The best movies ever made? I’ll kick things off...

The Third Man takes us from the top of Vienna’s ferris wheel to deep in its sewers. It has the finest final scene in cinema history – only one comes close.

Clockwise from left: Orson Welles in The Third Man; Cary Grant in North by Northwest; Helen Mirren in The Long Good Friday.

Just attended that highlight of the holiday season, Fil’s Fillum Festival, made possible by exploring the streaming services and Fil’s – Phil’s – vast collection of DVDs. He makes no claim that the following are the best; they’re simply the films that matter most to its curator.

Let’s begin with his all-time favourite, The Third Man, taking us from the top of Vienna’s ferris wheel to deep in its sewers – the latter convincingly recreated on a backlot in London. The star? Orson Welles. The director? Carol Reed. And the unforgettable cinematographer? The forgotten Australian genius Robert Krasker. It also has the finest final scene in cinema history. (Only one comes close – The Long Good Friday. Which is also memorable for me, as I accompanied its co-star Helen Mirren to the opening night in the East End.)

Favourite Hitchcocks? North by Northwest and Rear Window. I once had the surreal experience of watching the latter while sitting beside James Stewart, who hadn’t seen it for decades. The old man watching his young self.

Spielberg? His debut feature Duel –the strangest movie car chase. And his sci-fi epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, topped only by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though my favourite of Stanley’s wasn’t set in psychedelic space but in the trenches of WW1: the monochromatic masterpiece Paths of Glory. Starring Kirk Douglas, who once came to our house for din-dins.

I love De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Visconti’s The Leopard and Death in Venice. Also set in that mysterious city, the elegant horror film Don’t Look Now. Closer to home, Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Phil Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence and Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country. Peter Weir’s weird Picnic at Hanging Rock makes the cut – as does his US film, The Truman Show. And though modesty should forbid it, Don’s Party – one of my memorable collaborations with Bruce Beresford. Plus my animated collab with the great Alex Stitt, Grendel Grendel Grendel.

The cornucopia includes Lawrence of Arabia (Noel Coward thought Peter O’Toole was too pretty for the part, so retitled it Florence of Arabia), The Life of Brian, Moulin Rouge!, the original All Quiet on the Western Front, The French Connection, Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, Chaplin’s Modern Times and City Lights, Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Lang’s Metropolis, Sunset Boulevard (said to be Donald Trump’s favourite fillum), and A Night to Remember –a 1958 English film about the Titanic tragedy, vastly superior to the bloated US effort. Plus of course our beloved Casablanca – with the best dialogue ever. Practising their English, one Jewish refugee asks the other the time. “Vot votch?” “Ten votch.” “Such much?” Tell me what I’ve missed ([e-mail]) and we’ll run a sequel.

One postscript about another. My first film – and the first to win Best Film in the AFI Awards and the Grand Prix at an international festival – was Jack and Jill: a Postscript, which told the doomed love story of a biker and a kindy teacher. There was no dialogue; it was told via nursery rhymes. Six years in the making, amateur actors, budget $6000. Written, produced, photographed and edited by me and the late Brian Robinson.