Making lists is an activity moviegoers are fond of. Every year, the same ritual: compilation of the ten best films, with comparative analyses, debates, heated discussions. But what about the ultimate list of the most outstanding films in the history of cinema? That is to say, those films that must be seen, those that have forever transformed the art of cinema, but also our way of seeing a culture, of understanding the world as well as our own lives? This program aims to tackle this challenge with nearly eighty films, produced between 1916 and 1960, while waiting for your lists!
A middle-aged man, Kanji Watanabe, learns that he has an incurable cancer. A dull bureaucrat who has always worked in the same place, he begins to see the world differently and wishes to give meaning to his life.
Akira Kurosawa
Born in 1910 in Tokyo, Akira Kurosawa discovered cinema at a very young age, through his father and then his older brother Heigo, who was a benshi, or silent film commentator. After giving up a career as a painter that would not support him financially, Kurosawa managed to get hired as an assistant director in a studio that would soon become the Tōhō. He also wrote scripts and eventually landed his first project as a director, Sugata Sanshirō, in 1942. After several films marked by the context of World War II and the post-war period, Kurosawa shot The Drunken Angel in 1948, the first of sixteen collaborations with Toshiro Mifune. Three years later, Rashōmon won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and gave the filmmaker international recognition that has never been lost during a career that spans the 1990s and whose influence has proved to be major.
