Pretend you have a ballot for the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound's top 10 movies of all time list

Not crazy to imagine that others looking to slip a super-recent film in the mix would've gone in that direction, too.

i wonder how many ppl watch griffith films just for pleasure these days -- i admire his films but they're not something i want to revisit that often, whereas chaplin and keaton and eisenstein and murnau all seem endlessly fresh

Broken Blossoms is the only one I can rewatch tbh

On our last day my undergraduate film teacher, a boob in most respects, said she had a "surprise": she would show her print of Way Down East. The class looked catatonic.

Pleasure might be the thing going most in Griffith's favor, if all his other innovations have been refined/usurped.

What about Joe Weerasethakul? Wasn't he a reasonable guess for the Top 50?

In the little, petty victories column:

Keaton over Chaplin
Apocalypse Now over the Godfathers
Taxi Driver well over Raging Bull
Mulholland Dr. well over Blue Velvet

Joe may be a new Bunuel. You love one, you sort of love them all.

Keaton over Chaplin -- eh, narcissism of small differences
Apocalypse Now over the Godfathers -- concur with this
Taxi Driver well over Raging Bull -- ditto
Mulholland Dr. well over Blue Velvet -- basically detest both of them but BV is better

What's your pick for least essential? Mine: The Searches or 2001

I'll add a petty victory nobody cares about: The 400 Blows over Jules and Jim (I think the latter came reasonably close to the top 10 once).

my pick would be '8 1/2' -- i like fellini, but have never gotten the love for that one.

'the searchers' definitely has more all-out embarrassing stuff in it than anything else i've seen on the list: you could take out about 20 minutes of it without sacrificing anything decent. still riveting whenever wayne's on the screen.

least essential = obv vertigo

i was mildly surprised that 8 1/2 was so high on the critics list too - i always thought of it as a directors movie

As I said way upthread, 8-1/2 mystifies me. Not that La Dolce Vita is a favourite or anything, but I much preferred that the one time I saw it.

searchers is pretty good but i dont like its status as The One True Ford. i havent seen Man With A Movie Camera but it sounds like something that can go to hell

ok, might as well toss Amarcord and The King of Comedy in here

the people I know who curate silent film showings in NYC were very happy about The Artist putting more fannies in their seats.

Ford has at least 12 movies better than The Searches, thankfully. My Darling Clementine or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon should be the equals of The Searchers

My least favorite of the top 10 is no contest: 8 1/2.

Griffith's epic/thriller modes really need as big a screen as possible.

(Keaton too really)

The Searchers benefits from Schrader acknowledging Taxi Driver's debt to it.

'man with a movie camera' is wonderful. love the idea that something like that actually made the top 10.

That I don't doubt, and that's a great thing (even though I couldn't stand the film). But do you think it actually affected voters? Surely anyone who voted in this didn't rush out to rent Dziga Vertov or Murnau videos after seeing The Artist (or, even in the improbable event that they did, decide in the space of a few months that they'd suddenly found one of their favourite films ever). (xxxxpost)

I think crix find it easier to embrace a western that's more face front about its racism than ones that are comparatively surreptitious.

Criterion did more for Ozu than Schrader did.

It bears repeating, Late Spring seriously came outta nowhere to be #15.

Kinda think The Artist affected this poll not a whit; I meant general interest in silents.

Griffith's epic/thriller modes really need as big a screen as possible.

Hmm, never thought about this before but seems obviously true.

hell, as anti-racist westerns go I prefer Ulzana's Raid

yep

or anything with Robert Ryan

Well aren't you two just precious.

Do we get dragged off screaming to the snake pit?

The difference in vote totals from the 2002 list is striking. Kane got 46 votes last time--that'd be outside the Top 10 this year. Singin' in the Rain finished 10th in '02 with 17 votes, slightly more than half of what La Jetée got at #50 this time.

Seeing as the Olympics are in London, I assume they'll be taking time out at some point to acknowledge Vertigo's big win?

clemenza, i think there were something like 3-4 times as many polls submitted this time round.

