Not Quite As Much Of A Country For Old Men: The 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time Poll

I kind of doubt that any of the film critics who put Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels on their ballots for the British Film Institute and Sight & Sound magazine’s once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time poll had any expectation that the movie would come in at the number one spot. Nevertheless, it persisted. 

For background, the BFI and Sight & Sound have been running the poll since 1952, when De Sica’s very moving Bicycle Thieves took the top position. Film was a much younger medium in 1952 than it is today, and De Sica’s movie had a galvanic effect that went beyond its immediate emotional impact — you know, the whole world-historical post-World-War-II thing. Google it. After that, it was Orson Welles’ protean Citizen Kane all the way until the 2012 poll — in which I voted — when Hitchcock’s morbidly obsessive feast of light and color Vertigo took the top spot. I love Vertigo, but don’t look at me.

In any event, I wasn’t invited to participate this year (and I’M FINE with that — coming up with these lists is a chore, and there’s no money involved). And while I’m a little surprised that a relatively uneventful three-hour picture about a homemaker who’s also a sex worker spending a drudgery-filled day looking after an infant, peeling potatoes, and, oh, wait, murdering a john, is the recipient of such elevated critical appreciation, I’m not shocked. 

I can see why one would vote for it, as a statement if nothing else. Akerman’s 1975 movie is an undeniably Great Film, but it’s a film that achieves its greatness by deliberately withholding the conventional components we associate with great cinema. 

Lemme lay it out for ya, people. 

In the fall of 2019, at the Venice Film Festival, I saw a restoration of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 Sansho the Bailiff (a consistent presence on the list, coming in this year at #75). It’s beautifully constructed. And even more beautifully shot and acted. It’s a compelling tale of human cruelty, loss, and suffering. One of those movies that reduces you to tears while implicitly telling you that, in the words of the German comedian Rainer Maria Rilke, you must change your life. Emerging from the theater in a sort of elated misery, I ran into my colleague, L.A. Times film critic Justin Chang, and we concurred — this HAD to be the greatest film ever made. 

Jeanne Dielman doesn’t work that way at all, even though in its way it carries as much passionate indignation as the Mizoguchi film does. What does it do, then? Another colleague, Slate critic Sam Adams, put things pithily on Twitter this afternoon: “[W]hat’s great about JEANNE DIELMAN topping the #SightAndSoundPoll is not just that it’s the first movie by a woman but how thoroughly its long takes and rigorous mundanity militate against virtually every current in contemporary cinema,” continuing “JEANNE DIELMAN has no adaptable IP, no holy-shit compositions or winking pop savviness—all it does is make you feel completely different about the way your body moves through the world.” 

That is accurate, EXCEPT, as Adams later kind of acknowledges, in order for it to do that, the viewer has to more than meet the movie halfway. Akerman’s vision does not ingratiate, it does not draw you in or “cast a spell.” Her style is even more spare than Robert Bresson’s, whose endlessly iterated shots of walking feet and hands at rest create a kind of devotional rhythm for the viewer to fall in with. (Mr. Fun has got two pictures on the list this year, A Man Escaped low, Au Hasard Balthazar in the top 25.)

So Jeanne Dielman certainly can be called the most demanding of the Number Ones to have been honored in the poll. I share my friend Farran Smith Nehme’s amusement — she wrote to me that she thought it funny that “all those bright young people […] spent years telling me Citizen Kane was not, could not, be the greatest film of all time because it’s ‘boring’ and ‘nothing happens.’” In a sense, Jeanne Dielman tells Citizen Kane to hold its beer. 

Director Chantal Akerman died in 2015, a suicide. She suffered from depression and could be prickly with her admirers; right now on social media someone’s circulating an exchange with a fan who hails Akerman as a filmmaking influence, to which Akerman replies by asking where her percentage is. One wonders how she’d respond to this honor. 

The living directors on the current list are Jordan Peele (Get Out, in the lower rungs), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Bong Joon Ho, Wong Kar Wai, Victor Erice, David Lynch, Bela Tarr, Hayao Miyazaki, Martin Scorsese, Barry Jenkins, Ridley Scott, Jane Campion, Charles Burnett, Celine Sciamma, Spike Lee, Francis Ford Coppola, and Claire Denis. The most-represented directors are Godard and Hitchcock with four films each. Billy Wilder has three and is one of the very few Hollywood classicists to make the list. (Hitchcock was not a classicist.) 

Genre doesn’t get too much love on this go around. Only two Westerns, both of them Major Statement types, so to speak: Leone’s great Once Upon a Time in the West, Ford’s great-but -bumpy The Searchers. No noir, unless you count Casablanca or maybe The Third Man (both nestled in the list’s lower half). Scorsese’s Goodfellas, in the 60s, stands in for every other gangster movie ever made except of course The Godfather, which comes in at a healthy #12. The infectious musical Singin’ in the Rain jumps from #20 to #10 this time around, and I’m here for it, but that’s kind of it for musicals. Is Caline Sciamma’s 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire too high at #30? I don’t know pal; is Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing too high at #24? Getting lost in what you could call the weeds of minutiae is part of what makes lists such as these both infuriating and fun, They don’t make sense because they can’t make sense. 

