Sight & Sound

[therewillbeblus]

Which would you nominate post-2009?

[Noiretirc]

I think it might be important to note that I gave the film a lot of latitude until the ending, which completely betrayed all my good will. I had a similar reaction to a much more recent, very long two part film that similarly resorted to extreme provocateur melodramatics at the finish line (though that movie certainly had a steadier clip of absurdities on the road to the finish). I don’t think what came before merits where it goes. I don’t hate the film, I get what it’s doing and where its aims are. I think all the accusations leveled at me for what is admittedly a pretty typically colorful (read: dickish) response from me to the placement on the list miss the possibility that I am perfectly capable of understanding this film’s appeal for others and its intents but still not buying it and still unhappy by the shift of weight it now carries (and much of this is my own fault for not extrapolating further in this thread, though I already touched on this in its dedicated thread)

You blinked! (Just a little.)

On Politics: We cannot wring politics out of this process. The statement "Sports and politics don't mix" has always had me pissing myself with laughter. Really? The 1952 list was informed by politics. Politics will continue to force films to rise and fall.

[domino harvey]

You blinked! (Just a little.)

My position is unchanged from the last time I posted about this film in 2009, so if I did, it was long before BFI's ranking came into fruition

[zedz]

Which would you nominate post-2009?

Is that a spider?

[yoloswegmaster]

Good on Frederick Wiseman for adding the Marx Brothers to his list:

[zedz]

Re: furbicide on Portrait of a Lady on Fire being the best of the 2010's: I don't think any film from the 2010's deserves to be in the top 100 films ever made.

That seems an incredibly silly position to take. What, they suddenly stopped making great films in 2009?

No, just that the films before 2009 were that much better. (Though the switch from film stock to digital as the go-to medium was a serious blow to filmmaking for me.) It's only 100 spots.

So will you be maintaining your inane 2009 deadline in thirty or fifty years' time, or will all the films you ignorantly dismissed have got magically better by then?

[domino harvey]

Good on Frederick Wiseman for adding the Marx Brothers to his list:

That's one way to hedge your bets with vote splitting!

[Toland's Mitchell]

Being I had a 12-hour workday yesterday, today's been quite a fun morning catching up on hundreds of posts in this thread.

Sight and Sound is just a list intended to broaden people's horizons and get people discussing. And for that, the 2022 edition appears to be successful. Similarly to how I feel about other lists and awards, I find the selections interesting but I don't get too excited or disappointed with the results.

So first up, my two cents on the new #1 critics choice...I haven't seen Jeanne Dielman. And to be honest, I knew very little about it until yesterday. I knew that I was going to watch it for the first time next year during CF's 1970s list project, but I won't be going into it with any different mindset due to this poll. Anyway, the overall critic list could have used a shake-up after decades of leaning towards white male filmmakers with a few reps from Classical Japanese cinema. Was suddenly placing a female-directed film at #1 a woke statement more than anything else? And was JD the appropriate film to receive such a high distinction? I can't say for sure (because again I haven't seen it), but I don't mind spicing more variety into these lists. I don't agree with all the results (Ex. Moonlight).

I also couldn't help but notice how openly willing the voters were to putting recent movies on their list. Four films made since 2016 are represented. There were no films made between 2006-2012 on the 2012 editions. Thus I thought this edition would see that window of time get a representative or two. I thought There Will Be Blood and Tree of Life had a reasonable chances for both lists. I thought maybe No Country would have a slim shot at the directors list. But nope, there's Cache, Tropical Malady, and Eternal Sunshine from 2004-05, then nothing until A Separation. Then nothing again until 2016's Moonlight, making A Separation the only film on either list in 2006-2015 decade. Thus I venture to say the recency bias is a woke reaction to the sociopolitical divide that's intensified since 2016. But there is no recency bias on the macro level, given that both lists still lean heavily on the 50s through the 70s, and the fact there is only one film on either list between 2006-2015.

I've always preferred the directors list to the critics list. I like how those lists are more rooted in the craft of the film-making process.

[FrauBlucher]

Also, if you look at the studio era picks and the 2012>2022 changes, it would seem that in 2022 there's been a higher concentration of voters who may not have a very good grasp of classical Hollywood. Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Rio Bravo, Sunrise, The Searchers descended or were knocked off the top 100. The Wilder films, The Third Man, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Night of the Hunter ascended. I'm not saying one group or the other is "better", but I would argue the latter films have the more "old movies for those who don't like old movies" appeal. Though, granted, we don't have much to go on, statistically speaking.

I have to agree that Classic Hollywood is getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. As the older generation disappears that era will be mostly ignored, and maybe even intentionally for its societal behavior as a form of punishment by some. There will be a handful of films that stay relevant from that time, you can probably name them but I'm afraid this is the beginning of many of the great directors of that era starting to lose notability. I would definitely welcome stats that highlight that from this poll, as well as from TCM for their viewership by age.

