New Greatest Film of All Time

[João III]

Sight and Sound has released its once-a-decade critics' poll of "greatest films of all time". This is the poll which Citizen Kane topped for decades until being overthrown by Vertigo in 2012. Now, there is a new king queen: Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

There is also a director's version of the poll.

Here is the critics' list in its entirety:

1. “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. “Vertigo” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3. “Citizen Kane” (Orson Welles, 1941)
4. “Tokyo Story” (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)
5. “In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
6. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7. “Beau travail” (Claire Denis, 1998)
8. “Mulholland Dr.” (David Lynch, 2001)
9. “Man with a Movie Camera” (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
10. “Singin’ in the Rain” (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)
11. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
12. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
13. “La Règle du Jeu” (Jean Renoir, 1939)
14. “Cléo from 5 to 7” (Agnès Varda, 1962)
15. “The Searchers” (John Ford, 1956)
16. “Meshes of the Afternoon” (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)
17. “Close-Up” (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
18. “Persona” (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
19. “Apocalypse Now” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
20. “Seven Samurai” (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
21. (TIE) “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
21. (TIE) “Late Spring” (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)
23. “Playtime” (Jacques Tati, 1967)
24. “Do the Right Thing” (Spike Lee, 1989)
25. (TIE) “Au Hasard Balthazar” (Robert Bresson, 1966)
25. (TIE) The Night of the Hunter” (Charles Laughton, 1955)
27. “Shoah” (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
28. “Daisies” (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
29. “Taxi Driver” (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
30. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (Céline Sciamma, 2019)
31. (TIE) “Mirror” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
31. (TIE) “8½” (Federico Fellini, 1963)
31. (TIE) “Psycho” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
34. “L’Atalante” (Jean Vigo, 1934)
35. “Pather Panchali” (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
36. (TIE) “City Lights” (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
36. (TIE) “M” (Fritz Lang, 1931)
38. (TIE) “À bout de souffle” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
38. (TIE) “Some Like It Hot” (Billy Wilder, 1959)
38. (TIE) “Rear Window” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
41. (TIE) “Bicycle Thieves” (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
41. (TIE) “Rashomon” (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
43. (TIE) “Stalker” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
43. (TIE) “Killer of Sheep” (Charles Burnett, 1977)
45. (TIE) “North by Northwest” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
45. (TIE) “The Battle of Algiers” (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
45. (TIE) “Barry Lyndon” (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
48. (TIE) “Wanda” (Barbara Loden, 1970)
48. (TIE) “Ordet” (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
50. (TIE) “The 400 Blows” (François Truffaut, 1959)
50. (TIE) “The Piano” (Jane Campion, 1992)
52. (TIE) “News from Home” (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
52. (TIE) “Fear Eats the Soul” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
54. (TIE) “The Apartment” (Billy Wilder, 1960)
54. (TIE) “Battleship Potemkin” (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
54. (TIE) “Sherlock Jr.” (Buster Keaton, 1924)
54. (TIE) “Le Mépris” (Jean-Luc Godard 1963)
54. (TIE) “Blade Runner” (Ridley Scott 1982)
59. “Sans soleil” (Chris Marker 1982)
60. (TIE) “Daughters of the Dust” (Julie Dash 1991)
60. (TIE) “La dolce vita” (Federico Fellini 1960)
60. (TIE) “Moonlight” (Barry Jenkins 2016)
63. (TIE) “Casablanca” (Michael Curtiz 1942)
63. (TIE) “GoodFellas” (Martin Scorsese 1990)
63. (TIE) “The Third Man” (Carol Reed 1949)
66. “Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973)
67. (TIE) “The Gleaners and I” (Agnès Varda 2000)
67. (TIE) “Metropolis” (Fritz Lang 1927)
67. (TIE) “Andrei Rublev” (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966)
67. (TIE) “The Red Shoes” (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948)
67. (TIE) “La Jetée” (Chris Marker 1962)
72. (TIE) “My Neighbour Totoro” (Miyazaki Hayao 1988)
72. (TIE) “Journey to Italy” (Roberto Rossellini 1954)
72. (TIE) “L’avventura” (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960)
75. (TIE) “Imitation of Life” (Douglas Sirk 1959)
75. (TIE) “Sansho the Bailiff” (Mizoguchi Kenji 1954)
75. (TIE) “Spirited Away” (Miyazaki Hayao 2001)
78. (TIE) “A Brighter Summer Day” (Edward Yang 1991)
78. (TIE) “Sátántangó” (Béla Tarr 1994)
78. (TIE) “Céline and Julie Go Boating” (Jacques Rivette 1974)
78. (TIE) “Modern Times “(Charlie Chaplin 1936)
78. (TIE) “Sunset Blvd.” (Billy Wilder 1950)
78. (TIE) “A Matter of Life and Death” (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1946)
84. (TIE) “Blue Velvet” (David Lynch 1986)
84. (TIE) “Pierrot le fou” (Jean-Luc Godard 1965)
84. (TIE) “Histoire(s) du cinéma” (Jean-Luc Godard 1988-1998)
84. (TIE) “The Spirit of the Beehive” (Victor Erice, 1973)
88. (TIE) “The Shining” (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
88. (TIE) “Chungking Express” (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)
90. (TIE) “Madame de…” (Max Ophüls, 1953)
90. (TIE) “The Leopard” (Luchino Visconti, 1962)
90. (TIE) “Ugetsu” (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)
90. (TIE) “Parasite” (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)
90. (TIE) “Yi Yi” (Edward Yang, 1999)
95. (TIE) “A Man Escaped” (Robert Bresson, 1956)
95. (TIE) “The General” (Buster Keaton, 1926)
95. (TIE) “Once upon a Time in the West” (Sergio Leone, 1968)
95. (TIE) “Get Out” (Jordan Peele, 2017)
95. (TIE) “Black Girl” (Ousmane Sembène, 1965)
95. (TIE) “Tropical Malady” (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)

