Richard Linklater names the 10 greatest films of all time
A major figure within the landscape of American independent cinema, Richard Linklater has produced incredibly moving works throughout his career. Ranging from the widely beloved Before Trilogy to more experimental projects such as Waking Life, Linklater has created a highly diverse filmography that is essential viewing for all film fans. Known for his groundbreaking experiments with time and its relationship with cinema, Linklater’s artistic vision has influenced countless young artists.
Last year, Linklater released his latest project – Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood – which dealt with the coming-of-age themes that he has often explored. The idea for the film had been floating around in Linklater’s head for almost two decades, but he finally put it all together, creating a memorable animated work about the first Moon landing mission. As always, Linklater successfully created a unique sense of nostalgia that resonated with many.
2022 also saw the publication of the BFI Sight and Sound poll, which collected the votes of the most prominent filmmakers and critics around the world to list the 100 greatest films of all time. Linklater also sent in his own selection of the ten most important cinematic masterpieces ever made, listing the works of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson and Stanley Kubrick. He started his list by putting Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running in the top spot.
Linklater once said (via The Film Stage): “Vincente Minnelli started here in New York. I think he was a costume designer. He was just a beautiful designer, he was a master of colour and the palette and the camera. I think Wilder dismissed Minnelli as a decorator, but I just think he’s so masterful. And the master of a lot of genres, too. He’s known for his musicals, obviously, but I love his melodramas. The way Some Come Running ends, he shot it like a musical without the music.”
The director also included Ingmar Bergman on his list. He explained his relationship with Bergman’s films to Criterion: “Once I settled into Austin, I noticed that the campus program would show the same two films. It would be Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, then the next semester, it would be Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring, and I realized the classes were just showing the same ones over and over. Those are great, but I wanted to see the other thirty films by Bergman.”
Check out the full list below.
Richard Linklater’s favourite films
- Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
- Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
- L’Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
- Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
- The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
- Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
- Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
- La Maman et la Putain (Jean Eustache, 1973)
- The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
One director who had a major impact on Linklater’s career was the great French auteur Robert Bresson, whose films changed Linklater’s life. Interestingly, the American filmmaker selected Bresson’s final film – L’Argent – among his ten greatest picks, preferring it over some of the more celebrated works like Pickpocket and A Man Escaped.
While talking about the genius of Bresson, Linklater elaborated: “No one has the precision of Bresson. We can talk about Hitchcock all day as far as leading you, the viewer, but Bresson has this elliptical storytelling method. He’s one of that special handful that created their own cinematic language and answered to it their whole cinematic career.”
