The 2022 edition of Sight And Sounds magazine’s polls of the “greatest films ever made” were released last week, and since our entire podcast is about movies that have been on these decennially updated lists, we got together to share our reactions to the new ones.
Here is the top 10, as decided by 1639 critics:
And here is the top 10, as decided by 480 directors:
In our discussion, we reference:
It’s Mia’s 5th pick: The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 film directed by John Ford.
The film is based on John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, which was also the best-selling novel of that year and was cited as a major part of the basis on which Steinbeck was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. The politics and story of the book were potentially thorny enough that Daryl F. Zanuck, the famed producer at 20th Century Fox, sent investigators to witness just how bad the situation in Oklahoma actually was so he’d know whether he’d feel equipped to defend the film against any criticism for being potentially pro-Communist. That said, the aforementioned politics and story were still softened somewhat as compared to the book.
Ford was coming off a banner year, having directed 3 films in 1939: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk – the latter two both with Henry Fonda, who himself had additionally been in 3 other movies in 1939.
The film received plenty of rave reviews and accolades including this incredibly laudatory one from Frank Nugent for the New York Times:
In the vast library where the celluloid literature of the screen is stored there is one small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema's masterworks, to those films which by dignity of theme and excellence of treatment seem to be of enduring artistry, seem destined to be recalled not merely at the end of their particular year but whenever great motion pictures are mentioned.
To that shelf of screen classics Twentieth Century-Fox yesterday added its version of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath…
John Ford won a Best Director Oscar for the film, while Jane Darwell won Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Outstanding Production (or what is today called Best Picture), Best Actor (Henry Fonda), Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Recording. In more recent years, The Grapes of Wrath was on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies list, ranked at #21 in 1998 and then at #23 in 2007.
As for our purposes, the movie has never actually appeared in the top 10 of Sight & Sound’s critics or directors surveys, but it was a runner up on the very first list back in 1952. In the 2012 polling, it was ranked #183 by critics and #174 by directors – and among the filmmakers who had it on their top 10 lists that year was Lawrence Kasdan.
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It’s Jeremiah’s 5th pick: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, the 1927 film directed by F.W. Murnau.
Based on a 1917 short story called “The Excursion to Tilsit,’ written by Hermann Sudermann, the film was Murnau’s first in the United States, after he was brought over from Germany by William Fox to make something for Fox Film Corporation like the expressionist work he’d produced in his home country – Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, and Faust among those. As with his previous work, the art design is exaggerated or even distorted to represent the emotional and symbolic tone being strived for. Add in innovative camerawork and one of the first synchronized soundtracks featuring a specifically composed score and sound effects, and the technical achievements alone begin to make it clear why the film had been popular and influential.
The film was hailed as a masterpiece by many critics of the day. And it also holds the distinction of being the only film to ever win Best Unique and Artistic Picture at the Oscars – an award that only existed in the ceremony’s first year. More recently, AFI listed Sunrise at number 82 in the 2007 version of their 100 Years… 100 Movies list of the greatest American films.
As for our purposes, Sunrise has appeared in the top 10 of Sight & Sound’s critics survey twice – at number 7 in 2002, and then at number 5 in 2012. Also in the 2012 polling, it was ranked #22 by directors; among the filmmakers who had it on their top 10 lists were Francis Ford Coppola and the Dardenne Brothers. And one more thing worthy of noting: Sunrise was released on September 23rd, 1927… Two weeks later, on October 6, is when The Jazz Singer was released, ushering in the beginning of the sound era for motion pictures.
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Listen up as we reveal our picks for what we’ll be watching in Round 5 of the podcast!
Spoiler alert: we have two bonus picks this time around, so we’ll be watching 7 films total.
And, as referenced in the episode, here is the list of all movies released after 1980 that appeared in the top 100 of the Sight & Sound critics and directors surveys in 2012:
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It’s Stephen’s 4th pick: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 film directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Often cited as one of the best comedy films of all time – as well as simply one of the best films generally – this was Kubrick’s follow-up to Lolita, released two years before in 1962.Its making began with the director’s desire to produce a movie about a nuclear accident during the Cold War. As he was doing research for the project, someone suggested he read Peter George’s book, Red Alert, and he eventually bought the rights for it and began working with the author on an adaptation.
As they began to write, Kubrick at some point came to the conclusion that there was no real way to depict the scenario he was interested in without it seeming absurd, so they decided to lean into that absurdity and make it a satire, which is a departure from the more serious depiction of the novel. Satirical author Terry Southern (perhaps best known by movie fans as a co-writer of Easy Rider a few years later) was brought in to help with the tone.
The casting of Peter Sellers was instrumental in getting the film made, with Columbia Pictures making it a condition that the actor play 4 roles – one more than he had in 1959’s The Mouse that Roared. Originally, he was set to also play Major Kong, the bomber pilot, though perhaps against his better wishes since he wasn’t comfortable with the character’s Texas accent. But an injury forced him out of the role and it was recast with Slim Pickens, though not before it was offered to John Wayne. Another change of note is that the film legendarily originally ended with a giant pie fight between all the personnel in the War Room.
