Sight & Sound Polls 2022

[dave jenkins]

Jeanne Dielman is the new #1? As titoli would say, Yeah, sure.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time


This list is a little better:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/directors-100-greatest-films-all-time

[Cusser]

I can make up a list too, so can others.....

[dave jenkins]

I think you're missing the point. These lists are supposed to be the result of consensus. Jeanne Dielman can't possibly be number 1 without collusion.

[dave jenkins]

[cigar joe]

Never heard of it,  lol.

[dave jenkins]

Never heard of it,  lol.

No reason you should, unless you enjoy the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry.

[stanton]

I never watched it either, I never tried to. It was also never a film I have read much about. Now I'm curious of course, but indeed it smells like a "PC-choice".

I always thought that these kind of lists, and I like these kind of lists, are always way to conservative by preferring much too much older films over more recent films, so that the new list is pleasing in that respect, but also puzzling for what was chosen. So I have no idea why Get Out (fine entertainment) or Portrait of a Young Lady in Flames (far less interesting than expected) are in the top 100, except for representing a PC look on art.

And normally I don't trust all this talk about how much discussions are changed by PC.

But then, such lists represent a consensus, as long as they are honest.

[stanton]

I always liked the fact that 4 westerns were in the top 100, but it seems logically that this now has changed, with The Searchers and OuTW losing ground and The Wild Bunch and Rio Bravo now out of the top 100.

Actually I expected OuTW to climb, but it didn't ...

[noodles_leone]

This list continues the trend of Raging Bull?s popularity recessing. It used to be in everybody and their mother?s top 10 a decade ago. It?s become much rarer to find it now.

[dave jenkins]

For those who are curious, here is my write-up from 2014:

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) -  A woman (Delphine Seyrig) is standing in her kitchen. She lights a burner and places a pot on the element. Her doorbell rings. She takes off her smock and leaves the frame. In the foyer she greets her guest, takes his overcoat and scarf, hangs them up out of frame. She accompanies the man into a room at the end of the hall and closes the door. A jump cut shows the light has changed and that time has passed. The woman and man emerge from the room, return to the foyer. The woman (Delphine Seyrig) helps the man put on his coat and scarf. She turns on a light. The man gives the woman some money, mentions next week, departs. The woman turns off the light. She goes into the dining room and, in a ceramic tureen in the center of the table, places the money. She returns to the kitchen, turns off the gas, and takes the pot that has been heating off the stove. She pours the contents into a strainer in another pot. She returns the strained contents (potatoes?) to the first pot. She pours off the liquid in the second pot into the sink. She goes into her bedroom and opens the window. There is a white towel on top of the bedspread. She takes it and exits the frame. She reappears in the bathroom, deposits the towel in the hamper. She returns to the bedroom. There is a cut and suddenly we are back in the bathroom, the woman is naked, in the tub, sitting, washing herself with a shower mitt. She gets the back of her neck, scrubs her ears. We see the woman's tits (Delphine Seyrig's tits), and they are nice tits, but her underarm hair is coyly withheld from view. Another cut and she is dressing. Another cut and she is scrubbing the bathtub. Then she is back in the kitchen, taking down a folded, vinyl tablecloth, and two cloth napkins in napkin rings. She opens a drawer and takes out utensils. There is a noise at the front door. The woman's son (Some Guy) has returned from school (high school? university?). The woman (Delphine Seyrig) goes into the foyer, turns on the light, and kisses the boy on each cheek. The boy takes his school bag and goes into the dining room, past the dinner table, into the livingroom area, turns on the light, sits and starts reading. The woman takes the folded table cloth into the dining room and places it on one half of the table. She sets two places for dinner. The woman (Delphine Seyrig) returns to the kitchen and ladles soup into two bowls. She brings the bowls into the dining room and places one at her son's place at the head of the table and the other at the place beside him where she intends to sit. The boy comes and sits at his place and continues to read his book.  The woman tells him not to eat at the table. Obligingly, the boy turns his book over. The woman places 18-and-a-half spoonfuls of soup into her mouth (I counted). The soup finished, the woman takes the empty bowls back into the kitchen. On a plate she places 5 potatoes, then spoons on some meat in what appears to be a demi-glace sauce. On another plate she places two potatoes and meat and sauce. She returns to the dining room and gives her son the plate with five potatoes. After dinner the woman takes the plates away. As she leaves she mentions that she has received a letter from her sister in Canada. She goes to her room and returns with her purse. From her purse she produces the letter, and reads it aloud. It is a compendium of banal observations. Afterwards she returns the letter to her bag, withdraws some chocolate, gives it to the boy. She begins clearing the table, but when she reaches for her son's glass he grabs it and guzzles the liquid. He leaves frame but quickly returns with his school bag and begins piling the contents on the table. Too soon, it seems: his mother enters with a damp cloth wanting to wipe down the tablecloth. He lifts everything up as she wipes. The boy reads a passage from his schoolwork to his mother. The woman goes into the living room and turns on the radio. The son also goes into the living area. The woman collects her knitting and returns to the table. While she knits she listens to a performance of Fur Elise. Apparently she is knitting a sweater for her son. At one point she calls him over for a fitting. She puts her knitting away, then she and her son prepare to depart. They leave their apartment and walk down the hall to the lift. They descend in the lift. They walk outside their building and go out into the dark street. There is an ellipsis. The pair return, enter the building, ascend the lift, go into the apartment. In the living room mother and son rearrange furniture and configure the hide-a-bed: this is where the son sleeps. The son reads in bed. The woman sits at her bureau, in nighty and housecoat, and brushes her hair thirty-nine times (I counted). She goes into the living room to kiss her son goodnight. She speaks briefly about the boy's dead father. When the son agrees it is time for lights out the woman (Delphine Seyrig) hits the switch. She goes into her bedroom and retires for the night. A title comes up stating that this is the end of the first day. The film has nearly three more hours to go.

