The Prestigious Sight & Sound Poll (2022) The 100 Greatest Films Of All Time (1 Viewer)

[uncledougie]

All lists like this are arbitrary and capricious, and I’d rather see a synthesis of a dozen such polls and see how much overlap is left than lend much credence in any one poll. Particularly annoying was the thumb on the scale to urge voters to eschew conventional choices and think outside whatever imagined box they may perceive. I would posit any such list’s greatest value is to cause people to seek out the more obscure titles or international films that one might otherwise not make the effort to watch. But such lists are personal and I’ve yet to see one that I agreed with more than about half the time. The S&S list overlap was less than that, and I can’t put much credence in any poll that omits LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, NASHVILLE, or internationally LA GRANDE ILLUSION, LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS. Without these, the allusion to the “greatest” anything becomes discombobulated.

 

[TonyD]

I’ve never even seen a mention of the Jeanne Dielman movie before this list appeared.
We have a review of the dvd form 2009 on HTF but that’s all I could find with any mention of the movie.

I’m watching it in boys and pieces about 20 minutes at a time.

I’ve seen her take a bath, wash dishes, take a baby and put it on a table while she prepares cutlets, fold clothes, make the bed all with no camera cuts.

About 90 minutes in now. It’s a fascinating movie but the number movie on a best of list? Nope.

The only real issue I have with the movie is the dubbed foley sound effects.
It’s too much. Everything that moves or touches something makes a sound.
It’s very distracting and really takes me out of the illusion of the movie.

 

[Capt D McMars]

Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll: Greatest Films of All Time - The Criterion Channel

Once every decade, “Sight and Sound” magazine has polled film critics from around the world and issued a list of the 100 greatest films of all time. Ever since the first poll in 1952, the “Sight and Sound” list has played a central role in film culture, sending movie lovers on obsessive viewing q...

www.criterionchannel.com

 

[Nick*Z]

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is an appallingly bleak picture, resurrected only by Delphine Seyrig's' incredibly nuanced performance as a reflective and graceful creature. It's the queer artifice mashed up against that 70's stain for experimental cleverness that never comes off as it ought, with a complete absence of directorial finesse or even modest trajectory in storytelling to get this one off the ground.

IMO, highly questionable if this would rate being on anyone's list of most influential or important films ever made, much less #1 on a 'top 100 in which no honorable mention is even made of JFK, Gone with the Wind, The Day of the Jackal, The Godfather Part II, Breathless (1960), Purple Noon, Foreign Correspondent, Jaws, Once Upon a Time in America, The Last Emperor, El Cid, The Remains of the Day, Ganz's Napoleon, Ben-Hur, Chinatown, The Shawshank Redemption, All About Eve, and Woody Allen's Manhattan.

Personally, I find about a third of these choices 'questionable', given the girth of cinema, and think about half of them have been misregistered out of order. What were these critics smoking, and remind me never to indulge in some.

 

[mskaye]

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is an appallingly bleak picture, resurrected only by Delphine Seyrig's' incredibly nuanced performance as a reflective and graceful creature. It's the queer artifice mashed up against that 70's stain for experimental cleverness that never comes off as it ought, with a complete absence of directorial finesse or even modest trajectory in storytelling to get this one off the ground.

IMO, highly questionable if this would rate being on anyone's list of most influential or important films ever made, much less #1 on a 'top 100 in which no honorable mention is even made of JFK, Gone with the Wind, The Day of the Jackal, The Godfather Part II, Breathless (1960), Purple Noon, Foreign Correspondent, Jaws, Once Upon a Time in America, The Last Emperor, El Cid, The Remains of the Day, Ganz's Napoleon, Ben-Hur, Chinatown, The Shawshank Redemption, All About Eve, and Woody Allen's Manhattan.

Personally, I find about a third of these choices 'questionable', given the girth of cinema, and think about half of them have been misregistered out of order. What were these critics smoking, and remind me never to indulge in some.

You're like the Bosley Crowther of HTF posters about this topic.

 

[TonyD]

You're like the Bosley Crowther of HFT posters about this topic.

Whomever that is.


Anyway I f9nally if she the movie after a half dozen attempts.

The last 10 minutes of the movie are her sitting at the kitchen table with blood on her hands.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[mskaye]

Whomever that is.


Anyway I f9nally if she the movie after a half dozen attempts.

The last 10 minutes of the movie are her sitting at the kitchen table with blood on her hands.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Look up the late Mr. Crowther on Wikipedia and you will understand the reference.

 

[TonyD]

Look up the late Mr. Crowther on Wikipedia and you will understand the reference.

