Introduction

   Hello and welcome to Cev Watches 101 Movies, the homepage of my film watching project.  This project started when I recently began watching movies, at a rate of one per day, which were considered Classics and which I had not seen.  Though an acquaintance commented that a couple of my selections were more "cult" films than Classics (a result of limited Netflix selection at the time), the point of watching them was unaffected: I wanted to familiarize myself with more Movies You're Supposed To Have Seen... to try to go through the filmbuff curriculum, so to speak.

   The purpose of my wanting to see so many classic movies was not so much because I have, or want to gain, a "refined" or "sophisticated" (some might say "pretentious") appreciation of film-- anybody who knows how many low-budget horror films and schlocky creature features I watch knows this.  Rather, my interest in the classic films of the past is less artistic and more scientific:  I want to gain a better understanding of the film industry to satisfy my curiosity.  On the same note, I will attempt to make my posts more towards commentary with less focus on criticism and review.

   That led to the idea of the 101 Movies project.  The idea is simple: starting with the year 1900 (for roundness' sake), I will watch one movie from each year, making a post about each one after I see them, ending with the year 2000.  Thus, I will be able to watch before my eyes the century unfold on screen, observing trends, watching the industry evolve, etc. and see quite a few classics along the way which I hadn't seen before.

   An important note: the selection of which movie to watch from each year did not follow any strict guideline.  I did not pick the most famous movies, nor the most influential, nor the most popular, nor the most critically-acclaimed, nor the ones that I would most enjoy.  Rather, it was an odd mixture of all of these criteria.  If any one rule was observed in the selection, then that was balance and variety: if I had to pick between two movies, I would check and see which director or genre was more represented in the list, and then pick the other one.  Of course, some directors you simply have to throw in several times... either because you want to (as with Hitchcock, for instance), or sometimes because you don't really have much of a choice (as with Méliès).

   In the end, I like to feel that I've come up with a list that is fairly representative of the medium as a whole, without being so random as to miss out on so many famous films.  There are dramas, horrors, comedies, and musicals... there are low-brow blockbusters and arthouse classics, and everything in between.  Glancing at the preliminary list, I have seen probably one in five.

   Since I reserve the right to modify my choice of which film per year to watch as I see fit, depending on whatever mood I'm in at the time, I won't be posting the names of the films I watch until I get around to each one.  Some years' picks will be obvious-- no prizes awarded to who can guess 1941-- but others not so much.

   That's enough for introduction.  But before I begin with my film selection for 1900, I feel I should say something about the short history of films made before the twentieth century.  So that will be my next post.