Sight & Sound Poll, 2022

I think the BFI website must be having issues so I can’t see the full list

But I do know that Jeanne Dielman, while a great movie, is not the greatest film of all time. Or worthy of Top 10 status.

The inmates have retaken the nuthouse, again.

Why can't I never vote on polls on DL? I'm using the latest version of Android on my phone. When I click on a chosen name, nothing ever happens.

In addition to Akerman’s film taking the top spot, this year’s overall list is far more modern and diverse than past editions — possibly due to the larger sample size of critics, with 1,600 participants contributing to the poll as opposed to 846 critics from 2012. 11 films from female filmmakers made the top 100, including Akerman’s “News From Home,” Agnes Varda’s “Cleo from 5 to 7” and “The Gleaners and I,” Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s “Meshes of the Afternoon,” Vera Chytilová’s “Daisies,” Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” Barbara Loden’s “Wanda,” Jane Campion’s “The Piano,” and Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust.”

Djibril Diop Mambéty’s “Touki Bouki” was the only film from a Black filmmaker to feature on the 2012 list. This year, it’s joined by six other films, including Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” (the sole film from a Black woman to be featured on the list), Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep,” “Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and Ousmane Sembène’s “Black Girl.”

Hmm….is anyone surprised

Old masters who once appeared in the Top 10 are gone from the Top 100 altogether: Rene Clair, D.W. Griffith, Robert Flaherty, Erich von Stroheim, Marcel Carne, and David Lean. Luchino Visconti only appears once at 90 for “The Leopard.” Only two Kenji Mizoguchi films make this list, as do only two Kurosawa and two Ozu. No Pasolini, and only the two most obvious titles from Fellini, “8 1/2” and “La Dolce Vita,” are lower than ever. And the only film altogether from India is Satyajit Ray’s “Pather Panchali” at 35, which has appeared in the past in the Top 10.

Classic Hollywood also takes a hit: There are no other John Ford titles on the list other than “The Searchers,” which fell out of the Top 10 this year. And no entries at all for Howard Hawks. Nothing from Welles aside from “Citizen Kane,” even though “The Magnificent Ambersons” has previously appeared in the Top 10. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton each have two films on the list. Hitchcock still has four titles, though.

For the curious - Jeanne Dielman is currently on HBO Max. Fascinating film.

#95 Get Out!

^ it's a great movie. One if the best ones out of 21st century.

Get Out is fine, but no way in hell is it the 95th best movie of all time. This list is pandering woke crap. Nobody is going to remember Moonlight or that dreary lesbian portrait movie in 50 years like they do Howard Hawks movies.

Jeanne Dielman is a very, very good movie, but if the exact same movie had been directed by a man it would not have made the Top 100, or even the Top 250.

The only point of such rankings is to bicker about them and pick them apart, so this is a great list.

Paris, Texas, Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should have been on the list. No Tarantino or Wes Anderson movies on the list, right? No Coen Brothers either? They made a few movies that could easily be on the list. Coen Bros. I mean, not Tarantino or Anderson.

[Quote]^ it's a great movie. One if the best ones out of 21st century.

Why is it great R8?

Not a single Woody Allen either. As if he just never even existed.

^and nothing from Polanski: Knife in the Water, Rosemary's Baby, The Pianist.

David Lean not being on the list is the definition of absurdity.

The Director's top 100 which can also be found on the website is much better and has more movies people might actually want to see.

R11, I think both Paris, Texas, and Eternal Sunshine are on the Director's list.

I need to see more of these films instead of watching junk

Vertigo is a bore. Kim Novak can't act and Jimmy Stewart is old enough to be her grampaw. It just ids aling and who cares?

It's basically Hitchcock's icky biopic, as he forever searched for a living Barbie doll who would be his avatar, since he was transgender.

No Robert Altman is a crime.

I like Get Out just fine but it's an EMBARRASSMENT showing up on this list

R19: I concur. I've never understood why Vertigo is so well-regarded. Kim Novak is stunning but other than that, she is a terrible performer.

R20, wow I didn’t notice that till you pointed it out. Shameful!

Hitchcock has many better films than Vertigo: The Birds, Psycho, Rope, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train...I do wonder why it's so highly regarded in retrospect? Some films deserve that treatment (Altman's 3 Women is brilliant and only somewhat recently got the adulation is deserves) but Vertigo does...not.

I say this as a person who loves Vertigo mind you but this is why:Vertigo gets the love out of his filmography -- because 1) it was regarded as a flop for a very long time and it makes critics feel like they're reclaiming something unappreciated and unloved from the dustbin of history. And 2) because it is a summation of Hitch's obsessions and his cruelty toward women, which appeals both to women who appreciate the self-critical nature of the story and to straight men who really just love watching women suffer even while they pretend otherwise. Also 3) it's been damn influential.

And his other movies are more superficially entertaining, which is looked down upon - critics want weight, not the immaculately weightless movie charm of a North By Northwest. Just look at how few comedies made the list, after all.

What about Steel Magnolias?

