Roger Ebert’s Final List of His Top 10 Favorite Films

Image by Sound Opin­ions, via Flickr Com­mons

Roger Ebert seems to have resent­ed star rat­ings, which he had to dish out atop each and every one of his hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of reg­u­lar news­pa­per movie reviews. He also empha­sized, every once in a while, his dis­dain for the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” sys­tem that became his and Gene Siskel’s tele­vi­sion trade­mark. And he could hard­ly ever abide that run-of-the-mill crit­ic’s stand­by, the top-ten list. Film­go­ers who nev­er paid atten­tion to Ebert’s career will like­ly, at this point, insist that the man nev­er real­ly liked any­thing, but those of us who read him for years, even decades, know the true depth and scope of his love for movies, a pas­sion he even expressed, reg­u­lar­ly, in list form. He did so for, as he put it, “the one sin­gle list of inter­est to me. Every 10 years, the ancient and ven­er­a­ble British film mag­a­zine, Sight & Sound, polls the world’s direc­tors, movie crit­ics, and assort­ed pro­duc­ers, cin­e­math­eque oper­a­tors and fes­ti­val direc­tors, etc., to deter­mine the Great­est Films of All Time.”

“Why do I val­ue this poll more than oth­ers?” Ebert asks. “It has sen­ti­men­tal val­ue. The first time I saw it in the mag­a­zine, I was much impressed by the names of the vot­ers, and felt a thrill to think that I might some­day be invit­ed to join their num­bers. I was teach­ing a film course in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Fine Arts Pro­gram, and taught class­es of the top ten films in 1972, 1982 and 1992.” His dream came true, and when he wrote this reflec­tion on send­ing in his list every decade, he did so a year near­ly to the day before his death in 2013, mak­ing his entry in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll a kind of last top-ten tes­ta­ment:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1968)
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Wern­er Her­zog, 1972)
• Apoc­a­lypse Now (Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, 1979)
• Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
• La dolce vita (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1960)
• The Gen­er­al (Buster Keaton, 1926) — free online
• Rag­ing Bull (Mar­tin Scors­ese, 1980)
• Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jirô Ozu, 1953)
• The Tree of Life (Ter­rence Mal­ick, 2010)
• Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1958)

Decid­ing that he must vote for “one new film” he had­n’t includ­ed on his 2002 list, Ebert nar­rowed it down to two can­di­dates: The Tree of Life and Char­lie Kauf­man’s Synec­doche, New York. “Like the Her­zog, the Kubrick and the Cop­po­la, they are films of almost fool­hardy ambi­tion. Like many of the films on my list, they were direct­ed by the artist who wrote them. Like sev­er­al of them, they attempt no less than to tell the sto­ry of an entire life. [ … ] I could have cho­sen either film — I chose The Tree of Life because it’s more affir­ma­tive and hope­ful. I realise that isn’t a defen­si­ble rea­son for choos­ing one film over the oth­er, but it is my rea­son, and mak­ing this list is essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble, any­way.”  That did­n’t stop his cinephil­ia from pre­vail­ing — not that much ever could.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphat­ic Crit­ic on TV; Inci­sive Review­er in Print

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.