Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

singin in the rain for me

Probably for me too.

Nice to see it getting votes! It's amazing.

I wonder if The Searchers will get any.

SitR was the only one of these 20 films to make me cry multiple times in the last year for just how good it is

Godfather films are great (I even ride for 3 to an extent) but there’s maybe a sense that the culture had consumed them and spit them out in increasingly uninteresting ways and why give too much thought to them?

My one problem w/the trilogy is I’m not really moved by any of the characters, there’s amazing storytelling all over the place but I’m a little removed from it, for all the talk about Kubrick being a cold filmmaker I find these films a little cold deep down albeit superficially running hot. Might obviously be a michael thing, he’s an icy dude who’s hard to like even before he falls into a vat of familia and becomes Mobman.

Oh I'm moved by Fredo. "I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says!" is a big part of my vocabulary. As for Michael, being better at "the business" than even his father at the expense of the family is a tiny bit sad if you're moved by that sort of thing.

the iciness being the tragic flaw, i guess.

There are many moments in the first two GFs that move me, but you might be on to something there, I don't know.

I'm positive, though, they will never go away. Maybe GFII has slipped for the strategic reason that's been mentioned, but I don't believe it has anything to do with the film itself. There are always going to be young critics who see those two films for the first time, and--I believe--many of them will be as overwhelmed as I and countless others were.

Nice to see it getting votes! It's amazing.

I wonder if _The Searchers_ will get any.

I’m not feeling like they’re totally ice cold and I’m not sure it’s a major flaw in the movies, it’s an almost admirable decision to have a lead character be that kind of bastard. I feel like in G3 one of the drawbacks is actually making him a warmer version of the guy.

Ok I guess I might say for a moving character, to me it’s probably Frank Pentangeli, for some reason. Fredo is also moving yeah to me for his fear and Michael’s implacable desire to kill him no matter what he does. But it doesn’t really make me feel for michael at all, and I’m not sure that was the intent either.

The thing that moves me about Michael is when you see him in the early scenes, knowing where he's headed. And also seeing Pacino, and knowing where--"Who-ah!" or however that goes--he's headed.

As far as Kubrick goes, I don't see anything to suggest he's going to disappear. It didn't win like some people thought it would, but he's got the #4 film right now, plus two or three others in the Top 100, I think. So I don't know what xyzzzz's talking about there.

Kubrick has three on the big list and three on the director's list, four different films in all. Is that better or worse than last time? I don't know, but it's still pretty damn good. He and Hitchcock and Godard will continue to place numerous films all over the place.

cannot get past the racism in the searchers

Just today I knuckled down and watched Jeanne Dielman. I didn't hate it, but I voted for Man With a Movie Camera (if it hadn't been that, it would have been Sunrise).

cannot get past the racism in the searchers

I thought The Searchers was the only western still on the list because it is seen as, on some level, "dealing with" the racism. I don't like the film enough to make that argument.

It is pretty far from the only vintage American western to deal with the racism, is my understanding, but it’s certainly the most visible

I used to be a non-believer in The Searchers but now I think I can safely say, like Hank Worden’s Mose Harper, “I’ve been baptized, Reverend, I’ve been baptized.”

I've seen all twenty. I like John Ford and Chantal Akerman. But my personal favorite on this list is Beau Travail. (Though Sunrise is right up there.)

2001 is still the greatest movie of all time to me. It is detached and cerebral and pompous but it is also profound and moving and so beautiful to watch. It's still thrilling after after 55 years. Seeing it for the first time was one of the teenage experiences I will never forget. It was what got me interested in film.

― Dan S, Monday, 9 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I get that it's beautiful to look at on the big screen (and the soundtrack is the best thing about it for me; I couldn't not see it after looking at the music choices). But I don't see anything very profound in HAL, and what engages your intellect in this?

"the work that's being done to take down this stuff down"--you actually do make it all sound like a conspiracy. And there's this undercurrent of "We've won, nah-nah, now pack up and go home" when you write about Kubrick or The Godfathers I find kind of juvenile.

― clemenza, Monday, 9 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Stuff like Dielman has been pretty much belittled or just isn't seen by film criticism outside of S&S. And like Omar says the end result of Godfather is greatest ends up in a an uninteresting place.

And like I said to you in the other thread, there ought to be an element of gaming in this particular poll. Rather than worrying about whether nonsense like 2001 will keep its place why can't we get really great films like Makavejev's W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism in the top 20 in future editions of this poll?

In the first two Godfathers there is lots of interesting stuff in it. This is a story of Italian migration into America.

I voted Ozu, I think in the end because his work as a whole is what I'm most sympatico with at this point in my life

It is pretty far from the only vintage American western to deal with the racism, is my understanding, but it’s certainly the most visible

Yeah, classic Hollywood westerns deal with racism more frequently than people think (which is not the same as saying they do so as often or as deeply as they should have). People assume they never did and so when they see The Searchers, whose discussion of racism doesn't go much beyond Heart Of Darkness imo, they hugely overinflate its credentials in that department.

I highly recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Way_Out_(1950_film)

Also: those Anthony Mann westerns addressed w/out much fuss the relations b/w whites and the indigenous populations.

yeah (as i was tempted to point out several times on the Avatar thread) that kind of stuff was part of the standard toolkit for tons of Hollywood westerns at least since Broken Arrow in 1950

I took a class in grad school on the archetype of "captivity narratives" and of course The Searchers was a major text...it's a very rich, if uncomfortable, film in that way.