No list of Top 100 Films of All Time that excludes Terms of Endearment is worth a damn.

I love Agnès Varda but the Gleaners And I has no business on this list, or in any list of top 500 films

No Elizabeth Taylor movies? Blasphemy!

It would've been great if Eternal Sunshine was on the list. That Fanny & Alexander isn't on it is ridiculous.

How can we trust a poll that didn't include "Welcome to My Home," from Brenda Dickson, in the top 5?

No A Place In The Sun?

The Wizard of Oz never makes these polls but it is the one most treasured.

Vertigo is awful. Never cared for Kim Novak at all.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles is a great film but it is very much a "Once was Enough" kind of film which is true of a lot of these films.

I get why some feel Vertigo is overrated in general but for me it is Bernard Herrmann’s greatest score.

I'm a cinephile and a French speaker and I've never even fucking heard of Jeanne Dielman. WTF? Sight and Sound IS hopelessly pretentious but still.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is like the most overrated film ever. I wish I’d never seen it - I’d have a higher opinion of it.

And the one that came after, Petite Maman, was even worse.

Not true, R35. The first thing I did after watching Jeanne Dielman was watch it again.

The 1959 "Imitation of Life" with Lana Turner and John Gavin is one of the 100 greatest films of all time?

R4 What’s wrong with adding black movies? Do the Right Thing is a terrific movie and deserves to be on the list, IMO.

R40, yes it is a masterpiece.

“What’s wrong with adding black movies?”

You’re missing the point.

[quote]That Fanny & Alexander isn't on it is ridiculous.

It's on the Director's List, at least.

Do The Right Thing is not one of the 100 best movies of all time.

If they're just going to elevate any film made by a woman into masterpiece territory, then why not just put Nancy Walker's "Can't Stop The Music" in the top 5?

^ or Joan Rivers’ Rabbit Test

I would watch Do the Right Thing 100 times over Vertigo. But I would have put Rear Window in the top 10, and I agree with Toto that The Wizard of Oz is the best of all time. Crimes and Misdemeanors would also have made my list.

I am certainly going to check out Jeanne Dielman!

Get Out? Really? I guess all those critics falling over themselves to overpraise it missed that they were the ones Peele was skewering.

Jeanne Dielman was amazing. I'd watch it again.

I'm not voting in OP's poll because I haven't seen all the films and am not that much of a cinéaste. Was anything by Margarethe von Trotta on there?

I was hoping the younger critics would be cool enough to put the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the top 100. That would have been a cool move. I know they wouldn't have put Silence of the Lambs in the top 100 cuz of the "transphobic" allegations, but that would have been a cool one too. The Shining and Psycho are OK as far as horror movies go though.

I don't get the love for Get Out. It was just the Stepford Wives but with black people. It was fine. Maybe you have to be black to really like it.

I’m really glad to read other people here criticising Vertigo. I’ve really enjoyed pet much every other Hitchcock I’ve seen. Rear Window is a favourite movie of all time, not just one of his. But I watched Vertigo recently and to be honest, hated it. Found it very dull and definitely didn’t meet my expectations.

These lists are always bullshit.

Memories of Murder is a much better film than Parasite.

R43 No, I get the point - r4 thinks they’re being added for woke points but it still stands that DTRT is a classic that deserves to be on the list.

#43 Killer of Sheep an 80 min student film from 1977 strikes me as a sincere effort at film realism but based on the reviews I'm reminded of the Emperor's New Clothes

- Viewed without any context, Killer of Sheep is difficult to appreciate or even grasp, because writer-director Charles Burnett eschews many of the tools that make narrative films accessible: Killer of Sheep doesn’t have much tension or structure, and the production values are, to be kind, humble. Killer of Sheep is also quite grim, depicting the hardscrabble lives of low-income African-Americans in mid-’70s Los Angeles. However, the harmony between the storytelling and the subject matter has made Killer of Sheep a favorite among some cinephiles. After the movie languished in obscurity for 20 years, Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh endorsed a 2007 re-release that introduced Killer of Sheep to a broader audience.

Two Akermans and two Vardas is four too many.

Jeanne Dielman consists of a four hour "gaze" on a woman making breaded cutlets and preparing a bed for prostitution sex.

Cleo is irritatingly twee.

Haven't seen the other two.

I approve of the high rating for Claire Denis' BEAU TRAVAIL, though.

I disagree, R58. Cleo deserves to be on the list.

Get Out was a decent horror flick, but hardly one of the best films ever made. Laughable.

[quote]Why can't I never vote on polls on DL? I'm using the latest version of Android on my phone. When I click on a chosen name, nothing ever happens.

Because DL is a website, not an app. DL does not have a *m.datalounge.com (mobile) version. Use a proper computer (desktop or laptop) web browser and it'll work.

Meh. What a boring poll. I'd rather watch this:

I can recognize that Jeanne Dielman is the work of a gifted filmmaker but it still felt like a duty to sit through it.

Kind of like going to church.

Four Godards (!) and not a single Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray film..

Even Godard himself would be upset at that.

