The results of the Condé Nast Traveler film poll are in, with the top 50 flicks, as chosen by readers, that captured a real sense of place and inspired them to travel. 50 films in the space of a year seems a little ambitious to me: I’m not sure I would classify Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (No. 22) as a travel piece, no matter how appealing its vision of a misty, Victorian UK. And how did it, or, for that matter, Last Holiday (no. 20), ever wind up higher on the list than the Eastern European odyssey in Everything is Illuminated (no. 24)? Still, there’s little to quibble with in the top 10, with Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener, and Tsotsi all making the list. But the top two finishers, Pride and Predjudice, and Chinese Actresses in Kimonos, er, Memoirs of a Geisha, show a preference for the fantasy version of a place, rather than any attempts at “reality”. Ergo, readers might want to learn from the lesson of eco-fantasist Timothy Treadwell, before they take too much inspiration from the 4th place winner, Grizzly Man, and go running off to the wilds of Alaska to commune with the bears.

1. Pride & Prejudice (England)
2. Memoirs of a Geisha (California; Japan)
3. Brokeback Mountain (Alberta, Canada, as Wyoming)
4. Grizzly Man (Alaska)
5. The Constant Gardener (Berlin; Kenya; London)
6. Tsotsi (Johannesburg; Soweto)
7. Casanova (Venice)
8. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Mexico; West Texas)
9. The Da Vinci Code (Paris; London; Scotland)
10. Mrs. Henderson Presents (London)

Previously:
– “Condé Nast Traveler Movie Poll“