 

[Gori the Grey]

Value of list somewhat mitigated by the 20- and 30-way ties at some spots. If you're going to make a ranking, effin' rank!

 

[João III]

Value of list somewhat mitigated by the 20- and 30-way ties at some spots. If you're going to make a ranking, effin' rank!

This is only the top 100, just wait until they release the top 250

 

[FriendlyFire]

Still too many old people films

7 samurai made the list but not hidden fortress ?
Totoro made the list but where is graveyard of fireflies ?
If you going to cheat and have like so many ties might as well cheat some more to add in a few more films

 

[Broken_Erika]

Princess Mononoke should be on that list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Mononoke

 

[Kyriakos]

I haven't watched their #1, has anyone seen it to share a view?
Vertigo is certainly a great movie.
I wouldn't rank Mullholland Drive so high. Imo the best Lynch movie is Inland Empire, but overall Lynch's films have issues with plot (I doubt he even has a specific interpretation in mind).
Space Odyssey looks amazing, but has severe pacing problems. It's an example of the attempt to have two climactic points (robot, final reveal), and (as usual) doesn't work.
PS: I don't believe I have seen Persona presented as the best Bergman movie before. I did once try to watch it, but after the crude reveal I gave up. Surely he has better films, even the Hour of the Wolf may be better.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm the odd one out, but I did not particularly like Citizen Kane. I found it too self-important and bloated to outweigh the genuine achievements. (Ironically, much like what happened to Orson Welles later in life!)

 

[Kyriakos]

Borges once described Citizen Kane as "a labyrinth without a minotaur", ie vacuous due to lack of any importance in the center. Rosebud :/

 

[João III]

I haven't watched their #1, has anyone seen it to share a view?
Vertigo is certainly a great movie.
I wouldn't rank Mullholland Drive so high. Imo the best Lynch movie is Inland Empire, but overall Lynch's films have issues with plot (I doubt he even has a specific interpretation in mind).
Space Odyssey looks amazing, but has severe pacing problems. It's an example of the attempt to have two climactic points (robot, final reveal), and (as usual) doesn't work.
PS: I don't believe I have seen Persona presented as the best Bergman movie before. I did once try to watch it, but after the crude reveal I gave up. Surely he has better films, even the Hour of the Wolf may be better.

I have seen Jeanne Dielman. It's almost 3.5 hours and I believe features just 5 characters. It's an intentionally slow (shot in real time at parts) look into the mundanity of a housewife, who has a job on the side as a prostitute. The movie just follows her life as it very gradually unravels over three days. I think it's good, but certainly not "greatest of all time" good. Honestly, it's probably the last movie I'd recommend out of the top ten (which is not to say I wouldn't recommend it). Really rather vexing to see it at #1, not sure what happened with the voting. The directors' list is more in line with what I'd have.

