The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever

Tristan Ettleman

The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever features experts and enthusiasts and, well, their favorite films of every year ever. Host Tristan Ettleman sits down with a new guest every week to dive into the history and beauty of some of the best movies to ever come out of the cinematic medium.

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106 episodes
Updated Wednesday
Explicit

Episodes106

Newest first

Dec 18, 2024 · 1 hr 5 min
1902 E5 - Vanessa Toulmin
Vanessa Toulmin, Chair in Early Film and Popular Entertainment at the University of Sheffield, is an expert on variety theater, circus, travelling exhibitions, fairgrounds, and other aspects of the history of show business. She brings this expertise...
Dec 11, 2024 · 43 min
1902 E4 - Lea Stans
Lea Stans has been writing about the silent era on her blog https://silentology.wordpress.com/ since 2014, informed by her college interests and even younger fascinations with the obscure. Her 1902 picks reflect the increasing diversity of the...
Dec 4, 2024 · 52 min
1902 E3 - Karl Wratschko
Karl Wratschko, curator, filmmaker, and artist, has been working as a film curator for the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna since 2016. He brings his experience of programming screenings based in specific years, not unlike this very show (he’s...
Nov 27, 2024 · 56 min
1902 E2 - Clara Auclair
Film scholar and preservationist Clara Auclair and Tristan talk quite a bit about comedy and tricks, those originating from the stage and those that could only come from the magic of filmic technology. That conversation leads into discussing the...
Nov 20, 2024 · 3 min
1902 E1 - A Trip to the "Industry?"
A Trip to the Moon looms large in looking at the picture of 1902 in film. Georges Méliès' masterpiece is inarguably the most famous film of the early cinema period. But as will be explored by this season's guests, its part in reshaping the aesthetics,...
Nov 6, 2024 · 6 min
1901 E7 - Truth and Tricks
Propaganda, comedy, tricks; these approaches may seem to obscure truths. That is certainly their potential in film, but in this 1901 season finale, Tristan reflects on the through lines of his guests' picks and the conversations that stemmed from...
Oct 30, 2024 · 1 hr 11 min
1901 E6 - Lawrence Napper
All but one of the picks from Lawrence Napper, senior lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London, come from the huge trove of discovered Mitchell & Kenyon films. These fascinating records of everyday life in Victorian and Edwardian England...
Oct 23, 2024 · 1 hr 2 min
1901 E5 - Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
Tristan has been the grateful viewer of many an eye-popping restoration fromhttps://www.youtube.com/@eyefilmNL. He expresses his thanks to Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Curator of Silent Film at Eye, before the two mostly discuss comedy films, with the broad...
Oct 16, 2024 · 1 hr 5 min
1901 E4 - Grazia Ingravalle
Grazia Ingravalle, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Film at Queen Mary University of London, focuses her 1901 picks in relation to colonialism. She creatively tackles the premise of this show by talking not of the “best films” of the year, but...
Oct 9, 2024 · 51 min
1901 E3 - Pamela Hutchinson
Pamela Hutchinson's https://silentlondon.co.uk/ has been a great resource for Tristan since even before he started the written essay series that gives this podcast its name about seven years ago. Now, she joins the show to provide some context yet...
Oct 2, 2024 · 57 min
1901 E2 - Ian Christie
Film historian Ian Christie rewires Tristan’s brain a bit in this episode, as Ian draws parallels between the early film “adaptation” and the tableaux painting, both of which benefit from contemporary shared pathos. During the discussion of his five...
Sep 25, 2024 · 4 min
1901 E1 - Entertainment as Propaganda
About five years into film's existence as a publicly available invention and art form, 1901 offers up a number of exciting threads for where the medium did and did not go. Some aspects may appear familiar: a form of a "close-up," attempts at adapting...
Sep 11, 2024 · 6 min
1900 E7 - Sound, Color, Trickery, Oh My!
Although this season has emphasized that the sudden transition into the 20th century didn't magically advance the still very young art form of cinema, the films selected by the guests for the 1900 edition of The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever...
Sep 4, 2024 · 42 min
1900 E6 - Enri Ceballos
The affinity Enri Ceballos has for dance is intensely represented by his picks for 1900, four of which feature the sheer joy of human movement. Both in front of and behind the screen, these films (all French and helmed by women!) also represent the...
Aug 28, 2024 · 43 min
1900 E5 - Carolyn Jacobs
Considering Carolyn Jacobs' research focuses on the cultural history of media, especially in relation to histories of medicine, science, and public health, it makes sense that she examines her five picks through those lenses. From kissing panics to...
Aug 21, 2024 · 55 min
1900 E4 - Frank Kessler
From misattribution to missing sound, this conversation with Frank Kessler has a bit of lamentation for the lost works and context of early cinema. But there's also some celebration that we can view any films from the turn of the century (and...
Aug 14, 2024 · 44 min
1900 E3 - Matthew Solomon
Matthew Solomon has taught film history and theory at the University of Michigan since 2011, with special interests in early and silent cinema, classic Hollywood filmmaking, and French film. He brings all that to bear on his five picks for 1900, which...
Aug 7, 2024 · 44 min
1900 E2 - Malcolm Cook
Malcolm Cook, Associate Professor of Film at the University of Southampton, found it challenging to pick just five works to represent 1900. But his selections embody the cross-section of genres and approaches across three countries, demonstrating how...
Jul 31, 2024 · 4 min
1900 E1 - The Beginning of a Century
The second season of The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever narrows down from the decade-plus of the first down to just one calendar year. The first year of the 20th century didn't suddenly erupt the cinematic world into wholly unprecedented...
Jul 17, 2024 · 7 min
The 1800s E7 - The End of a Century
Invented within the last decade or so of the 1800s, "cinema" (a fluid definition not owed to any one person or group as this season has demonstrated) grew exponentially through the end of the century. The guests for this first season of The 5 Best...

The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever

1902 E5 - Vanessa Toulmin

1902 E4 - Lea Stans

1902 E3 - Karl Wratschko

1902 E2 - Clara Auclair

1902 E1 - A Trip to the "Industry?"

1901 E7 - Truth and Tricks

1901 E6 - Lawrence Napper

1901 E5 - Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi

1901 E4 - Grazia Ingravalle

1901 E3 - Pamela Hutchinson

1901 E2 - Ian Christie

1901 E1 - Entertainment as Propaganda

1900 E7 - Sound, Color, Trickery, Oh My!

1900 E6 - Enri Ceballos

1900 E5 - Carolyn Jacobs

1900 E4 - Frank Kessler

1900 E3 - Matthew Solomon

1900 E2 - Malcolm Cook

1900 E1 - The Beginning of a Century

The 1800s E7 - The End of a Century