Look obviously anecdotal stuff is anecdotal blah blah blah but I have never once heard of someone who thinks Jeanne Dielman is the greatest movie of all time. I have watched over 4,700 movies according to my IMDB ratings and never saw fit to check it out because there was never a sense it was something I needed to see. I won't criticize the film, because I haven't seen it, but how can something be the consensus best movie of all time when
1. No one has seen it. Citizen Kane and Vertigo have over 400,000 views on IMDB. A great foreign movie like Grand Illusion has 37,000. Jean Dielman had 7,000 when the list was announced.
2. No one likes it. In all previous version of the list, both overall list and directors list, it never ranked in the Top 10.
So everyone just suddenly decided this was the best movie of all time? It doesn't make any sense. The only sense I can make of this is identitarian
-it's directed by a woman and about a woman and we're making a conscious effort to disrupt the canon, because WHO makes the movie now matters to us more than WHAT the movie is
And elitist.
-there is a clear move into the obscure and less mainstream on this year's list. Oscars reflect it too
I saw Vertigo in 2012 not long after that year’s S&S poll shocked everyone. I loved it but living with undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea at the time meant I fell asleep at some bits unintentionally. I need to see it again.
And how great is it that that film, Citizen Kane and Jeanne Dielman are all streamableon HBO Max?
Jeanne Dielman would not have been my first choice, but man, I love that it ended up at the top. So glad Filmspotting covered that one, it would've been, well, until now I guess before I'd seen it.
At risk of being contrarian, me surprised to see Mulholland Drive so high on list. Every scene with Naomi Watts is incredible, but me remembrer rest of movie being slapdash mess of recycled footage from TV pilot that never got off ground. Maybe it just me.
I don’t know, Scott, I think that’s a damn fine ballot, and IMO picking certifiably great, “canon”-approved movies is just as valid an approach as picking 10 offbeat choices you merely want to cheerlead because maybe no one else will. The snootiest corners of Film Twitter were snickering at Ti West’s supposedly too-basic S&S ballot, despite him picking 10 genuinely great and hugely influential movies. You can’t win with those jerks!
But I love when these kinds of lists experience major shake-ups because it’s a fascinating barometer of the shifting tides of opinion. Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums list was formative for me 15-20 years ago, but its 2020 version looked entirely different from past iterations, which I think is great. A few tried-and-trues stayed on top, many were knocked from the perch — is it because they no longer have cultural relevance (and does cultural relevance even factor in to your vote?), or is it merely a matter of voters thinking “Sgt. Pepper’s” had had its time in the sun and so went for an artist they feel deserves canonization instead? Such is the nature of the list.
Dec 6, 2022·edited Dec 6, 2022Liked by Scott Tobias
Looking forward to seeing Jeanne Dielman -- this is the kick in the pants I needed. (Thanks, Tom, for mentioning it's streaming on HBO Max!)
And of course, no one single person actually said that it was the greatest film of all time. (Well, maybe some people did, but for this list, that doesn't matter.) It was just listed in more people's top 10s than any other. More and more people were including it in the conversation.
I've been thinking about my own picks over the last week or so, and here's what I've come up with:
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Rear Window
Jaws
8 1/2
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Casablanca
Do the Right Thing
Picnic at Hanging Rock
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp
It's an imperfect list. They're only 10 films on it, for one thing, when there should be a hundred. But these are the ones that speak to me, and I'd watch any of them again right this second.
Well you have a new subscriber (me!). Thanks for contributing to the S&S poll and for the months (or more) of this great substack. Picking a top ten seems impossible - should it be your favorite? Should it be "the best" and include films you admire more than you like?
I think Jean Dielman falls into the latter category for me - clearly interesting, but too frustrating for me to take much away from it. Personally I'd put "The Piano," "Lost in Translation," "The Hurt Locker," "Wanda," "Persepolis" (hell can we count "The Matrix?) in the top 10 ahead of it.
No one asked me, but here's what I'd submit in no particular order:
"ET"
- still my favorite Speilberg, and he belongs here.
"Rear Window"
- at least as good as "Vertigo"
"Do the Right Thing"
- this would have made a better number one in 2022's list.
