Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy which helped redefine Indian cinema in the 1950s, Guru Dutt's classic Pyaasa portraying the disillusionment of a poet with the material world and
Mani Ratnam's Nayakan based on the life of a Mumbai gangster are among a list of 100 all time great films compiled by the Time magazine.
Put together by Time magazine critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss, the unranked list of the 100 greatest films has a host of acclaimed movies like Lawrence of
Arabia , Casablanca, Lord of the Rings trilogy and Pulp Fiction .
The list, which is posted on the magazine's website and would be published in the latest issue of the magazine, also names the best film from each decade since Time
began: Metropolis (1927), Dodsworth (1936), Citzen Kane (1941), Ikiru (1952), Persona (1966), Chinatown (1974), Decalogue (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Talk to Her
(2002).
Indian films in the list include the works of famed directors of the country. Ray's Apu trilogy - Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) - which traces
the life of a Bengali family and their son Apu as he moves from childhood in a rural village through his youth in Varanasi where the family later shifts, to manhood and
marriage in Kolkata, show that "Ray's film-making is direct in manner, simple in its means and profound in its impact", Time critics says.
Describing Dutt's Pyaasa as a soulful romantic film, the Time critics say the writer-producer-director star paints a glamorous portrait of an artist's isolation through dappled
imagery and the sensitive picturising of SD Burman's famous songs. Nayakan tells the Godfatherish take of Velu, a boy who embraces a life of crime after his father is killed
by the police.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 13:45 IST