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

[Thomas T]

What a horrible list.

I knew I shouldn't have left Jeanne Dielman off

 

[bujaki]

I knew I shouldn't have left Jeanne Dielman off

You're a braver man than I, Gunga Din! I could never compile such a list.

 

[Tino]

What a horrible list.

Yeah!! No Jaws? Casablanca??

 

[Keith Cobby]

I've seen 50 on Thomas's list, sad to see Casablanca and North by Northwest are absent.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I’ve seen 72 on Thomas’s list.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Have seen 14 out of 100 and I can not believe so many obscure tiles. And far to may ties in this list. Well just another opinion that is for certain, lol.

 

[Walter Kittel]

In the spirit of the thread, I put together a list of 100 of the films I consider the greatest of all time (at least today.) Disclaimers as follows:

- My exposure to European cinema is fairly limited, so this is mostly an American list.
- I've left some of my 'favorites' off of this list because I do not think favorite and greatest have to be synonymous. (Folks who know some of my favorites will not see Chariots of Fire, The English Patient, or Open Range (to name a few titles) in this listing.)
- I have not included anything too recent, because I am of the mind that films need to 'percolate' for a while before they can be correctly assessed in terms of their signifigance.
- I've listed them in alphabetical order, because honestly, attempting to sort them by rank is not something I wish to attempt.

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Alien (Scott, 1979)
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
Bad Day At Black Rock (Sturges, 1955)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Being There (Ashby, 1979)
Belle De Jour (Bunuel, 1967)

The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953)
Black Narcissus (Powell / Pressburger, 1947)
Bob Le Flambeur (Melville, 1956)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean, 1957)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
City of God (Meirelles / Lund, 2002)

City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)
The Conversation (Copolla, 1974)
Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg, 1967)
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978)
Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)

Easy Rider (Rikert / Hopper, 1969)
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970)
The General (Keaton / Bruckman, 1926)
The Godfather (Copolla, 1972)
Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964)
The Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988)
A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964)
Hud (Ritt, 1963)
In A Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)
In Cold Blood (Brooks, 1967)

In The Mood For Love (Kar-Wai, 2000)
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1962)
The Killing (Kubrick, 1956)
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971)
Last Year At Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell / Pressburger, 1943)

Local Hero (Forsyth, 1983)
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997)
M (Lang, 1931)
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
Night Moves (Penn, 1975)

Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Once Upon A Time In The West (Leone, 1968)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Forman, 1975)
Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
Patton (Schaffner, 1970)
Picnic At Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang, 1991)
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955)
Red River (Hawks, 1948)
The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983)
A River Runs Through It (Redford, 1992)

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968)
Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Singin' In The Rain (Kelly / Donen, 1952)
Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)
Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

Tender Mercies (Beresford, 1983)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)
Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Walkabout (Roeg, 1971)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)


- Walter.

 

[Keith Cobby]

Great list Walter, sadly no North by Northwest. Pleased to see Walkabout and Last Year at Marienbad included.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Great list Walter, sadly no North by Northwest. Pleased to see Walkabout and Last Year at Marienbad included.

Thanks, North by Northwest is pretty terrific but I already had three Hitchcock films from that period in the list so I went elsewhere. (Perusing the list - Kubrick topped it at five titles, Kurosawa had four titles, and Hitchcock and Wilder had three.)

- Walter.

 

[Thomas T]

I've seen 50 on Thomas's list, sad to see Casablanca and North by Northwest are absent.

On another day, North By Northwest could easily have made it. A great movie. It would easily make my second 100. And as great a pleasure Casablanca have given me through the years (and continues to give), I just can't call it "great" in the literal sense, just the casual sense.

 

[Thomas T]

Have seen 14 out of 100 and I can not believe so many obscure tiles. And far too many ties in this list. Well just another opinion that is for certain, lol.

Yes, 100 movies tied is too much but I couldn't rank!

