Alain Resnais-10 best films-Cahiers du Cinema-1955 to 1962

The following are a collection of ten best films of the year cited by Alain Resnais in Cahiers du Cinema from the mid 50s to the early 60s.I have color-coded some of the information which I have commented on at the end of the lists.

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1954
1…….I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)
2...….The Wild One (Laszlo Benedek)
3…….Monsieur Ripois (René Clément)
4…….Okaasan (Mikio Naruse)
5…….The Overcoat (Alberto Lattuada)
6…….Beat the Devil (John Huston)
7…….The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli)
8…….It Should Happen to You (George Cukor)
9…….Touchez Pas Ma Grisbi (Jacques Becker)
10……El Torero (René Wheeler)

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1955
(no order)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
Prehistoric Women(Gregg Tallas)
The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L Mankewiecz)
Gold of Naples (Vittorio De Sica)
La Strada (Federico Fellini)
Les Mauvaises Rencontres (Alexander Astruc)
East of Eden (Elia Kazan)
The Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman)

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1956
(no order)
Senso ( Luchino Visconti)
Il Bidone (Federico Fellini)
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray)
Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
This Island Earth (Joseph Newman)
La Mort en ce Jardin (Luis Bunuel)
Attack (Robert Aldrich)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
Der Untertan (Wolfgang Staudte)
It‘s Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)

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1957
1......Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni)
2......The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
3......La Casa del Angel (Leopoldo Torre Nillson)
4.... .A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
5......The Forty-first (Grigori Chukhrai)
6......Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
7......The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Luis Bunuel)
8......Funny Face (Stanley Donen)
9......Sait-on Jamais (Roger Vadim)
10.....Love in the City (7 sketches- 7 Italian directors)
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1958
Les Amants (Louis Malle)
Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Kanal (Andrej Wajda)
Lettre de Sibérie (Chris Marker)
White Nights (Luchino Visconti)
The Pajama Game (George Abbott)
Dreams (Ingmar Bergman)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
South Pacific(Joshua Logan)
Une Vie (Alexander Astruc)
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1959
Tales of Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
The Tiger of Eschnapur (Fritz Lang)
Head against the Wall (Georges Franju)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Karel Zeman)
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1960 --- no list
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1961
Description d'un Combat (Chris Marker)
L’Enclos (Armand Gatti)
Lola (Jacques Demy)
La Morte Saison des Amours (Pierre Kast)
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
La Proie pour l'Ombre (Alexander Astruc)
Shadows (John Cassavetes)
Une Aussi Longue Absence (Henri Colpi)
A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
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1962
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinah)
La Denunciation (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze)
L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Les Honneurs de la Guerre (Jean Dewever)
Jules And Jim (Francois Truffaut)
The Trial (Orson Welles)
A Very Private Affair (Louis Malle)
Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Children’s Hour (William Wyler)
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Rene Wheeler was for anyone who saw Bertrand Tavernier’s Laissez-Passer the character selling shoelaces who about an hour into film Jean Aurenche meets on a Paris sidewalk whom Aurenche brings to Continental studios to co-write the Fernandel film he has been assigned. El Torero is one of only three films that directed. An earlier film of his Premières armes was credited according to the one user comment on the IMDb by François Truffaut with influencing him. Wheeler also collaborated on the screenplay for Rififi chez les Hommes which was highly regarded by the staff at Cahiers du Cinema. Wheeler also worked on some films that were disliked by those critics such as Les Salauds vont en enfer and Méfiez-vous fillettes. Wheeler would once more in the mid-60s figure in some yearly Cahiers ten best lists. He co-scripted Le Journal d'une femme en blanc with Jean Aurenche for director Claude Autant-Lara. Jean-Luc Godard rated that film third for the year 1965 and Jacques Rivette also listed the film.
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Resnais seems to have had a taste for science-fiction programmers. The July 1956 issue of Cahiers du Cinema contains this notice beneath its Conseil des Dix: “If too few of our “counselors” have listed Forbidden Planet’(Fred Wilcox) for us to have it appear in our table, Jean Ferry, Alain Resnais, and France Roche recommend the voyage to you."
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I am assuming that Resnais meant this film even though it is not listed as being released in France until March of 1957, three months after the issue of Cahiers that this list appears in and not the short film La Sel de la Terre directed by Georges Rouquier that had been made in 1950. At his time, the magazine did not list the director of the film when they published the yearly ten best lists.
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The selection of these musicals would seem to foreshadow the later turn in his career.
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