I've never seen Jeanne Dielman but now that bar is set very high for my viewing experience. That's probably unfortunate.

[rrenault]

When people say the stock of Classical Hollywood is falling I'm assuming they mean "the classical mode of Hollywood filmmaking" exemplified by a Hawks or a Lubitsch, not necessarily "films made within the Hollywood system during the Hays Code era", because if we're referring to films within the latter category there are three in the top ten.

[rde]

That seems an incredibly silly position to take. What, they suddenly stopped making great films in 2009?

No, just that the films before 2009 were that much better. (Though the switch from film stock to digital as the go-to medium was a serious blow to filmmaking for me.) It's only 100 spots.

So will you be maintaining your inane 2009 deadline in thirty or fifty years' time, or will all the films you ignorantly dismissed have got magically better by then?

Eh, nevermind. Why bother.

[Maltic]

Also, if you look at the studio era picks and the 2012>2022 changes, it would seem that in 2022 there's been a higher concentration of voters who may not have a very good grasp of classical Hollywood. Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Rio Bravo, Sunrise, The Searchers descended or were knocked off the top 100. The Wilder films, The Third Man, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Night of the Hunter ascended. I'm not saying one group or the other is "better", but I would argue the latter films have the more "old movies for those who don't like old movies" appeal. Though, granted, we don't have much to go on, statistically speaking.

I have to agree that Classic Hollywood is getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. As the older generation disappears that era will be mostly ignored, and maybe even intentionally for its societal behavior as a form of punishment by some. There will be a handful of films that stay relevant from that time, you can probably name them but I'm afraid this is the beginning of many of the great directors of that era starting to lose notability. I would definitely welcome stats that highlight that from this poll, as well as from TCM for their viewership by age.

If you had done the poll among a wider circle of 1800 critics back then, the 2012 poll might also have been more favourable to The Third Man and Casablanca and less favourable to Ambersons and Rio Bravo.

[CriterionPhreak]

I first saw Jeanne Dielman about 10 years ago on TCM. I remember Robert Osborne introduced it by pronouncing the film's complete title in French: "Jeanne Dielman, vingt-trois Quai du Commerce, mille quartre-vingts Bruxelles." I don't remember my first-time reaction, but I must've liked it because I later bought the DVD, then the Blu-ray.

This film got only 34 votes from critics in 2012 (screenshot). This year, my estimate is that in order to achieve #1 rank from 1600+ voters, it must have got about 300 votes, and that is an astounding increase. I believe the full vote counts and breakdowns will be revealed when the magazine comes out.

When the full breakdown comes out, be sure to read the complete list of who voted what films, because that's the only places you can see any mentions of the films that received votes but didn't land on the top 100. For instance, Lawrence of Arabia and The Wild Bunch, which I'm sure got some votes from some people.

[swo17]

I must not care about recency bias, because here I am wishing it was Triangle of Sadness in the Parasite spot

[FrauBlucher]

When people say the stock of Classical Hollywood is falling I'm assuming they mean "the classical mode of Hollywood filmmaking" exemplified by a Hawks or a Lubitsch, not necessarily "films made within the Hollywood system during the Hays Code era", because if we're referring to films within the latter category there are three in the top ten.

I include the 30's, 40's and most of the 50's as Classic Hollywood before the collapse of the studio system which was probably somewhere around the mid to late 50's. The 3 films in the top ten still have a shelf life, mainly because I believe you still have enough older voters to keep those films relevant in the poll.

[rrenault]

I decided to do a makeshift aggregation of the critics' and directors' lists into one overall list to see how different the results would be. Of course it's not going to hold up as accurate once all the individual lists have been released as I know my method gives disproportionate power to the directors' choices seeing as how I weighed them evenly when in reality a lot more critics voted in the poll, but just as temporary estimation of what the overall results from everyone who voted in both polls might look like, all I did was take all the films that appeared on both lists and assign them points based on their rankings on each. Here's what the top 10 looks like using this method:

1 (tie). Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
1 (tie). Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Akerman)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
4 (tie). Tokyo Story (1953, Ozu)
4 (tie). Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
6. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong)
7. The Godfather (1972, Coppola)
8. Beau travail (1999, Denis)
9. Close-Up (1990, Kiarostami)
10. Persona (1966, Bergman)

The rest of the top 50 in the spoiler box:

Spoiler

11. Mulholland Dr. (2001, Lynch)
12. Seven Samurai (1954, Kurosawa)
13 (tie). 8½ (1963, Fellini)
13 (tie). Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)
15 (tie). Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Vertov)
15 (tie). Mirror (1975, Tarkovsky)
17. Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese)
18. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, Murnau)
19 (tie). The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Dreyer)
19 (tie). The Rules of the Game (1939, Renoir)