I got into movies seriously in the mid to late 90s so the 1992 list was my introduction to the canon (once I realized the AFI list was limited, to say the least...)

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. La Regle du Jeu (Renoir)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu)
4. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
5. The Searchers (Ford)
6. L’Atalante (Vigo)
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
6. Pather Panchali (Ray)
6. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

I like the 1982 list...

Citizen Kane
The Rules of the Game
Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
8½
Battleship Potemkin
L'Avventura
The Magnificent Ambersons
Vertigo
The General
The Searchers

First one I ever came across was the '72 list (in The Book of Lists) while in high school:

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
3. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
4. 8½ (Fellini)
5. L’avventura (Antonioni)
5. Persona (Bergman)
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
8. The General (Keaton)
8. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
10. Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
10. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)

Just 17 voters, I think.

Oh I'm moved by Fredo. "I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says!" is a big part of my vocabulary.

"It's the way Pop wanted it."

"It's not the way I wanted it!"

Oddly, I thought Sonny was the most empathetic character in the first GF. Probably has to do with the heat Caan brought to the role. I've always thought he was the standout among a cast of standouts.

The last hug between Sonny and Michael is the most emotional moment for me, yeah.

Cazale's untimely death was such a massive loss to film acting

rewatching it a few years ago it occurred to me that the emotional journey of watching michaels character has become totally reversed, the shock of seeing him transform into a killer ghoul is replaced by the shock of seeing him as a normal friendly guy at the wedding, shopping with Kay, etc, before he's become the "actual" character that i remember & hold in my mind when i think of the film. i also realized i cant remember the first time i saw the godfather, and so cant even remember what my thoughts & feelings might have been watching him go through that transformation for the first time without knowing what was going to happen, which bummed me out a bit

cazale as fredo obv the performance that never loses its potency, impervious to rewatching

The final scene in GF2 is a masterful recapitulation.

'72: peak Bergmania

Fredo's a harder part to play too because he doesn't have any of the menace of the other male Corleones. In the book, they described Fredo as a dream child, a kid who never got in trouble, loved and obeyed his parents. Biggest undoing is his unwavering trust in people, like how he doesn't put it together that Paulie sold his dad out, or how he sides with Moe Greene, not understanding that his family is in actual danger at that point. Or not realizing he was setting his brother up to be killed with Hymen Roth/Johnny Ola.

He's dumb but mostly in the emotionally naive sense, and he doesn't understand that him being passed over is perhaps the greatest thing that could have happened to him, especially after you see what it did to Michael. Cazale captured it perfectly even though he only got a fraction of the screen time

O sorry SPOILERZ

Godfather has been so memed in culture that Michael’s rise is arguably seen as largely a good thing by so many viewers, maybe due to the genuine duplicitousness of his enemies (many of them given even more reprehensible characteristics) when his rise is actually a fall. I don’t think it’s framed as a good thing btw it’s clear it’s meant as a tragedy and these are certainly great films in that respect. It’s hard to view the tragedy as anything other than michael coming into his own, though; kinda like Macbeth or something. He was not really a corrupted good guy as much as there was something in him that was awful and fundamentally evil from the start and it just needed a push in the right context.

The first time I saw the Godfather I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere and (to be honest) how old and musty and weird the film seemed to me. And how long! (Gotta say that it took me a while, until my mid-30s, to become really interested in old movies and the ins and outs of Hollywood, and I didn’t watch a ton of films in general until then; I was somewhere in my late 20s when I saw this.) So the feeling of the movie dominates everything in my memory and the finer points would only emerge with subsequent viewings, through reading reviews or listening to podcasts about it, etc.

If I watched a movie like this for the first time today I’d likely clock much more in the way of subtleties.

Omar otm

Michael's refusal to play ball had less to do with "I am above these reprehensible, evil actions" and more "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me", he didn't like anybody, even his own father, mapping his own life out.

plus, no doubt the war probably fucked him up, he was wounded in action and probably saw some fucked up things.

when i watch it now i see him specifically through the lens of a veteran. he's returning to civilian society without fully processing what he learned about himself while at war, shaken not just by his experiences of violence but also by the side of himself those experiences revealed. back in the states at the wedding around all those thugs and triggermen, he's like a recovering alcoholic trying not to look at the bar. the war made him worried about who he might be and he's afraid to go too far and find out for sure.

otm

while many mobsters were unhinged and might take down a civvy for disrespecting for them, the majority of the victims of violence by mob's hands were other mobsters, who were also pieces of shit, and even then, the rules of engagement were fairly tight, you couldn't just clip whomever you wanted.

Michael was bestowed the Navy Cross, which means more than likely he killed or aided in the killing of many soldiers, many of them civilians who probably didn't want to be there. yeah, there's rules of engagement there too, but often amounted then to "see a guy wearing a different uniform, and shoot". that shit will fuck you up more than killing someone named Johnny No-Neck who robbed one of your street men.

I saw a 25th anniversary screening of The Godfather when I was 18, and it didn't make much of an impression on me. I found the story hard to follow and didn't care about the characters. Not long after, I saw Part II out of a sense of obligation and mostly felt similar about it. (For context, my favorite filmmakers at the time were probably Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Mike Leigh.) I'm sure I'd get more out of it if I watched it now, though I haven't gotten around to it.

I definitely didn't follow everything the first time I watched it, mostly because it was my first exposure to mob-related cinema, so I didn't even get the tropes of the genre very well.

I read the book not long after and it made a lot more sense on my next viewing, though Puzo had somewhat of a maddening tendency to overexplain things

that and mentioning how people's sphincters released when they died