Ten Seriously Great But Overlooked (Except by Filmbuffs) Films

An interesting shot from Mr. Arkadin

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success

1. Odd Man Out (1947, Carol Reed)  A notorious Irish resistance leader is shot during a botched bank robbery. Abandoned by his comrades he wanders the darkening streets of an unnamed city, steered by a panoply of allies and adversaries toward his final fate.
2. Mr. Arkadin, or A Confidential Report (1955, Orson Welles) A would-be blackmailer is hired by his victim, a mysterious tycoon, to uncover the tycoon's presumably forgotten past.  Every person he questions ends up a corpse, as he suspects he may become one soon himself.
3. The Day of the Locust (1975, John Schlesinger)  An aspiring artist in Depression Era Hollywood cynically discovers the fastest way to the top, and loses his ideals along the way.
4. Slaughterhouse Five (1972, George Roy Hill)  A man "unstuck" in time jumps back and forth between a WWII German prison camp, Fifties suburban America, and an extraterrestrial zoo.
5. Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)  Trench warfare in France during WWI.  A squadron turns back from an impossible assault and three men are court-martialed to set an example.  Their colonel defends them, but unsuccessfully.
6. Umberto D. (1952, Vittorio de Sica)  An elderly pensioner and his beloved dog are turned out onto the streets by a heartless landlady.  The old man searches for someone to adopt his pet, but finds no one trustworthy enough.
7. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander MacKendrick)  A slick press agent is blackmailed by a powerful gossip columnist to break up a relationship between his overprotected sister and a rising jazz guitarist. Degradation ensues.
8. Oscar and Lucinda (1997, Gillian Armstrong)  Two gamblers in turn-of-the-century Australia, a minister and a glassworks heiress, form an unique bond of friendship.  The minister sacrifices everything for her, transporting a glass church across the Outback.
9. Slither (1973, Howard Zieff)  A parolee joins forces with his former cellmate's partner-in-crime to recover their hidden plunder.  Strangers in mysterious souped-up black vans are in hot pursuit.
10. Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer)  A bored banker exchanges his drab life for a new identity in a revamped body. It turns out to be a Faustian bargain he can never step back from.