Jean-Luc Godard 10 best films Cahiers du Cinema 1956-1966

I have to comment here on the set-up of Godard’s list. He seems at first to be the most ploddingly linear of list-makers. Everything is 1 through 10. He never seems to have made a clean break with that linearity. In 1960, he did turn in an alphabetical list. And in ’61 and ’63 he makes some minor lumping of films at one position, but there is no clean break. He does however begin to have fun playing with the titles of films at the end of his lists in ’64 and ’65.
It also might be noted that while Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette and Rohmer all have lists dating from 1954 (the first year that Cahiers compiled such lists), Godard's first list dates from two years later (1956). Godard left Paris in 1953, he spent some time with his father in South America and then spent more than two years back in Switzerland with his family. He returned to Paris and Cahiers in 1956.
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1956
1......Mr Arkadin (Orson Welles)
2......Elena et les Hommes (Jean Renoir)
3......The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock)
4......Bus Stop (Joshua Logan)
5......Slightly Scarlet (Allan Dwan)
6......The Saga of Anatahan (Josef von Sternberg)
7......A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
8......Fear (Roberto Rossellini)
9......Bhowani Junction (George Cukor)
10....My Sister Eileen (Richard Quine)
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1957
1......Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray)
2......The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
3......Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
4......Hollywood or Bust (Frank Tashlin)
5......Les Trois Font la Paire (Sacha Guitry)
6......A King in New York (Charlie Chaplin)
7......Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang)
8......The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz (Luis Bunuel)
9......Sawdust and Tinsel (Ingmar Bergman)
10....Saint Joan (Otto Preminger)
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1958
1......The Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
2......Dreams (Ingmar Bergman)
3......Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger)
4......Montparnasse 19 (Jacques Becker)
5......Une Vie (Alexandre Astruc)
6......Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
7......Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
8......L'Eau vive (Francois Villiers)
9......White Nights (Luchino Visconti)
10.....Le Temps des oeufs durs (Norbert Carbonnaux)
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1959
1......Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
2......Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (Jean-Pierre Melville)
3......Les Rendez-vous du diable (Haroun Tazieff)
4......Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch)
5......La Tete contre les murs (Georges Franju)
6......Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe (Jean Renoir)
7......Hiroshima, mon amour (Alain Resnais)
8......The Four Hundred Blows (Francois Truffaut)
9......Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol)
10....Du cote de la Cote (Agnes Varda)
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1960
(alphabetical in French)
Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray)
Give a Girl a Break (Stanley Donen)
Sansho (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Moonfleet (Fritz Lang)
Nazarin (Luis Bunuel)
Poem of the Sea (Alexander Dovzhenko/Yuliya Solntseva)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau)
Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut)
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1961
1......Two Rode Together (John Ford)
2......La Pyramide humaine (Jean Rouch)
3......The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (Jean Renoir)
4......Les Godelureaux (Claude Chabrol)
........Paris Nous Appartient (Jacques Rivette)
6......Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
7......Exodus (Otto Preminger)
8......Lola (Jacques Demy)
9......Escape by Night (Roberto Rossellini)
10....The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
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1962
1......Hatari! (Howard Hawks)
2......Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini)
3......Through a Glass, Darkly (Ingmar Bergman)
4......Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut)
5......Le Signe du Lion (Eric Rohmer)
6......Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
7......The Flaming Years (Alexander Dovzhenko)
8......Sweet Bird of Youth (Richard Brooks)
9......Une Grosse Tete (Claude de Givray)
10.....Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)
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1963
1......Trial of Jeanne d'Arc (Robert Bresson)
2......The Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel)
........The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
4......The Chapman Report (George Cukor)
5......Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
........Donovan's Reef (John Ford)
........Muriel (Alain Resnais)
8......The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
9......Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder)
10......Two Weeks in Another Town (Vincente Minnelli)
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1964
1......The Fiances (Ermanno Olmi)
2......Gertrud (Carl Dreyer)
3......Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
4......Man's Favourite Sport? (Howard Hawks)
5......The Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni)
6......A Distant Trumpet (Raoul Walsh)
7......Love with the Proper Stranger (Robert Mulligan)
8......Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford)
9......Bebo's Girl (Luigi Comencini)
10.....L'Amour a l’a(nnée pro)chaine (Claude de Givray)
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1965
1......Desna (Yuliya Solntseva)
2......Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
3......Journal d'une Femme en Blanc (Claude Autant-Lara)
4......Young Cassidy (John Ford/Jack Cardiff)
5......Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
6......Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig)
7......Vidas Secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos)
8......Yoyo (Pierre Etaix)
9......Lilith (Robert Rossen)
10.....Le Viel As de Pique Indigne. (A conflation of Milos Forman’s Black Peter (L'As de Pique) and René Allio’s La Vieille Dame Indigne)
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Best American Films of the Sound Era (Dec 63/Jan64)
1......Scarface (Howard Hawks)
2......The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
3......Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
4......The Searchers (John Ford)
5......Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen)
6......The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
7......Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
8......Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
9......To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
10.....Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg)
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Best French Films since the Liberation (Jan 65)
1......Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls)
2......La Pyramide Humaine (Jean Rouch)
3......Le Testament d'Orphee (Jean Cocteau)
4......Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (Jean Renoir)
5......Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
6......Les Godelureaux (Claude Chabrol)