I actually kind of like the film, but I never want to watch it again, and I can think of 1000 other ones of greater merit.

[T.H.]

Wokeamania is runnin' wild brother!!!!


I always hated these stuffy academic lists, but they at least had credibility. Now, that is gone. Schrader and Jenkins are right that there's no feasible way that movie could have been number one without collusion.

While part of me is sad that mainstream film culture is all but dead, the one good thing to come out of that is traditional film criticism has never had less relevance. And that's a great thing because no longer do we (generally) have insightful film lovers as critics, we have weirdos with agendas.

[dave jenkins]

The one good thing about this year's lists is that the magazine also publishes the individual lists of its high profile contributors. I don't have a copy of the magazine, but over at criterionforum some posters do, and they're sharing photos of some of the pages. Here's one that might be of interest to readers here:

[noodles_leone]

A few things to note though:

1- Those lists are just lists, they held no power. So they're mostly useful as (1) conversation starters and (2) symptoms of the state of the discourse over cinephilia.
2- There are about 7,8 billion different understandings of the phrase "greatest films of all time". One per person.
3- When you're doing such a list, you're always involving some level of "politics". Even when you're only thinking about cinema, you're always ending up being kind of combative and defending a certain idea of cinema. Bong Joon Ho puts Mad Max Fury Road in his top 10 and I don't believe he really thinks it's one of the 10 best movies ever. I think Mad Max Fury Road is a relatively recent film that defends a certain idea of cinema and this is why he puts it in his top 10. It's a statement. A political one. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm just saying, let's not fool ourselves and THINK that Vertigo and CK fighting for the first spot for decades wasn't the result of a political struggle.
4- The main difference between the current list and the previous ones is that they asked to much more people than they usually do. It ends up making a more controversial list than the usual one. Which is only a good thing and there is not a single bad thing to say about that.
5- The best thing to do in front of such a list is (1) make your own and (2) start working on the huge chunks of cinema history/geography you don't know shit about.

[stanton]

I liked the previous list more, there were more films in it which I love, while many of the newbies are films I consider not that great. Well I wanted more new films, but it seems I have other ideas which films of the last 20 years are the most fascinating. The director's list was for me always the more filmic one, and this year it seems to be that even more clearly.

Someone has some ideas where the more radical changes came from, and if he is right, it is bit sad, a win of content over style:

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/12/sight-and-sound

But of course the S&S poll is not dead, it is still breathing ...

The ones I love the most are 2001, Otto e mezzo, C'era una volta il West, Madame de, Persona, Apocalypse Now and Mulholland Drive, the ones I like the least are M, Do the Right Thing, The Apartment, Rear Window, Angst essen Seele auf and yes, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu

[Novecento]

Never heard of it,  lol.

Nor have I.

The one good thing about this year's lists is that the magazine also publishes the individual lists of its high profile contributors. I don't have a copy of the magazine, but over at criterionforum some posters do, and they're sharing photos of some of the pages. Here's one that might be of interest to readers here:

Michael Man?s list reminds me just how good Pale Flower is.