Movie listings or music, literature, painting, comics and any other artistic manifestation always cause surprises and sometimes significant confusion, but deep down they’re a pretty fun game that we all take very seriously. The list of the 100 best films in history, published every 10 years by the important British magazine Sight & Sound within the body of the British Film Institute, and voted by critics on the one hand and filmmakers on the other, is one of the most watched films in the world. made its mark on canon.
The Sight & Sound poll, founded in 1952, gave Vittorio de Sica’s Ladrón de bicicletas the first winner; But on the second ballot in 1962, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane climbed to number one and remained there for another forty years. The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir and Tales from Tokyo by Yasujiro Ozu took second and third places. In 2012, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo outstripped Welles’ brilliant debut, holding second place in all cases. It was patient as the Hitchcockian story climbed from the dead: seventh in 1982, fourth in 1992, second in 2002, and first in 2022. 846 participants.
maintain hegemony
On the list that has just come out, voted by 1,600 critics, academics, curators, and programmers, it’s nearly double the previous one, and that’s a basic fact, Vertigo slipped to second place and Citizen Kane to second place. third, that is, they maintain their hegemony in one way or another. Tales from Tokyo is in fourth place and another Asian film in fifth, but 21st-century Wong Kar-wai’s winning film in partnership with Mulholland Drive, Wishing for Love, is David Lynch’s eighth. Sight and Sound list-, in all recommended relationships, the best cinema of this century.
To round out the top 10, Stanley Kubrick wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey; Beau travail by Claire Denis; The Man with the Camera, Dziga Vertov and Singing in the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. A colorful cocktail of classical and modern cinema, from classical musicals to adult science fiction, from experimental cinema to the undeniable canon of Hitchcock, Welles and Ozu.
What is surprising, and which has already sparked considerable controversy, is that, as a result of this openness to twice as many critics from five continents, it suddenly sticks to the awakened ideology, more wary of social upheavals than anything else. , the best movie in history is now the otherwise excellent Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, directed by Chantal Akerman in 1975, a title that has never made it to the top 50 before: it was ranked 51st in 2012, and in 2002 at 73. In a poll of 480 filmmakers, Akerman’s film Tales from Tokyo tied for fourth place, with Kubrick’s space adventure winning.
Paul Schrader, author of Taxi Driver and director of Mishima, is one of the voters. Topping his list of 10 films is Pickpocket, Tales from Tokyo, Bergman’s Persona, The Rules of the Game, and Bertolucci, for which Robert Bresson did (some kind of variation or remake of 1992’s No Escape Possibility). He was the one who explained via Twitter the confusion that the choice of conformist Akerman’s film could cause: “Jeanne Dielman’s sudden appearance at number one undermines the credibility of the S&S poll. As Tom Stoppard points out in Jumpers, in a democracy it matters who counts the votes, not who gets the votes. By expanding the voting community and points system, this year’s S&S poll reflects a politically correct realignment, not historical continuity. Ackerman’s movie is one of my favourites, it’s a great movie, it’s a turning point, but it’s an unexpected trick that doesn’t do it any favors. Jeanne Dielman will henceforth be remembered not only as an important film in the history of cinema, but also as a milestone in the distorted re-evaluation of Wake.
No news from Buñuel
You can argue all you want about whether Singin’ in the Rain, a massive musical comedy about the transition from silent to sound, is better than FW Murnau’s Breaking Dawn, which was almost unanimously recognized as the best film of the year. Or if we have enough perspective with Let me go out and Barry Jenkins’ precious but very recent Moonlight, placed in the 60th position between La dolce vita and Casablanca, or the big European auteur cinema and the classic Hollywood model. by Jordan Peele, representing the latest in African-American cinema.
Not only does a director like Akerman and Denis de Beau break in, but Agnès Varda also has films that are incontrovertible or controversial – Cléo at number 5 out of 7, number 14, and The Gleaners and the Gleaner, at 67-. avant-garde Maya Deren -Afternoon Cries (16)-, Vera Chytilová -Las daisies (28)-, Céline Sciamma -Portrait of a woman on fire (30)-, Barbara Loden -Wanda (48)-, Jane Campion -Piano (50) )-, again Akerman -News From Home (51)- and Julie Dash -Daughters of Dust (60)-. Of course, we may wonder where Alice Guy, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, Sofia Coppola, Naomi Kawase or Kathryn Bigelow are.
Without telling Luis Buñuel and John Cassavetes—perhaps the most notable absences—nor Erich von Stroheim, Joseph von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir—first unattended, curiously, when he was the guardian of French cinema—Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Jerry Lewis, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, David Fincher, Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, David Cronenberg, the Coens, Bong Joon-ho or Michael Haneke. No Latin American production. Two anime and no animation from other countries. Only a Spaniard, the spirit of the Aquarius, is in the 84th position. But this is just a list.