100 Greatest Films Beyond the Canon

I wrote here before that I participated in a poll for The 50 Greatest Films of all times. The following is my contribution for Iain Stott's new project, Beyond the Canon, together with my introductory note:

This is my list of 100 greatest films "Beyond the Canon". Since it is impossible to decide/define what is "the canon", I decided to strictly follow the rules below:

1. The films in Iain Stott's "canon" list are not allowed (because the main purpose is to go beyond the accepted canon).
2. The films already on my 50 greatest films list are not allowed (because it would be too repetitive otherwise).
3. One film per filmmaker (because I'd like to leave room for less known filmmakers).

This list tells nothing about which directors I like more since it depended a lot on the two lists mentioned above. I tried to order the films according to their own value and not the overall quality of the director's work. For example, Mizoguchi is one of my five favorite directors but here his film is sixteenth. When I wasn't so sure between two films by the same filmmaker, I tried to choose the film that's less well known (i.e. "The Family Plot" over "Marnie", or "Man in a Bubble" over "The Lead Shoes", or "Mouse Wreckers" over "Duck Amuck").

Some incredible directors such as Carl Dreyer, D.W. Griffith, Joseph Mankiewicz, Leo McCarey, Dziga Vertov and Louis Feuillade are not listed, I assume because I haven't seen their non-cannonized works.

My list of 50 Greatest Films, along with its introduction, lists all the filmmakers I consider to be truly great.

A comment I'd like to make about "the canon" and its worst myth:
I firmly disagree that Orson Welles had his artistic climax with "Citizen Kane". "Citizen Kane" is a very great film, that's true, but all of the films I've seen that he made after that, starting from "The Magnificent Ambersons", are better works. I can think of nine films directed by this great genius, all of them being better than "Citizen Kane". My personal favorite is "Chimes at Midnight" but there are many I haven't seen.

I think all the movies below are better than "The Godfather" (or many other much-acclaimed and cannonized movies I don't want to list).

The order is more or less arbitrary. I compiled the list on September 2009.

1. L'età di Cosimo de Medici (1973) - Roberto Rossellini
2. Rubber Cement (1976) - Robert Breer
3. Faustfilm: An Opera: Part I (1987) - Stan Brakhage
4. Colorado Territory (1949) - Raoul Walsh
5. Finances of the Grand Duke (1924) - F.W. Murnau
6. Heaven and Earth Magic (1962) - Harry Smith
7. Lancelot du Lac (1974) - Robert Bresson
8. La sortie des usines Lumière (1895) - Louis Lumière
9. Mr. Arkadin (1955) - Orson Welles
10. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - Jonas Mekas
11. Le voyage du ballon rouge (2007) - Hou Hsiao-hsien
12. I Was a Male War Bride (1949) - Howard Hawks
13. Mogambo (1953) - John Ford
14. Un Lac (2009) - Philippe Grandrieux
15. Le Tempestaire (1947) - Jean Epstein
16. Gubijinso (1935) - Kenji Mizoguchi
17. Film About a Woman Who... (1974) - Yvonne Rainer
18. Screen Tests (1966) - Andy Warhol
19. States (1967) - Hollis Frampton
20. L'amour par terre (1984) - Jacques Rivette
21. Le fond de l'air est rouge (1977) - Chris Marker
22. Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) - Vincente Minnelli
23. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977) - Larry Jordan
24. We Can't Go Home Again (1976) - Nicholas Ray
25. The Cameraman (1928) - Buster Keaton
26. War and Peace (1956) - King Vidor
27. The Man Who Invented Gold (1957) - Christopher Maclaine
28. Man in a Bubble (1981) - Sidney Peterson
29. Written on the Wind (1956) - Douglas Sirk
30. Serene Velocity (1970) - Ernie Gehr
31. The Scarlet Empress (1934) - Josef von Sternberg
32. Men in War (1957) - Anthony Mann
33. Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (1974) - Michael Snow
34. Eniaios (1990) - Gregory Markopoulos
35. Mouse Wreckers (1949) - Chuck Jones
36. Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) - Otto Preminger
37. Poetry and Truth (2003) - Peter Kubelka
38. Spies (1928) - Fritz Lang
39. Holiday (1938) - George Cukor
40. Mortal Storm (1940) - Frank Borzage
41. Quixote (1965) - Bruce Baillie
42. Miami Vice (2006) - Michael Mann
43. 'R Xmas (2001) - Abel Ferrara
44. Worldly Desires (2005) - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
45. Hart of London (1970) - Jack Chambers
46. La ronde (1950) - Max Ophuls
47. Strange Illusion (1945) - Edgar G. Ulmer
48. Naked Kiss (1964) - Samuel Fuller
49. 10 (1979) - Blake Edwards
50. Family Plot (1976) - Alfred Hitchcock
51. Room Film 1973 (1973) - Peter Gidal
52. La Raison Avant la Passion (1969) - Joyce Wieland
53. Two Lovers (2008) - James Gray
54. Um Filme Falado (2003) - Manoel de Oliveira
55. Ten Videos: 3 (2006) - Kyle Canterbury
56. Sobibor, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (2001) - Claude Lanzmann
57. October (1928) - Sergei M. Eisenstein
58. Yi Yi (2000) - Edward Yang
59. The Virgin Spring (1960) - Ingmar Bergman
60. The Patsy (1964) - Jerry Lewis
61. Comanche Station (1960) - Budd Boetticher
62. Le silence de Lorna (2008) - Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
63. Rose Hobart (1936) - Joseph Cornell
64. Mavi Sürgün (1993) - Erden Kıral
65. Ten (2002) - Abbas Kiarostami
66. Jaguar (1967) - Jean Rouch
67. Film (1964) - Samuel Beckett
68. Kadosh (1999) - Amos Gitai
69. La Ceremonie (1995) - Claude Chabrol
70. Schweitzer and Bach (1965) - Jerome Hill
71. The Decay of Fiction (2003) - Pat O'Neill
72. The Tree (1974) - Chris Welsby
73. Süt (2008) - Semih Kaplanoğlu
74. Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) - Monte Hellman
75. Lachrymae (2000) - Brian Frye
76. Traité de bave et d'éternité (1951) - Isidore Isou
77. Le Temps Qui Reste (2005) - Francois Ozon
78. Still Life (2006) - Jia Zhang Ke
79. İklimler (2006) - Nuri Bilge Ceylan
80. Legend of Nile (2009) - Eytan İpeker
81. Breaking News (2004) - Johnnie To
82. EVO (2002) - Oliver Hockenhull
83. Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) - Arthur Lipsett
84. Songs from the Second Floor (2000) - Roy Andersson
85. I Walked with a Zombie (1943) - Jacques Tourneur
86. The Host (2006) - Bong Joon-ho
87. 30 Days of Night (2007) - David Slade
88. Flaming Creatures (1963) - Jack Smith
89. Ohio Postcard (2009) - Ekrem Serdar
90. The Disorderly Orderly (1964) - Frank Tashlin
91. Zodiac (2007) - David Fincher
92. Chumlum (1964) - Ron Rice
93. Come September (1961) - Robert Mulligan
94. Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son (1969) - Ken Jacobs
95. Pony Glass (1997) - Lewis Klahr
96. Pan of the Landscape (2005) - Christopher Becks
97. Crash (1996) - David Cronenberg
98. Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1966) - Owen Land
99. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) - Tsai Ming-liang
100. La frontière de l'aube (2008) - Philippe Garrel

The image is from Roberto Rossellini's sublime masterpiece L'età di Cosimo de Medici.