Bluff like a film buff

Battleship Potemkin 1925

Sergei Eisenstein's film celebrated the 20th anniversary of the failed 1905 Russian revolution. Bluffers should first mention the maggoty food which helps drive the sailors to mutiny. They should also rhapsodise about the Odessa Steps sequence in which troops open fire on civilians. One young mother is killed and her pram bobbles down the length of the steps with her baby inside. Also mention Eisenstein's use of "montage".

Metropolis (1926)

"Quite the silliest film," H G Wells grumbled about Fritz Lang's futuristic sci-fi epic but generations of film critics have disagreed. Bluffers should forget the plot - some hokum about oppressed workers, a mad scientist and a robot - and concentrate on the astonishing production design. Lang's conception of the futuristic city was inspired by his first glimpse of New York. Remember to turn up your nose at the 1984 colour-tinted re-release.

Sunrise (1927)

This was the most expensive art film made in Hollywood. It is about a girl tempting a man away from his idyllic life in the city. The director F W Murnau was renowned for the mobility of his camerawork. What is astonishing is the fluid way he shoots rural and urban scenes. Bluffers wanting to show off might care to mention that Murnau's brilliant screenwriter, Carl Mayer, is buried not far from Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery.

Napoleon (1927)

Britain's own Kevin Brownlow was responsible for restoring Abel Gance's masterwork. The key thing to remember about this several hours-long silent epic is its revolutionary use of special effects and, in particular, the way the screen splits into three. Bemoan the lukewarm reception it received on its initial release and the complex rights issues which still surround the film. If you haven't seen it, you have an excuse, as it is rarely shown.

Rules Of The Game (1939)

Jean Renoir's country house drama has long nestled in critics' top 10 lists. In 1939, French audiences detested it - Renoir said he was showing "a society dancing on a volcano". The film boasts the most famous line in Renoir's work, "the terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons." Bluffers should also mention the grisly sequence in which aristocrats blast away at rabbits in what passes for recreation but seems closer to genocide.

Citizen Kane (1941)

The clue to the mystery of Charles Foster Kane's life is the word he whispers before he dies, "Rosebud". No bluffer would accept this refers to the sledge that little Kane took on the snow. As Gore Vidal has suggested, "Rosebud" was the tycoon William Randolph Hearst's pet name for Marion Davies' clitoris. Bluffers caught out by discussions of Greg Toland's deep focus cinematography can always save face by invoking Davies' private parts.

Double Indemnity (1944)

One of Hollywood's darkest noirs, this was the only collaboration between Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder. It is seamy, hardboiled fare. Bluffers should express their admiration for Barbara Stanwyck's shapely legs, displayed in eyecatching fashion when she descends the staircase of her Hollywood home. You can hardly blame Fred MacMurray's insurance agent for being distracted from his work.

Rome, Open City (1945)

Myth has it Roberto Rossellini shot his classic with scraps of film given to him by US soldiers who helped liberate Rome. Bluffers can extol the urgency and authenticity of a movie shot on the streets just as the war was ending. They can also chide him for his overly romantic attitude toward Catholics and communists and for portraying the Italian anti-Nazi resistance so heroically. His portrait of a city under occupation remains topical.

Enfants du Paradis (1945)

Made by Marcel Carné , this is a romance set in 19th-century Paris. Arletty (later to fall into disgrace because of her "horizontal" collaboration with the Nazis) plays the heroine, Garance. Bluffers should point out most of the protagonists are based on real historical figures. Pick of the performances is from Jean-Louis Barrault as the lovelorn mime artist, a character so forlorn he makes Charlie Chaplin's tramp look hardboiled.

Tokyo Story (1953)

At the heart of Ozu's most famous film is a message with a special resonance for overworked city dwellers - don't forget your mum and dad. An elderly couple visit their grown-up children in Tokyo. The children are too self-obsessed to pay them any attention. Bluffers wanting to show off should talk about Ozu's use of 360-degree space, but this is tricky technical terrain and should be avoided unless you have done your homework first.

Ordet (1955)

You can't talk about Carl Dreyer's masterpiece without giving away the plot - so make sure you do and you will immediately assume an air of authenticity. The hub is the miracle at the end. A mother has just died in childbirth. A religious fanatic who looks a bit like a Scandinavian Catweazle whispers in her ear and she comes back to life. It may sound trite, but critics regard it as one of the most "transcendent" moments in cinema.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Max Von Sydow playing chess with the Grim Reaper on the beach is just too obvious. Bluffers will have to come up with other lines of attack. Bluffers could point out that the teenage Ingmar Bergman, who gained an international reputation following this film, was a Nazi sympathiser who once saw Hitler speak. How could an artist of his stature and intelligence have been so deceived?

