2001: A Space Odyssey wins best film tournament over The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2001: A Space Odyssey wins best film tournament by 101-98

A tournament that started with 64 candidates ended with a three-vote margin: 2001: A Space Odyssey beat The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 101-98. The round of 16, which still allowed additions, saw Casablanca eliminated (27-77 against The Godfather) and Taxi Driver fall short (38-41 against Gone with the Wind). In the quarter-finals, The Godfather dispatched The Sting (50-18), while Barry Lyndon did the same to Gone with the Wind (45-31). The semi-final between The Godfather and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was decided by six votes (59-65), and the other was resolved by 2001 with a landslide victory over Barry Lyndon (94-44).

The system was simple: direct elimination, two films per matchup, the most voted advances. No quotas, no weighted rankings, no declared criteria. A format that, as one participant warned, closely resembles what governs your fate.

Films left out of the initial list

The selection of 64 titles did not please everyone. Several messages missed classics considered superior to those included: Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Fight Club, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Philadelphia Story, To Kill a Mockingbird, To Have and Have Not, The Last Emperor, The Name of the Rose or Once Upon a Time in America. Hitchcock titles (North by Northwest, Vertigo, Spellbound, Rebecca, Notorious, Psycho, The Birds), John Huston's (The Man Who Would Be King, The Treasure of the Sierra Progenitora), Fritz Lang's (M, Metropolis) and Spanish films like El verdugo, Atraco a las 3, Le salaire de la peur, La Grande Fuite, Das Boot, Vivir, Buster Keaton's The General, The Apartment, La vaquilla or Banana Joe were also mentioned.

The organizer's response was blunt: there were 64, nothing more, and he had not compiled the list. The underlying complaint was less about the absence of a specific title than the method: an opaque preliminary screening that conditioned all subsequent results.

The rewatchability criterion: what withstands a second viewing

One of the most repeated arguments was that a top film must stand the test of time. Rewatching it years later and finding it still works. The problem, it was pointed out, is that this criterion also applies to titles no one would put on a masterpiece list: they are rewatched out of habit, domestic compromise, or because it's that or argue with a partner.

The counterpoint was clear. Some maintain that if a film falls from your hands over the years, it wasn't that good, and that great works of art endure. Against this, the thesis that there is no single best film, but rather a large number of extraordinary films dependent on the viewer's wavelength.

Taxi Driver, Blade Runner and cinema that is misread

The most developed analysis of the tournament concerned Taxi Driver. Conventional reading treats it as an icon of marginality and urban violence. The alternative reading circulated suggests that the entire film is paranoia: daydreams of a taxi driver working 18 hours a day, six days a week, whose mind constructs worlds where he is the hero. Under this hypothesis, the date with the blonde, the shootout with pimps, and the ending as savior would not be facts, but fantasies.

In parallel, Blade Runner was championed as the most authentic film in the tournament: for its setting, themes, and a cast that delivers science fiction without pretense, something almost no other achieves. And Kurosawa appeared twice: Seven Samurai fell in the quarters to 2001 (45-79), but Dersu Uzala was cited as an absolute masterpiece.

Gone with the Wind and the prejudice against classics

The elimination of Gone with the Wind in the quarters (31-45 against Barry Lyndon) generated one of the most interesting exchanges. It was argued that the film does not connect with current audiences because it portrays a society that no longer exists. The reply: that is not a problem with the film, but a problem with a society incapable of appreciating anything other than its own reality. And the reminder that Scarlett O'Hara's story is not a fairy tale: it is the chronicle of a woman ahead of her time who decides on her life and business in an environment that forbade it.

The final result and what remains open

The tournament closed with 2001 at the top and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly three votes behind. Participation was uneven: wide margins in the round of 16, some close matchups in the quarters, and a final decided by the narrowest margin of the entire competition. The organizer maintained momentum with periodic updates and pairings published in the header.

The eternal question remains: if the initial list had included Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, or To Kill a Mockingbird, would 2001 have won? No one will know. The format allows no repêchage.