A new Team Top Ten over at the Film Experience: the 12 (there was a big ol’ tie) best winners of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
It’s the kind of list that you basically can’t get wrong: I have, at the time of this writing, seen 57 of the 74 films that have taken the award since it adopted its modern shape (but not its modern name) in 1949, and a significant majority of them are in the great-to-extraordinary range. So my top 10 is not at all definitive; more that, at the time I had to submit something, it’s what I felt comfortable with (actually, it’s more like a rock solid top 6 followed by the four films that I’d have felt most sick about abandoning). But even with 10 extra runners-up, I’m still ignoring tremendously worthy victors.
My ballot:
1. The Third Man (1949) [on the TFE list]
2. Viridiana (1961)
3. Paris, Texas (1984) [on the TFE list]
4. The Piano (1993) [on the TFE list]
5. The Tree of Life (2011)
6. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) [on the TFE list]
7. Taste of Cherry (1997) [on the TFE list]
8. Barton Fink (1991)
9. The Conversation (1974) [on the TFE list]
10. Secrets & Lies (1996)
And my ten honorable mentions, chronologically:
The Wages of Fear (1953)
The Cranes Are Flying (1958) [on the TFE list]
La dolce vita (1960) [on the TFE list]
The Leopard (1963) [on the TFE list]
Blowup (1967)
Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975)
Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Eternity and a Day (1998)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)