Notes on the BFI’s Top 100 Films, 2022
Life is a chore… Jeanne Dielman
I was only just starting to get used to Vertigo being number one, the surprise upset of the 2012 list when it knocked the long-reigning Citizen Kane off the top spot. Then along comes the snappily titled Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a 3½ hour, slow-moving 1975 Belgian film which has taken the top spot in the 2022 poll, released a few days ago (suddenly, Saudi Arabia’s 2-1 ‘shock’ win against Argentina seems trivial).
Yes, the BFI has recently released their latest top hundred Greatest Films of All Time, a list published by Sight and Sound magazine every decade since 1952. This year some 1,639 critics, curators and academics voted for their top ten films.
I can only compare the new list to last year’s Rolling Stone revised Top 500 songs where, for example, Public Enemy’s 1991 Fight the Power went from #330 in their last list (17 years previous) to #2 in the recent list (interestingly, Do the Right Thing – the film which features Fight the Power on repeat – didn’t appear in the BFI’s 2012 list but makes #24 in the new one; it also appears in my top 100, posted several years ago).
The BFI list has provoked a similar online backlash to the Rolling Stone one when it came out, mainly for upsetting the old guard by omitting obvious classics but introducing some recent, decent films such as Parasite but also some not-so-great films, such as 2017’s Get Out – ‘a poster film for Black Lives Matter’ – is in at number 95 (‘it wouldn’t even be in my top thousand’, quipped one Twitterer) but gone are Chinatown, It’s a Wonderful Life, Raging Bull, Nashville, Touch of Evil, Aguirre, Wrath of God, Les Enfants du Paradis and The Colour of Pomegranates (though some of these are in the Directors’ 100 Greatest Films of All Time, a parallel list compiled by directors-only which seems to bridge the gap between the Critics’ Top 100 and more popular choices by including the likes of Jaws and Lawrence of Arabia). No, there’s still no Star Wars, Shawshank Redemption or Wizard of Oz in either list. Go figure.
Now, Get Out was okay. I preferred Jordan Peele’s follow-up, Us (that ending still gets me), but anyway, if you’re going to include a horror film or two, how about Dawn of the Dead, Ring, Alien, Don’t Look Back, Halloween… and a hundred other far superior films (I know The Shining’s in there but Kubrick always leaves me cold).
Still, a good list to meant to provoke, inspire and encourage discussion. And times have changed (though the films remain the same). Certain directors aren’t in vogue any more, like Woody Allen or Roman Polanski, though Annie Hall, Manhattan, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown will always be some of my favourite films.
Black Lives Matter, the Me Too Movement and the LGBT community have rightly had a significant effect on our cultural landscape. This is reflected blatantly in both the Rolling Stone and BFI lists. There are many more female and black directors, and a couple of gay films. This is great… if the films are great. If they are just ticking boxes, it’s not so great.
Killer of Sheep should rightly be in the list. Get Out, perhaps not. Another issue with both lists is having so many recent songs/films. In the Rolling Stone list there were far-too-recent songs by the likes of Robyn, Fall Out Boy and Beyoncé which jarred against established ‘classics’ by the Rolling Stones, Dylan and the Beatles. As one astute commentator wrote, ‘This list is like a dad and his teenage daughter taking turns picking a song to listen to on a long... Awkward drive to the grave.’
Surely the definition of a classic is one that stands the test of time. It took Vertigo 50 years to get to number one! But Moonlight (2016), Get Out (2017), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) and Parasite (2019)? They’re okay, but we need more time to decide. It’s called a recency bias and happens a lot with critics’ lists, especially if the critics are under the age of 30.
Another commentator put it more succinctly than me: ‘When Celine Sciamma and Barry Jenkins are sitting in places that belong to Yasujiro Ozu and Satyajit Ray, we’re toast.’ (Though Ozu actually did okay; there’s no films by Luis Bunuel, Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog, Woody Allen, Howard Hawks, Terrence Malick or, say, Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Orson Welles, just one (as the obsolete film joke goes, Citizen Kane may be the best film ever made, but it’s not even Orson Welles’ best film…)
I’ve seen about 80 of the films so I’ll try to watch some I haven’t (a couple I hadn’t even heard of). I like to say my favourite directors are Bunuel, Polanski, Altman, Welles et al but in truth I haven’t watched their films in years, so perhaps it’s time to move on after all. I was thrilled to see my two favourite Studio Ghibli films in there, and not a Marvel movie in sight.
Probably half of the films can be seen for free on either Kanopy or the Internet Archive (both of which I’ve blogged about previously), and probably none on Netflix or Amazon Prime (both of which I’ve criticised repeatedly because they’re so crap). Here’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles for starters. Good luck.
Previously on Barnflakes
The top 100 films
The top 100 songs
Top twenty free films on the Internet Archive
Top ten films to watch on Kanopy, April 2022
Top ten films to watch on Kanopy, January 2022
Sight & Sound magazine mastheads
Vertigo knocks Kane off the top spot
The film remains the same
Top 10 film directors