Sight & Sound 2022 "All-Time" List
Thursday, December 1, 2022 at 3:31PM by Nathaniel R
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
The once a decade Sight & Sound poll of the "Greatest Films of All Time" is upon us, and there's a new winner. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). The Belgian film jumped 35 spots from a decade ago to claim the top spot from Hitchcock's Vertigo which itself had pushed Citizen Kane from the top of the heap in an earlier poll. The list is getting extremely recent! A full forty percent of the top ten is now from the still newish 21st century... which seems extreme to us for an all time list given that there's nearlly 100 years of feature films before the year 2000!
A few more notes after the jump and the top 50...
Vertigo
1 Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2 Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
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)
Beau Travail
7 Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
8 Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
9 Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov,1929)
10 Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951)
About that recency bias. Yes, technically Beaux Travail is from the 20th century. But it wasn't widely screened until 2000 when it began opening in various countries around the world (including its home country, France) so we consider it part of the 21st century. Anyway, this suggests that there's either a hunger to shake up the canon or the new people polled either don't know or don't care much about the back catalogue. Or both.
1 1 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (FW Murnau, 1927)
12 The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
13 Rules of the Game (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 & 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 The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
22 Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
23 Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Do the Right Thing
24 Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
25 Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
26 The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
27 Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
28 Daisies (Vera Chytilova, 1966)
29 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
30 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma, 2019)
30 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
-- Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
-- Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
34 L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
35 Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
36 City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
-- M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Some Like It Hot
38 Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
-- Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
-- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
41 Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
-- Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
43 Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
-- Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
45 Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
-- Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
-- North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
48 Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
-- Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
50 The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
-- The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
You can see the rest at the BFI's official Sight & Sound page
The prevalence of two-way to even six-way ties in the lists suggests to us that they need to poll a bit more than the 1,639 people they spoke with so ties are harder to come by in the math.
Several directors have two films on the list but the only ones who show up more than that are the Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard with four titles each, and Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Billy Wilder with three titles each.
Parasite
The most recent films on the list are Parasite (tied for 90th) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (tied for 30th) both from just three years ago (my personal 2019 top ten list here) which is far too young to place on an all time list though both are obviously very great movies!
Do you have any observations about this list and will you use it for screening ideas?
Jeanne Dielman, List-Mania, Sight & Sound
Reader Comments (31)
Little cold/heady/heavy for my taste—some of my favorite filmmakers (Mike Nichols, Jonathan Demme, Quentin Tarantino) find more fun and heart in the medium than this list celebrates. To each his own I guess!
Thanks for the link to your 2019 list, which reminded me how much I also loved Shadow!
I will definitely print this new list out and start hitting blind spots when I complete the current year/awards offering.
I prefer the Filmmakers' Poll choices:
1. 2001
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Godfather
4. Jeanne Dielman // Tokyo Story
6. 8 1/2
7.Mirror
9. Persona // In the Mood for Love // Close-Up
My own ballot (sadly it was never solicited)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
The Emigrants
Fallen Angels
The Lady Eve
The Lady Vanishes
Lincoln
Nights of Cabiria
Persona
Sons of the Desert
Tokyo Story
SPECIAL BONUS (My 10 runners-up - 2 of which were really really hard to cut)
Amelie (#12)
Battle of Algiers
El
The General
Lawrence of Arabia
The Man Who Would Be King
Once Upon a Time in the West
Seven Samurai (#11)
Through the Olive Trees
Woman in the Dunes
I hope they eventually publish all the individual ballots. That's always lots of fun.
I absolutely love Jeanne Dielman, but I have really mixed feelings about it being #1, and not because I question whether or not it's "deserving" of the spot. Part of me really loves that pick, as it does represent a quite radical shift in the so-called canon of great films. But on the other hand, I worry this is ultimately going to do more damage than good to its reputation. Obviously any movie being named THE greatest of all time puts a target on its back, but this film in particular is so inaccessible to "normal" moviegoers and even to a lot of cinephiles that by putting this kind of spotlight on it, a significant backlash is inevitable for a film that prior to today most people probably hadn't even heard of except maybe in passing. This is the kind of movie that casual cinephiles will check out on HBO Max to see what all the fuss is about and most likely not even make it 30 minutes before deciding that it's the most insufferably boring movie they've ever seen.
To be clear, I'm quite thrilled that Chantal Akerman is finally getting her due, but this is the sort of decision that is really going to alienate a lot of people and may end up giving Jeanne Dielman a reputation among more casual movie fans as the ultimate snooty arthouse film that only the most elitist cinephiles could even stomach, let alone enjoy. It would be like if Rolling Stone's recent greatest albums list were topped by a John Cage album. I'm glad I'm no longer on social media, because I'm sure most of the conversation about this right now is depressing.