 

[Thomas T]

In the spirit of the thread, I put together a list of 100 of the films I consider the greatest of all time (at least today.) Disclaimers as follows:

- My exposure to European cinema is fairly limited, so this is mostly an American list.
- I've left some of my 'favorites' off of this list because I do not think favorite and greatest have to be synonymous. (Folks who know some of my favorites will not see Chariots of Fire, The English Patient, or Open Range (to name a few titles) in this listing.)
- I have not included anything too recent, because I am of the mind that films need to 'percolate' for a while before they can be correctly assessed in terms of their signifigance.
- I've listed them in alphabetical order, because honestly, attempting to sort them by rank is not something I wish to attempt.

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Alien (Scott, 1979)
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
Bad Day At Black Rock (Sturges, 1955)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Being There (Ashby, 1979)
Belle De Jour (Bunuel, 1967)

The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953)
Black Narcissus (Powell / Pressburger, 1947)
Bob Le Flambeur (Melville, 1956)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean, 1957)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
City of God (Meirelles / Lund, 2002)

City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)
The Conversation (Copolla, 1974)
Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg, 1967)
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978)
Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)

Easy Rider (Rikert / Hopper, 1969)
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970)
The General (Keaton / Bruckman, 1926)
The Godfather (Copolla, 1972)
Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964)
The Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988)
A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964)
Hud (Ritt, 1963)
In A Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)
In Cold Blood (Brooks, 1967)

In The Mood For Love (Kar-Wai, 2000)
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1962)
The Killing (Kubrick, 1956)
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971)
Last Year At Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell / Pressburger, 1943)

Local Hero (Forsyth, 1983)
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997)
M (Lang, 1931)
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
Night Moves (Penn, 1975)

Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Once Upon A Time In The West (Leone, 1968)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Forman, 1975)
Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
Patton (Schaffner, 1970)
Picnic At Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang, 1991)
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 1955)
Red River (Hawks, 1948)
The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983)
A River Runs Through It (Redford, 1992)

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968)
Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Singin' In The Rain (Kelly / Donen, 1952)
Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)
Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

Tender Mercies (Beresford, 1983)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)
Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Walkabout (Roeg, 1971)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)


- Walter.

I've seen 95 on your list, Walter. Remaining unseen are Miller's Crossing, A River Runs Through It, City Of God, Grave Of The Fireflies and Koyaanisqatsi. A lot of your titles almost made my list. It killed me to leave Chinatown off but as I said, on another day, it may well be on it.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I forgot to mention my tally of Thomas' list. 44. Plenty of great untapped cinema to experience.

- Walter.

 

[Wayne_j]

Here is Dan Murrell's take on this poll. He brings up interesting points on how the BFI could be pre manipulating the results by instructing participants to shake their fists at film orthodoxy and also how participants like Ti West have been attacked online for having choices that are too traditional.

 

[Polbroth]

I’ll say it. Terrible list.

ps. I’ve only seen 33.

Yeah.

I only agree with 25 of the films listed as being among the 100 greatest, and some of the selections are simply bizarre.

The rankings are also absurd - Bicycle Thief at #41???

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Here is Dan Murrell's take on this poll. He brings up interesting points on how the BFI could be pre manipulating the results by instructing participants to shake their fists at film orthodoxy and also how participants like Ti West have been attacked online for having choices that are too traditional.

It certainly does appear that there was a goal of "shaking up the list" and intentionally making it more "inclusive" of certain filmmakers. Which, as I said before is fine. It is just a list, if that is their goal with it, that is up to them. It does get clicks and gets people to talk about it.

 

[Polbroth]

Beyond whatever agendas we *may* be seeing hotly pursued at the moment beyond pure creative merit, the biggest problem with the list is that one really does need to break such things down by genre and/or other criteria.

Other than this latest list being kind of nuts (not that it wasn't always kind of nuts), the jumbling of distinct genres just doesn't make sense to me.

The list is dominated as ever by disturbing/heartwarming slice of life flicks, but excludes numerous best of genre films, and other films which might be best separated by other distinctions, including country of origin.

It is, as ever, auteur-heavy, which is fine, but as such, it really should be called "100 Best Mostly Auteur-created Films Whose Selection Will Make Us Seem Ponderously Wise & Inclusive While Really Not Being This At All."

Another problem is that certain auteurs, just as certain cultural enclaves, can really only be judged in relation to themselves.

No Woody Allen films? (Love him or hate him - I'm in the latter category - he's created some of the greatest films ever made.)

The inclusion of fewer than ten Hitchcock films?

