Cahiers du Cinéma's Annual Top 10 Lists

Members of an English settlement cope with the exotic lure of life in India.

A frail priest is assigned to a small French provincial town where he slowly is able to help some wayward souls rediscover their faith in God, but must soon contend with his own realization that he is dying.

An open-hearted, unrelentingly energetic orphan struggles to make the best of his life on the streets of Milan.

Los Olvidados is the third Mexican film from Luis Buñuels and depicts the miserable and neglected lives of kids and teenagers in Mexico.

Director Mankiewisz’s tragic comedy about the American show business is one of the darkest and most cynical films ever made. Bette Davis is brilliant in her roll as a once Broadway Diva who takes care of the promotion for the talented actress Eva (played by Anne Baxter). All together the film won six Oscars in 1951.

Based on the play by August Strindberg, Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes and classes that ensues when Julie, a wealthy businessman's daughter, falls for Jean, her father's bitter servant.

Paola is a young, beautiful woman married to a wealthy entrepreneur. She meets her former lover Guido after seven years, but their relationship is marked by tragic events.

Director Billy Wilder is ice cold in his captivating Hollywood drama Sunset Blvd. A screenwriter begins an affair with a silent film actress who thinks she’s at the top of her field...

Edouard is a young, headstrong musician. Caroline is his flibbertigibbet spouse. The two quarrel over an evening dress, they separate and then reunite.

St. Francis of Assisi sends his followers into the world to spread God's word.

This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple (George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman) travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.

The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's ...

An unscrupulous movie producer blackmails an unhappy star - who opted for box-office success over art- into signing a new contract.

The film tells the tragical story of the life of Lola Montes who was a great adventurer and stopped being the attraction of her circus after having been the lover of various important men.

Jefferies has had his leg in a cast for weeks and has nothing to do but watch his neighbors from his window. His voyeurism leads him to think that he’s witnessed a murder. Together with his girlfriend Lisa and his nurse Stella they try to solve the mystery and possibly a murder.

Catherine Racan, a young journalist who always puts her career over her love life, is brought in by the police for questioning. They are looking for a doctor who illegally performs abortions and now they are interrogating all of his previous clients.

With this poetically fabulous film classic Italian director Federico Fellini makes a world wide success of emotional melodrama and a highlight of the Italian Neo-realism movement.

The life of a Hollywood film star is recalled by the different men who knew, worked with, and loved her.

On the outskirts of town, the hard-nosed Vienna owns a saloon frequented by the undesirables of the region, including Dancin' Kid and his gang. Another patron of Vienna's establishment is Johnny Guitar, a former gunslinger and her lover. When a heist is pulled in town that results in a man's death, Emma Small, Vienna's rival, rallies the townsfo...

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" i...

French Resistance activist Andre Devigny is imprisoned by the Nazis, and devotes his waking hours to planning an elaborate escape. Then, on the same day, he is condemned to death, and given a new cellmate. Should he kill him, or risk revealing his plans to someone who may be a Gestapo informer?

Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, ...

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz vio...

Claiming that he doesn't know his own past, a rich man enlists an ex-con with an odd bit of detective work. Gregory Arkadin says he can't remember anything before the late 1920s, and convict Guy Van Stratten is happy to take the job of exploring his new acquaintance's life story. Guy's research turns up stunning details about his employer's past...

A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.

In Sweden at the turn of the century, members of the upper class and their servants find themselves in a romantic tangle that they try to work out amidst jealousy and heartbreak.

Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Carlo, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.

In the first episode, a heartbroken woman talks to her ex-lover on the phone. In the second, a pregnant woman believes she is carrying the child of Saint Joseph.

Labor Day in a small Kansas farm town. Hal, a burly and resolute drifter, jumps off a dusty freight train car with the purpose of visiting Alan, a former college classmate and son of the richest man in town.

Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with anxiety and guilt. However, Johanna Schultze, Erich's jealous ex-girlfriend, learns about the...

Due to a revolution in his country, King Shahdov comes to New York - almost broke. To get some money he goes to TV, making commercials and meets the child from communist parents. Due to this he is suddenly a suspected as a communist himself and has to face one of McCarthy's hearings.

To save his career, an ad man wants a sex symbol to endorse a lipstick. But she wants something too: he has to pretend to be her new lover.

Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.

True story of an innocent man mistaken for a criminal.

A bizarre black comedy about a man whose overwhelming ambition in life is to be a renowned serial killer of women, and will stop at nothing to achieve it - but not everything goes according to plan...

A number of complicated relationships develop between a circus ringmaster, his estranged wife and his lover.

Bigger Than Life is an American film made in 1956 directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, about a school teacher and family man whose life spins out of control upon becoming addicted to cortisone.

A down-and-out gangster hires an alcoholic press agent to make his blonde bombshell girlfriend a recording star in 6 weeks. But what is he going to do when he finds out that she has no talent? And what is going to happen when the two fall in love?

A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, ...

12 Angry Men is the 1957 film debut for director Sidney Lumet. An interpretion from a Broadway show, this film is about 12 jurors who must decide whether an 18-year-old is guilty of killing his father.

Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town.

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to e...

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

A man wanders aimlessly away from his town, away from the woman he loves, emotionally and socially inactive.

A spoiled teenager spends the summer at the French Riviera with her rich, widower, playboy father, but when his old flame resurfaces, she resolves to keep her frivolous lifestyle at all costs.

The film consists of several dreams based on Kurosawa's own, throughout his life. The dreams are eight separate segments in the following order: Sunshine Through The Rain The Peach Orchard The Blizzard The Tunnel Crows Mount Fuji in Red The Weeping Demon Village of the Watermills

Normandy, second half of the nineteenth century. Jeanne Dandieu lives in a manor house with her parents and their servant Rosalie. She gets to know Julien, a handsome man, whom she soon marries. Her happiness is short-lived as she finds out that not only has Julien married her for her money but he cheats on her as well, with Rosalie to crown it ...

With many idea rich comic situations French director Jacques Tati uses his poetic ways and knowledge of the discrepancy between heart and technique to tell a gentle business satiric tale that won him the Oscar for best foreign film in 1959.

Cynical British journalist Fowler falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman but is dismayed when a naïve U.S. official also begins vying for her attention. In retaliation, Fowler informs the communists that the American is selling arms to their enemy.

Ballet dancer Marie reminisce of a summer 13 years ago when she was a teenager and met Henrik on vacation in the archipelago.