Some Quick Thoughts On The 2022 Sight & Sound Poll

You won't believe what's better than RASHOMON

Every ten years Sight & Sound, the British Film Institute’s magazine, publishes a list of the best one hundred movies of all time. The list is compiled by polling film critics (they used to poll directors as well, but starting in 1992 they gave directors their own separate poll)They started doing it in 1952, and it has long been considered one of the most important ‘best of’ polls, with its ten year frequency giving an intriguing snapshot of a given era’s critical consensus. You know how for the longest time everybody considered Citizen Kane the greatest movie ever made? That’s at least partially because it dominated the top spot of the S&S poll for fifty years. In recent years S&S poll opened the doors to more critics, and many wondered how the expanded voter base would impact the poll - would it dumb down the results?

Quite the opposite, as the greatest movie of all time is now Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a Belgian film from Chantal Akerman that - and I don’t think I’m reaching here - most people have never even heard of before this morning. It’s a shocking number one, with the film jumping up 34 spots since the last poll. A three and a half hour movie about the daily life of a single mother and prostitute, the movie is actually great, but it’s rarely seen and rarely screened. Akerman has had a real resurgence in hip snobby film circles in recent years after her death, and I’m quite certain that her presence at the top of this list this year is facilitated almost entirely by the Criterion Collection and streaming.

Now, I haven’t seen Jeanne Dielman since Akerman was still alive, and I remember it being a truly great, great film… but is it the best of all time? Akerman is the first woman to ever top the S&S poll, which is a great triumph, but at the same time I have to wonder if this really makes sense. It does call into question what it means for a film to be the greatest of all time; the previous two greatest of all time - Citizen Kane and Vertigo - were much more accessible to the average filmgoer. Jeanne Dielman is a tougher one, as Akerman’s movie lives in the banal details of a woman’s life as it crumbles over the course of three days. It’s an epic length movie about a subject that is traditionally not given the epic treatment. I am curious to revisit Jeanne Dielman in the wake of this poll, and I am curious to see the reactions of folks who never heard of it who give it a shot based on its placement.

As for the rest of the poll… well, it’s kind of nuts in places. The poll represents a very modern turning away from the classical greats (bye bye Lawrence of Arabia! Akira Kurosawa, you’re good, but only two movies good) and a baffling inclusion of very, very recent films. Portrait of a Lady on Fire comes in at number 30; the 2019 film is considered better than bedrock classics such as Pather Panchali, The 400 Blows, Rashomon and City Lights. Also on the list from the very recent past are Moonlight, Parasite and Get Out, which I think is absolutely bonkers.

This isn’t to say these films are not good or great, but four of the 100 best movies ever made? Call me old fashioned, but I feel like a list of the best of all time should be compiled with an eye towards what actually stands the test of time, and there’s simply no way to know if a film like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which came out three short years ago, is going to stand that test. It’s easy to have very strong feelings about a newer film, but that’s exactly why you might not want to put it on your list - recency bias is real, and it is vicious. I look back at my top ten lists from years past and am shocked at movies I ranked highly a decade ago that I have barely thought about since. In the heat of the moment the movie is an all-timer, but give yourself a little distance and it begins to fade away. And I have to say that I suspect even Jordan Peele might wonder if his debut film is actually better than Jules et Jim, which dropped off the list entirely this year.

By the way, Jules et Jim reflects a larger diminishment of the French New Wave; once a stalwart part of this poll and a huge part of what the snobbier critics considered the greatest movies of all time, many of the old favorites have fallen off. Truffaut only gets one mention, although Godard manages to hold on to four spots.

One of the movies that best exemplifies what I think is wrong with some of this list is Parasite, which I have a hard time believing anyone actually thinks is one of the one hundred best movies ever made. It’s very current, that’s for sure, and there was a very large social media wave for director Bong Joon-ho when the film was in the Academy Awards, but let’s be frank - it’s not even the best Bong film, let alone one of the 100 best ever. But it’s highly memetic, and it’s a film that bestows a lot of in-group signaling when name-dropped. I am being uncharitable here, but I wonder how many people who voted Parasite have seen Bong’s more explicitly genre work, much of which is better than this (excellent) movie.

Another element of the list that intrigues is the disappearance of Chinatown. One has to wonder if the estimation of the film itself has changed or if the voters couldn’t bring themselves to list a Roman Polanski movie and suffer the ensuing disapproval. Perhaps Sight & Sound can rebrand the poll moving forward as the 100 Best Movies Made By The Best People.

Missing, as usual, is Steven Spielberg. I had wondered if his late career acceptance would have earned him a spot on the list - again, is Portrait of a Lady on Fire better than Jaws? Are most of the films on this year’s list better than Jaws? - but that was not to be the case. Spielberg’s populism continues to make him too low class for a list like this, no matter that many of his movies simply are some of the best movies ever made. It’s almost comforting to see that Spielberg gets shafted yet again, as it reconfirms the three reliable facts of life: death, taxes, and that some critics consider movies that people actually like watching beneath contempt.

Check out the whole list here. I'm curious about your thoughts!