Move Over, Vertigo: There’s a New Greatest Movie of All Time

The list of the greatest films of all time has a new champion, and for the first time ever a woman stands on top. The British film magazine Sight and Sound released the results from their celebrated once-a-decade poll of the global film community today, and the new winner is Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a 1975 drama about a widowed housewife by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. 

Jeanne Dielman makes its first appearance in the top ten this year, after finishing 36th (tying with Sátántangó and Metropolis) on the 2012 list. It displaced Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (which finished second) from the top spot that it first claimed in the 2012 poll. In third place was Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which once enjoyed a 50-year streak at the top of the Sight and Sound list, ranking first in every poll from 1962 to 2002 before finally being supplanted by Vertigo in 2012. 

As might be expected given overall trends in the critical community, this year’s list is far more diverse than any since the Sight and Sound poll began in 1952. Only two films by women and one film by a Black director made the top 100 in 2012; this year’s top 100 featured 11 films by women, including two in the top ten—Jeanne Dielman and Beau Travail, the latter by Claire Denis. Other films by women on this year’s list include Portrait of a Lady on Fire (number 30), The Piano (50), Daughters of the Dust (60), and two films by Agnès Varda (including Cleo From 5 to 7 at number 14). 

Seven films by Black filmmakers made the top 100, beginning with Spike Lee’s seminal Do the Right Thing at number 24 (which was, amazingly, its first appearance in the top 100). Beloved recent films like Moonlight and Get Out also made their inaugural appearances on the list, at numbers 60 and 95, respectively. 

Sight and Sound conducts their once-a-decade poll by asking prominent film critics, academics, and programmers from all over the world to list their personal top ten films (ranking doesn’t matter). This year’s poll had by far the most voters ever, with the tally nearly doubling from 846 voters in 2012 to 1,639 voters this year. 1939’s The Rules of the Game was the only film that had made the top ten in every poll, but that streak came to an end this year with Rules finishing 13th.

In 1992 Sight and Sound also began a second poll of the world’s prominent directors, and although the critics poll is generally the more popular one—or at least the more cited one—the directors poll is equally fascinating to pore over. 480 directors voted this year (up from 358 in 2012), and they selected Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as the greatest film of all time, with Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Tokyo Story, and Jeanne Dielman rounding out the top five. 

Both the critics poll and the directors poll featured films from the 21st century in their top ten for the first time, with In the Mood for Love making the top ten of both lists and Mulholland Dr. also placing in the top ten of the critics list (it finished merely 22nd in the directors poll). Other films from the 21st century to appear on one or both of this year’s lists include Spirited Away, Parasite, A Separation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the aforementioned Moonlight, Get Out, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Although both the critics and directors polls were revealed today, that’s only the beginning of Sight and Sound’s rollout (and of the arguing on film Twitter). The ballots of every single voter will be available to view on Sight and Sound’s website later this month.