The Internet is full of lists, all claiming to rank the best movies ever - some are made by distinguished cinema critics, even more by simple movie-lovers, but they have one thing in common, they're based on opinion and they’re unavoidably subjective. How then can we define which are the most important films ever, from a historic perspective? Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Turin (Italy) came up with a scientific method, an algorithm which calculates which movies were the most influential.
The research was based on four different mathematical formulae, used to explore the connections between movies, like how many times a certain film was referenced in other movies. For younger audiences, the results might be a bit surprising, as the algorithm determined ’The Wizard of Oz’ (1939) to be the most influential movie ever made.
How did the story of Dorothy change the world of cinema? It took the world by storm, just like the tornado that takes the little girl from her little safe, yet monotonous, Kansas farm life, and throws her into a world of wonders, complete with witches, talking scare-crows and marvelous adventures. In more technical terms, the movie is outstanding for the scene where the girl’s black-and-white universe changes in front your eyes and the screen explodes with colors. Such a thing had never been done before.
We’re among movie-lovers here and this series is dedicated to art, talent and creativity, so I’m not going to bother you with formulae. However, to get an idea of the magnitude of this study, let us just say it involved the analysis of 47,000 movies from 26 genres, created up to 2010, using references found in the online movie database IMDB. The researchers did not take into account short movies, adult films or productions which bear no connection to others.
The results, which you can find here, revealed that the 20 most influential movies ever were all made before the 1980s, which should come as no surprise - the older the movie, the more time it had to leave its mark on the other producers.
“It is exactly the purpose of our research on most significant movies: to find the ones that are important from an historic point of view,” said Dr Livio Bioglio, co-author of the study, from the University of Turin.
In second place we have "Star Wars", the first movie of the series from 1977, which launched a cultural phenomenon and a franchise, which even today is ranked fifth among the highest-grossing media franchises. It’s not only the long series of movies and the merchandise related to them, whole generations grew up enchanted by the Star Wars universe. For comparison, let me point out that the Disney Princess franchise or Barbie, rank lower on the list, many girls choosing Princess Leia as a model rather than Cinderella. ‘Star Wars’ was so influential that it generated the 2001 Jedi Census Phenomenon - authorities all over the world were baffled when hundreds of thousands of people around the world declared their religion to be ‘Jedi Warrior’, and we’re speaking of an organic grass-roots movement, with no structure or leaders. Such was the magic of the movies that people identified more with Jediism, rather than established religions.
Released in 1960, ’Psycho’ was essential for the whole horror movie genre and was ranked third on the list of the most influential films ever. According to the same study, director Alfred Hitchcock was the most influential movie-maker for two decades, between 1940-1960, which is quite a feat considering that cinema is barely 100 years old. The famous shower scene is one of the most replicated ever and was even the subject of a documentary.
Of all the monster movies out there, it was the 1933 version of ’King Kong’ that made it to the list, and not just because it grossed a record $ 90,000, which was quite a lot for those times. Its influence is explained by its special effects, which were cutting-edge at the time, and also because it created a monster that lives on in pop-culture. The gigantic gorilla beats other famous monsters, like Frankenstein and Dracula, that have left a mark on the horror genre.
Another movie that made history, Stanley Kubrick’s ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ established a framework for the sci-fi genre. It’s one of those timeless masterpieces and it’s quite hard to imagine that the movie is now more than 50 years old.
The same goes for ’The Godfather’, with the first movie of the series coming out in 1972. Besides being one of the most beloved movies of all time, ’The Godfather’ gained recognition for basically creating its own genre, paving the way for all the mafia-movies and TV shows for decades to come.
Why is the 1975 ’Jaws’ on the most influential movies list? Easy, with this movie, Steven Spielberg created the notion of (summer) blockbuster. A movie with a modest $9 million budget, made almost $470 million in global returns, becoming the highest earning movie of its day. ’Jaws’ also reinvented the concept of advertisement, the movie’s release being anticipated by a true media marketing blitz. Universal Studios spent $2 million to promote the upcoming movie, creating the sort of hype we see today prior to the release of a new Marvel movie.
The 1941 ’Citizen Kane’ is featured on the list, not only for its cinematic innovation, but also because of the controversy it generated. Although the technique was not exactly new, Orson Welles’ movie eschews chronological narrative, telling the story through flash-backs, from an omniscient perspective, giving viewers the "illusion that we are looking with impunity into a world which is unaware of our gaze, Hollywood movies give us a feeling of power."
While Welles never confirmed who was the main source the movie’s protagonist is based upon, media magnate William Randolph Hearst considered he was the main target and forbid any mention of the movie in any publication under his control. At the same time, the movie, released just a few months before Pearl Harbor, raises the question of America’s isolationism on the world stage, a question still hotly debated today.
To this day, ’Citizen Kane’ is one of the most frequently analyzed films in movie-classes around the world.
As we’ve seen, most of the movies that made it to the list are American productions, mostly because the database used contains primarily US-made movies. However, the top 20 included a few European films: two German movies from the 1920s, one of the most remarkable periods in the country’s cinema. A very early silent Italian movie, ’Cabiria’ was added to the list as it is one of the first epic productions ever made.
Another silent movie on the list is the 1925 ’Battleship Potemkin’, the story of the 1905 mutiny of Russian sailors aboard that ship. Obviously, it was a Soviet propaganda movie at the time of its launch, yet, the film made an impression on the international stage with its ‘extraordinary pictorial beauty and great elegance of form’. The movie made director Serghey Eisenstein an international star, but, in an ironic twist, back home dictator Joseph Stalin banned the movie for fear it made incite to rebellion.
Speaking of influence, the research came up with one unexpected result - although Japanese movies as such do not qualify among the most influential in the world, their monster movies, the so-called kaiju, such as ’Godzilla’, released in the 1950s had a major influence on Western monster films.
Talking about all the 20 movies on the list would obviously exceed the constraints of a normal post, but I’m sure most are familiar to you and some have been previously featured in other ADSactly articles.
However, I would like to know your opinion on this top 20? Are your personal favorites among them?
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References: 1, 2, 3.
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