The End

On Sunday night I watched the very fine 1970 sexual thriller Deep End, and thereby completed my somewhat obsessive quest to view the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die



I have the 2004 edition of the book but the earliest reference to the list on this blog appears in 2006, so I guess that’s about when I started taking the idea of completing the list seriously. I think when I first started I had seen 337.

It’s been a fun experience, if occasionally somewhat arduous (yes, 9 hour Holocaust documentary, I’m looking at you). Putting to one side my mildly OCD box-ticking urges, the main reason I did this was to encounter films I wouldn’t otherwise have tackled, like Bela Tarr’s epic of slow cinema Satantango.

Perhaps the single most memorable viewing was a screening of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles at the Sydney Film Festival, a film in which basically nothing happens (compellingly) for 3 ½ hours, which created a level of suppressed anger-cum-hysteria I have rarely encountered among the usually placidly arty SFF crowd.

Best films: Too numerous to mention. There were lots of pleasant surprises, such as The Burmese Harp, Daisies and a whole bunch of silent films

Worst films: I think all of the experimental US films of the 1960s underground, which comprise mainly of men in leather declaiming profoundly shallow dialogue on horrible grainy film inadequate sound quality

Masterpieces not on the list: La Ronde, Swingers, Rififi

What next? Well I could catch up with the movies listed in later editions of the book (19 to go), complete the list of Best Picture Oscar winners (2 to go), the Time magazine Top 100 movies (9 to go), or - eeeek! - the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (649 to go)...

(Apologies for the paucity of links in this post, Blogger really is crappy software sometimes.)