2002 was less than 200 ballots iirc. This one had 850. I'm surprised any (relative) idiosyncrasies showed up at all this time.

ok we have an F for Fake sighting on Sl4nt

along w/ JLG's King Lear at #1

I could tell...basically the point I was trying to underscore. I assume that impacted the results, unless you would expect a much larger field of voters to vote proportionally the same as last time. (Which is opposite to what Eric's saying. Good question: does a much larger field make idiosyncratic results inevitable or impossible?)

Hey, did Heaven's Gate get any votes? I know Robin Wood would have voted for it.

James Wolcott's 2022 ballot:

1. MARGARET 2. VERTIGO 3. THE SEARCHERS 4. TINY FURNITURE. 5. CITIZEN KANE 5. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE..9. ISHTAR

nice.

is Chantal Akerman at 35= the only woman in the 50? is she the first woman ever in the 50?

it is possible that last time i was reading these poll results i thought carol reed & lindsay anderson women, but i can imagine she's the first (& is the only woman in this top fifty, yep). i hope the top 100 lets a lil more '90s/21st century light in. directors' top 10 is more interesting to me than the critics, i think:

1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

=2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

=2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

=7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

=7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

i pledge allegiance to the body that works to keep bicycle thieves in the top 10 out of affection & principle - i guess maybe sunrise is the thing that takes its place as something clear as a bell, simple made perfect

Surprising number of silent films in the top 10?

I know complaining about what isn't there gets old fast but I'll do it anyway. Apart from Akerman, Godard or Battle for Algiers there is nothing too confrontational is there? No Pasolini (lol at Fellini), Resnais, Fassbinder, Oshima, Ferreri, Ghatak, Sembene, Makavejev.

Don't really like the sensibility at display here. But I like that a film from the late 50 is at no.1.

The usual not enough films from women/Africa/Asia and all. Maybe its because I've watched most of these.

Surprising number of silent films in the top 10?
ian christie i think the first to posit the relevance of the artist in this - can't begin to untangle the feedback loop of critical impulses that might corroborate this, ie persnickety critics who've had real silents on the tip of their tongues for months.

struggling to take this in in list form; am really looking forward to the illustrated list. like someone just mentioned that le mepris made it, which i hadn't picked up - this is crazy to me (& feels, tenuously, like a further affront to the absence of Lang's M), & something i'd just breezed past. that histoires du cinema made it is more interesting, but this is maybe just a fact of godard's complex position i guess. it would be hard to imagine anything super surprising in the rest of the list just because of the numbers it would require. crossing fingers for iran i think.

yr point about confrontational is true but i almost feel like that says something about canons being inherently anti-confrontational, & the sample size cancelling out marginal works. like mirror & histoires maybe occupy some similar cinematic ground. can imagine sembene in the full #100, though.

Yeah I wanted to speculate on the effect The Artist might have had but I didn't have the heart.

Get your point re: canons but I feel like this is taking out some very great filmmaking in favour of thrash like The Godafather.

re: Mepris I think there is far too much Godard and Tarkovsky, as much as I like those two.

Sembene is top 20 material, not 100. Him and Ghatak not making it is a real shame.

8 1/2 is actually my favorite of the top ten (tho I like them all). It may say something that I don't really care for any other Fellini though.

is Chantal Akerman at 35= the only woman in the 50? is she the first woman ever in the 50?

Definitely the only woman in the 2012 list. Not sure about first woman ever, since I'm not sure S&S published a top 50 before recently.

The guy who runs the They Shoot Pictures Don't They? site has all of the data, though, and from poking through some of it, I was able to find a handful of woman-directed films that have scored at least one vote prior to 2012:

Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl): 1 (1952)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren): 2 (1992), 1 (2002)
Orlando (Potter): 1 (1992), 2 (2002)
Daisies (Chytilova): 1 (1992, 2002)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda): 1 (2002)
The Piano (Campion): 2 (2002)

I can't imagine what else could've gotten enough votes to crack the top 50.