Fewer than ten Bergmans?

Fewer than ALL Dreyer flicks?

Renoir deserves at least five entries, as do Melville and Bresson, but perhaps ALL French directors should be limited to a list of ten best French films?

So few silent masterpieces?

Two horror films, one of which is Get Out, markedly inferior to the fatally flawed but brilliant Us?

So few documentaries? (There could easily be 25 included.)

So many Japanese films (for instance), including the only two animated films on the list(!), and NONE from Canada (for instance)?

Playtime rather than Trafic??

The list of objections to the silliness of this list could go on and on, but let me finish with the current #1.

It's unquestionably a masterpiece, and among the few dozen greatest flicks ever made, but it's nonetheless fatally flawed, and I use the term advisedly; the tonal shift (I won't go into greater detail so as not to spoil the film for those who haven't yet seen it) is simply bizarre, and ultimately crashes the film.

If a film with a female auteur and a female central character was inevitably going to be placed at #1, I can think of literally DOZENS of better films, far less well-known, and far more deserving.

Pee south.

 

[mskaye]

Beyond whatever agendas we *may* be seeing hotly pursued at the moment beyond pure creative merit, the biggest problem with the list is that one really does need to break such things down by genre and/or other criteria.

Other than this latest list being kind of nuts (not that it wasn't always kind of nuts), the jumbling of distinct genres just doesn't make sense to me.

The list is dominated as ever by disturbing/heartwarming slice of life flicks, but excludes numerous best of genre films, and other films which might be best separated by other distinctions, including country of origin.

It is, as ever, auteur-heavy, which is fine, but as such, it really should be called "100 Best Mostly Auteur-created Films Whose Selection Will Make Us Seem Ponderously Wise & Inclusive While Really Not Being This At All."

Another problem is that certain auteurs, just as certain cultural enclaves, can really only be judged in relation to themselves.

No Woody Allen films? (Love him or hate him - I'm in the latter category - he's created some of the greatest films ever made.)

The inclusion of fewer than ten Hitchcock films?

Fewer than ten Bergmans?

Fewer than ALL Dreyer flicks?

Renoir deserves at least five entries, as do Melville and Bresson, but perhaps ALL French directors should be limited to a list of ten best French films?

So few silent masterpieces?

Two horror films, one of which is Get Out, markedly inferior to the fatally flawed but brilliant Us?

So few documentaries? (There could easily be 25 included.)

So many Japanese films (for instance), including the only two animated films on the list(!), and NONE from Canada (for instance)?

Playtime rather than Trafic??

The list of objections to the silliness of this list could go on and on, but let me finish with the current #1.

It's unquestionably a masterpiece, and among the few dozen greatest flicks ever made, but it's nonetheless fatally flawed, and I use the term advisedly; the tonal shift (I won't go into greater detail so as not to spoil the film for those who haven't yet seen it) is simply bizarre, and ultimately crashes the film.

If a film with a female auteur and a female central character was inevitably going to be placed at #1, I can think of literally DOZENS of better films, far less well-known, and far more deserving.

Pee south.

You make lots of good points but ... definitely PLAYTIME before TRAFFIC. No contest. I'd put Mon Oncle up there before TRAFFIC. You're allowed to like TRAFFIC more but PLAYTIME is a monumental achievement that puts it in a class of its own.

 

[jayembee]

The inclusion of fewer than ten Hitchcock films?

Fewer than ten Bergmans?

Fewer than ALL Dreyer flicks?

Back in the day, when I was more inclined to present "best of" lists, I used to say I had two separate lists of "Ten Best Westerns". One was "Ten Best Westerns", the other "Ten Best Westerns Not By John Ford", because Ford would crowd out a lot of great Westerns by other filmmakers.

 

[Polbroth]

Back in the day, when I was more inclined to present "best of" lists, I used to say I had two separate lists of "Ten Best Westerns". One was "Ten Best Westerns", the other "Ten Best Westerns Not By John Ford", because Ford would crowd out a lot of great Westerns by other filmmakers.

I was surprised to see Liberty Valance finally get some respect, but no Horse Soldiers or Clementine???

Even Long Gray Line is better than several films on the list; some people just know/knew how to make great movies.