Edwin -- i think a lot of people vote to make a "statement"... which I get since how else would you narrow it down to just ten films? I can assure you that you are correct about the conversations at the moment ;) I just wish that if we were going to have a new #1 that was an a feminist French language art film that it had been like CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 instead since I think that's accessible enough that a *lot* of people who haven't heard of it but are the type that might watch a film because it topped a list like this would really enjoy it if they gave it a chance.
Amy & DK -- i haven't looked at the director's list yet but i should. It's EXTREMELY hard to do a ten film only list. I have tried numerous times and given up. Only selecting ten from over a 100 years of cinema is just and insane task. So I would also end up having to vote with a statement and be like 'well, i'll just pick great movies that also happen to be really fun times since those are often wildlly underrepresented on this sort of list.'
Kelly -- i have some blind spots on this list too but i always tell myself i will for lists like this but then forget because, you know, current Oscar season which lasts for months.
I feel like pulling a Billy Eichner to all voters: "Name a Spanish Language Film, NAME A SPANISH LANGUAGE FILM!!!"... not a single film in spanish seems just bad, .
Yes, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 is objectively not the best Nouvelle Vague film, nor is PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE the 30th greatest picture.
But so what? The poll is exactly what it suggests it is. A 2022 imagining of an "All Time" list. Very much of its time.
I am, however, very satisfied that JEANNE DIELMAN will finally get the recognition and visibility it deserves.
And to reply to Edwin's fear that the general public will dismiss the film as pretentious, well... let them eat cake!
There's a distinct lack of films starring my sister! Come on critics, couldn't find a place for I'M NO ANGEL or EVERY DAY'S A HOLIDAY? It's better to be looked over than overlooked, hun.
I went to film school, have been watching art house movies for 30 years, been reading movie blogs for 20+, and I had never heard of Jeanne Dielman before today. Having not seen it, hard to believe it’s the best movie of all time.
I'm just glad a film I'd legitimately include in my "best of all-time" top 10 actually got the top placement. I've been in love with Akerman's cinema since I first started discovering her in college, and am glad it seems others are waking up to her mastery. If only she had lived to see this day.
The Director's poll is much better than the main poll: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sigh...
Out goes GET OUT, MY NEIGHBOR TORTORO, THE SHINING, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE & DAISIES (all of which I like by the way) but, it does make room for the likes of:
DR. STRANGELOVE, GODFATHER II, LA STRADA, COME & SEE, VIRIDIANA (there is no Bunuel on the main list), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, CHINATOWN, SEVENTH SEAL & WILD STRAWBERRIES, THE CONVERSATION, THE CONFORMIST and A SEPARATION.
A much stronger list
I do think Jeanne Dielman is one of the greatest films ever made but is it in my personal top 100? I don't know. I own the film on DVD but I'm not sure if I put it in the top 10. I'm shocked that I've seen the entire top 10.
The only films in the overall 100 I haven't seen are Wanda, Histoire(s) du Cinema, and Tropical Malady. I think that's progress for me personally.
For more lists- check out They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? They have a list of 1000 best films. Their top 100 in interesting as well- Andony Alvarez they do have Spanish language films in their lists.
It feels a little dumb to have a lot of ties, if you gonna do a list that excludes hundreds of titles, why to be so worried about the order?
I recently do my own Top 100 and included two very recent films: Parasite and the fantastic Lúa Vermella (Red Moon Tide) from 2020.
Probably is just me but I consider the spanish film as a truly masterpiece.
Joe Stemm - It goes without saying that it’s subjective, but since most of the movies you cited are long-established classics that have been perennials on the Sight & Sound lists for decades, determining which list is “better” ultimately comes down to what one values in a list. The critics’ list is more of a shakeup of the traditional canon, and while I realize that’s causing a lot of people to question some of its placements, you could just as easily take the opposite perspective and say the directors’ list is too safe and doesn’t represent enough of a change from past iterations. Again, it just depends on whether you think the list should serve to further solidify the existing canon with some tweaking as necessary or to more fully focus on expanding and revamping the canon, and since that’s a very subjective preference I don’t think either list can definitively be called “better” without revealing one’s values in that respect. I personally don’t think the quality of a list is related to how agreeable it is, but of course I realize that in itself says something about my approach to such things.