"Goodfellas"
- because...c'mon now.
"The Piano"
- best romance of the last 30 yrs, IMO.
"You Can Count on Me"
- surely not a of votes for this one, but it kills me every time.
"Pulp Fiction"
- The most formative movie for me, coming out as I entered film school and had been making short films on a VHS camera with friends throughout high school.
"Singin' in the Rain"
- Can't think of a better musical and at least one belongs here.
"Dr Strangelove"
- As much as I admire "2001," This is the Kubrick that should be here IMO.
coincidentally, I just watched The Lady Eve last night for the first time. It's a good film! but.... it's not even my favorite Sturges. I honestly don't get the overwhelming love it gets. The first half is wonderful fun, but the fact that Charles never once catches on to her deceptions in the second half is just....not funny after the first half dozen times?
if you've got five seconds to point me to what makes it a contender for a top ten film, I'd love to know. by comparison we watched Palm Beach Story last week and found it a much superior film.
My main feeling about the sight and sound list is that 100 is just too small a number for all the great films across the mediums history. Maybe 100 made sense in 1952, but by 2022 it’s a positively anemic amount. Also I think it unconsciously make people get a little conservative with their votes. You only get ten and you know like Broadcast News (a GREAT film) isn’t making it when it has to compete with seven samurai and The Godfather and all those serious European art house films. So you don’t wanna waste ya vote on something that probably isn’t happening. Of all the talk of upheaval and recency bias, the list is largely the same canonical films that’s been on this list for decades.
I’m for expansion when it comes to lists like this. A website i frequent, They Shoot Pictures Don’t They(TSPDT for short) did a top 1005 favorites with nearly 2000 of us voted for 25 films. With ten times the results and 2.5x the choices, it opened the results up to a vastly more varied and interesting collection of movies across history, genre, and style.
So yes all the Sight and Sound 100 usual suspects are there(many are there for good reason: they’re great films!), but there’s way more comedy, horror, action, American indie, animation, obscurities and those weird personal touches that you and maybe a dozen other cinephiles just absolutely love.
An incomplete list of great filmmakers who’s work is featured here but did not make the cut for Sight and Sound 2022: Melville, Altman, Carpenter, Morris, Leigh, Peckinpah, Fuller, Eastwood, Bigelow, Cukor, Cronenberg, Wenders, Yimou , Von Trier, Malle, Almodovar, Lumet, Malick, Allen, Mann(michael and anthony), Lubistch, Cuaron, Spielberg, Hawks, Bunuel, Tarantino, Anderson(Wes, Paul Thomas AND Paul W.S.), Coens, Woo, De Palma, Ang Lee, Polanski, Lean, Cassavettes, Cimino, Cameron, Linklater, Lucas, May, Nolan, Burton, Lanthimos, Friedkin, Naruse, Jarmusch, Kore-eda, To, Kazan, Hark, Ramsay, Wachowskis, Raimi, Preminger, Roeg, Sternberg, Malle, Hu, Bird, Zemeckis, Weir, Tourneur, McQueen, Miller, Carax, Boorman, Verhoeven, Assayas, Brooks, Kobayashi, Reichardt, Zhangke, Craven, Stone, Ashby, Fincher, Aldrich, Huston, Wright, Reiner, Romero, Bogdanovich, Kon, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sturges, Ray, Wyler, Nichols, Gerwig, Safdies, Costa-Gavras, Herzog, Jonze, Yimou, Glazer, Rohmer, Fosse, Schrader, Jackson, Demy, Clouzot, Kalatozov, Haneke, Park, McCarey, Argento, Takahata, Fleming, Gilliam, Demme, Forman...I mean I can keep going.
When you put all these films together, i think it gives a wider and more interesting idea about great cinema. When you scroll down the list and see Winter Light, Akira, Hard Boiled, Before Sunrise, and the Umbrellas of Cherbourg all sitting side by side, you see great films can come in all sorts of forms, genres, colors, or even in animation. It can open your mind more to the possibilities of the medium and make you wanna check some of these out. A similar expansion for Sight and Sound can only help, not hurt, conversation and broaden cinephile horizons.
