The Sight and Sound “Greatest Films of All Time“ poll | Hacker News Reader

The Sight and Sound “Greatest Films of All Time“ poll

bfi.org.uk

26 pointsthazework45 comments

Having seen quite a few of these, amongst the feeling of validation I can't entirely shed a sense that this is also a list informed by snobbery, and the trans-epochal hipsterism of "It's only cool because I said so and now you say it, its not cool" movement.

Some of the experimental, art-house films are in the bucket of "massively influential, but not that many people watch it all the way through" Like Chien Andalou. -And speaking of Luis Buñuel how come only his b&w stuff gets "in" and not "the discrete charm of the bourgoisie" or "that obscure object of desire" or "Belle Du Jour" It's really in the end, about a bunch of prefereneces weighted by "everyone else's eyes are on me"

The more recent and high score films tend to box office. It's also heavily weighted into specific genres and styles. One Indian movie, despite the massive weight of Indian film production.

I've seen around 60 of the films on this list and every one was amazing. Most of my personal top 10 are here.

Genres are all over the place: horror, action, sci-fi, spaghetti western, musical, farce, drama, ... 4 Indian movies. Doesn't look the way people voted is in any way public.

> Doesn't look the way people voted is in any way public.

Available here: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-ti...

Agreed. Citizen Kane was insanely boring even though it’s supposed to be the best movie ever. I need to pull a Wittgenstein and ask: what does the word “best” mean here?

I care mostly about movies that are incredible to me now in 2023. That informs my definition of “best movies”. I am not interested in Citizen Kane’s innovative use of the deep focus technique. I can appreciate an incredible older movie, but not for obscure film buff reasons. If anyone knows of a good best movie list that is free of this sort of pretentious navel gazing, please link it below.

Also, this is a hot take, but at a certain point older movies become worse precisely because of their datedness rather than “more interesting due to what they achieved within their technological boundaries at the time”. If they’re still good, that’s because they have an absolutely stellar story.

You probably find most literary novels incredibly boring too.

Crime and Punishment, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Lord of the Rings, 1984, The Great Gatsby, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Odyssey (by Homer) are all books that I enjoyed that are varying degrees of old. I think comparing old vs new books is fundamentally different from old vs new movies. Let’s bring in another form of media since you brought up books: what about video games? Most gamers have some cutoff before which they either generally don’t play games older than that or they do but wouldn’t call any of them “greatest of all time.” This is not a deliberate decision, but a product of revealed preference. Even then, newest doesn’t mean good.

I think Morrowind, Ocarina of Time, and FF7 are GOATed, but I also don’t go out of my way to play older 2D games and certainly would never call them the greatest. On top of that, I have to admit that the games I mentioned are less enjoyable today than they were back then, and are on the same level as other 10/10s that I played in more recent times.

The medium by which books are conveyed hasn’t really changed meaningfully (holding fixed what is being written about). They’re still words. That’s not true of movies and video games.

I can respect this. There is no problem in saying that Citizen Kane is a boring movie as a matter of personal opinion based on personal preferences in style and technical requirements. Ocarina of Time, which you mention and is often considered the best game of all time, isn't a game I particularly enjoy despite recognizing its many qualities. I simply don't like that type of game very much.

> The medium by which books are conveyed hasn’t really changed meaningfully (holding fixed what is being written about). They’re still words. That’s not true of movies and video games.

Movies are still a lot of still images shown fast enough to give the impression of movement. Video games are still interactive electronic entertainment.

'Old' books, movies and video games can have just as much to offer as anything created recently.

I was going to expand on this point. “Moving images” abstracts away a lot of large improvements in both the technology for producing and for consuming movies. Same with “interactive electronic entertainment” for video games. And the more limited technology in 1941 placed constraints on storytelling such that, if Citizen Kane was made today instead of 1941, just with better resolution and color (but the same shots, same dialogue, same story), it probably wouldn’t even be in consideration for GOAT by most movie critics.

In contrast if LOTR (the book series) was released today instead of 1954-1955, it would have a serious chance at being a mega best seller. It’s such a good read independent of its influence on subsequent fantasy novels.

And don't you dare even think that a fun or funny movie is high art. Why does comedy always gets the shaft?

