How many of the newly-revealed 100 best movies of all time have you seen?
Ever since the first poll in 1952, once every ten years critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics from all over the world are asked by Sight & Sound Magazine to place their votes to decide on what is, essentially, the best movie ever made.
The previous winners of best movie have been:
1952 – Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
1962 – Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
1972 – Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
1982 – Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
1992 – Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
2002 – Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
2012 – Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
You get the idea. When they’re talking about the best movie, they aren’t talking about “favourite movie” (you unfortunately won’t find Paddington 2 anywhere in the new top 100, which does feel like a criminal offence).
There had been some debate this year over whether Vertigo would retain the top spot, or would Citizen Kane return as ruler, or maybe something new – Parasite? Get Out? Moonlight? – would suddenly rocket to the top.
Instead, the new best movie ever is something we’re guessing 99.9% of the general public might never have even heard of, let alone seen.
Here is the critical reasoning as to why the 201-minute long Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles shot up to No.1, from No.35 in the 2012 poll:
“The film charts the breakdown of a bourgeois Belgian housewife, mother and part-time prostitute over the course of three days; on the side of form, it rigorously records her domestic routine in extended time and from a fixed camera position. In a film that, agonisingly, depicts women’s oppression, [director Chantal] Akerman transforms cinema, itself so often an instrument of women’s oppression, into a liberating force.”
Here are the top 20 movies, according to the 2022 poll:
1 Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2 Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
4 Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953)
5 In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
6 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7 Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1998)
8 Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
9 Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov,1929)
10 Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951)
11 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
12 The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
13 La Règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
14 Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
15 The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
16 Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943)
17 Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
18 Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
19 Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
20 Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Check out the full top 100 right here.
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