Sight & Sound's Surprising Cinematic Shake-Up

Last week, British magazine Sight & Sound released their latest list of the greatest films of all time, and the results have surprised a significant number of film buffs. Several classics have been replaced with new additions, and for the first time, a woman director tops the list.

For those of you, Sight & Sound began in the spring of 1932 as an affiliate of the British Institute of Adult Education. Although the fledgling magazine started as a quarterly review, its management was transferred to the British Film Institute just two years later. After several decades, Sight & Sound evolved into its current form after it was merged with the Monthly Film Bulletin in 1991. Issues are published monthly, and they’re chock full of interviews, news, and reviews for all the films released per month. Over the years, Sight & Sound has become a name with all the prestige of the Motion Picture Academy, and just a fraction of its controversy. No less a figure than Roger Ebert described the magazine’s Greatest Films Ever poll as "by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies—the only one most serious movie people take seriously."

The poll in question has been running once every ten years, beginning in 1952. The magazine invited several film professionals around the world to provide their choices for the ten best films of all time. The winner of that first poll was the 1948 drama Bicycle Thieves, securing a mention in 25 different lists. The film list has since been expanded to become the 100 greatest films of all time, even as the number of participants has also increased. The 2022 list was compiled with the help of more than 1,600 film professionals. Additionally, Sight & Sound began releasing a list of greatest films whose source was made up entirely of film directors. Notable people who’ve contributed their rankings over the years include Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-Ho, Sofia Coppola, Guillermo Del Toro, Barry Jenkins, and Lulu Wang.

But as to the list of 2022, it has caused quite a few people to raise an eyebrow. One must expect that new voters will bring fresh takes to the table, and there are so many great films which deserve a spot on the list, but in order for some to get recognition, others get knocked off the list. Such has been the case for Raging Bull, Chinatown, Fanny and Alexander, The Seventh Seal, Lawrence of Arabia and even The Godfather: Part II! Those are just 6 of 25 films which lost a spot on the list, but we can certainly imagine how shocked some film buffs must be when these classics get dropped. In their place have risen the likes of Do the Right Thing, Spirited Away, Get Out, Chungking Express, Parasite, and Goodfellas. Academics have already given their own opinions on the lineup changes and how they reflect a different group of people than the ones which named Citizen Kane the greatest film of all time for five decades straight.

In that aforementioned top spot, the 2022 winner has made Sight & Sound history in a couple of ways. Firstly, it was directed by a woman. Born in Belgium to Polish Holocaust survivors, Chantal Akerman made her first film in 1968. She spent the next five decades establishing her reputation as a proud feminist and avant-garde filmmaker who experimented with film, telling ordinary stories about identity, mother-daughter relationships, and femininity.

In 1975, Akerman directed Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. With a runtime which exceeds 200 minutes, the film follows a middle-aged woman’s many routines across three days, which includes her job as a sex worker. Jeanne Dielman was immediately hailed in Europe upon its release, with one critic calling it the "first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema.” Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), the film was virtually unknown in the United States. In fact, Jeanne Dielman wasn’t even released in the States for another eight years! However, it did eventually draw a cult audience, with filmmakers Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant both listing Jeanne Dielman as a direct influence on their own work. The film first made an appearance on Sight & Sound at #35 in its 2012 list, making for quite the impressive jump. It is only the fourth film to make the #1 spot in Sight & Sound’s Critics’ Poll, and it’s also reached #4 on the 2022 Directors’ Poll.

Although Akerman died under tragic circumstances in 2015, her legacy as a filmmaker is impossible to doubt. We can only speculate where she will place on 2032’s list, and moreover, which films will appear whose creators were inspired by Akerman’s example.