400 Blows (1959)

By all accounts, François Truffaut had a wretched childhood. His first feature film - which is largely autobiographical - helped launch the French New Wave in earnest and remains one of the best films ever made about what it is like to be a truculent 14-year-old. This is Adrian Mole but done with Gallic flair. Truffaut went on to make four more films about the main character of Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Peeping Tom (1960)

"The sickest and filthiest film I ever remember seeing." "Shovel it up and flush it down the nearest sewer." Thus fulminated the critics when Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was released. Now, as every bluffer should know, this everyday tale about a man in a duffel coat who tries to photograph the moment of women's deaths, is accepted as one of the cast-iron British classics. Martin Scorsese is a fan - and Marty has taste.

A Bout De Souffle (1960)

All you need to make a movie, Jean-Luc Godard once proclaimed, is a girl and a gun. And all you need to bluff about a Godard movie is knowledge of one or two of his better-known aphorisms. If you can't remember the girl and the gun line, try: "Cinema is truth 24 times a second." If you can't remember that either, just mumble about jump cuts, Jean Seberg's T-shirts and the way Jean-Paul Belmondo smokes his cigarettes.

Loves Of A Blonde (1965)

This was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave. It is black and white, small scale and undemonstrative. The setting is a factory town where there are no men. Andula, the heroine, meets a jack-the-lad musician at a dance and resolves to follow him to Prague. She gets there, but neither he nor his family want her. Bluffers should note that the film is acknowledged by Ken Loach as a major influence on his work.

Death in Venice (1971)

If you want to be a provocateur as well as a bluffer, suggest that Dirk Bogarde's earlier films were better. He was much better in comedies such as Doctor In The House and Doctor At Sea than in the arty pictures he made on the continent. It is all very well ogling blond boys on the Venice Lido as he does in Death In Venice, based on Thomas Mann's novella - but it took more oomph to play a junior medic sharing digs with Donald Sinden.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is just about the greatest film ever made. In recreating late 18th-century England, it shows astonishing craftsmanship (production designer Ken Adam deserved his Oscar) but it is lively too. There is drama here aplenty as the Irish chancer Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) lives the wild life. There is also a huge emotional undertow. In other words, it is a film you should actually see rather than bluff about.

Days Of Heaven (1978)

Terrence Malick's second feature is arguably his best: an evocative, beautifully shot tale about migrant workers from Chicago seeking to escape poverty in the early part of the 20th century who head out west to work on a farm in Texas. One question bluffers might ask is how did the director get those locusts - who we see ravaging the fields - to do their jobs on cue. Do even insects take direction from the great Malick?

Come And See (1985)

If bluffers ever get drawn into discussions about the best anti-war films of all time, they should opt for Elem Klimov's utterly brutal account of life in Belarus under the Nazis. Spielberg is reputed to have been influenced by it. Klimov had grown up in the Soviet Union during the Second World War and had seen at first hand the kind of apocalyptic scenes in the film. "I am burdened with very strong recollections about that hell," he said.

Do The Right Thing (1989)

When the temperature rises above a certain point, people lose it. That was Spike Lee's thesis in his drama about racial tension in Bed-Stuy New York. Bluffers will note the irony that a film as explosive as this is now part of the canon. You can't forget the riot that ends the film, but this is much more than agit-prop. Unlike Woody Allen, Lee didn't just show the white Manhattan elite but attempted to capture the full richness of the city.

The Piano (1993)

Harvey Keitel seemingly borrowed his Scottish accent from John Laurie in Dad's Army. "I want to lie together with no clothes on," he mutters in a Laurie-like burr at the mute heroine (Holly Hunter) in Jane Campion's dark, 19th-century melodrama. There is one key lesson that Campion is trying to impart. Fortunately, it is a lesson that bluffers can learn without actually seeing her film: namely that Victorians had sex lives.

Breaking the Waves (1996)

This is Lars von Trier in pre-Dogma mode. It was acclaimed as a masterpiece on its release but has been relatively little seen since. Emily Watson excels as the shy, religious Highland woman who talks to God and has sex with strangers in the hope that it will cure her husband. Bluffers might note Von Trier's obsession with Joan of Arc-like heroines. With its lurching camera movements, it is the kind of film that might make them car sick.

Mood for Love (2000)

Two married neighbours (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) in 1962 Hong Kong discover their respective spouses are having an affair. They would like to do the same but hold back. Bluffers might best describe Wong Kar Wai's melodrama as Brief Encounter, done Asian-style. Their failure to do so is what lends the film its fascination and erotic tension. That, and the fact that they are as stylish a couple as ever stepped forth from a fashion spread.

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