Nope. You brought him up. If it’s not political you explain it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Crowther was a well-known critic for the New York Times decades ago who was widely known for cranky and curmudgeonly diatribes in his reviews. It has been said that the reason he lost his position was due to his continued negative reviews of the film Bonnie And Clyde - as that film became popular, he continued to write multiple reviews and columns on how terrible he believed it to be, putting him at odds with both critics and audiences at the time. (That was likely the final straw rather than the sole reason; it was probably unreasonable for him to review the same film with the same negative comments multiple times in the same year.)

 

[mskaye]

Nope. You brought him up. If it’s not political you explain it.

This is what mr. crowther wrote in his NY TIMES review of an acknowledged masterpiece like Pather Panchali "He commented that while Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955, US: 1958) took on "a slim poetic form" the structure and tempo of it "would barely pass as a 'rough cut' with editors in Hollywood." He is also notorious for being a little less than open minded about some other notable films, like Psycho, L'Avventura, and esp. Bonnie and Clyde. I take the S&S poll with a grain of salt. It is a collection of opinions. Their recent list doesn't entirely sync w my tastes but it doesn't bother me. Jeanne is a singular work and to dismiss its lack of directorial finesse is like dismissing My Dinner with Andre for being too talky. I think Jeanne is like 30+ years ahead of it's time in how it deals with space and framing etc. I also think its provocative choice. Is Vertigo really worthy of being "the greatest film of all time?" I don't think Jeanne is either btw. I'll take 2001 A Space Odyssey (which is #1 on the director's poll.)

 

[Angelo Colombus]

Crowther was a well-known critic for the New York Times decades ago who was widely known for cranky and curmudgeonly diatribes in his reviews. It has been said that the reason he lost his position was due to his continued negative reviews of the film Bonnie And Clyde - as that film became popular, he continued to write multiple reviews and columns on how terrible he believed it to be, putting him at odds with both critics and audiences at the time. (That was likely the final straw rather than the sole reason; it was probably unreasonable for him to review the same film with the same negative comments multiple times in the same year.)

Bosley Crowther's bad review of Chimes At Midnight did hurt Welles and the film when it was released in New York in 1966.

 

[Worth]

Crowther was a well-known critic for the New York Times decades ago who was widely known for cranky and curmudgeonly diatribes in his reviews.

Armond White has taken up this mantle in the present era.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Armond White has taken up this mantle in the present era.

I never heard of him.

 

[TonyD]

I never heard of him.

Me too, again.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

He’s not really a mainstream critic in the way Crowther was. He’s someone who openly wears his biases on his sleeve (he generally gives negative reviews to films when he perceives them to be in opposition to his political preferences) and seems to delight in being incendiary and contrarian. Reading his writing, it’s easy to come away with the sense that he already has a diatribe in mind and is on the hunt for a movie to use as an excuse to convey his preexisting thoughts on a subject.

I personally wouldn’t put him in the same league as Crowther. Crowther was notoriously cranky, but I think he generally came to film criticism without looking to push a pre-existing agenda, and it just so happened that he wasn’t able to adapt and evolve when both the medium of film and the public’s appreciation of that medium did. He was an honest curmudgeon who outlived his era.

On the other hand, I feel more often than not that White’s criticism is more disingenuous, and that he’s not so much reacting to the films in front of him so much as he’s using them as an excuse to air a set of personal grievances. I don’t get the sense that what he’s doing is honest; I get the sense that he’s trying to push buttons to get a reaction and that he gets his delights more in the controversy than the art.

 

[Worth]

I never heard of him.

His take on this poll:

Sight & Sound Poll Results: The End of Popular Cinema | National Review

Jeanne Dielman, a dull Marxist-feminist token, tops the list, thanks to the woke hive mind dominating film culture.

www.nationalreview.com

 

[Robert Crawford]

His take on this poll:

Sight & Sound Poll Results: The End of Popular Cinema | National Review

Jeanne Dielman, a dull Marxist-feminist token, tops the list, thanks to the woke hive mind dominating film culture.

www.nationalreview.com

I don't have to read his take on anything. He's a nobody to me and will remain so.

 

[jayembee]

His take on this poll:

Sight & Sound Poll Results: The End of Popular Cinema | National Review

Jeanne Dielman, a dull Marxist-feminist token, tops the list, thanks to the woke hive mind dominating film culture.

www.nationalreview.com

Setting aside whether one agrees or disagrees with his opinions on any given film...

Wow. That was some bullshit.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Setting aside whether one agrees or disagrees with his opinions on any given film...

Wow. That was some bullshit.

Thank you for reaffirming the correct decision I made ignoring that link. I don't need exposure to another ass****, I already deal with enough of those type.

 

[TonyD]

I think we saw in that preview all we needed to know about him.