The fifteen films thing of last week was good for me. I'm always trying to make lists but never manage to finish one. Naming fifteen films in fifteen minutes was good discipline; no pressure to produce a perfect list, just a list of films that came to mind. As I expected I missed out one film that would be compulsory on my list of personal favourites - The Seven Samurai. Only one, not bad for me.
Anyway it got me to review a list of favourites I've been trying to put together for months, almost a year. I thought up a few more, making fifty, if I've counted correctly. I suppose it's unfinished and is open to amendment, but I feel I've achieved something getting it this far. There are a few odds and sods tacked on, documentaries, etc.
Umberto Eco wrote an article entitled, "We make lists because we don't want to die". Maybe so - I like reading lists, God knows why. Here's one from a Paul Mann (Paragraph 1).

Now, my films; the first six are the cream of the crop, the rest come in no particular order -

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
I Soliti Ignoti (Mario Monicelli)
The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
Matewan (John Sayles)
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Confidential Report (Orson Welles
Deuxième Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Los Olvidados (Luís Buñuel)
Hue and Cry (Charles Crichton)
The Third Man (Carol Reed)
The Organiser (I Compagni) (Mario Monicelli)
Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) Jean-Luc Godard)
Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa)
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen)
His Kind of Woman (John Farrow (and ?)
Pulp (Mike Hodges)
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch)
Badlands (Terence Mallick)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati)
Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler)
Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo)
Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment (Tony Richardson)
War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk)
Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch)
Beat the Devil (John Huston)
The Dead (John Huston)
Nazarín (Luís Buñuel)
Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard)
Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi)
Waterloo (Sergei Bondarchuk)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Danton (Andrzej Wajda)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Robert Altman)
The Wedding Party (Robert Altman)
Judex (Georges Franju)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
The Cradle Will Rock (Tim Robbins)

Plus some that I find interesting, but have doubts about -
Sait-on Jamais? (Roger Vadim)
(A portent of the Nouvelle Vague?)
La Notte Brava Mauro Bolognani)
(The leading characters resembled people I knew at the time)
Shoot the Pianist (François Truffaut)
(Interesting? Yes - worthy? Not sure.)

Some Documentaries -
The Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty)
(Real people in their real environment, but OK, some phoney stuff.)
On the Bowery
(What an eye-opener.)
Le Mystère Picasso (Georges Clouzot)
Jazz on a Summer Day (Bert Stern)
(Beautiful film)
A Great Day in Harlem (Jean Bach)

Films I haven't seen but need to see -
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has)
Queimada (Gillo Pontecorvo)
La Tête Contre les Murs (Georges Franju)