The history of cinema has produced hundreds of masterpieces, but it is certainly legitimate to object that the ranking of the “best films” says more about the way we talk and think about cinema and art than about the films themselves. The most famous and representative list of this genre is that of the British film magazine “Sight and Sound”, first published in 1952. Every ten years since then, critics have been asked which films they considered the best. Not surprisingly, a rigid canon has emerged, with little movement, especially at the top. Until 2022 only three films made it to number 1: Vittorio de Sica’s neo-realistic film about the starving in post-war Italy “bike thieves” 1952. Replaced in 1962 by Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane‘, a formally enormously imaginative negotiation of American myths and dreams. It wasn’t until 2012 that Alfred hit Hitchcocks “Vertigo” In Welles’ From the Throne, the time was apparently ripe for a film about psychotic compulsions and deep-seated fears.
At the end of 2022 there was a small revolution. The significantly higher number (about 1,600) of respondents worldwide shook the canon violently. There are suddenly many more female directors: eleven films in the new Top 100 were directed by women (in 2012 there were two). Additionally, the number of black filmmakers (from the United States and Africa) went from one to seven. While Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull”, David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” or Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather II” dropped out of the top 100, Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a young woman on fire” (30th) and Barry entered Jenkins’ “Moonlight” (60°) on. The canon is definitely more diverse now. Whether it has automatically improved as a result has already become the subject of debates devoted to the question of whether art is now primarily evaluated on the basis of identity-political criteria.
But the biggest surprise was the change at the top. Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman” was already placed in 2012, but it was a small feeling that a basically unknown film, which after all is known only to hardcore filmmakers and film students, managed to place ahead of Hitchcock, Welles and similar.
It will hopefully bring renewed attention to the 1975 film by Belgian artist and director Akerman (1950-2015). The film, which Akerman directed at age 25 (!), is currently available on DVD in the US and copies are circulating on the Internet. Akerman co-created “Joan Dielmann” a film in which almost nothing actually happens. Follow the daily life of widowed housewife Jeanne, who lives with her son in an apartment in Brussels. For minutes, the unmoving camera remains on actress Delphine Seyrig, who washes dishes, cooks, makes beds, dusts and shops, and earns a living as a prostitute.