Jacques Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton regularly feature in these kind of lists. Plus Singing in the Rain, Annie Hall, and Nouvelle Vague films that are full of jokes. Critics have always viewed comedy and high art as compatible, so I don't know what you are complaining about.

Aside from Buster Keaton's stunts lot of that is just early filming of vaudeville. Little of it was new and viewer would have been familiar with most of it from the stage. The later stuff dips it's toes in to comedy but barely gets wet. Take your examples of Singing in the Rain and Annie Hall, sure there is some comedy in both films but that is not the point of the film.

No Brooks, no Python, it's hard to take those lists seriously...

To claim that Annie Hall has just “some comedy” but does not have the point of being comedic, is bizarre. The very structure of the film is a series of gags. Woody Allen’s initial career was in comedy and in the 1970s he was still regarded mainly as a comedian. Singing in the Rain is categorized as a comedy, and what is Tati if not comedic?

Seems to be that just because these lists lack the comedy that you personally enjoy, you do a no-true-scotsman to simply deny the presence of comedy on them.

It's been a while since I seen Anne Hall but I remember to be more of romantic comedy with emphasis on the romance and characters than the jokes as opposed to a film like Sleeper that is almost a pure string of gags. Take a good look at the linked to list. Out of 250 movies, how many are anything close to pure comedies? Certainly exceptions exist but at 20 to 1, 30 to 1 I think my point stands, comedy gets the shaft...

It's always nice to see a list which includes movies I haven't watched or heard of. Alas I suspect many are hard to find now, the streaming services don't show much interest in picking up the classics.

My sub-list:

Film I'm pleasantly surprised to see in the top 10: Mulholland Dr.

Film I'm not going to complain about: 2001. It's impact can't be denied even if the last bit drags

Film I'm happy to see recognized: Yi Yi

Films I found underwhelming:

-- Melancholia

-- Tree of Life

Films I'd forgotten about that I now have to watch again:

-- Dr. Strangelove

-- Playtime

-- Yi Yi

-- 8 1/2

Film I would have ranked higher: The Third Man

Film I would have ranked higher, for being a cultural touchstone: Twelve Angry Men.

Mad Max Fury Road?

Also, heavily biased towards the 20s-50s

Edit: more detail, 35/250 films are from the past 25 years, from 1998 to now. Less than 1/7 of films from over 1/5 of the entire history of film?

And then the consistant bias of impact to the industry vs actual filmic value... this isn't supposed to be a list of the 250 most impactful films... I've seen a few of these older films from the 20s or 30s. For sure, they were developing the language of film and are absolutely key to film history. But are you really going to say they stand up to films made in recent years with a fully mature vocabulary?

This is such a common occurrence on lists like this, they might as well be called "250 films you will probably watch in film studies class"

Another edit: I counted 42 films from the 25 year period from 1920-1945

Fury Road absolutely belongs on the list.

Alright I'll take that comment back, it is pretty good and I see other films of the same tier on this list.

I still think this list lacks recent films.

Explain to me why Fury Road belongs on that list? I personally found it one of the singular worst most disappointing films I have ever seen.

In my opinion Mad Max was a master piece of exploitation cinema and the most realistic of the bunch.

The Road Warrior pushed it a bit further and was at least plausible. I think it's the best of the series and one of my favorite movies of all time.

Beyond the Thunderdome is tough. They destroyed the Interceptor early and Miller seems to not understand the importance of a car as a character. I think reusing the actor from The Road Warrior in a different roll was a confusing mistake and some parts were pushed to the edge of silly. On the other hand, the homage to Lord of the Flies was beautifully done and somewhat made up for the other deficiencies.

Fury Road was a completely implausible comic book that delved into the silly to a ridiculous degree. But even worse, it was not a Mad Max movie other than it copied The Road Warrior in much the same way the 7-9 star wars sequels copied Star Wars.

Edit: I will also say that after seeing the film I was shocked it was Miller. I assumed it had been passed off to some hack and was made purely for the benjamins.

The chase in mad max furry road: your eyes are always where they are supposed to be, even if it the scenes are total confusing. The best example is the part with the motorcycles.

You might rewatch it with this idea in mind. It is not great storywise but it is greatly done in this regard

Mad Max "Furry" Road now lives in my imagination.

I would like it gone.

I think that Fury Road is a great example of purely visual storytelling.

