ARTS: MOVIES / FILMS / CINEMA

List: Top Ten Greatest Films Ever Made

Date: November 2008

Source: Les Cahiers du Cinema

Base: The list was created from the choices of 76 French film directors, critics and industry executives, each of whom drew up their own top 100 and then total results collated.

Notes: Les Cahiers (trans: notebook) du Cinema is arguably the most influential of all cinema magazines. It was founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The list below (which is actually 11 films due to score draws) is part of a top 100 list, in which eleven movies in the top 20 were American and four were French. John Baxter, a Paris-based film critic and cinema biographer commented that the list, although commendably global and not francocentric, was a touch recherché: "If you look at these choices, they are not the choices of film fans but of film specialists, and French film specialists at that... You can imagine the jury competing with each other to make statements to one another with the most obscure selections."