Lists

I have a friend who claims to see many parallels between two of his favourite films, namely One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Searchers. I couldn't really follow him and thought I would check it out on the internet. What did I find? Millions of hits, but no information at all, because where the two films were mentioned together it was merely because they were both on somebody's 'my favourite films' list.

I even found someone who'd compiled his 'hundred greatest films' - and put a star against the ones he'd actually seen.

Nick Hornby, in High Fidelity, had great fun with this male tendency to compile lists. It usually is a male affliction, unless you count shopping lists. I've heard that, like hobbies, collecting and general buffery, it's a vestige of our hunter-gatherer days. No doubt that gives a little sense of pride to the nerds and anoraks who are particularly prone to the syndrome.

I like to think that lists are like diaries, or blogs, and photograph albums. They are a way of hanging on to the fleeting little pleasures of life. Or maybe a way of fitting the the vagaries of knowledge and experience into a satisfactory framework.

I have my own film lists, which I might share one day, but I thought I would compile one which uses the different criteria I notice others using, which give a different result from what I would otherwise produce.

I am thinking of criteria like primacy, recency, snobbery, prejudice, nostalgia, politics, etc. I'll talk about primacy first, where else. Later.

Who the hell is 'they'?