Paranoid Android - I’m not trying to be condescending at all here, but since the “if it’s so great, how come I’ve never heard of it?” mentality actually seems to be quite common, let me just say that your lack of familiarity with the film doesn’t say nearly as much about its quality as it does about the scope of the blogs you’ve been following these 20+ years, because again in the least condescending way possible, Jeanne Dielman has been widely discussed and highly regarded for a long time. It ranked in the 30s in the previous Sight & Sound poll a decade ago, and a lot of people (myself included) were predicting it would make the top 10 this time around (although, granted, I didn’t see anyone predicting it to be #1). I mean, given the number of people polled for these lists, the fact that it was #1 with the critics and #4 with the directors kind of proves that it’s built up quite a reputation over the years, doesn’t it? It’s not some completely obscure movie that all the voters conspired to randomly pluck out of nowhere. I’m not saying “you should have heard of it by now” as that would be really snooty, but come on, don’t act like just because people haven’t been discussing it in the places you frequent that there can’t possibly be people who have been discussing it anywhere.
There's a great shift in perspective here that I think is important. I respect Jeanne Dielman getting the number one spot, though I predict we'll see the inevitable "Um, actually" think pieces and IMDB review bombing over the next few weeks.
The lack of Spanish-language films is the big omission.
There are plenty of films I would vote for that would also cause people to scratch heads. I think the most defendable of those from my own picks is Santa Sangre, but that's also a pretty inaccessible almost-horror film for a lot of viewers.
@Nathaniel—
If you did an unnumbered list of your 50 "favorite" movies of all time (with as many honorable mentions as you want), that would mean more to me than some tortured list of the 50 Greatest Movies of All Time According to You. Films weren't made to be compared in this way. You can do it in a single year but all time is too much. I'd rather get a sense of what one person I respect's taste is (a la the John Waters lists) than any kind of faux scientific thing.
DK -- that's a good point. I should make it my project to write up a "personal canon top 100..." which i've started a couple of times but never gotten very far with. But I feel like a lot of them I've written about a lot already.
Tom -- i like THEY SHOOT PICTURES DON'T THEY list because 'top 1000" feels a lot more accurate given how old this artform now is!
Yes, I just consider this a "films to explore" list since there are a few I've barely heard of, including our winner. There must be some real gems in here.
But, for example, I just watched Beau Travail this week. I consider it to be full of sexy images and kind of hypnotic but not belonging anywhere near a Top 100, yet on the other hand, I consider In The Mood For Love a stone cold masterpiece. So, obviously everyone has different opinions about greatness.
I'm glad to see some of the true classics still sticking around, like Singin' In The Rain and Sunrise, but I've really got to see some of these other films, I wonder where they are available.? Meshes Of The Afternoon, uh, what?
The Spirit of the Beehive is Spanish... I think it was Viridiana also included?
The Spirit of the Beehive is the only Spanish-language film in the top 100, although I'm sure several more will fall in the 101-200 range once the full results are made available, Viridiana almost certainly being one of them. I think Buñuel is one of a handful of directors who was likely kept out of the top 100 simply due to a lack of consensus regarding their best film, so once all the individual lists are published, I expect to see a lot of people include a Buñuel film but no one film of his getting an abundance of the votes. Same thing with Cronenberg, Hawks, Pasolini, Altman, and a few others who are widely regarded as being among the best directors without having a solid consensus pick for what their masterpiece is.
I get taking issue with portrait or parasite being on the list since both are only 3 years old, but I’m actually thrilled to see new blood in the top 10. In the Mood for Love, Beau Travail, and Mulholland Drive are all over 20 years old and hugely influential films. If that isn’t enough time to accurately quantify their value, then how long would be? 30 years? 40? One of my major qualms with this list in the past was that it seemed to suggest that films stopped mattering after the late 1970s, so to see that so radically rectified this time around was very refreshing
Dave -- 'films to explore' is i think a safe and wise assessment of almost any "best" list ever created. Lists are fun but they are never definitive because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Cristal -- thank you for sharing that. It lowers my eyebrows about the recency. That's a good point. 20 years is a good amount of time and they've all definitely had staying power in the imagination and in the discourse.
Edwin -- yeah, that hurt a lot of great filmmakers. Though with Altman I'm a bit surprised that the consensus ISN'T "Nashville" which is just perfect... though I suppose some might prefer "three women" which is also brilliant.
everyone -- as a lot of people have pointed out online CRITERION obviously has a *ton* of power in terms of influencing the canon because so many of the films that made it have had criterion releases and are widely available. If Criterion widened their taste to include say, great musicals (which they very much ignore) maybe more musicals could have had a fighting chance? And as many people have pointed out online the absence of some entire regions from the list has more to do with which countries 'the discourse' focuses on and which countries get their films more easily exported to other country, than actual quality of films.
I am all for embracing more contemporary titles. If we're not watching movies to find new titles to covet and cherish and champion then why are even here?
@ParanoidAndrew. "I went to film school, have been watching art house movies for 30 years, been reading movie blogs for 20+, and I had never heard of Jeanne Dielman before today. Having not seen it, hard to believe it’s the best movie of all time."