And why two very similar Miyazakis (unbearably cutesy) and no other animated films?

I found Jeanne Dielman totally riveting, in no small part to the lead actress, who is also great in Last Year at Marienbad and Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Nothing and everything happens, if that makes sense. Absolutely worthy of a top 20 placement. Looking at the list as a whole it's pretty solid. I'd add in a few of the Hollywood classics that inspired the European art directors in the first place.

"Four Godards (!) and not a single Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray film..

Even Godard himself would be upset at that."

Exactly. The point has been totally lost. A great film entertains AND is art.

Only 1 Spanish language film on the list. What about Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados aka The Young and the Damned (1950) or Simon of the Desert (1965) or Alejandro Inaritritu's Amores Perros (2000) and no Kurosawa the Seven Samurai (1954) and High and Low (1963)

(^.^) missed Kurosawa at #20 and #41

Inarritu absolutely sucks and this has won two Oscars. Those belonged to his cinematographer.

A poll is worthless.

Woody Should have at least 7 or 8 films in the top 100. And, yes, there should be at least one or two of his early or mid career comedies in there.

Parasite was a good watch but does it belong here? I’d vote Snowpiercer before this.

Did you see his first film Amores Perros R69? It's brilliant and far superior to Cleo from 5 to 7, Get Out, The Shining, Killer of Sheep, Do the Right Thing, Le Mepris, Casablanca, andThe Piano

USA Today/The gritty, Oscar-nominated "Traffic" is a limo ride compared with the bloodletting in this year's foreign-film nominee from Mexico

Chicago Tribune/.A stunner: a fiercely brilliant film of such wrenching impact, nonstop drive and unpredictability that watching it becomes an exhilarating ride.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan An overpowering and original piece of bravura filmmaking that constitutes one of the most breathtaking and impressive directing debuts in years.

I'm glad to see this list get shaken up a bit, but some of these inclusions are absurd. I have never seen "Jeanne Dielman..." but am interested now. I love Delphine Seyrig in "Last Year at Marienbad" and the under-seen "Muriel", which is a fantastic, haunting film. I will have to check it out.

We watched Jean Dielman for the first time last summer. It is a movie that stuck with me, and continues to stick with me. You see the influence of this movie in so many other places.

I would never, ever watch it again.

[Quote]Woody Should have at least 7 or 8 films in the top 100. And, yes, there should be at least one or two of his early or mid career comedies in there.

Really? provide a few titles.

[quote] I've never even fucking heard of Jeanne Dielman.

You don't need two verbs in that sentence, R37.

Woody Allen openly and admittedly copied filmmakers with movies on this list. He's a dumb person's idea of a smart filmmaker. I think he'd admit how much he took from Bergman, Fellini, and on and on. I like his movies but they are absolutely derivative.

Yass Kween Akerman SLAY!🏆

Lawrence Of Arabia? Gone With The Wind? All About Eve?

Lavin desperately wanted to remake Jeanne "Dielman" with herself in the title role and Philip McKeon as Sylvain. She went so far as to record the title song, "Il y a une nouvelle courtisane en ville!", when funding unexpectedly fell through.

I enjoyed Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Broadway Danny Rose. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters are overrated, and Interiors is ridiculously pretentious. Allen is not an original or innovative filmmaker, and I don't think any of his films are ever studied in film classes. His films don't belong on a list alongside The Battle of Algiers, Sunset Boulevard, Tokyo Story . . .

"I get why some feel Vertigo is overrated in general but for me it is Bernard Herrmann’s greatest score."

Indeed it is his greatest score. Kim Novak wrote to the Academy asking them to use that music during her appearance in the In Memorium segment once she dies.

Lol.....

Get Out is a beat by beat remake built on a faulty premise. Sorry, but most white people don’t actually hate black people or covet their bodies. What a fantasy.

Dielman is an interesting choice, I'll go with it, but I'd still put Ozu first, though, personal choice, Late Spring ahead of Tokyo Story.

Beau Travail = men exercising

We live in Godless times.

No Bunuel, Almodovar, Lubitsch, Polanski, Hawks, Ray, Borzage, Rohmer, Resnais, Chabrol, Naruse, Lupino, Jancso, Haneke, Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

The poll was open to "more diverse and younger" respondents for the first time, according to the BBC, many of whom are less than familiar with films made before 1980. Hence additions like TWO Miyazakis and GET OUT.

One Yang, OK, I guess, but not two. Not when when none of the above are on the list. Sciamma won't be on the next list, I predict. Too recent to establish a lasting reputation.

"Portrait Of A Lady On Fire" is deadly dull.

No Melville or Becker, two of the most important figures for the French New Wave (who are overrepresented). And no Cocteau, either. Carne, I guess, is considered as dead to them now as Lean.

(Happily, HOTEL DU NORD is a recent addition to the Criterion Collection).

[quote] Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles is a great film but it is very much a "Once was Enough" kind of film which is true of a lot of these films.

