25 ROOKIES WHO DID IT RIGHT HERE AND THERE, A FIRST-TIME DIRECTOR CUTS TOGETHER A MASTERPIECE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Today's release of ``The Battle of Shaker Heights,'' the second unwanted offspring of the HBO reality series ``Project Greenlight,'' got us to thinking about how hard it is for anyone to make a maiden feature film - even if the writer-director is really talented and isn't being constantly jerked around for the entertainment of TV audiences.

So, rather than give credence to a program that was partially invented by a star of ``Gigli,'' we decided to come up with a list of the 25 best first features.

This was not easy. Even though our top pick in this category was a no- brainer, many of the usual, great director suspects just don't qualify.

Some of the best-known auteurs in the international and Hollywood pantheons - names like Ford, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Bergman and Rossellini, for example - worked their ways up through hierarchical production systems, where they made any number of ropes-learning movies before discovering their distinctive styles and voices. Later geniuses, such as Kubrick and Scorsese, were more self-starters, but similarly failed to make the most auspicious starts with the likes of ``Fear and Desire'' and ``Who's That Knocking at My Door.''

For our purposes, made-for-TV movies were verboten, Spielberg's (more impressive than ``Sugarland Express'') ``Duel'' being a casualty of that. And we had to draw the line at first features or go crazy, although leaving Luis Bunuel's surrealist masterpiece ``Un Chien Andalou'' off the list admittedly drives me kind of nuts.

As for criteria that went into making this subjective list, well, it was all pretty subjective. How well a first feature presented a director's fully matured vision clearly influenced some of the selections; its wider impact on cinema in general was sometimes taken into account. But, as is especially evidenced by some of the more recent entries, making a good movie was far and away the main factor.

As any director with anything to say will tell you, that ain't easy to do the 10th or 20th time out, let alone the first.

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Of course, the best movie ever made would top the best first feature list as well. Given unheard-of artistic control at the height of the classic studio era, Welles' innovations still influence all that's good about cinema today.

2. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) A perfect film noir before the cycle even really started. Huston's sense of pacing, instinctive use of silhouette and shadow, and acuity with such superb actors as Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Elisha Cook Jr. turned an oft-filmed Dashiell Hammett thriller into the stuff that Hollywood's best dreams are made of.

3. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) The boldest of the French New Wave critics-turned-directors invented a whole new, self-referential film language with this one, and as an extra bonus, redefined movie cool. There would never have been a Scorsese (and, although Godard would hate to admit it, a Spielberg) without ``Breathless' '' wised-up take on our collective cinematic memory to guide them.

4. Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) Before he spaced out into the imagistic ether of ``Days of Heaven'' and ``The Thin Red Line,'' Malick located a rare, unpretentious kind of poetry in the least likely of subjects: a rural teen couple's killing spree based on the Starkweather-Fugate case of the 1950s.

5. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) It took a skate punk to update surrealism for the modern media age (when, admittedly, it's hard to tell the subversive dreamy stuff from broadcast ``reality''). Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman went even further with their follow-up ``Adaptation,'' but this was the first MTV generation film to really get that perception is just another creative tool.

6. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955) This simple story of a boy's coming-of-age in a Bengali village is a pure expression of filmic humanism. It also marked the start of a career that examined Indian culture - and presented it to the world - like no other from the largest national cinema on Earth.

7. On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1949) With all due respect to the early efforts of Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minnelli, this hooferific marvel not only moved the movie musical out onto the street, but it also showed that an infectiously fun illusion of spontaneity could be wrung out of this most stylized and controlled of genres.

8. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1924) The guy who wrote the book (literally) on movie montage first put his ideas into practice with this propagandistic portrayal of the pre-revolution repression of a Russian work stoppage.

9. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959) The other great New Wave master may not have possessed the formal and philosophical restlessness of compatriot Godard. But as this semi-autobiographical study of troubled youth - perhaps the most sensitive yet unsentimental ever made - proves, Truffaut had an eye for human behavior that all the movie-watching in the world couldn't bestow.

10. Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) The director's use of space, hard dialogue, eccentricity and visceral discomfort has been copied a million times ... but only with the same potency in Tarantino's sophomore effort, ``Pulp Fiction.''

