As the seasons turn to autumn, and the chances of wanting to stay home of an evening and watch a good film rather than venture out into the chill/wind/torrential rain… what films would you like to buy?  (Bear in mind that Santa Claus is making his list and this year you HAVE been rather nice)…..

Good old Sight and Sound and BFI (British Film Institute) have drawn up a list of 50 amazing films, which you can use as a starting point. 

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

For an astonishing half a century, “Citizen Kane” has been Number One – but has now moved down from the relentless number one…. to number two.  So not much changes there.  The list has got many classic black and white films and foreign language ones in highest places – so may be a challenge to source.  But at least if you know the titles to look for, it is a start – and BFI are willing to rent them to you.

The top ten are “8 and a half” (Fellini, 1963), “the Passion of Joan of Arc” (Dreyer, 1927), “Vertigo” (Hitchcock, 1958), “Tokyo Story” (Yasujiro, 1953), “2001 a space Odyssey” (Kubrick, 1968), “The Searcher” (John Ford, 1956), “Citizen Kane” (Welles, 1941), “Sunrise – a song of two humans” (Murnau, 1927) and “La Regle du Jeu” (Renoir, 1937) and “Man with a Movie Camera” (Vertov, 1929)…. but in what order?  Which is the new number one?  I’ll let you guess and then check the answer for yourself.

Inspired by this list, I watched “The passion of Joan of Arc” and found it utterly gripping and visually stunning.