I was going to say this. Actually speaking of which in terms of the opposite I love Polanski’s movies Tess and Chinatown because I was not crazy about them when I first saw them but I was haunted by them weeks after and on watching each of them 2 or 3 times more I grew to love them. Jeanne Dielman has never had this effect on me.

Worst poll ever.

Thank goodness for climate change - these younger people have such bad woke taste.

And how can they leave off the greatest film ever directed by a woman - Triumph of the Will.

Well, it's easy to leave off Triumph of the Will....it's horrifying Nazi progaganda.

Albeit horrifying Nazi propaganda whose imagery has been copied in hundreds of thousands of films, mainly commercials.

Arletty and Louis Jouvet are brilliant in "Hôtel du Nord."

1) Vertigo IS a brilliant, gorgeous, flawed masterpiece. Yeah, I also get that hype sets you up to be disappointed.

2) Get Out is a fun, clever film, It's not "Top 100" clever though.

3) I adore Miyazaki and I'm glad Spirited Away is on here but one was suffient. My Neighbor Totoro is achingly twee.

4) Who are these critics? I can't really believe so many of them sat through all of Jeanne Dielman and Beau Travail and decided they were Top 10 calibre. (They 're not.)

I would vote for VERTIGO, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, and BATLLE OF ALGIERS as the best films.

Jeanne Dielman is a dreadfully dull and plotlessly plodding film - must be great for insomniacs.

R21 You take that back or I'll send my man over to slap your face.

R94 We copied it too for The Lion King.

I suspect a lot of these new voters probably have never even seen a movie like The Grand Illusion (which fell off the list) or, at best, half-slept through it in film school. When your frame of reference for a "great cinema" is the garbage these people have grown up on the last 20 years of movies, then who can blame them? It may well be that Get Out *is* one of the best films they've ever seen.

Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game...only people who read books and have some understanding of culture appreciate these films. Not the ADD crowd who have taken over the so called arts and media.

Get Out is an incredible and terrifying movie that deserves to be on this list. I don’t think Jordan Peele will ever get to those heights again, though.

Jeanne Dielman? Come on. It relies on a cheap narrative trick at the end to have any real impact. What would have been braver would have been to leave her exactly as she was, peeling a potato at some point, since that’s precisely what would have happened to her in real life. But relying on what it did rely on? Yawn. It’s an eye roll that’s happened thousands of time in thousands of movies.

[quote] And how can they leave off the greatest film ever directed by a woman - Triumph of the Will.

You’re wondering why a Nazi propaganda was left off a greatest film list?

Of course you are. I wouldn’t expect any less from ancient white culturally and societally blinkered DL.

[quote] Sorry, but most white people don’t actually hate black people or covet their bodies.

You’re absolutely wrong on the first part, but you know that. I’ll agree with you on the second.

No All About Eve, Wilder’s greatest film by far with easily the greatest and most sophisticated script ever written? Please. Hitchcock and Wilder are over represented, as is Scorsese. No Allen at all? Ridiculous. And there are a lot more animated films that should be considered. This list is pretty lame, relying on judges who I guarantee have seen barely half of these movies and relied on film professors to help them with voting.

Jeanne Dielman is an “interesting” art house, chin-stroking movie for people who like to think they’re really deep but “greatest film of all time”, fuck right off! Prententous tossers. It was always the “4 hour boiling potatoes” movie.

‘Get Out’ is only considered something groundbreaking by people who have never seen The Stepford Wives or watched The Twilight Zone. It’s a good commercial movie that came at just the right time but that’s it. It didn’t deserve to win an Oscar for its screenplay.

I love the actress Delphine Seyrig and I’ve had Jeannie Dielman on my list for a while of things to watch, but now I think I’m gonna have too high expectations going into it.

[quote]possibly due to the larger sample size of critics

Critics aren't entirely to blame for this wacko list. The respondents were a mixture of "critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics."

Whoever is responsible, it will deal a blow to S&S's prestige and likely kill interest and anticipation in future iterations of their list. The directors' list shames theirs.

Also, I don't think it would be possible to overrate Vertigo, and it IS my favorite Hitchcock. I think one reason it stands above many of his others critically is that the viewer may notice more in it and get different things from it in subsequent viewings. It's a Hitchcock film to study. A film like North and Northwest (which I'd also have in the Hitchcock top ten) is always great fun, but when you see it once, you've got it. That one is more like getting back on the amusement-park ride a second time, and knowing when the peaks and the dips are going to come.

[quote]North and Northwest

I'll "Oh, dear" myself. North by Northwest.

[quote]Get Out’ is only considered something groundbreaking by people who have never seen The Stepford Wives or watched The Twilight Zone. It’s a good commercial movie that came at just the right time but that’s it. It didn’t deserve to win an Oscar for its screenplay.

Peele owes Karyn Kusama a drink. Get Out borrows quite a bit from The Invitation, right down to the same opening scene— interracial couple on their way to a remote gathering hitting a deer with their car.

R52 No, you don't have to be black to enjoy it. What a moronic thing to say. I'm white and I loved it. Too bad his next two films sucked.

