Way back when Perry and I started We’re Watching Here in early 2019, he mentioned one day wanting to do an episode where we discuss the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Top 100.
For the uninitiated, Sight and Sound is a poll conducted by the BFI every 10 years, where they ask film critics and directors to vote on their 20 favorite films. Because the poll is conducted every year that ends in a 2, the last one was 2012 and then polls went out this summer, and I believe the results will be published next month. The last time the BFI released its list, Vertigo overtook long-time favorite Citizen Kane as the choice for best film ever made.
Perry and I are not asked to participate in Sight and Sound. But that’s okay; we have our own outlet. And we each came up with 10 choices of our own that we believe should be placed on the list. Spoiler alert: while Vertigo and Citizen Kane topped the last list, only one of those titles appeared on either of our lists.
As I told Perry at the start of recording this episode, this was the hardest list I’ve ever compiled, and I’m sure it’s not the list that I need to have. Picking the 10 best movies ever made is a much different task than picking your 10 favorite movies, and much of my picks were also colored by not having seen some legitimately great films in decades (the reason there’s no Kurosawa, Bicycle Thieves or picks from the French New Wave are because I haven’t revisited most of those since college). But I think the result is a list of 20(-ish; there was some overlap) movies that we love and had a great time talking about.
One day, I really want to sit down, re-visit some of the films that I haven’t seen in ages, and try to think about what my list of the best films ever made might truly be. So, this list could be in flux. Maybe we’ll discuss it again in 2033.
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