Life of Brian

The Monty Python team's Life of Brian opened in August 1979. George Harrison financed it after EMI's chief executive read the script and pulled the funding as too blasphemous. It was banned in Norway, Ireland and parts of Britain for varying lengths of time, and the BBC declined to broadcast it for decades. Several polls (Channel 4, Total Film, Empire) have since ranked it the greatest comedy film ever made.

Brian Cohen of Nazareth (Graham Chapman) is born in a stable next door to Jesus on the same night, and spends the rest of his short life being mistaken for the Messiah. He is caught between the Roman occupation, the People's Front of Judea (not the Judean People's Front, of course) and a fast-growing crowd of disciples who insist on misunderstanding him. John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (who also directs) play approximately fifteen roles each. Idle's song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, written for the film and recorded in a single afternoon, has since become one of the most-covered British songs of the late twentieth century.

The satire is aimed at the people who attach themselves to religion more than at religion itself, and that distinction remains the cleanest defence the Pythons ever offered against the blasphemy charge. The Cleese-Palin debate with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, chaired by Tim Rice on the BBC's Friday Night, Saturday Morning is a small classic of the genre in its own right.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: It is the funniest film ever made about the politics of belief. Forty-five years on it still works exactly as designed, and Idle's song is now sung at British funerals more often than any hymn.