I don't think Us and Nope are bad films, but each film he's made has been less good than the previous one. He's starting to seem trapped in a format and expectations...like Shyamalan with more socially conscious chin-stroking.

R72 Snowpiercer was such a terrible movie. I couldn't believe that the guy that made Parasite and Memories of Murder (his best movie) is the same guy that made that dreck

R113 Us and Nope were just typical American horror movies. Absolutely nothing special about them.

R85 A movie being a fantasy? Color me surprised.

Always thought that Seven Year Itch is a lot better movie than Some Like It Hot.

R115 The only thing special about them is how nonsensical they are. Peele claims it’s deliberate but no, they just fail on basic (internal) logic. ‘Us’ falls apart the second you try and make any sense of it. The premise simply doesn’t work even if you suspend all disbelief.

R85 “Get Out is a beat by beat remake” - of what?

Weird that Paris, Texas didn't made either of those lists.

To add the likes of Miyazaki, Peele, Sciamma, Jenkins, 4 x Godard, 2 x Akerman, 2 x Varda, and Deren's home movie, you need to purge:

Preminger, Siodmak, Zinnemann, Mankiewcicz, Sturges (Preston), Stevens, Wyler, Minnelli, Cukor, Mamoulian, Whale, Arzner, Losey, Lumet, Frankenheimer, Roeg, Mackendrick, Von Sternberg, Fuller, Tourneur (Jacques and Maurice).

Also: Pasolini, Bertolucci, Polanski, Wenders. Pudovkin, Clouzot, Etaix, L'Herbier, Gremillon, Duvivier, Gance, Pabst, Epstein, Etaix, Cocteau, Becker, Melville.

^ all those people were purged in favor of diversity (not diversity of ideas and/or content, mind you)

S&S’s great strength is that it’s in flux. The more recent picks are always going to be more debatable, that’s the nature of time and art, but then 10 years from now it will change again and something else will top the poll.

Don’t really get the love for Vertigo. Singin’ in the Rain, Kind Hearts and Coronets, In the Heat of the Night would be up there for me. And The Pianist.

Speaking of Woody Allen above … I know the basic “facts” or gist of his saga, but where would I go to get a thorough, objective, as-trustworthy-as-can-be overview of the whole Woody controversy? Whether it be documentaries or books. Any recommendations?

No Altman is just bizarre.

Fun fact: The main character in vertigo suffers from a fear of heights, which has nothing to do with vertigo.

It's the main symptom he suffers as a consequence of the fear of heights. "I have acrophobia, which gives me vertigo, and I get dizzy," he tells Midge. And Vertigo is a better title than Acrophobia would have been.

Re: Altman. Nashville did make the top 100 in 2012. It was one of the films broomed out to make room for new arrivals. Wrongly, IMO.

No Roman Polanski movie will even be considered for a list like this, given the climate of film criticism today, R123. And the same goes for Woody Allen. They might receive reappraisals after they're dead, but not before.

The Sight and Sound poll has always been pretentious, but it was still tethered to reality. It's easy to make the case for Vertigo or Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time. These are films that are massively influential, they're taught in film school, they inspire a lot of scholarship. No one doubts that these movies are essential to film history. I don't think anyone can legitimately claim the same about Jeanne Dielman. Even the Criterion Collection didn't bother releasing the movie until 2010.

Wokeness gone amok!

I agree Get Out was a good movie, but a little overrated and probably not top 100. I think the twist actually hurt it a bit making, whereas it seemed a bit more realistic and creepy prior to the ---- Spoiler --- the brain transplant reveal. Plus, I doubt the white racists would have wanted to live their lives in the body of a black man no matter his physical condition. It would have been better if they victims were somehow brainwashed into a submissive state or full Stepford wives - replaced by robots.

Get Out is a good not great movie. Let’s see where it ranks in 10 years. It’s ridiculous that Woody Allen gets no recognition.The charges against him were investigated and he wasn’t charged with anything.

Bertolucci is now also radioactive in the way Allen and Polanski are. You have to be a good boy to make the list, apparently. (Forget about Hitchcock's sadistic perversities, however).

Polanski and Allen are all time greats and you can tell because their movies are still being constantly aped by amateur filmmakers today.

Aggregate opinion is rarely to be trusted.

I love:

Wim Wenders "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty"

Jacques Demy's "Lola"

Terrence Malick's "Badlands"

Jan Troell's "The Emigrants" and "The New Land"

[quote]I love the actress Delphine Seyrig and I’ve had Jeannie Dielman on my list for a while of things to watch, but now I think I’m gonna have too high expectations going into it.

Jeanne Dielman (like most of Akerman's films) is a rigorous, formalist work which was inspired by the avant-garde films Akerman had seen while living in New York in the early 70s - Michael Snow, Andy Warhol, etc. I think it's great, and I personally don't find it difficult to watch at all, but it's also a 3-1/2 hour film which takes place in a very limited space with very limited and repetitive action. The true audience for a film like this (like that for, say, the music of Steve Reich) is always going to be niche at best, as one can see from the responses on this thread and elsewhere on the internet. Pretending otherwise for ideological reasons - which has been happening over the last decade or so, culminating in this poll - places a burden on the film that it doesn't really need or deserve.