I've never heard of it so it can't be that great? That's one of the most breathtaking justifications for ignorance I've ever read and it brings up several questions: What film school? Did you go to class? (If you would have gone to my university and studied film you would have watched it in a required freshman class.) Did you do the assigned reading? ( I doubt there's a Film History textbook on the market that doesn't talk about the film.) What kind of grades did you get? What blogs do you read? What do you consider an "art house movie"? Have you ever heard of the Criterion Collection? (They have it out on DVD and Blu-ray and on their streaming service.) Where do you live? (There have been allusions to it in popular TV shows (Ms. America) and it was referenced once in THE SIMPSONS.) Man... People will say the most self-incriminating things when they don't have to use their real names.
Hahaha. I knew that comment would draw some jabs. I didn’t mean for folks to think: “I haven’t heard of it, so it’s not worthy,” but rather: “I haven’t heard of it, and I’ve studied film a lot, so I’m surprised it’s at number one.” For the record, I went to UCLA, got good grades, and took a French film class! At which I watched a number of other movies on this list for the first time, like the Rules of the Game, Breathless, L’atalante, and the 400 Blows. And I’ve read this very blog a lot, way back since the 2001 Oscar race. And I see literally hundreds of movies a year, new, old, and everything in between. And I’ve never heard of this one.
(Not sure how to make a valid comparison, but it would be like someone saying the Kinks are the best British Invasion band of all time, but you’d never heard of them up until then.)
I don't love the idea of blaming Criterion for anyone's issues with the list. Criterion has released most of the films that fell off of the list. Criterion has also released a ton of Golden-age comedies in the last 5 or so years, and yet they're not represented on the list at all (to the list's fault). In fact, there are only 3 comedies in the top 50 - Playtime, City Lights, and Some Like It Hot. Something like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has been promoted by Criterion as much as Jeanne Dielmann, and is arguably as influential (would La La Land exist without it?). There are just some genres, like musicals and comedies, that certain tastemakers don't accept as belonging on all-time lists, unfortunately (even though my top 10 list would include both).
Nathaniel — Nashville was the consensus for a while (it’s still my favorite), but along with 3 Women, I’ve also noticed more and more people citing McCabe & Mrs. Miller or The Long Goodbye as their pick for Altman’s masterpiece, so I’m really curious to see how the votes were distributed once the full results are made available. It’s kind of a kiss of death with these lists for a director to have multiple masterpieces, because then you can’t get enough of the votes for any one movie to make the top 100 and end up with 3 or 4 films in the 101-250 range. It doesn’t help that the 4 Altman films I just mentioned are all quite different and thus appeal to different “factions” of cinephiles as it were.
That said, I actually like it when a director doesn’t have a solid consensus for their best film because I think that encourages people to explore more of their filmography than they might have otherwise. I firmly believe Ozu has made multiple masterpieces, but because everyone has congregated around Tokyo Story (and to a lesser extent Late Spring), I think that has actually done a disservice to his body of work since it seems like a lot of budding cinephiles haven’t done a deeper dive into his filmography. That’s especially disappointing for a director like Ozu who, to me, is very much a filmmaker for whom the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as his films all build upon each other and explore recurring themes. So having a single agreed upon masterwork is helpful for list purposes, but it can also work against a director in terms of people digging into their filmography.
I realize she's not the most famous actress ever, but Delphine Seyrig had an interesting career. I wouldn't be upset if TFE did a highlight of her work.
@Paranoid Andrew: Thanks for not being too offended. Looking at it today, my response seems much more hostile and angry than was warranted.
It's probably more like seeing some GRE-type high-level vocabulary word in an article in April, and say to yourself, "I've never heard THAT word before," and so you look it up. Then, suddenly you come across the word a lot again in May and July and September and say, "wait a minute. Why am I suddenly seeing this word that I'd never seen before this year?!?" It's not that you'd never seen it. It's just that you unconsciously skipped over it before because it didn't seem important. Now that it's sunk in you notice it a lot. But I guarantee that it was in whatever film history book you read at UCLA. Its even been mentioned on THE FILM EXPERIENCE before. An article showed a frame from JEANNE DIELMAN and one from MS. AMERICA and talked about how the latter's recreation of the former was a fun homage. You just skipped over it. :)
Too much emotional investment here for my taste. A ranking is just an opinion. It is not right or wrong. Some folks like cinema, others prefer film while still others just enjoy a movie. These type of lists exist to bring attention to films that may eluded particular filmgoers.
Personally, Jeanne Dielman isn’t the best film ever. It’s not even the best film of 1975. That title belongs to Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville.