Since 1952, and at ten-year intervals, the British magazine Sight
Supported by its status as a feminist plea with a prestigious firm, and for nothing else, this assault on the heavens by Jeanne Dielman is the most striking of the nonsense offered by this list of the supposed hundred best films, but by no means the only one. . In the seventh position of this new and curious ranking appears Beau travail, by Claire Denis. A good film, of course, directed by one of the most brilliant voices on the current scene. But from there to placing it in the top ten historical average, I think, an abyss. The prominent place of the recent Portrait of a Woman on Fire, by Céline Sciamma, seems exaggerated, a film too full of itself. And what to say about the fact that Cléo from 5 to 7, by Agnès Varda, looms ahead of any other nouvelle vague title, as if Varda had been more influential than Godard, Truffaut or Resnais.
Arrived here, the reader may think that I am a misogynist, allergic to films made by women or something similar. But those who know me well know that this is not the case. For years, and in these same pages, I have praised numerous films directed by women and I have vindicated forgotten pioneers of cinema. I firmly believe that the future is a woman, also filmically speaking. But it is a duty to remember that the history of cinema is what it is, and not what it should have been if it could have been developed in more just and egalitarian societies. Therefore, one must face the facts and, within the inevitable subjectivity, examine the past with the greatest possible equanimity. On this occasion, it is clear that sociology has won the game over the cinema itself.
In an inclusive and demanding key, the large representation of films by black filmmakers must also be read, which leads to the presence of works as debatable as the lurid Do What You Must, by Spike Lee, the overrated Moonlight, by Barry Jenkins, or the somewhat Jordan Peele’s quirky Get Out, to name just a few examples. The Asian quota is also large, in which the number and type of titles chosen clash not so much, with an abundance of recent works (including the oversized Parasites) that goes to the detriment of hitherto untouchable classics.
Speaking of classics: among the illustrious of classicism and the sponsors of modernity, the ones that come out best off are Hitchcock, with four films mentioned, and Kubrick, with three. Fellini obtained two recognitions, while Welles, Renoir, Ford, Bergman, Antonioni or Visconti received only one mention. Although the most bloody thing is the list of absentees: Lubitsch, Hawks, Kazan, Griffith, Lean, Mankiewicz, Vidor, etc. Nor does Buñuel appear, too iconoclastic for such a thin-skinned age, and, of course, Polanski is ignored, Bertolucci or Allen, gold materials for the culture of cancellation.
Faced with such a succession of nonsense, two conjectures are possible: either international criticism has lost its way, or the survey has been somewhat manipulated in pursuit of the inclusive desire and the desire to look good with everyone and not hurt certain sensibilities. Since I cannot prove the latter, I will speculate that perhaps the new generations of critics are unaware of the past or do not know how to appreciate it, or that knowledge of the genealogical lines that trace the evolution of cinema is scarce, or that the art of the staging and rise of series and platforms encourages a mere consumption of content (horrifying expression when it comes to talking about cinema). Be that as it may, a basic notion should prevail: the history of cinema can be rewritten, of course it can, but always in a well-founded way, never under the dictates of political correctness.
