Movies

All-TIME 100 Movies

TIME's Richard Corliss updates our All-TIME 100 list of the greatest films made since 1923 — the beginning of TIME — with 20 new entries

D - F

Farewell My Concubine

By Richard CorlissJan. 13, 20100

Everett

Two boys meet as students in a punishing Peking Opera school in the 1920s and remain partners, friends and enemies for 50 years. It’s The Sunshine Boys with screechy singing, and one of the boldest, most beautiful Chinese films in a decade dominated by them. In the “Concubine” opera that becomes their trademark, stolid Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) plays the emperor, luscious Cheng Dieyi (the late, great Leslie Cheung) the concubine. Yin and yang are the roles they assume offstage as well, as Xiaolou has an affair with a courtesan (Gong Li, the imperious queen of Chinese cinema) and Dieyi flirts with the satrap of the occupying Japanese government. Sexual politics gives way to political horror during the Cultural Revolution, when personal betrayal may be the one way to stay alive. Chen Kaige’s stately, volcanic epic was one of the first Mainland films to acknowledge that damage wrought by Maoism. Beyond that, it is a rich dramatization of the venial and mortal betrayals that are the secret, somber melodies of our lives.

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19 comments

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MehakRain

Raj Kapoor has always been an underrated actor. Some time back, I read an interesting piece on him where it was written WHY he is beyond the chaplinsque image so associated with him.... http://www.leisuremartini.com/raj-kapoor-tramp/

Glad to see his name in the list :)

NiteshDwivedi

Pyasa one of the best movie
and the act by Gurudutta.... ahhh awesome man

ebtighsinger

I can not believe that The Shawshank Redemption, and The Silence of the Lambs is not on here. Best 2 movies of all-time.

JesseAvery

I have to agree here; see this movie if you have not taken the time to see it. Actually, this movie is in my top 5. One of the best movies ever made, in my opinion, and highly underrated.

SiddharthChari

where is scarface?

matterkid

Nayakan is my favorite movie ever.

ShobhitBhatnagar

Why the hell is "Gone with the wind " not there if a movie like Drunken Master2 can make in top 100

L.P.Harless

What a dopey waste of time. Out of what I believe to be at least a hundred movie titles, there was only ONE I would care to see. An old W.C. Fields movie, "It's a gift."

fraser.chapman

@L.P.HarlessYou are the only dopey thing around here, the actual list is here - http://entertainment.time.com/2005/02/12/all-time-100-movies/slide/all/

you know, if you actually read the page the link is at the top - in two places!

You know, non-English films are often excellent, most are better than any of the childish drivel that comes from the USA - but I guess having to read the subtitles might be a bit taxing for someone of your obviously limited intelligence...what with not being able to even read a simple web page.

Maybe stick to which ever comic book Hollywood have made in to a film this week...probably more your thing...

L.P.Harless

From the so-called list: "“Ya gotta have an Iranian film!”, I said, even as Richard insisted on a representative of the 60s Czech New Wave."

Is this unbelievable, or what?

L.P.Harless

Rats, they include foreign language films too. So, not only is there not a "list," you have to glean movie titles from text of a ginormously long article (no telling how many titles I actually missed) but space is wasted on foreign films too! I'm only going to peruse this article for about 10 minutes, then go to another site that may actually have a list. I don't see the point of wasting my time here.

Looking for a good movie from this so-called list is not unlike dumpster-diving for a diamond that someone told you was in the dumpsters behind Wal-Mart!!! Maybe it's there, maybe it's not. Either way you're going to get dirty.

L.P.Harless

There isn't really a list. You have to read this big, long, article and pull the movie titles out of the text. I was looking for a "list."

GafKerg

Nobody is starting to agree, Time. I would bet that ten people on the street wouldn't even have heard of Barry Lyndon. This is, by far, Kubric's worst film, even worse than Eyes Wide Shut. You can't criticize him for trying his hand at a new genre, but this film fell flat in every way. Repeating that this is a masterpiece will not make it eventually come true.

fraser.chapman

@GafKerg That is because greatness has nothing at all to do with popularity - just because ten random people on the street haven't heard of something doesn't mean at all that it isn't great - ask 10 random people to name an opera, or a work by Plato, etc... Barry Lyndon is a great film, visually stunning and beautifully set - not Kubric's best I agree - but a masterpiece all the same. Much better than the populist drivel 'The Shining' for example....

GafKerg

@fraser.chapman @GafKerg I'm not convinced. Barry Lyndon put me to sleep, and I'm a fan of Bergman. The fact that you mention opera and Plato gives me a sense of where you're coming from. Plato's absurd fantasies are only significant to historians and operas are the trashy novels of classical music. It doesn't surprise me that you'd find Barry Lyndon--an archaic homage to feudalism--a great work of art. The aristocracy died a long time ago, and fantasies about usurping aristocratic positions are for slaves of the old order. Sure, popularity isn't always the best gauge (Titanic was trash) but everybody knows Shakespeare, and for such a celebrated film-maker as Kubric, the fact that no one has ever heard of it does tell us something, perhaps that it's "drivel."

GafKerg

@fraser.chapman @GafKerg The idea of a state run by philosophers is the fantasy, and outlawing poetry and art is absurd, but as you said, it's a matter of opinion. I was mostly thinking of his magical world in which a pure version of everything exists as the absurd fantasy, but I'll place that label on his other philosophical work. It's brilliantly argued, but I don't think he made it much further than sophistry. His crowning achievement came in the form of Aristotle, but he can only take credit for teaching him.

fraser.chapman

@GafKerg I wouldn't call either the Republic or the Gorgias 'absurd fantasies' but perhaps that is a matter of taste. My point was simply that most people haven't heard of many great works of history, things that have stood the test of centuries. Interestingly I would say with most modern films the inverse is true - the more people 'on the street' have heard about it, the more likely it is to be drivel (The Hobbit, Hunger Games, Any super-hero-comic-book-harry-potter-trash). For whatever reason modern popularity seems to go hand in hand with insipid banality.