Films That Matter: Prologue

A New Project To Create A Film Canon

“When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, ‘No, I went to films.’"

- Quentin Tarantino, 2004 BBC interview with Andrew Walker

We live in perhaps the greatest time to be a lover of, and student of, cinema’s past, present, and future. Because at around one hundred and fifty years old, it is possible to experience the medium’s seminal works from the silent era to the golden age of Hollywood, to the French new wave, to the blockbuster nineties, to the superhero-dominated 2010s, to this new modern day resurgence of independent cinema. As the years fly by, it will become nearly impossible to pull something like that off.

In this moment in time its not asking too much that a burgeoning cinephile learn the history of the medium by going back and watching 1902’s A Trip To The Moon, followed by 1927’s Metropolis, followed by 1931’s M, followed by 1954’s Seven Samurai, followed by 1972’s The Godfather, followed by 1991’s Beauty And The Beast, followed by 2003’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, and then finishing up the binge with 2023’s Oppenheimer. A cannon like this truly gets you to see how film has evolved through the ages, and gives you a better understanding of how the medium can be used to tell stories.

We are just a few generations away from a moment in time where there will just be too many to catch up on. Hell, some would argue there are too many to catch up on already. Which means a cinephile a hundred years from now may have to skip on some all-time greats that have begun to fade from the public conscious with time. They might still have time to experience 1943’s Casablanca, but they could just as easily see themselves skipping over say 1916’s Intolerance. The window of error for a movie to become a classic that becomes a must-watch of film canon for any lover of movies will only get smaller and smaller as father time makes the medium older and older. Those who push that certain movies be remembered will fade away with time, and some of those movies will lose some of their biggest champions for future generations.

So knowing this I’ve been starting to consider something - what would be the film canon that I would recommend any new young and upcoming cinephile to follow? What would be the movies that I believe would help them understand the history of the medium, and what movies made some kind of impact during their release and in the years afterwards?