As someone who prefers F FOR FAKE to CITIZEN KANE and NORTH BY NORTHWEST to VERTIGO I am used to being "this guy", but am I the only one who doesn't think JEANNE DIELMAN is even Akerman's best? I prefer LES RENDEZVOUS D'ANNA by a sizable margin, and would put NEWS FROM HOME, HOTEL MONTEREY and NO HOME MOVIE above it as well, albeit with only one viewing of all of those. (I think my rhetorical question is probably also answered by the fact that NEWS FROM HOME probably didn't place there from voters naming *two* Akerman films in their top ten.)
I like that you have the Top 5 on your list while still making room for less obvious films like “Modern Romance” and “Blow Out.” As much as I like looking through the consensus list, I think I enjoy seeing what’s on all the individual lists even more. Once in a while I’ll see something that’ll surprise and delight me, and with over 1600 participants this year, I’ll definitely be geeking out for a while.
Scott, how much can I pay you to change your Albert Brooks selection from Modern Romance to Defending Your Life? ;)
I adore both films, but I do think DYL is his masterwork.
I'll be watching two 3+ hour movies this month -- Avatar 2 and Jeanne Dielman! I have a feeling they're gonna be a little different. I've never heard of "slow cinema," but I have heard of, and have seen, "slow tv," the train video in Norway. I hope Jeanne Dielman will be slightly more exciting than that...I hope!
I've been sitting on my Netflix DVD of Jeanne Dielman for the last two months, approximately... just in time for the latest S&S poll! (just kidding, coincidence of course) But I've wanted to make sure there was time when I wasn't busy with work, family and classes to watch it with my wife, now that I'm done with class for the term.
When Scott got into “stodgy”-ness, I immediately thought of this take by Paul Schrader on the new list (linking an article discussing the take, not to FB where he wrote it) - https://nofilmschool.com/Paul-schrader-sight-and-sound. Perhaps lists shouldn’t be called “stodgy”, but takes about such lists can absolutely reek of it, among other things (*cringe).
Look obviously anecdotal stuff is anecdotal blah blah blah but I have never once heard of someone who thinks Jeanne Dielman is the greatest movie of all time. I have watched over 4,700 movies according to my IMDB ratings and never saw fit to check it out because there was never a sense it was something I needed to see. I won't criticize the film, because I haven't seen it, but how can something be the consensus best movie of all time when
1. No one has seen it. Citizen Kane and Vertigo have over 400,000 views on IMDB. A great foreign movie like Grand Illusion has 37,000. Jean Dielman had 7,000 when the list was announced.
2. No one likes it. In all previous version of the list, both overall list and directors list, it never ranked in the Top 10.
So everyone just suddenly decided this was the best movie of all time? It doesn't make any sense. The only sense I can make of this is identitarian
-it's directed by a woman and about a woman and we're making a conscious effort to disrupt the canon, because WHO makes the movie now matters to us more than WHAT the movie is
And elitist.
-there is a clear move into the obscure and less mainstream on this year's list. Oscars reflect it too
I saw Vertigo in 2012 not long after that year’s S&S poll shocked everyone. I loved it but living with undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea at the time meant I fell asleep at some bits unintentionally. I need to see it again.
And how great is it that that film, Citizen Kane and Jeanne Dielman are all streamableon HBO Max?
Jeanne Dielman would not have been my first choice, but man, I love that it ended up at the top. So glad Filmspotting covered that one, it would've been, well, until now I guess before I'd seen it.
At risk of being contrarian, me surprised to see Mulholland Drive so high on list. Every scene with Naomi Watts is incredible, but me remembrer rest of movie being slapdash mess of recycled footage from TV pilot that never got off ground. Maybe it just me.
I don’t know, Scott, I think that’s a damn fine ballot, and IMO picking certifiably great, “canon”-approved movies is just as valid an approach as picking 10 offbeat choices you merely want to cheerlead because maybe no one else will. The snootiest corners of Film Twitter were snickering at Ti West’s supposedly too-basic S&S ballot, despite him picking 10 genuinely great and hugely influential movies. You can’t win with those jerks!
