Jurd: The 10 Greatest Movies of All Time

The British film magazine Sight and Sound conducts a famous decennial poll, among movie critics and directors, for the Greatest Films of All Time. The first poll was in 1952, and the next one will be released later this year. It’s probably the most prestigious and respected of all such lists, and is one of the places that beatified Citizen Kane as the greatest of all movies. (Famously, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo knocked Citizen Kane from its Number One spot in the last poll, in 2012.)

No one asked me for my vote for the Top Ten, but, to observe the 2022 poll, I’m giving my own choices here. The task turned out to be inordinately tricky; there’s a host of inspiring and transformative artists that I would want represented in a list of the best that cinema has to offer – far more than ten little slots can accommodate. For the most part, I’ve resorted to whittling down a list of my top directors, and selecting one movie to represent each; it’s not a perfect system, and I’m just as unhappy about what needs to be left out as what I’m proud to include. But what would be a better number? Would we be happier if we could list twenty movies? We’d still have to cut out a few greats. Would fifty do, or would that start to make the selection a little less special? (Forget about ranking; there’s no idea for grading movies in individual slots that has ever made sense to me.)

Do please send me your own Top Ten selections; I’m very interested to see and publish as many individual lists as I can.

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940). Chaplin is the Mozart of cinema: a name that has come to stand for the artform itself, accessible and delightful to audiences worldwide, a genius innovator of deceptive simplicity, an artist of both tender human emotion and strong political stances, and a grand spirit of supreme grace. All of his feature films make an alternative Top Eleven list in my head. To single out one, in The Great Dictator, at a moment of tremendous historical import, Chaplin steps out from behind any character to deliver his own personal exhortation to courage and decency for the ages.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975). Jeanne Dielman (released before Akerman was 25 years old) is not only a revelation in form and style, not only a groundbreaking political work, but a shattering declaration of the spirit, a new way of observing and respecting a person and their life. Watching the movie showed me a new way of watching movies, too; it may only run for three hours of viewing, but it resounds for years.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011). Before I saw The Tree of Life, I had no idea of the possibility of passing on deeply subjective and emotional experiences, as well as a distinctive and personal perspective on the world at large, through mere images and sounds. Terrence Malick mines his own rich personal life for movies of such stunning originality and sublime beauty, they have changed the very way I look at the world around me.

Yeelen (Souleyman Cissé, 1987). Cissé conjures astonishing images, to match his story of magic and sorcerers with the magic of his movie-making. The story is taken from ancient legend, where magic takes on political power, and apocalyptic proportions. The plot is circular, as in some African tales, and the movie suggests many of the great possibilities that exist for a world beyond Western cinema.

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960). The critics at the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma in the 50s first turned moviegoing on its head, with their strongly political writing about just what was or wasn’t valuable to the cinema, then became the directors of what is called the French New Wave, who turned movie-making on its head by putting their ideas into practice and on the screen. Breathless is among the earliest (and most invigorating) examples of the movement, and has proved more artistically influential than any debut ever since.

Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980). If Chaplin is Mozart, then Scorsese is Brahms, the perceptive scholar and reverent classicist who transforms the forms of the past with his own radical artistry – an artistry that looks forward to future visions of the artform, and that reaches inward to the fiercest and most intimate of his own emotions. In Raging Bull, the painful, searing, and tragic view that Scorsese takes of his subject feels like a self-flagellation as much as a bio-pic.

Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, 2004). Sembène worked his whole life to build an insightful and assertive culture for West Africa, as it emerged from colonial oppression. The women in Moolaadé face a different oppression, but Sembene deftly evokes the interweaving histories of local tradition, Islamic transformation, and French colonialism in his setting of this Burkinabè masterpiece.

The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007). To me, the subject of Wes Anderson's first handful of movies always seemed to be himself, and the difficulties and dangers of a life lived following adventure and passion, while neglecting relationships and connection. In The Darjeeling Limited, his exquisitely controlled style met with fiercely uncontrollable emotions, and made a grand and unforgettable high-point in this thematic thread.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927). Is this the most beautiful of all movies? Murnau created images of grandeur and exalted rapture that have remained unsurpassed for 100 years. His justly lauded sequences are not only lyrical and picturesque, but so tenderly, poignantly marked by deep emotion that the images seem to sing out a music all their own.

Othello (Orson Welles, 1951). As great as Citizen Kane is, it’s only the beginning of an unparalleled career. Othello was as difficult a production for Welles as any other, and it shows in what would today be considered a very roughshod and sloppy finish. But the heart-piercing essence of Shakespeare is amplified by sublime images and sounds and, above all, the Great Soul of the man born to play tragic heroes.

You can see others’ Top Ten lists here.