As for the Mad Max franchise, I think of it (I can’t remember where I first saw this idea) as the same legend retold over multiple generations of oral storytellers. So the world gets less and less detailed and the characters change with each retelling.

That’s why I see it differently than I see Star Wars 7 & 9 (I loved 8 though).

You're very much missing the visual artistry of the movie, and focusing too much on literal story telling. You can do that if you like, but the visual aspects are why this movie belongs on this list.

One way to approach film making is to see it as the art of moving objects in 3d space, then using a camera to transpose those objects onto a 2d plane. Take the resultant series of images, and splice / edit them into a feature film. Fury Road is a masterclass in this craft. Every frame a painting and all that. Every edit is perfect.

Who decides what "filmic value" is? I've seen some of the older films, and I feel they hold up pretty well; The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927, #21 on this list) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, not listed here) are some of my favourite films, and personally I'd say they really do stand up well today.

Some people might also find these finds incredibly boring, and that's fine. In the end this is nothing more than "films the 1,639 people who voted liked the best". I bet everyone can name some films they feel should be on that list, or has seen films on the list that they disliked; for example I felt Citizen Kane was profoundly boring. That's okay as not everyone's movie taste is the same, just as people's tastes in music or food differ.

Years ago I watched The Childhood of a Leader in the theatre with my then-girlfriend. I thought it was pretty good. I could see her shifting in her seat and sighing heavily, and her dislike of it was palpable even in the dark without any words spoken. She hated it and would have walked out if it wasn't for me. My rating would be 8/10 or so; hers 1/10. Average rating: 4.5, which is not too far off the 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyhow, my point is: I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss people's tastes.

> But are you really going to say they stand up to films made in recent years with a fully mature vocabulary?

Sure! I've seen 19 of the 42 films you counted as being made between 1920-1945, and I'd say the overwhelming majority of those 19 definitely still hold up. Are you seriously telling me Double Indemnity (1944), City Lights (1931), Duck Soup (1933), and Casablanca (1942) are only fit for consumption by film students? If so, I'd say "lucky film students!"

I am telling you that Metropolis for always being cited as one of the greatest films of all time is not actually that good, although very very influential.

> Edit: more detail, 35/250 films are from the past 25 years, from 1998 to now. Less than 1/7 of films from over 1/5 of the entire history of film?

To be fair, the industry made about a billion superhero movies and 10 fast and furious and 3 (three!!!) hobbit movies in that time.

Random variation is random. It looks like clusters.

If there were an even spread across the decades, you'd be right to suspect selection by other than aesthetic or innovation criteria.

As a counterpoint, you may want to consider the IMDB top 250:

https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/

There are some common titles, but they remain quite different lists.

It's all subjective, and these lists make for fun discussion.

IMDb's ratings have been consistently gamed for about 2 decades now making their charts almost worthless (for me).

Notable omissions:

    - Schindler's list
    - The Pianist
    - La vita è bella

Schindler's list is pathetic. It was a good movie until the scene where Schindler leeds the people with a flag in its hands. This was desgusting.

La vita e bella - i have to rewatch it. My impression (20 years ago) was that tried to see some tragic moments with a comical note.

Pianist is ok.

Some great movies and some I still need to see... but there are four David Lynch movies, including two Twin Peaks movies spin-off movies, but not a single Coen Brothers? And Dr. Strangelove is tied with Mad Max: Fury Road?

I couldn't find an explanation for why a TV series (Twin Peaks: The Return) is in a Greatest Films of All Time list.

In any case, that's a handy reference list for things to watch.

The Godfather is timeless. More than 50 years since its debut, it's still as beautiful and tragic and captivating as ever.

"Pink Flamingos" scored surprisingly high.

I can't take it seriously when "Back to the Future" and "The Princess Bride" are not mentioned.

Big Lebowski a glaring omission.

Rohmer deserves more than one film, Green Ray is not even his best.

Good that "Come and See" is relatively high.

Certainly the best (anti)war film.

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is missing.

2001, which I like, is not the 6th best film of all time. It’s 3/4ths of a really good movie. The rest is psychedelic nonsense.

I could say anything listed at the top is imperfect, but that's not the impediment to greatness.

A large subset of 1600 critics and 480 directors strongly disagree with you.

If you click on the Directors top 100, it's number one! (deservedly so)

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