I put it in the same camp as Marguerite Duras' India Song - also from 1975, also starring Delphine Seyrig, also highly formalist and dealing with ritualized, repetitive action rather than any sort of traditional narrative momentum. I think it's a beautiful film (John Waters was also a fan), but the audience for this kind of work is never going to be large.

R137 nailed it

The audience for that work won’t even be small R137. More like minuscule. 99.999999% of the population will never see Dielman or any of the films of its ilk.

I said earlier that I would watch Jeanne Dielman again, and I started viewing again soon after posting that. I don't agree with R103 that it's a cheap narrative trick, but I do agree that the movie would have been just as good or better without it. However, it does spur you to reevaluate everything that went before. I'm noticing things on this second viewing that are more illustrative than I thought the first time. There did have to be some kind of climax, but perhaps not necessarily that one.

It's an extremely subtle and slow-moving film with little dialogue, and I can see why a lot of people don't have the patience for it. But I love that kind of film. I like having the time to observe the characters closely in my own time without being told more explicitly what I'm to think; I like being able to appreciate that all the choices of the director and actors were quite deliberate, and to contemplate why those choices were made and what they signify. Jeanne's face gives almost nothing away, but you can tell a lot by her behavior and her conversations with her son.

When the film opens, she's to all appearances a quiet and almost freakishly methodical housekeeper, and you view her going about her utterly mundane tasks of making dinner, turning the lights on and off as she goes in and out of rooms (no matter how short a time she spends in the room! Surely she knows by now where the tureen is without having the turn the light on!). When the doorbell rings and the man arrives in the middle of her dinner prep, she takes a full minute to slowly settle things in the kitchen, hang up her apron, and wash and carefully dry her hands before answering the door. Why doesn't she rush? Is she not surprised to have a visitor in her solitary afternoon? What was he there for? When you realize what's going on, isn't it a real WTF moment? That's when you know you that your assumptions about her have been wrong and you need to watch carefully.

Also, now I almost never make pour-over coffee without thinking of Jeanne.

Oh, also, if anyone's daunted by a 3.5-hour film, it takes place over several days, and I don't think there's any harm in watching it one day at a time.

No love for Jean Eustache's LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN (73), possibly because it's not readily available now for home viewing, even in France. I watched Akerman's long film once (which was enough), but I love seeing Eustache's equally long masterpiece every couple of years.

Also no love for Louis Malle or Jacques Demy, sadly.

If curators and academics are part of the poll, then it's clear that the field of film studies is clearly on a downhill slope.

Where in hell is The Sound of Music?!

[quote] No love for Jean Eustache's LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN (73)

It made the directors list.

When Hitchcock was asked what Vertigo was about he said it was about a man who loses his fear of heights.

R137, "Jeanne Dielman (like most of Akerman's films) is a rigorous, formalist work which was inspired by the avant-garde films Akerman had seen while living in New York in the early 70s - Michael Snow, Andy Warhol, etc."

Right. Hey, let's go see Jeanne Dielman! Why? Well, it's a rigorous, formalist work which was inspired by the avant-garde films akkkkkeerrmm.........KLUNK.

R106: No All About Eve, Wilder’s greatest film by far with easily the greatest and most sophisticated script ever written? Please.

Please, yourself.

I see the Director's List is more in line with what's established a "track reputation." Good.

I agree with the very smart folks here, Avengers Endgame shoulda been number 1 because it has a plot and lots of people have seen it.

Shocked that In the Mood for Love was ranked so high. I think that many of the voters came of age in the 90's and after and we're in peak Wong Kar Wai fandom. I love his movies up to ITMFL, but it will be interesting to see if his legacy lasts one to two generation after the current voters. Chungking Express is #88 so WKW has two in the list list while other more renown directors didn't even get one. He fell off the cliff after ITMFL though. I was disappointed with 2046. Chinese critics usually rank his earlier Days of Being Wild higher but ITMFL resonates more with western viewers.

Puh-leeze, like ANY of these stack up to the masters. They'll be consigned to the dustbin of oblivion in no time at all.

This year Jeanne Dielman, next year Warhol's Empire.

[Quote]No All About Eve, Wilder’s greatest film by far with easily the greatest and most sophisticated script ever written? Please. Hitchcock and Wilder are over represented, as is Scorsese. No Allen at all? Ridiculous. And there are a lot more animated films that should be considered. This list is pretty lame, relying on judges who I guarantee have seen barely half of these movies and relied on film professors to help them with voting

R106 maybe you should rely on professors regarding film history. Wilder didn't write or direct All About Eve. He directed that other film classic from 1950 Sunset Boulevard

[quote]Kidz be sayin'...