11. The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) The silent-comedy master had not quite figured out the sublime balance of slapstick and sentiment he perfected later in the decade, but as was the case with the equally influential Eisenstein, the basics are all here; and, needless to say, there are a lot more laughs.

12. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1978) He may have grown more adept over the years, but Lynch has not gotten any weirder than he was with this first foray into psychologically loaded nightmare scenarios.

13. Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948) Blacklisted soon after directing this tough-minded expose of big-city crime and corruption, Polonsky at least went to his grave knowing that he made a more impactful, socially conscious thriller than his lifelong nemesis Elia Kazan ever did.

14. Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962) A career (and, some would say, a life) devoted to examining entrapment, dislocation and the depths of human cruelty began with this Polish production about a sex- and-jealousy-charged boating excursion.

15. sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) Actually revived the adult dramatic comedy that had been thought to have died out in the 1970s. Oh, and virtually made the percolating independent film movement commercially viable ever since.

16. The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940) The first of Sturges' sassy, sexy screwball masterpieces was not his best. But this tale of a bum turned puppet governor turned genuine reformer still unveiled a unique energy, distinctly American sense of satire and a crack crew of comic actors that would grow to represent the diverse and craziest aspects of our culture.

17. Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1960) Though it now appears to be trying way too hard to be hip, at the time actor-turned-indie pioneer Cassavetes' first feature - a jazz-infused take on interracial dating - not only broke every rule of production, but initiated a rawer, more emotional approach to cinema that the filmmaker would later make into indelible works of art.

18. The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967) ``Springtime for Hitler''; as funny then as it is now, with the extra added attraction of being utterly unexpected. At a time when everyone was self-consciously trying to break rules, Brooks, an old-school comedian even back then, was the one to prove that there is no bad-taste limit where movie humor is concerned.

19. Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2000) Although word is that his soon-to-be-released second feature, ``21 Grams,'' is remarkable, it remains to be seen whether this unflinching, structurally inventive Mexican filmmaker lives up to the promise of his confrontational and heartbreaking first film. My guess is that a start this ambitious and accomplished is no fluke.

20. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968) More than anybody who followed him, Romero rebooted the horror movie genre into a more thrill-oriented, kill-it-yourself sensibility. That this no-budget zombie bloodfest also incorporated metaphorical social commentary still marks it as one of the most intelligent fright films of the past 35 years.

21. American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) This beautifully controlled, Oscar-winning debut feature indicated that British theater wiz Mendes was a full-blown auteur. ``Road to Perdition'' marked him as perhaps more of a blowhard, but that doesn't take away from the iconic accomplishment of this one's uniquely trenchant criticism of the much-derided suburban lifestyle.

22. Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) A movie lover's inquiry into whether filmed terrors can ever be as scary as some of the stuff that goes on in real life. Of the '60s, but just as relevant now.

23. George Washington (David Gordon Green, 2000) Offbeat rhythms, allusive images and a confident sense of people in their places marks Green as, perhaps, a cinematic William Faulkner for the 21st century. As with Inarritu, we can't say for sure yet. But he gives us confidence.

24. Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) The first filmmaker to move real people into the ghetto gangsta genre. A little too celebrated in its day (Singleton is hardly the new-jack Welles), ``Boyz'' has nevertheless withstood the test of more than a decade as a vital dramatization of conditions that cry to be taken seriously.

25. Blood Simple (Joel Coen, 1984) A body of artful quirkiness began subtly enough with this atmospheric Texas noir. It bore just enough of the Coen brothers' weird characterizations, snapdragon camera work and offbeat sensibility to hint at what was to come ... without, shrewdly, predicting a moment of it.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

12 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) 25 best first films

Few directors get it right the first time

(2) Citizen Kane: Orson Welles

(3) On the Town: Gene Kelly, Vera-Ellen

(4) Boyz N the Hood: Cuba Gooding Jr.

(5) Badlands: Martin Sheen

(6) Being John Malkovich: John Malkovich

(7) The Great McGinty: Brian Donlevy, center

(8) American Beauty: Kevin Spacey, Mena Suvari

(9) Reservoir Dogs: Harvey Keitel

(10) sex, lies and videotape: Andie McDowell