Once a decade, the British film Journal Sight and Sound produces its “Greatest Films of All Time” list, based on a survey of nearly 1,000 critics, programmers, distributors and film scholars. Last time around, in 2012, there was some excitement as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo unseated the perennial “this is officially the greatest movie of all time and don’t you forget it” Citizen Kane (Orson Welles). This year promises to be even more dramatic, as, given the times, allowing a mere thousand snooty “experts” to decide such things was renounced as painfully elitist. (I hear there was some talk of rebranding the entire enterprise the Taco BellTM Sight and Sound Survey of Well-Intentioned Film Lists.)
As one of the unwashed barbarians once held back by the gatekeepers, with the approach of the more inclusive 2022 survey cohort I was quivering with anticipation, eager to receive my ballot for the very first time. Unfortunately, it seems to have gotten lost in the mail, so I’m submitting it electronically, which I thought I would share here.
How does one make such a list? It’s not easy. To start with, the entire notion of a “ten best” is utterly ridiculous, as we’ve stated repeatedly—and we only play such games following the Andre and Wally rules, noting their inescapable arbitrariness and fluidity. Today’s list might not be tomorrow’s list – there are easily fifty films that I might have placed on my ballot — but today’s list is set in stone for ten years. Pressure. This also explains why there has been some “herding” behavior over the decades, as entrants learn to converge around the anointed classics of their favorite directors. Near the summit, for example, 2012 saw Vertigo, Kane, and Tokyo Story representing Hitchcock, Welles, and Ozu—as they did in 2002. But those are not my favorite films by those directors. Still, does one vote for the understood “official selections,” to support the team in the hopes of ensuring favorite filmmakers a top spot in the rankings?
No. What’s the point of that? A good list should be idiosyncratic, reflecting the distinct tastes of the particular person who compiled it (within the bounds of some reasonable non-ridiculousness). But even then, challenges abound. Self-imposed pressures remain: to allot slots to favorite directors, to reflect thematic and stylistic variation (the “desert Island discs” principle), and so forth. Ultimately, winnowing down to ten remains a vexing challenge . . . on what basis does one film or another make that final cut?
In general, “what we want from the movies” has been previously established: Something to say, Authenticity, Beauty, Filminess, and Voice. So all of those attributes, in abundance, are prerequisites. But to land in the Top Ten, Of All Time, we would add: a movie that invites (and perhaps even insists on) repeated viewings over the years, and one that the viewer has a close, personal, emotional relationship with. (This is why Hitchcock slips off the list—he is one of my favorite filmmakers, who produced a full shelf of treasured masterpieces, but I can’t recall ever being moved by a one of his films – though for the record, it would have been Rear Window or Psycho.) And finally, however out of fashion, I would add an anti-presentist bias—all other things held constant, a selection should demonstrate that it can stand the test of time. (Or gain in esteem, like the initially dismissed Vertigo.) It’s a good test, if a conservative one.
Having said all that, and without any further . . . um . . . hesitation . . . here is my ballot:
Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
A Christmas Tale (Arnuad Desplechin, 2008)
Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
Early Summer (Yasujirô Ozu, 1951)
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
Just Before Nightfall (Claude Chabrol, 1971)
Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
Of course, just looking at this list leaves me traumatized at the omissions: no Kubrick, no Kieslowski, no Scorsese, no Altman, no Out of the Past (or ten other staggeringly brilliant noirs), nothing from Iran—and various other passionate obsessions like the French New Wave are wildly under-represented.
But that’s not why we’re here—let’s celebrate the list rather than lamenting the oversights. We’ll give Roger Ebert the last word on Army of Shadows: “Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism.” We have declared Chinatown “The Citizen Kane of the Seventies Film,” so that would seem automatic. The next two are both non-traditional, twenty-first century entries. In fact, in a first draft The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) held the spot now taken by Clouds. And The Third Man is, arguably, a perfect film—just a towering masterpiece. Nevertheless, Christmas Tale and Sils Maria are, ultimately, everything we want from the movies, and I return to them obsessively, and I have an intimate personal, emotional relationship with each of them (if, admittedly, they never return my calls).
The next two are, for us, pretty easy picks—what we consider to be the best, and, important for this exercise, most representative movies by two of our favorite filmmakers. “Informed opinion” insists on Tokyo Story or Late Spring for Ozu, but we prefer, among others, Early Summer and An Autumn Afternoon, and lean towards the former as best representing his oeuvre. And any one of a dozen Bergmans could have been slotted in here, but the long form version of Fanny and Alexander steps in as a summary statement of a stupendous career that spanned seven decades.
Just Before Nightfall is doing some heavy lifting here—our favorite film from our favorite New Wave filmmaker is also holding a place for fifty treasured gems from a dozen postwar French auteurs. And as with the Bergman and Ozu selections, Manhattan is something of an exemplar. From his incredible run of seventeen features from 1977-1993, five were candidates for our list; of those, Allen’s 1979 masterpiece has the most to say (and is the most beautifully shot—props to Mr. Gordon Willis).
Sydney Pollack is rarely included in the pantheon of great directors; arguably he wasn’t even the greatest American director named Sydney (or Sidney) making films in the mid-seventies. But we treasure every single frame of Three Days of the Condor. So There. And although this list is alphabetical, it is fitting that it closes with Touch of Evil, the movie that opened our eyes to the possibility of cinema. PS: Pro tip from a repeat viewer—the movie isn’t about the mystery, it’s about the relationship between Orson Welles and Joseph Calleia, as summarized by Marlene Dietrich.