21. À bout de souffle (1960, Godard)
22. Do the Right Thing (1989, Lee)
23 (tie). Barry Lyndon (1975, Kubrick)
23 (tie). Pather Panchali (1955, Ray)
23 (tie). Stalker (1979, Tarkovsky)
26 (tie). Bicycle Thieves (1948, De Sica)
26 (tie). Rashomon (1950, Kurosawa)
28. Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Bresson)
29. Singin' in the Rain (1952, Donen & Kelly)
30. Playtime (1967, Tati)

31. The Night of the Hunter (1955, Laughton)
32. Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962, Varda)
33. Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
34 (tie). Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, Deren & Hammid)
34 (tie). Ordet (1955, Dreyer)
36. L'Atalante (1934, Vigo)
37. City Lights (1931, Chaplin)
38. Late Spring (1949, Ozu)
39. The 400 Blows (1959, Truffaut)
40. The Searchers (1956, Ford)

41. Goodfellas (1990, Scorsese)
42. Andrei Rublev (1966, Tarkovsky)
43. La Dolce Vita (1960, Fellini)
44. Shoah (1985, Lanzmann)
45 (tie). Le mépris (1963, Godard)
45 (tie). Some Like It Hot (1959, Wilder)
47. La jetée (1962, Marker)
48. The Piano (1993, Campion)
49. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Fassbinder)
50. L'Avventura (1960, Antonioni)

In other words, nothing seismic compared to 2012 aside from Jeanne Dielman skyrocketing, L'Avventura tumbling, and a handful of new entries.

[therewillbeblus]

I must not care about recency bias, because here I am wishing it was Triangle of Sadness in the Parasite spot

I'd die on that ship with you

[Mr Sausage]

Also, if you look at the studio era picks and the 2012>2022 changes, it would seem that in 2022 there's been a higher concentration of voters who may not have a very good grasp of classical Hollywood. Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Rio Bravo, Sunrise, The Searchers descended or were knocked off the top 100. The Wilder films, The Third Man, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Night of the Hunter ascended. I'm not saying one group or the other is "better", but I would argue the latter films have the more "old movies for those who don't like old movies" appeal. Though, granted, we don't have much to go on, statistically speaking.

I have to agree that Classic Hollywood is getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. As the older generation disappears that era will be mostly ignored, and maybe even intentionally for its societal behavior as a form of punishment by some. There will be a handful of films that stay relevant from that time, you can probably name them but I'm afraid this is the beginning of many of the great directors of that era starting to lose notability. I would definitely welcome stats that highlight that from this poll, as well as from TCM for their viewership by age.

I've never seen Jeanne Dielman but now that bar is set very high for my viewing experience. That's probably unfortunate.

You guys shouldn't predict the future by assuming it'll be an extension of what's true now. Things like this are cyclical. It's just as likely that old Hollywood will swing back into popularity at some point, become over-represented even, and then die down for a few decades again.

[Maltic]

Spoiler

That seems an incredibly silly position to take. What, they suddenly stopped making great films in 2009?

No, just that the films before 2009 were that much better. (Though the switch from film stock to digital as the go-to medium was a serious blow to filmmaking for me.) It's only 100 spots.

So will you be maintaining your inane 2009 deadline in thirty or fifty years' time, or will all the films you ignorantly dismissed have got magically better by then?

Some people might say classical music peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries, cinema and jazz in the 20th, and so on. Not saying I agree, but I wouldn't call it ignorant.

[Maltic]

Mr. Sausage, I just thought I noticed a trend (vaguely) - that the expansion of panel of critics had made the selection less "eclectic", not more so, at least as far as older movies are concerned.

[Mr Sausage]

Mr. Sausage, I just thought I noticed a trend (vaguely) - that the expansion of panel of critics had made the selection less "eclectic", not more so, at least as far as older movies are concerned.

My bad. I didn't have you in mind when I wrote that. Should've deleted your quoted passage so it wasn't lumped in with my "you guys".

[colinr0380]

Apichatpong as well:

Spoiler

Nice to see Apichatpong Weerasethakul making a stand for musicals, albeit unorthodox ones with Rose Hobart!

[beamish14]

Apichatpong as well:

Spoiler

Nice to see Apichatpong Weerasethakul making a stand for musicals, albeit unorthodox ones with Rose Hobart!

The man clearly takes animation seriously as well, which is a rarity

[diamonds]

Apichatpong as well:

Spoiler

Nice to see Apichatpong Weerasethakul making a stand for musicals, albeit unorthodox ones with Rose Hobart!

Terence Davies had a few musicals in his all-around lovely list!

Terence Davies

[Michael Kerpan]

Does anyone (should anyone) view lists of this sort as "useful"?