The film was originally set to open in late 1963, but was delayed due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Instead it was released in January 1964 to good box office and it was eventually nominated for 4 Academy Awards – Best Picture, Director, Actor (Peter Sellers), and Adapted Screenplay – though it won none. It did however win 4 BAFTA awards, including Best British Film and Best Film From Any Source. And it was nominated for or won other Guild and Critics awards.
As for our purposes, it only appeared in the top 10 of one of Sight & Sound’s polls once, when it was ranked the 5th greatest film by directors in 2002. In the 2012 polling, it was ranked #117 by critics and #107 by directors. Among the directors who included it in their top 10s were Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Mann, and Amos Poe.
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It’s Mia’s 4th pick: Persona, the 1966 film directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Persona is a film that is open to much interpretation about its themes, meaning, and maybe even its plot. In the most basic way, it’s the story of a well known Swedish actress who suffers an emotional shutdown and is put in a hospital. It’s explained that there is nothing wrong with her either mentally or physically, but she is completely unwilling to move or speak. A nurse is assigned to her, but a lack of any progress soon leads the attending doctor to send the actress, with her nurse, to a seaside cottage. With the actress still not speaking, but beginning to otherwise take part in life, the nurse finds a willing set of ears to spill her thoughts and secrets to. This eventually leads to a seeming betrayal of confidence. Meanwhile, both for the nurse and for the audience, the identities of the women become increasingly blurred.
Persona was Ingmar Bergman’s 27th film as a director and was released 20 years after his first. It also came about a decade after The Seventh Seal firmly established him as a well-known name of world cinema. The experimental opening moments of the film effectively set up an experience that is harder to pin down than other, more mainstream films. Discussion and debate about how to interpret Persona tend to follow several different lines, from identity, gender, and sexuality to Jungian psychology, art, and even vampirism.
For our purposes, Persona only appeared in the top 10 of Sight & Sound’s critics poll once, in 1972, when it was ranked 5th. In 2012, it was tied with The Seventh Samurai at number 17 on the wider critics poll, and it was ranked number 13 on the directors poll.
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It’s Jeremiah’s 4th pick: The Rules of the Game, the 1939 film directed by Jean Renoir.
‘The Rules of the Game’ was the most expensive film ever made in France at the time of its production and came on the heels of a series of successful films that had made Renoir one of the top French directors. After initial preview screenings that began in June of 1939 and a premier in July that met with low box-office and mixed reviews, a series of edits eventually whittled the film down from its 113 minute runtime to 85 minute; many of the edits excised Renoir’s own performance, resulting in a much less complex and integral character. By October, the film was banned in France for being "depressing, morbid, immoral [and] having an undesirable influence over the young." A successful 1956 attempt at restoration led to the discovery of negatives and other prints and audio for the film that had been thought lost during World War II. Eventually, with advice from Renoir, a 106 minute cut was assembled that largely restored what had been cut after the film’s post-release failure. This restoration was screened for Renoir in 1959 and reportedly left the director in tears.
Director Satyajit Ray – whose film, ‘Pather Panchali,’ we’ll be watching for an upcoming episode – said of The Rules of the Game: it is “a film that doesn't wear its innovations on its sleeve ... Humanist? Classical? Avant-Garde? Contemporary? I defy anyone to give it a label. This is the kind of innovation that appeals to me."
For our purposes, this is the only film that’s been in the top 10 of Sight & Sound’s critics poll every single time since it began in 1952, when it debuted at number 10 (even before it’s restoration). It then fluctuated between number 2 and number 3 from 1962 to 2002 and was at number 4 in 2012. Additionally, it was on the directors poll in 2002, at number 9. In the 2012 polling, 100 critics had the film on their list – and 17 directors, including Olivier Assayas, Lawrence Kasdan, Steve McQueen, and Paul Schrader.
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It’s Alicia’s 4th pick: Hiroshima Mon Amour, the 1959 film directed by Alain Resnais.
With ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour,’ Resnais and screenwriter Marguerite Duras, explore the intersection where tragedy and trauma meet history and memory.
The film was released on May 8, 1959 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize.
Among its other accolades was recognition by Cahiers du Cinéma on its list of the top 10 films of 1959, where it was ranked 2nd after Kenji Mizoguchi’s ‘Ugetsu.’
It opened in the United States in May of 1960 and went on to earn Marguerite Duras an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
To give a sense of what was popular in the United States in the years ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ was first released, then when it opened in the United States, the top grossing films in North America for 1959 and 1960 were Ben-Hur and Spartacus, respectively. Meanwhile, Ben-Hur was also the big winner at the Oscars for 1959, while The Apartment was the big winner for 1960.
For our purposes, the film has never been in the top 10 of either the critics or directors polls done by Sight and Sound magazine to determine the greatest films ever made. It did, though, place, as a runner-up in both 1962 and 1972.
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Listen up as we reveal our picks for what we’ll be watching in Round 4 of the podcast!
Spoiler alert: it’s our most international round yet!
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