It was probably "the kidz" (i.e., younger critics/programmers/critics) who voted for Jeanne Dielman in such numbers, but go ahead and flail at shadows. The whole point of my post was to express that I don't think JD has the broad appeal that a film in the top spot should have (and that Citizen Kane and Vertigo have), from the perspective of someone who actually likes the damn thing. Nothing more or less. I'm certainly aware that a lot of people won't like the film and shouldn't watch it.

[quote]No love for Jean Eustache's LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN (73), possibly because it's not readily available now for home viewing, even in France. I watched Akerman's long film once (which was enough), but I love seeing Eustache's equally long masterpiece every couple of years.

[quote]Also no love for Louis Malle or Jacques Demy, sadly.

It's definitely a big boost for a film to be readily available on streaming/Blu Ray (as JEANNE DIELMAN is). I saw LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN in the 90s, when it got a VHS release, but anyone who wants to watch it now has to hunt for a torrent or wait for a sub par copy to turn up on YouTube. But it's a great film with one of Léaud's greatest performances.

Genuinely surprised THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG didn't make the cut. Two Vardas and no Demy ain't right. Malle has never been a popular choice for polls like this but he made several films I love. THE FIRE WITHIN would probably be on my own list, personally.

R154, see R148.

Demy was a far greater talent than his beard wife.

None of the above

Which Tyler Perry movies made the list?

I’m aware of that R154, you can all calm down as you rush to correct my error in director. Fucking tired ass queens.

I think it's nearly impossible to limit your ballot to 10 films and have results which don't omit masterpieces. With the amount of films released since the initial S&S poll was instated, a 20 film ballot seems more in order today. For a 10 film ballot, Vertigo and Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar" would be my first "must include" choices but after that, I would have a hard time pinning down the other 8. 10 seems much too narrow. I'm all for change and diversity but "Jeanne Dielman" doesn't strike me as a passion vote film. Seems more like a "well I'd better include this in my pick since it's being talked up and it checks all the diversity boxes." And it was being talked up. This is life today so this is what we get. No big deal. This is what you get with consensus voting.

One perfect movie that will never be on anyone's list of best films and yet may be the best of them all is "SCROOGE" 1951, Sim.

[Quote]No All About Eve, Wilder’s greatest film by far with easily the greatest and most sophisticated script ever written? Please. Hitchcock and Wilder are over represented, as is Scorsese. No Allen at all? Ridiculous. And there are a lot more animated films that should be considered. This list is pretty lame, relying on judges who I guarantee have seen barely half of these movies and relied on film professors to help them with voting

[Quote]I’m aware of that [R154], you can all calm down as you rush to correct my error in director.

R161 how about working on your errors in syntax which makes your factual fuck ups seem minor

Double Indemnity? Dodsworth? Some Like it Hot? Sunset Boulevard? Weekend? Bringing Up Baby? The Gangs All Here? Rear Window? All of these are far more influential than at least 25% of those listed.

[quote]I agree with the very smart folks here, Avengers Endgame shoulda been number 1 because it has a plot and lots of people have seen it.

This is the type of trite, bad faith reaction to the Sight & Sound poll that the critics who took part in this poll not only encouraged, they had to have outright intended. Of course if you don't think an obscure, virtually plotless movie that is 200 minutes long is the greatest film of all time, you should stick to comic book movies, you philistine! There's an element of trolling to it, and that will be fatal to the poll's reputation. It was once seen as canon; in the last poll, Vertigo unseating Citizen Kane felt like a monumental shift. This, though, feels like contrarianism.

You can choose to be either canonical or contrarian, but you can't be both.

Adam McKay included Jeanne Dielman on his ballot, which makes me wonder how many other normies picked it as their token arty outlier. Who knows, maybe more people genuinely like this film than I would have figured.

You can find more directors’ top ten on World of Film. Out of the twenty or so directors listed, only McKay, Joanna Hogg, and Luca Guadadnino have Jeanne Dielman on their lists. 2001 and Raging Bill seemed to be the most cited films among this directors.

If they had a womens quota then Lina Wertmuller should have been in there

R151, I've heard regular people who have seen In The Mood For Love gush about it. It has a kind of unironic romanticism that is completely lacking in modern film. Definitely belongs in a conversation about a top 30 at least.

Of films from this millennium, I'd say In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Drive are two that have definitely established themselves as modern classics with pretty wide appeal. I'm not surprised to see them in the Top 10 at all.

R125 Mia and Ronan.

Well, "the greatest film of all time" has a very noticable technical flub about an hour into its running time - a boom mic appears on the right side of the screen for several seconds.

HAPPY TOGETHER is Wong Kar-Wai's greatest movie, or at least would be my pick for inclusion in the Top 100. He certainly deserves be in the pantheon now.'

If you have to "tick the box" and include a French woman director (the list is overly-oriented toward the French New Wave), Nelly Kaplan and Jacqueline Audry deserve to be included just as much as Varda does. (AV was fortunate in living a long life, was well-connected, and never needed to be rediscovered).

