They might not be great Films. They might even be really really bad films. They might not be films you are currently watching. I guess it could also include "straight to" DVD/Blu-Ray films and films/plays made for TV. But what changed your life? I'll start with this one: The Matrix (1999)
La strada (1954)
La promesse (1996)
Le bonheur (1965)
Sullivan's travels (1941)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I never laughed as hard before or since as I did the first time I saw it. I can't have been more than 10.
Being taken to see the Polish film Kanal and discovering that films could be made anywhere outside Hollywood and Elstree i.e. Anglo-Saxonlandland.
In what way did Le Bonheur change you life, Iamma?
It's many years since I saw it, and it struck me then as nice looking but deeply unpleasant.
It is difficult to talk about it without spoilers. The end is definitely provocative.
What did you find deeply unpleasant, Rosy?
As you say, difficult without spoilers--and I last saw it in 1967 and may have missed the point of the idyllic ending.
The Good The Bad & The Ugly. Saw maybe 30-40 minutes of it in a Dixons store aged about 7 - so probably without sound - but was still transfixed. Not life-changing but made a big impression.
I don't think a film has ever changed my life and I can't imagine what sort of film would. Which maybe it's a failing in me.
I possibly taught myself the banjo due to Deliverance. ...But learning the banjo hasn't really changed my life.
Schindlers List, and 12 Years A Slave:
what the world can do you if you don't have any power.
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover seen at the cinema as a fifteen year old. Nothing has had the same effect since. And not just because well-cooked booksellers are rarely seen on screen.
'Fourteen Days in May'. Never a more powerful condemnation of the death penalty.
Apart from 12 Angry Men.
14 days in May is an extraordinary film and never forgotten once watched.
Wake in Fright. It made me want to make films.
#6: I didn't think I was supposed to agree with the ending of Le bonheur.
Agnes Varda turned ninety last year and she is still making movies. God bless her!
Do you expect a French intellectual type to title a film 'Happiness' and then make a movie about happiness?
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Saw aged 15 and decided I was going to be a criminal law defence guy just like Atticus Finch.
Note to younger self: It's really not much like being Atticus Finch.
I read the book.