Listomania

It’s 2022, which means the Sight and Sound decennial greatest movies list will be updated again. Such lists are useful and silly in equal measure, it seems, although this one is perhaps the most useful and least silly? There are other lists alongside the big one (the critic’s list), such as a couple of lists by directors. The Big List changes each time, as a decade’s worth of scholarship and opinion plays out; in 2012, Vertigo displaced Citizen Kane from the top spot it had occupied since 1962.

The top ten is not usually as interesting as the next ten or the the whole top one hundred, as we see which films are the movers and shakers on the list. It’s more interesting to see which 21st century films are beginning to creep into the top 100 than to note that Kane is still in the top ten. (In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Drive and Yi Yi are three that have begun to appear from 2000 and 2001, but there’s nothing more recent yet.) It’s also interesting to note which films have appeared in the top ten that drop out of that rank.

What I was thinking about was directors—who are the best directors and what does it mean if we don’t see their films in the top ten?

In 1972, Ingmar Bergman had two films in the top ten, Persona and Wild Strawberries. This is the only time any of his films appear in the top ten. Bergman directed 60+ films; Orson Welles, for example, directed 12, depending how you reckon these things. Which is the greater director? There’s no question that Bergman directed more good films than Welles, maybe even more great ones.

Hitchcock directed 50+ films, four of them in S&S Top 100 (as of 2012). Welles has three on the list. Bergman has four on the list. Welles tops the director list (both the critic’s and the director’s) the last time S&S asked, in 2002. Bergman appears on the director’s directors list, the last time he appeared in a top ten. Should those with giant filmographies be given more points? or something? Having a giant filmography is no guarantee of top ten (or top 100) greatness, of course, but if you make 30 B+ movies and five A to A+ movies, aren’t you a better filmmaker than the guy who made 6 A+ movies total?

It’s an insignificant question, of course, an idle question. The “best” director doesn’t matter, really. But it’s interesting to see how their fortunes change—The Godfather 1 and 2 were number four in 2002, then out of the top ten in 2012.