I think movies which have a lot of impact on pop culture even years after they were released should also be considered for any greatest movies list. Movies like Silence Of the Lambs basically reinvented an entire genre and has been a pop culture staple. How can it be not there on any list ? So do movies like Star Wars, Lord Of the Rings, Annie Hall, The Big Lebowski etc.

Also I am curious many of us are so divided about Get Out but no one is talking about Moon Light or that other movie. Other than critical acclaim these movies broke no boundaries, have not had any impact on people, or a pop culture staple.

R175 It isn't just a critical acclaim. They well all well received by public as well. And isn't that most important thing when making a best movies list? That they are good? Well, actually the only important thing. Who cares about pop culture or breaking boundaries? Serbian Film or Cannibal Holocaust broke boundaries. Does that mean they should be on the list? Harry Potter movies or dozens of action hero movies of the last two decades became part of the pop culture. Does that mean they should be on the list?

It's funny that "The Shawshank Redemption" has held the #1 spot at the IMDB forever, but it doesn't even make the top 100 of a critics' list.

Moonlight is a mistake! It’s meant to be La La Land on the list. Warren what did you do this time??

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. will forever be front and center in people's hearts, as they should be, critics be damned.

Mulholland Drive is fascinating.

I thought Moonlight was visually so beautiful. The scenes in the water were just gorgeous. For that alone, I’m ok with it being on the list.

Former New York Times film critic Janet Maslin provided this response on Twitter. As usual she is spot-on.

"Looks like a list by dutiful A-seeking film students and Criterion addicts. My God, the world is so much bigger than this."

Janet Maslin's pussy stinks!

[quote] Dodsworth?

I recently tweeted about Wyler being underrated, and even I had never heard of this film before your post, so I don't think it's the canonized classic you think it is, r165.

Paul Schrader is pissing off a lot of people with his comments on Facebook.

[quote]For seventy years the SIGHT AND SOUND POLL has been a reliable if somewhat incremental measure of critical consensus and priorities. Films moved up the list, others moved down; but it took time. The sudden appearance of "Jeanne Dielman" in the number one slot undermines the S&S poll's credibility. It feels off, as if someone had put their thumb on the scale. Which I suspect they did. As Tom Stoppard pointed out in Jumpers, in democracy it doesn't matter who gets the votes, it matters who counts the votes. By expanding the voting community and the point system this year's S&S poll reflects not a historical continuum but a politically correct rejiggering. Ackerman's film is a favorite of mine, a great film, a landmark film but it's unexpected number one rating does it no favors. "Jeanne Dielman" will from this time forward be remembered not only a important film in cinema history but also as a landmark of distorted woke reappraisal.

This is what Schrader posted on Facebook about the poll.

Paul Schrader is absolutely correct.

Did they say they weighed female and minority voices on a curve?

Citizen Kane sucked. How come Godfather was on there?

Schrader posts on DL, right?

[quote]The sudden appearance of "Jeanne Dielman" in the number one slot undermines the S&S poll's credibility. It feels off, as if someone had put their thumb on the scale. Which I suspect they did.

I suspect so as well. People knew the identities of other voters (many are friends and colleagues), and they colluded with an aim of having the top vote-getter of 2022 be a film made by a woman. It would be a headline-grabbing blow against the patriarchy as epitomized by Welles, Hitchcock, Fellini, Bergman, Ozu, Kubrick, Ford, et al. Akerman's film had been the highest-placing female-directed film in the 2012 poll (at 36th), so it made the most sense as the one to rally around. This became the instruction: "Put Jeanne Dielman first on your list."

What is also going to happen is that Ackerman's reputation is now going to take a beating as people are going to seek out her others films and find most of them are mediocre to downright terrible.

Jeanne Dielman is an excellent film, Ackerman's best easily and top ten of the year in which is was made (1975) but not one of the top ten films ever made.

[quote]This became the instruction: "Put Jeanne Dielman first on your list."

That could not have been the instruction, as there is no "first" on a voter's list. The lists sent in are a Top Ten, unranked.

[quote]I'm a cinephile and a French speaker and I've never even fucking heard of Jeanne Dielman. WTF?

Wow. That's all on you, though, it's not because Sight & Sound is "pretentious." It's been included in top lists on the larger websites and from bigger-name critics for a long time. It came out on Criterion in 2010.

[quote]This became the instruction: "Put Jeanne Dielman first on your list."

That's not how you vote for the Sight & Sound poll. You submit a list of 10, not a list of 10 movies ranked 1 through 10.

It’s such a shame that Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman didn’t top the Sight & Sound poll 10 years ago, when she was still alive. As a great admirer of her work, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. Toward the end of her life, you could sense that the lack of support for her work and the difficulties of continuing to create her art affected her mental health (of course, without forgetting her profound family trauma). I keep wondering if this would have made a difference. But apparently she hated polls and rankings, so maybe not.

Mulholland Drive is my favorite movie ever so I would vote for it if I could, meaning if DL polls weren't so messed up that you need to be a tech wizard to cast your vote.

[quote] Old masters who once appeared in the Top 10 are gone from the Top

This is disheartening. It means the dissolution of the canon.