6. MIRROR (TARKOVSKY, 1974)

 Encompassing dreams, childhood memories, levitation, his father's poetry, Renaissance art, documentary and newsreel footage, 20th century Russian history, as well as events in the lives of his family, Tarkovsky's complex and obscure autobiographical film is one of cinema's great personal statements. 

Through a succession of images of breath-taking luminosity (rendered all the more astonishing by heightened sound effects and desaturated colour), mundane elements and objects- rooms, corridors and buildings, wind, water, meadows, rivers, woods and Brueghelesque snowscapes- are made miraculous. Sweeping in scope yet intimate, delving fathomless depths yet soaring, Mirror is a unique poetic and spiritual masterpiece.  


5. LA REGLE DU JEU (RENOIR, 1939)

Considered the world's finest director by Orson Welles and later lionised by the French New Wave, Jean Renoir was an international humanist who dominated France's cinematic golden age, the 1930's, with classics such as La Grande Illusion, Boudu Saved from Drowning and A Day in the Country. La Regle du Jeu is surely his pinnacle. 

For decades second only to Kane in numerous international polls, it concerns an aviation hero in love with the wife of an aristocrat who invites him with his friend (Renoir himself) to a weekend gathering at their chateau. A terrific mix of drama, comedy and romantic farce, its social satire and observations of upstairs/ downstairs moral codes proved too rapier-sharp for French audiences on its release at the outbreak of war, and it was promptly banned.

 Its magnificent cast of characters, ingenious wit, innovative use of deep focus, liberated camera movement and assured marshalling of the actors are still all too often overlooked by audiences due to the director's undemonstrative modesty. La Regle du Jeu is to be admired, revelled in and trumpeted from the rooftops.