I agree with what you're saying, though; especially on issues with 2001's pacing, particularly with the orchestral bit at the start. And the lack of Bergman representation just seems bizarre, I was shocked to see The Seventh Seal fall out of the top 100. While some of the new inclusions are shocking (Portrait of a Lady on Fire at 30??), the exclusions might be more shocking

I'm the odd one out, but I did not particularly like Citizen Kane. I found it too self-important and bloated to outweigh the genuine achievements. (Ironically, much like what happened to Orson Welles later in life!)

I'm not particularly into Kane either. Whenever I do watch it, I appreciate it more for its technical aspects (for its time) than story or anything Welles is trying to tell us

 

[EgonSpengler]

Value of list somewhat mitigated by the 20- and 30-way ties at some spots. If you're going to make a ranking, effin' rank!

It's a poll of 1600 people, not a curated ranking. There's no way not to have huge numbers of ties without asking the people conducting the poll to meddle with the results.

Still too many old people films

I was thinking it looks like there's a skew towards older films, too. When hearing a word like "greatest", many people will interpret that to mean most influential, most innovative, or most (historically) important - or a stew of all of the above, along with other considerations, and with each person favoring certain ingredients over others. I think that probably creates the opposite of 'recency bias', whatever that might be called. 'Historical bias'?

I think in any field where technique & technology play a part, earlier efforts will necessarily be weaker than later efforts, because the later efforts are by definition building on what came before. You see that in sports. There's basically nothing to debate in objective comparisons between contemporary athletes and athletes of the past, in every sport. It's mostly understood that comparing athletes across eras requires "adjusting for the era in which they played." In the creative arts, results are more subjective, so we can compare Citizen Kane to Parasite simply as films to enjoy in 2022, and we can consider whether a film "holds up today." But technique does play a big role in filmmaking, maybe a bigger role than the casual viewer realizes. I think older films tend to suffer in a 1:1 comparison of technique; simultaneously, if older films aren't considered in the context of their day, they may ironically seem less original or innovative, simply because a modern viewer will have seen the things those movies pioneered several times already. Older films that seem original today would almost have to be the ones that weren't influential.

 

[Kyriakos]

There's an absence of Kusturica too, eg Time of the Gypsies.

 

[Gori the Grey]

It's a poll of 1600 people, not a curated ranking. There's no way not to have huge numbers of ties without asking the people conducting the poll to meddle with the results.

Pah.

Ask them not just to list but rank, and devise a means for weighting their ranking.

 

[Fippy]

Are my eyes fooling me..or did they really manage to not include Shawshank?

 

[Kyriakos]

The list has many bad choices (imo).
I certainly didn't expect to see "Get Out" in this, that was made a few years ago and doesn't stand out as great cinema at all ^^
Not that Blue Velvet deserves to be there either.
It's way too US-centric anyway, and there are great movies made in more than three (four?) other countries.

 

[Fippy]

No John Carpenter's The Thing either, i think.
Or Halloween. Or Jaws..

 

[JollyRoger]

These are just placeholders until my sex tape gets leaked.

 

[Kyriakos]

No John Carpenter's The Thing either, i think.
Or Halloween. Or Jaws..

Or

Those two Charlie Chaplin movies aren't something many people would watch either.

For quality horror movies that might be able to be on a 100 best movies list, maybe Eyes without a Face, Carnival of Souls or even The Tenant/The Exorcist

 

[Fippy]

Good xmas movie either way, Gremlins

 

[TheCleanerDragon]

Maybe next decade they should try making a list of the greatest movies normal people would actually watch.

 

[João III]

The list has many bad choices (imo).
I certainly didn't expect to see "Get Out" in this, that was made a few years ago and doesn't stand out as great cinema at all ^^
Not that Blue Velvet deserves to be there either.
It's way too US-centric anyway, and there are great movies made in more than three (four?) other countries.

I also find the Get Out inclusion baffling. Not to say it's bad or anything, but I don't see how it's better than the horror films they left out in its place. Also, I believe this decade's list is actually more US-centric than the last. Somewhat ironic, considering I believe they expanded the number of people voting in an effort to increase "diversity"

Maybe next decade they should try making a list of the greatest movies normal people would actually watch.

I'm normally a staunch defender of art house cinema, but even I can't defend this top pick. I think explaining to people the "greatest film of all time" is a 3.5-hr, slow-moving Belgian film about a housewife/part-time prostitute is going to alienate most people. I feel like Vertigo is at least more accessible