If, for some insane reason, you’ve read all of my posts, you might have noticed something I haven’t attempted here at FtY even once: a list.

I bring this up over the perhaps still lingering mini-hubbub/thoughtful discussion around the OFC “Greatest Films” list compiled by Cinema Fusion. The complaint: while the AFI List is regarded as overly stodgy, cliche-ridden and a bit-fuzzy on what is and isn’t an American film, the OFC list is derided as being overly weighted toward more recent, less artistically ambitious, more “populist” films which, not to put too fine a point on it, tend to be favored by young, heterosexual, Caucasian males in their twenties.

The complainers have my sympathy. The AFI list includes very few interesting surprises and too many films that are not even especially interesting examples of Oscar bait; it seems to have been assembled on automatic pilot. I personally have a big problem with the #4 ranking of Gone With the Wind, but that’s another essay.

The OFC list, on the other hand, includes several films that are certainly not stodgy but, as an over-forty heterosexual caucasian male, strike me as less than complete or otherwise a bit silly or pandering. If you’re familiar with the proclivities of all the young cinedudes, you can perhaps recite some of the most questionable choices with me: Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption (a guilty pleasure, accent on the “guilty”), Leon/The Professional, and American History X. Call me an elitist or a fogey, but if any one these makes your top ten, or even your top 50, you haven’t seen enough films.

(A parenthetical rant: The other three films might not be all that great, but American History X alludes me completely. Despite my Jewish perverse fascination with Neo-Nazis, I think it’s a pretentious bore and in general pretty worthless. Also, I’ve actually spent the large majority of my life within a four mile radius of the film’s setting. and I actually call Venice High School — “Venice Beach High” in the movie — my alma mater. One thing I’m sure of: any gang of racist skinheads running around that most politically liberal, ethnically diverse, and economically bifurcated of areas in the late 1980s would have a situation on its hands that would recall Rick Blaine’s warning to Major Strasser on the dangers of invading Brooklyn. If the gangbangers-of-all-races-and-creeds didn’t kill them with guns and knives, the hippies, Maoists and the anarchist/vegan punk rockers certainly would have annoyed them to death with rhetoric.)

I have less problems with some of the other controversial choices, even if would probably not put them in my personal pantheon. I think The Usual Suspects and The Big Lebowski are jim dandy and, on this list, anyhow, I can at least hope that everyone contributing is getting the references to Casablanca and The Big Sleep. I actually love Pulp Fiction and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings mega-film enough to think they actually belong on such a list, and not at the bottom either.

But I actually have an assortment of problems with the very idea of this kind of list that goes beyond disagreeing with the choices made. Sometimes I wonder if we should make lists at all.

First of all, I fear that, by selecting individual films as “the greatest of all time,” we are actually killing the film for a large portion of the audience, creating an impossible to achieve expectation and therefore a permanent backlash. As a young cinegeek in the making, it took me a few viewings to get past the weight of all that adulation, and the fear that I might not be smart enough to appreciate it, and realize just how much fun Citizen Kane really is. Most people won’t give it that chance — I’ve tried to persuade more than my share of non-cinephiles to give it another chance and they all agree that they’ve got other things to do. They seem to feel they’ve been the but of some kind of joke at their expense.

The higher a film is ranked, the more we’re all creating an expectation that really perhaps no film can live up to. To enjoy a film, you’ve got to feel free to dislike it on your own terms without having to fight back against the weight of some vast body of respectable opinion. It took me years of serious filmgoing to simply have my own reactions to “film classics.”

Another problem for me is that no single film really expresses what the best writers and directors do, it’s always part of a larger pattern. I’d probably never list Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three on a “greatest” list — yet it’s truly one of my favorites from perhaps the greatest writer-director ever, lack of obvious visual style be damned. To me, “representing” Wilder with, say, a more Oscarbaity choice like The Apartment — which I really do love and admire — orSome Like It Hot — which really might be the best film farce of all time — and, Sunset Blvd. to show that I dig Wilder’s gothic ultra-dark side — actually diminishes the contribution of someone like Wilder, which to me is more about a body of work.

Kind of similarly, Stephen Frears may or may not have a single film I would put on this list, but I still think he’s one of the best filmmakers of the last thirty years. Leaving him out seems wrong, even if I can’t quite justify putting The Hit or Sammy and Rosie Get Laid on such a list — at least partly because it’s been so long since I’ve seen either that I’m not sure what I’d think of them today.

Which brings up another problem — every time I see a given film is a new experience, each viewing is as legitimate as any other. If a film doesn’t stand up to a second showing, it might not be great, but it doesn’t invalidate the pleasure I got from it the first time around.

