responsible for why I ended up here at FILMSTARTS – and for that reason alone he really deserves a mention in my top 10.

And because lists are so much fun and the subject simply offers it, I naturally thought again about my current top 10 with this text:

1. “Lion King”
2. “Nosferatu”
3. “Shoah!”
4. “Under the Skin”
5. “The Murder of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
6. “Dance of the Devils 2”
7. “Lost in Translation”
8. “The Knights of the Coconut”
9. “Donnie Darko”
10. “2001: A space odyssey”