Jacques Demy -- 10 Best Films -- Cahiers du Cinema 1958-1963

Though most film historians tend to paint a picture of their being two separate strands to the "New Wave" -- the right bank Cahiers click and the Left Bank group (Resnais, Marker, Varda and Demy) , the actuallity seems to have been somewhat different. Though the "Left Bank" directors did not contribute articles to Cahiers in the 1950s, excluding Chris Marker (who was sometines credited as "Christian" Marker) who contributed six articles to Cahiers in that period, the editors and staff at Cahiers certainly considered those four aspiring directors. A short article in [Cahiers] "Petit Journal" in the July 1958 issue, which was headlined "Cahiers at the foot of the wall" and which details the tentatives of seven members of the Cahiers family to break into film production, ends on this note:
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Jacques Demy, whose “Le Bel Indifferent” went far from passing unnoticed, is writing and preparing a film on “la foi".
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Selections are color-coded to selections at the end.
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1958
1........Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
..........White Nights (Luchino Visconti)
3........Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger)
4........Les Girls (George Cukor)
..........Montparnasse 19 (Jacques Becker)
..........Secrets of Women (Ingmar Bergman)
..........Une Vie (Alexander Astruc)
..........The Quiet American (Joseph L Mankiewicz)
..........Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle)
..........Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni)
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1959
1........Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
2........Tales of Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
..........Au Coté de la Côte (Agnes Varda)
..........Hiroshima, mon Amour (Alain Resnais)
..........Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
..........Ossessione Luchino Visconti)
..........The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
..........Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
..........Head against the Wall (George Franju)
..........Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
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1960
1........Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
2........The Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau)
3........L’ Amerique Insolite (François Reichenbach)
..........L’ Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
..........Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
..........Sansho the Bailiff(Kenji Mizoguchi)
..........Moonfleet (Fritz Lang)
..........Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut)
..........Le Trou (Jacques Becker)
..........Zazie dans le Metro (Louis Malle)
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1961
1........Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
..........The Horse That Cried (Mark Donskoy)
3........The Criminal (Joseph Losey)
..........Description D’un Combat (Chris Marker)
..........Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
..........A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
..........Le Monocle Noir (George Lautner)
..........La Pyramide Humaine (Jean Rouch)
..........The Sacrigeous Hero (Kenji Mizoguchi)
..........Last Year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
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1962
(in disorder)
Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan)
Vivre sa Vis (Jean-Luc Godard)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda)
Jules and Jim (Françcois Truffaut)
Viridiana (Luis Bunuel)
Hatari (Howard Hawks)West Side Story (Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins)
Une Grosse Tete (Claude de Givray)
The Trial (Orson Welles)
Le Signe du Lion (Eric Rohmer)
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1963
(alphabetical in French)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel)
Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy)
Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard)
Cleopatra (Joseph L Mankiewicz)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti)
Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)Muriel (Alain Resnais)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson)
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Francois Reichenbach on his deathbed told Daniele Thompson that he wished to be buried in Limoges. When Thompson protested to him that Limoges was too far away for his friends to attend his enterment, he said to her, "Those who love me can take the train" and voila the beginnings of the film with that title written by Thompson and directed by Patrice Chereau
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Rare appearance on a Cahiers ten best list for this successful director of films de commande (programmers)
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