We Need a Great Films List

In 1952, thanks to the work of Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, Encyclopædia Britannica published Great Books of the Western World in fifty-four volumes. In 1972, in his renowned How to Read a Book, Adler expanded this selection to a list of 137 authors’ works. It is 2024, and it is surprising that, in a time saturated with cinema, a comparable “Great Films” list has not, to this author’s awareness, been produced by the classical Christian community. 

 Perhaps in the vast sea of ongoing ventures to rebuild the ruins of education, the nonexistence of such a list is understandable. However, I believe a Great Films list could only do good and that the classical Christian community would be an appropriate group to produce it.  

 In my experience, most adults in our community really do not know what they ought to watch. Parents, for example, are interested in watching and showing their children “good, old movies,” but they tend to think of these “classics” as the popular movies from their own upbringing rather than The Gold Rush, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Red Shoes. There is, of course, a substantive difference. 

 I suspect that a very small percentage of parents and teachers would feel at all qualified to gauge the fineness of a film. They are therefore forced, if they are greatly interested in refining their family’s taste, to scour the internet, which is littered with dubious suggestions from Christians and non-Christians alike. I tend to doubt an average parent has the time or frankly the desire to pore over these lists, seeking to find something that is both genuinely lasting and appropriate. Our parents, teachers, and students need direction. And while there will be some who are uninterested in taking that direction, a Great Films list would be an indispensable resource for those who are. 

 I anticipate several hesitations. The first two I will only briefly mention and respond to, though maybe I need not mention them at all. There may yet be a contingent convinced of a “Green Book” mindset, that beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder, and therefore one cannot say any art is objectively better than any other art. Perhaps they need only read Lewis’s critique of their mindset in The Abolition of Man to be converted. 

 Possibly there is still a sizable population who have a low view of film as art. There is little to be done in argument. However, it may be that watching something like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny followed by something like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet would be enough to convince them that at the very least, not all movies are created equal. 

 But there are hesitations more difficult to respond to. One might rightfully wonder why we should spend the time curating such a list if it would not be useful in the curriculum. Even if Citizen Kane is fantastic, and even if it has something to do with 20th-century American journalism, one struggles to see its legitimate place in a humanities classroom.  

 To this, I have two responses. First, that taste will always be a tacit topic of conversation in the classroom. As students need to have a sense that their teachers find Bach obviously superior to Travis Scott, so they need to know their teachers much prefer Frank Capra to James Gunn. A high view of certain films in the classroom would work toward dethroning film from its perceived place of “sacred self-service.” A unified idea of what constitutes a great film would provide the grounds for teachers to develop this taste and promote this dethroning. 

 Second, while watching an entire film is unlikely, it would be possible and powerful to show pertinent scenes of great films in class, just as one might show a relevant great painting or listen to a relevant great song. A Great Films list would allow teachers to confidently show a clip and engage meaningfully with it as art, seeking that their classes would wonder at and love what is set before them, in addition to understanding its content. 

 Of course, as previously indicated, the primary usage of a Great Films list would inevitably be in the home. And a hesitation might be that this is beyond our jurisdiction. I would see such a list, however, as essentially equivalent to an optional summer reading list. In addition, it’s been my experience as a filmmaking teacher that parents are happy to take film recommendations from a trusted source. Making available a list would not be tantamount to prescribing a family’s movie night selection. Happily, however, the list could not help but be a standard to compare their selection to. Simply stated, parents and teachers must have harmonious visions of art and entertainment. It is no secret that the movie a student watches on Friday night can absolutely destroy their chances of being transformed by Dante on Monday morning. 

 Finally, one might stumble over the fact that film is very young. Practically speaking, it is just over one hundred years old. I argue that that is long enough. Mortimer Adler, whose list inspires this prospective one, considered “great” more than sixty works less than one hundred years old, from Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) to Kafka’s The Trial (1925), and even Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle (1968). Their inclusion on his list would be equivalent to today including films released in 1974, 1977, and 2020. One assumes that Adler included these titles not because he could prove that they would last for centuries in the public consciousness, but because he understood that Solzhenitsyn’s work, for example, would endure substantially longer than other contemporary works, such as A Wizard of Earthsea. 

 The first great film, I would argue, was released in 1916—D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. This film is 108 years old this year. The oldest book, other than the Bible, on Adler’s list is the Iliad, written about 750 BC. It is turning 2,774. We do not need a same-calibered stamp of approval on each of these for both stamps to bear some validity and usefulness. 

 Even if the endurance of a great film is less certain than the endurance of a great book, pointing teachers, parents, and students in the right direction would be helpful, kind, and wise. If instead of the latest superhero movie, parents opted for Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or 12 Angry Men, what would happen to their children’s love of old things? If young people watched and loved The Passion of Joan of Arc instead of TikTok, what kind of people would they become? 

 In 1952, a Great Books list started with two people. In 2024, I propose we start a Great Films list with two or three. I have, myself, created a “Fine Art Film List” for my filmmaking students, currently including just over eighty titles. Whether or not that list is a starting point, I believe only a collaboration of classical cinephiles would yield a list that is properly veracious, thoughtful, and enduring.