Deciding to watch all of these 1001 filmsI see theres a handy checklist in this edition so you can tick them off like a shopping list, like so many necessitieswill in itself send you off on life experiences: If you want to relive 1957 with Satyajit Rays Aparajito, Fellinis Le Notti di Cabiria, and the unforgettable Russian masterpiece The Cranes Are Flying, youll have to go browsing in independent DVD stores, scuttling to art cinemas on wet weekend breaks in Paris or Berlin, or vacationing near film festival retrospectives (I eventually saw Sullivans Travels in a sidebar program at the wonderfully public festival in Spains San Sebastian).
All this might, after all, take you a lifetime.
Good questions all. The first step in determining the 1001 movies to be included here involved taking a close look at a number of existing greatest, top, favorite, and best film lists, and prioritizing titles based on the frequency with which they appeared. This allowed us to identify something like a canon of classics (including modern and contemporary films) that we felt confident warranted a spot in this book on the joint basis of quality and reputation. By no means did every film that turned up on these shorter, occasionally idiosyncratic lists make our cut of 1001, but the exercise at least gave us some key reference points and significantly reduced the unavoidably subjective nature of the selection process.