For Your Consideration: Cinema Revival

Cinema Revival is right around the corner. It’s an enjoyable privilege to assemble this lineup every year, and it was made more interesting for me with the anticipation for one of the film world’s once-a-decade galvanizing events.

Every 10 years, the British Film Institute’s magazine Sight & Sound conducts a worldwide poll of filmmakers and “critics” (historians, curators, actual critics) to produce two lists of the greatest films of all time. In December, the highly anticipated results were published. Mind you, historically, there has not been a substantial amount of turnover from decade to decade. Some films move up, others down. The Godfather (I & II) (1972 & 1974) made the critics’ list for the first time in 2002, for example. But films such as Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), and Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) regularly make the top ten. 

In 2012, Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) finally knocked Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) from the top spot in the critics’ poll, where it had appeared in every poll since 1962. In the directors’ poll, Tokyo Story finished at the top for the first time. As firmly entrenched as Citizen Kane had been (for years, many almost reflexively referred to it as “the greatest film ever made”), I don’t recall much surprise at the results, and any arguments about the results that do materialize are usually reserved for the critics’ list.

So, when Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) finished at the top in the 2022 critics’ poll, well, a lot of (mostly white, older, male) people were not happy with the results. I should note that Sight & Sound has made a great effort to expand the ranks of those voting in both polls in the last two cycles. There are more people voting—younger people, more women, more people of color, plus a better reflection of geographic diversity—than ever before, and obviously, this impacts the results (my colleague Chris Stults and I have participated in the last two polls). To some (including some very prominent filmmakers), the poll is now watered down. Some even claimed that the 2022 poll was fixed to advance some sort of woke agenda (it’s fascinating to hear this claim coming out of some people’s mouths). I don’t recall anyone making these claims when Vertigo topped Citizen Kane, but Jeanne Dielman’s place at number one sure inspired a lot of handwringing, even vitriol.

Many—maybe even most—were thrilled by the results, viewing it as a shakeup or interrogation of the canon or even the need for a canon, or as a welcome distillation of a more diverse group of voices. The best rebuttal to all the pouters that I read was by critic, programmer, and curatorial director at the Criterion Collection, Ashley Clark.

On December 10, in his Substack Keeping Up, Clark wrote (with just a wee bit of sarcasm):

“I think we can all agree that something fishy has gone on. I did some detective work, and could find absolutely no good reason that Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles would finish on top of the poll this year, other than: it hasn’t really been that accessible for that long, having only made its debut on US DVD three years before the 2012 poll, where it finished in 36th place (a retrospectively exponential leap from its 73rd place ranking in 2002), and made its Blu-ray debut, between polls, in 2017; Akerman passed away tragically in 2015, prompting a major surge of interest in her work, which struck a chord with a new generation of cinephiles fascinated by her skillful interweaving of themes of work, gender, feminism, queerness, labor, and memory; there were major international theatrical retrospectives of Akerman’s work following her death (I only saw Jeanne Dielman for the first time in 2016); there has been a significant, sustained and deeply serious questioning of the idea of the canon formation in the past few years (yes I’m taking a tiny little bit of credit here); and Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, and inspired piece of filmmaking. Apart from that, I’ve got nothing. It’s a mystery.”

I cite the kerfuffle over Jeanne Dielman to illustrate one of the most important impacts that film restoration and preservation can have on the film culture. Films can’t be evaluated or reevaluated if they are not available. A new restoration brings new attention to a film and its maker. Older generations might remember a given film, but memories and even the reputation of that film might fade over time, to the point that it becomes unknown to the current generation. I would argue that some of the films in the top 100 of the 2022 and/or 2012 lists are there because of recent restorations: Véra Chytilova’s Daisies (1966), Barabara Loden’s Wanda (1970), and Ousmane Sembé’s Black Girl (1965), to name just three, and I think cases could be made for more “canonical” films such as Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) and Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967), which delighted a new generation beginning in 2004 as a 70mm print toured around the country including three packed shows at the Wex.