What Makes a Movie the Greatest of All Time?
The much-respected Sight and Sound poll of the best films ever shows that what is valued onscreen has changed over time, sometimes radically.
What Makes a Movie the Greatest of All Time?
The much-respected Sight and Sound poll of the best films ever shows that what is valued onscreen has changed over time, sometimes radically.
What are the greatest films of all time? Everyone from IMDb to the American Film Institute to your favorite podcast has tried to answer this. But for many cineastes, a poll conducted once a decade by the British film magazine Sight and Sound has served as the gold standard since 1952.
Roger Ebert once described the survey as “by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies — the only one most serious movie people take seriously.”
And for a very long time, the same “serious movies” got taken seriously decade after decade. The new list, however, marks several radical shifts from the accepted wisdom — and maybe, just maybe, from the idea of a “canon” altogether.
At the start, when Sight and Sound asked 85 critics to submit their all-time Top 10 lists, just 63 responded. Top honors went to Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist drama “Bicycle Thieves,” which had been released a mere four years earlier.
Following it was a curious blend of the popular (two Charlie Chaplin films, “City Lights” and “Gold Rush,” tied for No. 2) …
the lavish (“Intolerance”) …
and the austere (“The Passion of Joan of Arc”).
The list even made room for “Le Million,” a French musical comedy about a missing lottery ticket.
In 1962, Sight and Sound returned with a bigger set of respondents — and a drastically different set of winners.
“Bicycle Thieves” still made the cut, as did Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin.”
But no more lottery tickets or Little Tramps. And the top spot went to a newcomer that would get pretty comfortable as No. 1 …
“Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles’s paper-thinly veiled William Randolph Hearst biopic.
It would sit atop Sight and Sound’s rankings for the next half century. And during that time, a fairly sturdy canon of Great Films settled into place …
with such titans as Jean Renoir (“The Rules of the Game”)…
Yasujiro Ozu (“Tokyo Story”)…
and Federico Fellini (“8½”) taking up seemingly permanent residence on the survey.
If you took a Film 101 class in college in the late 20th century, there’s a decent chance your syllabus looked a lot like the 1972 Top 10 list.
The preponderance of certain directors added to the sometimes clubbish vibe: In 1972, Welles and Ingmar Bergman alone were responsible for more than a third of what the respondents considered the greatest films of all time.
In 1982 Alfred Hitchcock finally made his first appearance. Horror and suspense were (and still are) largely outsiders in Great Film discussions, but here we see “Vertigo” enter at No. 7 …
and creep north until, by 2012, it had supplanted “Citizen Kane” in the top spot, generating headlines around the world like Slate’s “Three Theories for How ‘Vertigo’ Dethroned ‘Kane.’”
Still, every film but one in the 2012 Top 10 had appeared on at least one previous list.
But when this year’s Sight and Sound list was unveiled on Dec. 1, the list featured surprises galore.
Nearly half of the elite Top 10 were newcomers, including No. 1 — a title that very few people saw coming …
Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”
It’s a pioneering work of slow cinema — in one unbroken shot, the title character makes a meatloaf for more than three minutes — and represents the first appearance of any female director in any Sight and Sound Top 10.
And she’s not alone. Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail” is joining her.
As it happened, those films made their first appearances in 2012, when Sight and Sound’s rankings went well beyond the Top 10.
That transparency was also evident this year, allowing the idiosyncrasies of individual lists to poke through. The two Top 100 lists make room for quirkier titles like “Blade Runner” …
and for influential short films like “La Jetée.”
But the 2022 reshuffle also meant five films from the previous Top 10 list needed to go, among them the only title to have charted every single decade since 1952. Sorry, Renoir, that’s just “The Rules of the Game.”
Early in the poll’s history, respondents were often willing to honor recently released titles. (You could only go back so far into film history in 1952!)
But not since 1992, when “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) made the Top 10, had any film less than 25 years old been charted.
That changed in a big way this year, with no fewer than three films from the last quarter-century in the Top 10: “In the Mood for Love” (2000), “Beau Travail” (1999) and “Mulholland Drive” (2001).
Those 63 Sight and Sound voters in 1952 have given way to more than 1,600 in 2022, and the more extensive vote tabulations allow for a deeper look into trends in the Top 100.
Akerman and Denis, the first women to ever appear on the list, made it into the Top 100 in 2012 …
and were joined this year by seven other women: Céline Sciamma, Julie Dash, Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, Vera Chytilova, Barbara Loden and Jane Campion. (Akerman and Varda were recognized twice.)
Not a single Black American filmmaker made the Top 100 in 2012. This year there are five, led by Spike Lee and “Do the Right Thing” at No. 24.
And is directing the 60th-greatest film of all time not sufficient to land Julie Dash, the only Black woman on the list, funding for her subsequent projects?
The French new wave is well represented and Japanese films continue to make a strong showing.
But in addition to being more inclusive, this decade's list is more global, with new entries from New Zealand (“The Piano”), Czechoslovakia (“Daisies”), South Korea (“Parasite”) and Thailand (“Tropical Malady”).
The Thai film “Tropical Malady,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s enigmatic romantic drama, also reflects an increased recognition of L.G.B.T.Q.-themed films.
Two of those Japanese titles, both from Studio Ghibli, remain the only animated films to make the list. Maybe next decade, Disney and Pixar.
And horror is surprisingly well represented in 2022. (Don’t forget that dumpster scene in “Mulholland Drive”!)
For all the arguments over the greatest year in film history — 1939, 1999, etc. — it looks like strong cases could be made for 1960 and 1966, based on this year’s list.
And if it’s any consolation to Hitchcock after losing the top spot, he is one of the two most honored filmmakers on the list, with “Rear Window” and “North by Northwest” joining “Vertigo” and “Psycho” in the Top 100.
He’s tied with Jean-Luc Godard, the “Breathless” director, who died in September. Godard once called Hitchcock the “greatest creator of forms of the 20th century.”
By contrast, Godard’s old nemesis Bergman saw three of his four Top 100 titles vanish this year. Only “Persona” remains.
Also gone from the Top 100 altogether: Welles’s famously mangled “The Magnificent Ambersons,” which was nestled in Top 10 lists as recently as 1982.
And whether it’s Frank Capra or Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog or Ernst Lubitsch, Quentin Tarantino or Howard Hawks, we can probably all agree that somebody is missing.
(On a personal note, a world where “Dr. Strangelove” is neither a Top 100 film nor even one of Stanley Kubrick’s three best works is not one I care to inhabit.)
There’s always 2032. What will the next list bring? Well, 18 of the directors on this year’s list are still alive, which is encouraging. If this list is any indication, a handful of future entries haven’t been made yet.
And look down at No. 41, near “Rear Window” and “Rashomon.” “Bicycle Thieves” is sitting there patiently, perhaps waiting for its time back in the spotlight of serious movie people everywhere.