Sight & Sound

[hearthesilence]

Really stunned that giving Jeanne Dielman such a prominent spot has been dismissed so broadly here. It is a difficult film, but to me, if you really want to explore film as an art form, that means being challenged by it and having your idea of cinema expanded in ways that never would've occurred to you. That's always going to be polarizing, but so be it. It reminds me of Ulysses when it was given the top spot of the Modern Library's list of 20th century literature - I recall some writers arguing against it, saying it was too difficult and not accessible enough, and it was an extremely dubious argument given what the book accomplished.

[rrenault]

Jeanne Dielman in the top ten is not the issue for me. The excessive recency bias is. Portrait of a Lady on Fire in the bottom fifth of the top 100 wouldn't have bothered me, but Moonlight over L'Avventura??!!

I wonder how Bill Georgaris over at TSPDT will contend with this new list. Will he just s**t up and tabulate and not take sides or find himself at a crossroads?

[ianthemovie]

Spirit of the Beehive isn't on Blu-ray in the US either, is it? (I'd love to be wrong...)

[therewillbeblus]

I don't get the outrage. Btw, where TF is Assassination Nation?

[swo17]

Arguing with these results is like arguing with a thermometer. It's not like the guy who published the list tried to slip in Xanadu or whatever

[DarkImbecile]

I'm currently processing the backlog of how-dare-yous needing to be doled out in this thread, please bear with me

[Drucker]

In 2009, I signed up for Netflix and went through the TSPDT list top 100 as I got into film. If you did the same exercise with this list, I think you'd be in great shape. Sure there's more to seek out, but I love almost all of these films and would recommend many of them to beginners.

[thirtyframesasecond]

At the end of the day, it's just a poll and it's probably a good thing that it's shaken the canon up. At least it's not an Empire poll.

[Red Screamer]

No Lubitsch, Hawks or Sternberg.

But 3 Wilder films. Yeah, they let the kids vote alright.

Wow, wasn't even paying attention to that. Lubitsch and Hawks seem to be filmmakers almost everyone likes, but I guess they have the (listmaking) problem of too many masterpieces, on top of the bias against comedy.

[dustybooks]

I'm currently processing the backlog of how-dare-yous needing to be doled out in this thread, please bear with me

I recall that you and I had a near identical response on first seeing Portrait of a Lady on Fire and my feeling extremely validated reading your initial post about it. So I’m right there with you, haha.

[JakeStewart]

No Resnais on the critics’ or directors’ top 100, huh?

[hearthesilence]

Well for the unhappy campers, take solace in the director's poll which pegged 2001 at #1.

[therewillbeblus]

It's not like the guy who published the list tried to slip in Xanadu or whatever

I dunno

[Noiretirc]

Criterion Forum's reaction to this list might be more shocking to some (ie me) than the list itself.

I wonder if any other editions of this caused bafflement/furor, initially. Did Vertigo overtaking Kane go down well?

[swo17]

It's not like the guy who published the list tried to slip in Xanadu or whatever

I dunno

Your link doesn't seem to be working

[JakeStewart]

I don’t understand why Some like It Hot continues to be such an acclaimed film. There are so many other better classic American comedies than that one. If we have to have three Billy Wilder films on the top 100, Ace in the Hole should have been the third.

[therewillbeblus]

It's not like the guy who published the list tried to slip in Xanadu or whatever

I dunno

Your link doesn't seem to be working

Probably not worth correcting, but it should work now

[swo17]

Speaking of shorts, I welcome the inclusion of a couple of those here. Is that a first for this poll?

[colinr0380]

Glad about Jeanne Dielman! I was not expecting that, and I suppose that means that UK television will finally have to acknowledge it by actually showing it on television now!