Their value, ultimately, is in provoking discussion, and spurring people to see more movies. If someone actually feels like they want to make a case AGAINST Jeanne Dielman, they’ll actually have to sit down and watch it, won’t they? And any reactionary who wants to claim that the list is following some kind of “Woke” agenda will have to explain why The Searchers is still on the list, let alone at #15, five places ahead of Seven Samurai. I myself might swap their positions. (One would also have to explain the almost literal dearth of African and Indian movies, which you can count on the fingers of one hand: Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl ([#95], Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki [#66] and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Pachali [#35].)  It would be entirely incorrect to grouse that this cinematic landscape is no country for old men. Kane is now #3! Vertigo holds at #2!

Is it more than a little weird that the director held in highest esteem by Andrei Tarkovsky and so many other, my own favorite director of all time, Luis Buñuel, isn’t represented ONCE on the list? Yes, it’s appalling. But things come around.

And I think the ways — not huge, really, when you put them in perspective — in which the list has, this year, become just a little less of a place for old men are all for the good.  

2022 SIGHT AND SOUND TOP 100 FILMS POLL (COMPLETE LIST): THE GREATEST FILMS OF ALL-TIME

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
2. Vertigo (1958)
3. Citizen Kane (1941)
4. Tokyo Story (1953)
5. In the Mood for Love (2000)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
7. Beau Travail (1999)
8. Mulholland Drive (2001)
9. Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
10. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
11. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
12. The Godfather (1972)
13. The Rules of the Game (1939)
14. Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962)
15. The Searchers (1956)
16. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
17. Close-Up (1990)
18. Persona (1966)
19. Apocalypse Now (1979)
20. Seven Samurai (1954)
21. (Tied for 21st) The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
22. (Tied for 21st) Late Spring (1949)
23. Playtime (1967)
24. Do the Right Thing (1989)
25. (Tied for 25th) Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
26. (Tied for 25th) The Night of the Hunter (1955)
27. Shoah (1985)
28. Daisies (1966)
29. Taxi Driver (1976)
30. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
31. (Tied for 31st) 8 1/2 (1963)
32. (Tied for 31st) Mirror (1975)
33. (Tied for 31st) Psycho (1960)
34. L’Atalante (1934)
35. Panther Panchali (1955)
36. (Tied for 36th) City Lights (1931)
37. (Tied for 36th) M (1931)
38. (Tied for 38th) Breathless (1960)
39. (Tied for 38th) Some Like It Hot (1959)
40. (Tied for 38th) Rear Window (1954)
41. (Tied for 41st) Bicycle Thieves (1948)
42. (Tied for 41st) Rashomon (1950)
43. (Tied for 43rd) Stalker (1979)
44. (Tied for 43rd) Killer of Sheep (1978)
45. (Tied for 45th) Barry Lyndon (1975)
46. (Tied for 45th) The Battle of Algiers (1966)
47. (Tied for 45th) North by Northwest (1959)
48. (Tied for 48th) Ordet (1955)
49. (Tied for 48th) Wanda (1970)
50. (Tied for 50th) The 400 Blows (1959)
51. (Tied for 50th) The Piano (1993)
52. (Tied for 52nd) Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
53. (Tied for 52nd) News From Home (1977)
54. (Tied for 54th) Contempt (1963)
55. (Tied for 54th) Blade Runner (1982)
56. (Tied for 54th) Battleship Potemkin (1925)
57. (Tied for 54th) The Apartment (1960)
58. (Tied for 54th) Sherlock Jr. (1924)
59. Sans Soleil (1983)
60. (Tied for 60th) La Dolce Vita (1960)
61. (Tied for 60th) Moonlight (2016)
62. (Tied for 60th) Daughters of the Dust (1991)
63. (Tied for 63rd) Goodfellas (1990)
64. (Tied for 63rd) The Third Man (1949)
65. (Tied for 63rd) Casablanca (1942)
66. Touki Bouki (1973)
67. (Tied for 67th) Andrei Rublev (1966)
68. (Tied for 67th) La Jetée (1962)
69. (Tied for 67th) The Red Shoes (1948)
70. (Tied for 67th) The Gleaners and I (2000)
71. (Tied for 67th) Metropolis (1927)
72. (Tied for 72nd) L’Avventura (1960)
73. (Tied for 72nd) Journey to Italy (1954)
74. (Tied for 72nd) My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
75. (Tied for 75th) Spirited Away (2001)
76. (Tied for 75th) Imitation of Life (1959)
77. (Tied for 75th) Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
78. (Tied for 78th) Sunset Boulevard (1950)
79. (Tied for 78th) Sátántangó (1994)
80. (Tied for 78th) A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
81. (Tied for 78th) Modern Times (1936)
82. (Tied for 78th) A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
83. (Tied for 78th) Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
84. (Tied for 84th) Blue Velvet (1986)
85. (Tied for 84th) The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
86. (Tied for 84th) Pierrot le Fou (1965)
87. (Tied for 84th) Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1988)
88. (Tied for 88th) The Shining (1980)
89. (Tied for 88th) Chungking Express (1994)
90. (Tied for 90th) Parasite (2019)
91. (Tied for 90th) Yi Yi (2000)
92. (Tied for 90th) Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
93. (Tied for 90th) The Leopard (1963)
94. (Tied for 90th) The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)
95. (Tied for 95th) A Man Escaped (1956)
96. (Tied for 95th) Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
97. (Tied for 95th) Tropical Malady (2004)
98. (Tied for 95th) Black Girl (1966)
99. (Tied for 95th) The General (1926)
100. (Tied for 95th) Get Out (2017)

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.