Vintage Sand Episode 43: Thoughts on the "Sight and Sound" 2022 Poll

Vintage Sand

It is indeed the episode a decade in the making! Here, in Episode 43, Team Vintage Sand puts in its collective two cents on the newly released Sight and Sound decennial poll of the greatest films of all time. It is a list referred to by no less an authority than Roger Ebert as “the best damned film list of them all.” But this time, was it a “woke” poll, reflecting more our need for political correctness than a genuine and deep understanding of film history, as old-timers like Paul Schrader proclaimed? Or was it about damn time that the old white men gave up at least some of the strangle hold they’ve had on the poll since its inception in 1952, as many younger critics proclaimed? Does this new list signify that the battle lines have been drawn irrevocably between older and younger film people? As always, the truth is never that simple. Team Vintage Sand tries to approach the poll by avoiding either extreme, oversimplified position, reaching, as ever, for the complex and embracing the gray. Does Akerman’s "Jeanne Dielman" deserve its new place atop the rankings? Probably not, but it surely is a much better film than its position in the mid-30’s for the 2012 edition of the poll suggested. And if the poll is so politically correct, why are there no films by the Mexican New Wavers here? Along these same lines, 16 of the 22 directors who have multiple entries on the list are white men; four of the remaining six are Asian men. Yes, there are no films by Howard Hawks or Roman Polanski. No Buñuel. No Lean. No Altman. No Demy, or Melville, or Resnais. No Sternberg or Stroheim. No Huston. No Malick. No Tarantino. No Anderson, be it Wes or P.T. No Coen Brothers. No Linklater. No Spielberg, for goodness’ sake! No silent films in the Top 10, and all the silent films that are still there from 2012, with the exception of "City Lights", plummeted to the nether reaches of the list. (If anyone tells me that there are 20 films greater than "The Passion of Joan of Arc", it’s ON!) And yet… …there’s "Do The Right Thing" entering the list at #24. FINALLY. And there’s Burnett’s brilliant "Killer of Sheep". And Dash’s "Daughters of the Dust". Maybe now someone will give her some money to make a second film, three full decades after she released a Top 100 masterpiece. And there, brand spanking new, are Jordan Peele and Barry Jenkins. And there's Agnes Varda’s extraordinary "Cleo from 5 to 7" entering the list in the top 15. And my historical experimental film crush Maya Deren is finally here as well for her extraordinary and endlessly influential "Meshes of the Afternoon". And Claire Denis in the Top 10. And Jane Campion, Barbara Loden(!), Celine Sciamma and the aforementioned Julie Dash. If it took some “woke” (whatever that means) younger critics to put these artists in their rightful places in the pantheon, we’ll take it. Ultimately, we recognize the silly waste of energy in trying to compare, say, "Jeanne Dielman" with "Tokyo Story" with "In the Mood for Love" with "Man with a Movie Camera". For us, this poll has one purpose only, and it’s the same purpose that guides what we do at Vintage Sand: it opens doors. It takes us out of our comfort zone as viewers, and reminds us that there are vast aspects of film history about which we know little or nothing. So look carefully at Sight and Sound 2022 through this lens, check off the films you haven’t seen yet or not in a long time anyway, and track them down. We’ll bring the popcorn!