But yes, prepare for a lot of new viewers getting upset about how slow and/or boring it is, when really the only flaw of that film is that it needs a certain extreme act to occur to bring it to an end and bracket the 'action'. I would say that beyond the headline talking points about women on top, I think it is interesting that in this current age of livestream video feeds and endless internet streams (and the films of Tsai Ming-liang!), suddenly the duration of Jeanne Dielman's shots does not seem quite so intimidating an aesthetic any more (and the intricate editing structure of the film is coming more into view as being just as important as the duration). Like Andy Warhol's Sleep, its a decades prescient structural concept whose time has come. Why not combine a viewing with L'Avventura for the perfect double bill of 'human landscape' films!

[DarkImbecile]

For those wailing about recency bias, here's the decade breakdown:

Pre-1919: 0
1920s: 7
1930s: 5
1940s: 8
1950s: 20
1960s: 20
1970s: 14
1980s: 9
1990s: 8
2000s: 5
2010s: 4

Doesn't seem insane to me, especially if one considers the relative volume of global film production in recent decades; surely there have been some all-time masterpieces produced in the last 10 or 20 years, and I'm not sure why we would expect critics or directors to turn off their critical faculties regarding those films until they've reached some arbitrary "do not open until" date. Bicycle Thieves was within a year as old as Portrait, Get Out, and Parasite when it topped the first iteration of this list, so I can't imagine the agitation back then.

[therewillbeblus]

Bicycle Thieves was within a year as old as Portrait, Get Out, and Parasite when it topped the first iteration of this list, so I can't imagine the agitation back then.

I can remember pre-Internet agitation, quite fondly

[MV88]

I was expecting Jeanne Dielman to make the top 10, but #1 is a huge surprise. I love the film, but I am 100% convinced this is going to create a significant backlash against it. It already seems to be a divisive pick here, so I can't imagine what people are saying on Twitter right now. Obviously any film being named the #1 greatest of all time puts a target on its back, but this film in particular is so antithetical to what most shall we say "normal" moviegoers expect out of a movie that I imagine there are going to be a lot of people checking it out on HBO Max soon and giving up after 20 minutes or so convinced that the Sight & Sound poll must be some kind of joke played on them by the most pretentious cinephiles in the world. Oh, and of course I'm sure there will also be a ton of people accusing them of only choosing it as #1 for "woke" reasons.

Honestly, though, I'm more surprised by some of the omissions than I am any of the inclusions. I mean, I figured Raging Bull would fall below Taxi Driver and Goodfellas as far as Scorsese films go, but to not even make the top 100? That's certainly unexpected. Ditto The Godfather Part II. In general, it seems like New American cinema didn't do nearly as well this time as it has in the past, but I suspect that may have been somewhat conscious given that era has already gotten its due and those films are not in any danger of becoming obscure.

The most surprising omission to me, though, has to be Come and See. I even thought it might be a dark horse candidate for the top 10, so to not even make the list at all is just weird. (It is #41 on the directors' list, though.)

Oh, and not a single Terrence Malick film either. Also surprising.

[DarkImbecile]

Oh, and of course I'm sure there will also be a ton of people accusing them of only choosing it as #1 for "woke" reasons.

I shudder to even imagine the histrionics going on at the Ruimy/Wells/Stone sites this afternoon

[MichaelB]

I'm always disappointed with how serious these lists are. One musical in the top 100, zero screwball comedies, and precious few non-silent comedies in general... Even the consensus that Vertigo is so much better than North by Northwest.

Maybe humor just doesn't translate as well and musicals are long out of vogue, but it seems like the old bias that serious equals important still lingers. Or maybe I'm just out of step.

There were two comedies on my own list, neither of which cracked the top 100.

But I genuinely do think that The Wrong Trousers is one of the most perfect achievements in cinema over the last three decades - and it also ticked the "animation" box, which I regretted not ticking last time.

[soundchaser]

I like Jeanne Dielman, but there's no denying it's an idiosyncratic #1. How much that matters is up to you, I suppose. I'd prefer something a LITTLE more crowd-pleasing, honestly, but then I think the worst part of the list is the dearth of musicals.