Jeanne Dielman, a dull Marxist-feminist token, tops the list, thanks to the woke hive mind dominating film culture.
The film-loving tradition of Britain’s Sight and Sound magazine, especially its international poll on “The Greatest Films of All Time,” is over. Announcing the decennial poll’s latest results — Jeanne Dielman tops the list now, as Vertigo did in 2012 — S&S ruined its trustworthiness. No longer a reliable consensus, the poll fragments film culture into political sects.
Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman is an inarguably political choice, made by radical Marxist feminists, not humanist critics in a thriving popular culture. Citizen Kane, former S&S poll champ for the previous four decades, conveyed the excitement of watching movies. The phenomenon of Kane is incomparable. It rallies enthusiasm across nations and generations. Kane remains fresh, a work of endless discovery that inspires people to make movies. But the toppling of Kane was a more devastating blow to civilization than the 1619 Project was. Now, the blatant agenda-setting of the S&S poll only inspires cultural discord.
In 2012, former S&S editor Nick James rationalized Vertigo’s crushing of Kane as evidence of film-culture solipsism (which he commended). But this year, S&S presented Jeanne Dielman’s coup without explanation, just a casual admission that the poll had expanded to 1,639 participants — like packing the Supreme Court. So it’s not a critics’ poll as it initially was in 1952, but an agglomeration of “academics, distributors, writers, curators, archivists, and programmers.” Critics have lost authority (especially in the internet age), so S&S added ivory-tower attitudinal ballast — gatekeepers who are also social activists.
That’s how the 2022 poll became a referendum on political correctness. It prefers feminist, black, queer politics — not cinephilia. But favoritism toward Jeanne Dielman doesn’t exalt Chantal Akerman, its late obscure white lesbian female director, or women filmmakers (especially when Leni Riefenstahl is boycotted without comment). Jeanne Dielman and Akerman were chosen by press and academic coteries, a deluge of new participants. S&S has descended from solipsism to propaganda.
S&S’s ballot harvesting should not shock anyone in this era of rampant election irregularities in Brazil and the United States. Including the organizational elite changed the nature of the poll into cultural reengineering, largely on behalf of the left-liberal hive mind.
Don’t mistake this decade’s poll for a mere shift in the zeitgeist. Critical thinking has been abolished – to crown Jeanne Dielman is to allege a change of taste that’s unsupported by popular agreement.
The test-of-time axiom doesn’t work for Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (the full bureaucratic title); its acclaim is strictly a matter of progressive bias. Akerman fashioned an experiment in realism and duration. This film of a widowed housewife (Delphine Seyrig) — her routine chores, maternal social-role obligations, and limited freedom (to prostitute herself, then exact murderous revenge on a male client) — is deliberately anti-dramatic and misandrist. It’s an experiment in ennui, anxiety, and non-pleasure (authenticated by Akerman’s own eventual suicide). The film’s S&S victory can only be recognized in Marxist-feminist terms because those terms rule Millennial film culture.
* Women directors abound in the S&S list: Two Akermans, two Agnès Vardas (none by her husband Jacques Demy, a superior artist), a nugatory Jane Campion soap opera, Vera Chitilová’s obscure Czech feminist screed, etc. But no masterpieces exploring gender experience, such as The Scarlet Empress, Master of the House, Bringing Up Baby, The Maltese Falcon, The Golden Coach, or Jules and Jim.
* Non-white directors infiltrate the poll: Two by Edward Yang, plus Spike Lee, Ousmane Sembène, Jordan Peele, Djibiril Diop Mambéty, and Julie Dash, adding tokenism more than originality. But no masterpieces representing shared ethnic experience: Broken Blossoms, The Sun Shines Bright, Los Olvidados, Beloved, or The Color Purple.
* Queer subjects defy heterosexuality: Moonlight, Mulholland Drive, Beau Travail. But no sexual identity masterpieces, such as Red River, Lawrence of Arabia, Lola, Accattone, Straw Dogs, Deliverance, or Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train.
* Short films promote the poll’s avant-garde elitism: Meshes of the Afternoon, La Jetée. But no masterpieces that illustrate moral struggle, such as A Corner in Wheat, Ménilmontant, The Fatal Glass of Beer, A Day in the Country, Un chant d’amour, or The Red Balloon.
By going against popularity, aesthetic certainties, and timeless artistry, S&S iconoclasts favor topical social trends. The new names and titles don’t compare with the great names and classics that the poll overlooked: Griffith, Altman, Sternberg, Lubitsch, Frank Borzage, Leo McCarey, David Lean, Preston Sturges, Minnelli, Bertolucci, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller. This is partly the fault of cinema illiteracy: critics and curators ignorant of their specific fields. How else could a no-fun movie such as Jeanne Dielman command a poll except by using arid feminist theorizing to displace the basic, natural pleasures of beauty, insight, and inventiveness?
Throughout Millennial life, “experts” commit themselves to politics over culture. The S&S list may score ESG points, but love and awe are missing; so are films that slap you (and your parents and grandparents) in the face and make you bow — or swoon. The newer titles flatter recent political trends, with no respect for cultural continuity.
Broadening the canon is ridiculous if the standards are shaky. But this S&S “broadening” merely stacks the deck against movie classics — Intolerance, Children of Paradise, La Terra Trema, Nashville — that acknowledge our humanity and unite us.
Newsflash: At press time it was reported that S&S had hired a consultant for the poll who vowed to “take the white male canon and set it on fire.” This typical progressive move disregards taste and honest response in order to force-feed a political result. It degrades the poll and the British Film Institute. But it doesn’t work: Nobody really believes that Jeanne Dielman is the greatest film of all time.