If I loved a film nearly to death on three or four occasions, and found myself distracted the last time I saw it, was it because the film wasn’t strong enough to hold up, or because I hadn’t slept enough or consumed sufficient whole grains that week? (A simple caffeine deficiency has ruined more viewing experiences that I can count.) If I had a less than majestic experience the last time I saw The Rules of the Game (which I’m sorry to say is actually true) does that discount the several times I saw it and was absolutely floored? What about the next time I see it? And what about the fact that I had somewhat mixed feelings about Jules and Jim the first three or four of maybe five times I saw it but, for some reason, I kept seeing it and finally discovered what all the fuss was about on the fifth or sixth try? Can I really say I love Diabolique, which I’ve seen at least three times, when I can’t even remember the famous surprise ending — although I have a perfect memory of the end title card which begs me not to be diabolical and give away the ending?

And what of the wonderful non-classics? To me, also there is something about films that aren’t particularly ambitious, that really can’t be great, but that set out to achieve pretty much what they intend to do. Among more recent films, Erin Brockovich is just the best TV movie ever not made for TV. In some ways, it goals and scope are so modest it really can’t be a classic no matter what, yet for me it perfectly succeeds at what it’s trying to do.

Rio Bravo, on the other hand, actually does make a lot of greatest film lists, and I love it as much as anyone this side of Quentin Tarentino, but to me there’s something wrong with actually putting it on such a list. It’s so modest in its scope and so completely relaxed and removed from high seriousness that it’s almost an insult to place it any kind of canon. This is a movie clearly meant to be seen on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and it’s status as a commercial object is also part of its charm. I love the Dean Martin-Rick Nelson duet that risks stopping the film cold. To me, it’s always seemed pretty clearly intended as a sop to the girls in the audience (you’ve got handsome singers in your movie…let ‘em sing!) and a convenient opportunity for boys, at least those who don’t appreciate fine fake-Western music, to go out and buy popcorn or hit the john. It is, quite deliberately, the opposite of a film that strains for greatness.

Bravo is famously a response to High Noon - a movie which seems practically made to be put into a canon. The contrarian instinct (and Howard Hawks offhand genius) has led to Bravo’s greater popularity amongst cinephiles, but putting either film into a line-up really doesn’t accomplish anything. Comparing and contrasting the two films as two artistics poles of a particular genre in a particular period, on the other hand, can provide endless hours of film geek edification. Movies are a like people, best appreciated as individuals.

Having said all of this, I have to confess that, despite all I’ve just said, I enjoy putting together lists…until I start to realize that, at least for me, making a list of “greatest” or, worse, “favorite” films is an inherently dishonest act. Not to go all Hornby on you, but it’s simply impossible to make these things without thinking of the impression you’re creating. Here are a few thoughts that, if I were to put together such a list, would almost certainly go through my head. And, no, I’m not really exaggerating:

“Gee, I’m putting Casablanca at number four…kind of high up…that makes me look pretty mainstream. Maybe I really do like Weekend more…I was pretty devastated by that. And I’m not being one bit motivated to rank it higher because it’ll make me seem more cerebral in a punk-rock way. I mean, I could boost Weekend for that purpose, but that would be wrong…”

“Gosh, there really aren’t very many foreign-language films here. I’ve certainly seen tons of them, though to be honest my cinema diet is probably a bit unfairly skewed towards English language. Quick, I need to throw in some that I haven’t seen in decades just to show I’m not an ethnocentric philistine….Do spaghetti Westerns count?”

“Okay, for color I’m throwing in some Japanese films, but they can’t all be Kurasawa. He’s almost an American. I could throw in some Seijun Suzuki…but that would that just make me look like some kind of fanboy Tarentino wannabe. Damnit. Why can I suddenly not remember a single Japanese film not directed by Kurasawa or Suzuki? I’ve seen probably hundreds of Japanese films….well, it feels like I’ve seen hundreds….Mizoguchi…yeah, I must have seen some Mizoguchi…but what film. Okay, I guess if i can’t remember it, it’s not really a favorite…Damnit. Okay, what about Hong Kong….”

“Are any of these films directed by women? Quick, I know there are some women directors I really like…Okay, there’s Ida Lupino — she wasn’t a bad director…and Agnes Varda, who I’ve only seen one film by that I can remember. Penny Marshall???? She’s okay….No, no, a thousand times no…How about Mira Nair? Monsoon Wedding is good…”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t make lists, except when people ask me to really nicely.