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BBC Honors Spirited Away, Akira Kurosawa in List of Greatest Foreign Language Films
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
BBC's fourth critic-curated list of best films is taking the spotlight off Hollywood all together to look at the global stage. American-made and English-language films usually dominate the "best of" discourse but foreign media fans know there's plenty of exciting and moving stories to be found, all viewers have to do is turn on the subtitles.
BBC's list scores the opinions of 209 critics from around the globe to create a diverse list of 100 films. The film represents films from 24 different countries, helmed by 67 different directors, and presented in 19 languages. The largest number of films are in French, followed 12 in Mandarin, and 11 in Japanese and Italian.
Of the 11 Japanese films included, only one is animated, and that honor goes to Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning film Spirited Away. The critically acclaimed film took the 37th spot on BBC's list. Spirited Away held the distinction as the highest-grossing anime film worldwide until it was surpassed by Makoto Shinkai's your name. last year.
The film tells the story of Chihiro, a young girl who ends up working in a bath house for the spirits while trying to find away to turn her parents back into humans after they are punished for eating food meant for the gods.
Beloved director Akira Kurosawa also holds four spots on BBC's list including the top spot for his film Seven Samurai BBC notes that critics from almost every country included except for his native Japan. No Japanese critics listed a single Kurosawa film. Nonetheless, the director's works still hold the #1 spot, #4 spot (Rashomon), #72 spot (Ikiru), and #79 spot (Ran).
Seven Samurai premiered in theaters in 1954 and was nominated for two Academy Awards. The film went on to inspire the Western The Magnificent Seven, the sci-fi film Battle Beyond the Stars, the sci-fi anime Samurai 7, and the Hong Kong martial arts film Seven Swords.
The remaining Japanese-language films included on BBC's list are Late Spring by Yasujirō Ozu, the Kenji Mizoguchi films Sansho the Baliff, Ugetsu, and The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, and Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds.
The list also includes Park Chan-wook's Oldboy live-action film based on Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's manga of the same name, and Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, a partial inspiration for an episode of Cowboy Bebop.
Thanks to WingKing for the news tip
Source: BBC
