"Voice Version" great movie, Text/Roger Ebert

This book is the second in the Great Movies series, but the films listed in the book do not belong to the second echelon. I don't believe in rankings and charts, and refuse any offer to ask me to reveal what I call "ten best musical films of all time" because charts like these are meaningless and change between Tuesday and Thursday. I'm only making two exceptions: my list of the best films of the year, because that's what critics have to do, and the top 10 film history of film history that I'm involved in, which is held every decade by directors and critics from around the world, at Sight & Hearing magazine.

　　Since I made it clear in the preface to The Great Movie that the book is not a list of the "greatest" hundred films, but just a list of a hundred great films—not a ranking, I chose them because I like them because they are of sufficiently high artistic standards, historical status, influence, and so on.

　　Of course, the first book included the following films that clearly belonged to the first echelon: Citizen Kane (1941), Song in the Rain (1952), The General (1926), Desire for Life (1952), Ecstasy (1958), The Ape Trilogy (1955–1959), Masquerade (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Battleship Potemkin (1925), Raging Bull (1980), and Angry Bull. The Sweet Life (1960). But since I didn't write it in any order, this second one also includes films with exactly the same accomplishments as above, such as The Rules of the Game, Children of Heaven, Leopard, Bartha the Donkey, Birth of a Nation, Sunrise, The Tale of the Rainy Moon, Kieslowski's Trilogy of Trilogies, Tokyo Story, The Searcher, and Rashomon. I waited until the release of new DVDs of the two films, Rules of the Game and Children of Paradise, to write a review on "The Great Movie." The new copies were so badly repaired that I was watching them for the first time.

　　I've quoted British film critic Derek Malcolm's definition of a great film: a film that is unbearable at the thought of not being able to watch it again. I wrote reviews of about two hundred and fifty films in a year, two hundred more than that. Undoubtedly, I can't stand not re-watching many of them, and some films can't even watch them for the first time. There is nothing more enjoyable than to avoid the assembly lines of the film industry and to watch deeply and lovingly those who maintain the value of art.

　　For those who love movies, the value of DVDs is immeasurable. DVD copies can achieve such high quality that the movie seems to be breathing right in front of our eyes, not just there. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage in the disc is so useful and informative that in a way, audiences today probably know more about a film than the directors who made it at the time. When it comes to producing commentary soundtracks and behind-the-scenes footage, Martin Scorsese is the leader of all directors. He not only makes his own films, but also other films that he loves. Consider his contribution to the DVD of Michael Powell's films, especially the one hundred generals. It was a great honor to listen to Powell and Scorsese watching and talking about this film together.

　　I have watched these films at various times and places, through various channels, and I have watched many of them three or four times, some more than a dozen times, and some twenty-five times. At the university of Colorado, the university of Virginia, the university of Hawaii, and the film festivals I coach each year, I analyze sixteen of them one by one each time. The Colorado screening is an integral part of the World Affairs Congress, which has become an annual event that has lasted for fifty-three years. We sat in McKee Auditorium, shrouded in darkness. Sometimes there are thousands of people, and we spend ten to twelve hours over five days pulling the tablets using a motion pause analyzer. Under the gaze of so many pairs of eyes, you can see something extraordinary.

　　Looking at these titles, memories of the past come to mind. I watched Heart and The Crown in London, and at a time when Ealing's comedy was reviving, a restored version of Leopard was being released at the Curzing Cinema in London, where I loved so much. The Telluride Film Festival features Philip Glass's live soundtrack of The Smiley Man. The festival also featured "Dinner with Andre," and when the lights came on, I found myself sitting in front of Andre Gregory and Wallace Sean, whom I hadn't recognized two hours earlier. At the University of Illinois, at my own "Lost Pearls of the Sea" film festival, I watched "General Patton" screened on a giant screen with a 70-millimeter 150-dimensional projection system. After the screening, Dr. Richard Vettel, the inventor of the system, stood on stage with me and said he had never seen a better screening. Romeo and Juliet brings my memories back to one night somewhere in Italy, the exterior of the film's balcony scene.

　　In December 2003, Money Don't Touch was re-released in Seattle. At that time, I was in the city for a month of treatment, and this film and many other films saved me from my illness. I learned about the film through Bob the Gambler, and reviews of the former were included in the book. Anyone who knows both films will understand how they rescued me and why I said that. I re-watched Exhausted in 2003, and it's still as vivid as it was when I first watched it forty years ago. I was listed in my 1974 1974 Top 10 Films of the Year after watching Earth-Shattering Heads for the first time, and I was relieved to find that my judgment of the film's greatness was entirely accurate.

　　On the other hand, what pleases me most about these books is that I include some films that people don't usually call "great," some of which are ostracized simply because they are too popular (e.g., Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark), some because they advertise entertainment (e.g., The Fall of the Truth, The Battle of Men), and some because they are too obscure (e.g., The Fall of the Ancient Building of Usher, The Wanderings of Stusy). We go to see different movies for different reasons, and the greatness of movies is reflected in different forms. Of course, turnip greens, each has its own love.