Today, the Online Film Critics society (in whose number I count myself) has released our list of the Top 100 Best First Films (that is, feature directorial debuts). It’s not a perfect list (are there any such things?) but a good place to get discussion started.
For comparison, here is the top 25 I submitted:
1. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
#1 on the OFCS list
2. Badlands (Malick, 1973)
#13 on the OFCS list
3. Hiroshima mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
#17 on the OFCS list
4. Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962)
#68 on the OFCS list
5. Eraserhead (Lynch, 1976)
#2 on the OFCS list
6. Closely Watched Trains (Menzel, 1966)
#61 on the OFCS list
7. 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
#10 on the OFCS list – I contributed the write-up
8. L’Atlante (Vigo, 1934)
#11 on the OFCS list
9. Breathless (Godard, 1960)
#5 on the OFCS list
10. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
#3 on the OFCS list
11. Sweetie (Campion, 1989)
Not on the OFCS list
12. Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995)
#12 on the OFCS list
13. Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1978)
#16 on the OFCS list
14. The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)
#9 on the OFCS list
15. The Producers (Brooks, 1968)
#22 on the OFCS list
16. The Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003)
#67 on the OFCS list
17. Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)
#41 on the OFCS list
18. Lola (Demy, 1961)
Not on the OFCS list
19. The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
#7 on the OFCS list
20. Jour de fête (Tati, 1949)
Not on the OFCS list
21. George Washington (Green, 2000)
#80 on the OFCS list
22. Harlan County U.S.A. (Kopple, 1976)
#46 on the OFCS list
23. They Live By Night (Ray, 1949)
#73 on the OFCS list
24. Sanshiro Sugata (Kurosawa, 1943)
Not on the OFCS list
25. Mad Max (Miller, 1979)
#43 on the OFCS list
Incomprehensibly missing from my ballot, but present on the OFCS list at #31:
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)