But I love when these kinds of lists experience major shake-ups because it’s a fascinating barometer of the shifting tides of opinion. Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums list was formative for me 15-20 years ago, but its 2020 version looked entirely different from past iterations, which I think is great. A few tried-and-trues stayed on top, many were knocked from the perch — is it because they no longer have cultural relevance (and does cultural relevance even factor in to your vote?), or is it merely a matter of voters thinking “Sgt. Pepper’s” had had its time in the sun and so went for an artist they feel deserves canonization instead? Such is the nature of the list.
My take on Jeanne Dielman is that she should get a cat.
Looking forward to seeing Jeanne Dielman -- this is the kick in the pants I needed. (Thanks, Tom, for mentioning it's streaming on HBO Max!)
And of course, no one single person actually said that it was the greatest film of all time. (Well, maybe some people did, but for this list, that doesn't matter.) It was just listed in more people's top 10s than any other. More and more people were including it in the conversation.
I've been thinking about my own picks over the last week or so, and here's what I've come up with:
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Rear Window
Jaws
8 1/2
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Casablanca
Do the Right Thing
Picnic at Hanging Rock
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp
It's an imperfect list. They're only 10 films on it, for one thing, when there should be a hundred. But these are the ones that speak to me, and I'd watch any of them again right this second.
Well you have a new subscriber (me!). Thanks for contributing to the S&S poll and for the months (or more) of this great substack. Picking a top ten seems impossible - should it be your favorite? Should it be "the best" and include films you admire more than you like?
I think Jean Dielman falls into the latter category for me - clearly interesting, but too frustrating for me to take much away from it. Personally I'd put "The Piano," "Lost in Translation," "The Hurt Locker," "Wanda," "Persepolis" (hell can we count "The Matrix?) in the top 10 ahead of it.
No one asked me, but here's what I'd submit in no particular order:
"ET"
- still my favorite Speilberg, and he belongs here.
"Rear Window"
- at least as good as "Vertigo"
"Do the Right Thing"
- this would have made a better number one in 2022's list.
"Goodfellas"
- because...c'mon now.
"The Piano"
- best romance of the last 30 yrs, IMO.
"You Can Count on Me"
- surely not a of votes for this one, but it kills me every time.
"Pulp Fiction"
- The most formative movie for me, coming out as I entered film school and had been making short films on a VHS camera with friends throughout high school.
"Singin' in the Rain"
- Can't think of a better musical and at least one belongs here.
"Dr Strangelove"
- As much as I admire "2001," This is the Kubrick that should be here IMO.
"Casablanca"
- The most "movie" movie ever made, right?
coincidentally, I just watched The Lady Eve last night for the first time. It's a good film! but.... it's not even my favorite Sturges. I honestly don't get the overwhelming love it gets. The first half is wonderful fun, but the fact that Charles never once catches on to her deceptions in the second half is just....not funny after the first half dozen times?
if you've got five seconds to point me to what makes it a contender for a top ten film, I'd love to know. by comparison we watched Palm Beach Story last week and found it a much superior film.
My main feeling about the sight and sound list is that 100 is just too small a number for all the great films across the mediums history. Maybe 100 made sense in 1952, but by 2022 it’s a positively anemic amount. Also I think it unconsciously make people get a little conservative with their votes. You only get ten and you know like Broadcast News (a GREAT film) isn’t making it when it has to compete with seven samurai and The Godfather and all those serious European art house films. So you don’t wanna waste ya vote on something that probably isn’t happening. Of all the talk of upheaval and recency bias, the list is largely the same canonical films that’s been on this list for decades.
I’m for expansion when it comes to lists like this. A website i frequent, They Shoot Pictures Don’t They(TSPDT for short) did a top 1005 favorites with nearly 2000 of us voted for 25 films. With ten times the results and 2.5x the choices, it opened the results up to a vastly more varied and interesting collection of movies across history, genre, and style.
