Personally I think Kieslowski is the king of beautiful cinema. If anyone knows of any films that could match or possibly top his excellence please list them. Here are, in my opinion the most beautiful films of all time:
La Double vie de Veronique
Blue
White
Red
I guess you're leaving it open as to our interpretation of "beautiful"
Just thinking back to '07, I have to say
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
In the Shadow of the Moon
Atonement
you already covered Kieslowski, so I'd add
Pride and Prejudice
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Saving Private Ryan
Bound
2001: A Space Odyssey
Road to Perdition
Fellowship of the Ring
Pretty much anything shot by Roger Deakins
to add some that I didn't see on the list yet.
Once Upon a Time in America
Miller's Crossing
La Sconosciuta
Lolita (1997 version. Yes hate me if you like, I just cannot help it)
Mulholland Dr. (disturbing beauty)
They Fought for Their Motherland
Beautiful in the sense of composition... certainly "La Double Vie De Veronique" might be my favorite. David Lean films such as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago" are certainly beautiful but perhaps less delicate. "The Year of Living Dangerously", and in a strange way I have to put Lynch's "Elephant Man" as beautiful black and white.
Beautiful in the sense of story and pastoral beauty... "Jean De Florette" and "Manon Du Sources".
Beautiful in the sense of story and beautiful women... "Gloomy Sunday" and "Camille Claudel".
Somewhere in all this I'd have to add "The Red Balloon".
way too many to count but this is certainly one of themWhen there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
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Here are a few additions
1. To Catch a Thief/Marnie (Hitchcock)
2. Contempt (Godard)
3. Citizen Kane (duh?) (Welles)
4. An Autumn Afternoon/Floating Weeds (Ozu)
5. The Draughtman's Contract (Greenaway)
6. Basically anything by Tarkovsky (but Solaris and Andrei Rublyev haven't been mentioned here yet)
7. Tokyo Olympiad/Antonio Gaudi/Taxi to the Dark Side (three of many documentaries that aesthetically go above and beyond)
8. Europa (von Trier)
9. Songs From the Second Floor (Andersson)
10. The Man Without a Past (Kaurismaki)
11. A Very Long Engagement/Amelie (Jeunet)
Ice Storm
Badlands
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Mosquito Coast
Dead Man
Fargo
Zodiac (David Fincher)
2001
The Royal Tenenbaums
Donnie Darko
Fight Club
Dark City
No Country for Old Men
The Illusionist
Michael Clayton
Last Temptation of Christ
O' Brother, Where art Thou?
Shawshank Redemption
Dances with Wolves
Network
Sergei Parajanov has to be added to the list, he has too many
My favorite is Sayat Nova and thanks for mentioning Amelie, must be up there as the most beautiful ever
Most of all the new American films mentioned in this thread are a joke and are not even close to the classics
-The Piano
-Bambi
-Pride and Prejudice (2006)
-Atonement
My other car is the millenium falcon.
Off the top of my dome:
Daniel (Sidney Lumet)
You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
Who's that knocking at my Door (martin Scorcese)
Buffalo Soldiers (Gregor Jordan)
Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano)
Lianna (John Sayles)
Cobb (Ron Shelton)
Tillsammans (Lukas Moodysson)
Moon (Duncan Jones)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
Breaking the Waves (Lars Von Trier)
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Daybreakers (Spierig Brothers)
King Pin (Farrelly Brothers)
etcetera... obviously this is not a purely aesthetic judgment I am making. I guess the hypothesis of this list is that beauty goes hand in hand with sorrow and/or violence...
If this thread goes on long enough, I'm sure we'll end up with about every film ever shot. Many nice entries already. No need repeating them. Here's my two cents' worth (which also happens to be my personal top 3 of all time):
Valery en tyden divu (Jaromil Jires)
Mikres Aphrodites (Nikos Kondouros)
La dolce vita (Federico Fellini)
At once coming to my mind:
The New World
The Double Life of Veronique
Vertigo
Marnie
Madame de...
Dama s sobachkoj (The Lady with the Little Dog)
Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes are flying)
2001
Barry Lyndon
Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)
...and lots of John Ford and many many more....