BBC
Culture polled 209 critics in 43 countries to find the best in world cinema. It recently unveiled the list,
and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a Japanese epic, made it to the number one
spot in the list.
The list features 100 films from 67 different directors, from 24
countries, and in 19 languages. “27 of the highest-rated films were in French,
followed by 12 in Mandarin, and 11 each in Italian and Japanese,” according to
the BBC.
However, only one Indian film, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali,
has made it to the list at number 15. The movie was released in the year 1955.
“One statistic we noted was that a quarter of the films on our
list were East Asian: that is, 25 of them were made in Japan (11), China (6),
Taiwan (4), Hong Kong (3) or South Korea (1). And the winning film, Seven
Samurai, by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, was loved by critics
everywhere – everywhere, that is, except for Japan. The six Japanese critics
who voted didn’t go for a single Kurosawa film between them,” stated the BBC.
The
BBC, disappointingly, also noted that the final list had only four films out of
100 directed by women. But 45 percent of the critics who responded were women.
Pather Panchali
With the release in
1955 of Satyajit Ray’s debut, Pather Panchali, an eloquent and important new cinematic voice
made itself heard all over the world. A depiction of rural Bengali life in a
style inspired by Italian neorealism, this naturalistic but poetic evocation of
a number of years in the life of a family introduces us to both little Apu and,
just as essentially, the women who will help shape him: his independent older
sister, Durga; his harried mother, Sarbajaya, who, with her husband away, must
hold the family together; and his kindly and mischievous elderly “auntie,” Indir—vivid,
multifaceted characters all. With resplendent photography informed by its young
protagonist’s perpetual sense of discovery, Pather Panchali, which won an award
for Best Human Document at Cannes, is an immersive cinematic experience and a
film of elemental power.