So yes all the Sight and Sound 100 usual suspects are there(many are there for good reason: they’re great films!), but there’s way more comedy, horror, action, American indie, animation, obscurities and those weird personal touches that you and maybe a dozen other cinephiles just absolutely love.
https://www.theyshootpictures.com/2021poll.htm
An incomplete list of great filmmakers who’s work is featured here but did not make the cut for Sight and Sound 2022: Melville, Altman, Carpenter, Morris, Leigh, Peckinpah, Fuller, Eastwood, Bigelow, Cukor, Cronenberg, Wenders, Yimou , Von Trier, Malle, Almodovar, Lumet, Malick, Allen, Mann(michael and anthony), Lubistch, Cuaron, Spielberg, Hawks, Bunuel, Tarantino, Anderson(Wes, Paul Thomas AND Paul W.S.), Coens, Woo, De Palma, Ang Lee, Polanski, Lean, Cassavettes, Cimino, Cameron, Linklater, Lucas, May, Nolan, Burton, Lanthimos, Friedkin, Naruse, Jarmusch, Kore-eda, To, Kazan, Hark, Ramsay, Wachowskis, Raimi, Preminger, Roeg, Sternberg, Malle, Hu, Bird, Zemeckis, Weir, Tourneur, McQueen, Miller, Carax, Boorman, Verhoeven, Assayas, Brooks, Kobayashi, Reichardt, Zhangke, Craven, Stone, Ashby, Fincher, Aldrich, Huston, Wright, Reiner, Romero, Bogdanovich, Kon, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sturges, Ray, Wyler, Nichols, Gerwig, Safdies, Costa-Gavras, Herzog, Jonze, Yimou, Glazer, Rohmer, Fosse, Schrader, Jackson, Demy, Clouzot, Kalatozov, Haneke, Park, McCarey, Argento, Takahata, Fleming, Gilliam, Demme, Forman...I mean I can keep going.
When you put all these films together, i think it gives a wider and more interesting idea about great cinema. When you scroll down the list and see Winter Light, Akira, Hard Boiled, Before Sunrise, and the Umbrellas of Cherbourg all sitting side by side, you see great films can come in all sorts of forms, genres, colors, or even in animation. It can open your mind more to the possibilities of the medium and make you wanna check some of these out. A similar expansion for Sight and Sound can only help, not hurt, conversation and broaden cinephile horizons.
As someone who prefers F FOR FAKE to CITIZEN KANE and NORTH BY NORTHWEST to VERTIGO I am used to being "this guy", but am I the only one who doesn't think JEANNE DIELMAN is even Akerman's best? I prefer LES RENDEZVOUS D'ANNA by a sizable margin, and would put NEWS FROM HOME, HOTEL MONTEREY and NO HOME MOVIE above it as well, albeit with only one viewing of all of those. (I think my rhetorical question is probably also answered by the fact that NEWS FROM HOME probably didn't place there from voters naming *two* Akerman films in their top ten.)
I like that you have the Top 5 on your list while still making room for less obvious films like “Modern Romance” and “Blow Out.” As much as I like looking through the consensus list, I think I enjoy seeing what’s on all the individual lists even more. Once in a while I’ll see something that’ll surprise and delight me, and with over 1600 participants this year, I’ll definitely be geeking out for a while.
Scott, how much can I pay you to change your Albert Brooks selection from Modern Romance to Defending Your Life? ;)
I adore both films, but I do think DYL is his masterwork.
I'll be watching two 3+ hour movies this month -- Avatar 2 and Jeanne Dielman! I have a feeling they're gonna be a little different. I've never heard of "slow cinema," but I have heard of, and have seen, "slow tv," the train video in Norway. I hope Jeanne Dielman will be slightly more exciting than that...I hope!
I've been sitting on my Netflix DVD of Jeanne Dielman for the last two months, approximately... just in time for the latest S&S poll! (just kidding, coincidence of course) But I've wanted to make sure there was time when I wasn't busy with work, family and classes to watch it with my wife, now that I'm done with class for the term.
Can't wait...
Great list, btw, Scott
When Scott got into “stodgy”-ness, I immediately thought of this take by Paul Schrader on the new list (linking an article discussing the take, not to FB where he wrote it) - https://nofilmschool.com/Paul-schrader-sight-and-sound. Perhaps lists shouldn’t be called “stodgy”, but takes about such lists can absolutely reek of it, among other things (*cringe).