FWIW, I heard of Jeanne Dielman a little under 10 years ago, when looking at the 2012 poll results. It was on Hulu at the time, because that was the era when Hulu had the criterion collection. There were even ads promoting the criterion collection on hulu. I remember someone I knew at the time, who wasn't a cinephile asking me, "what is the criterion collection," because they had presumably seen the ads on Hulu.
Coincidentally, that's also when I first heard of Pather Panchali. Seeing as how I was more impressed with that one and it was was from India (a Bengali film specifically), country where my film knowledge is, to put it politely, "shit," (tbh, it still is. btw, you should watch The Night of Knowing Nothing while it's (hopefully) still on the Criterion Channel) it seemed the more embarrassing point of ignorance for me. Due to a sequence of studio fires (I think in the 90s), that one was legitimately more difficult to track down until it got a restoration in the early part of the past decade.
But also, you should watch Pather Panchali, if you haven't seen it (it's been S&S top 10 before, so maybe you have) - and also the whole trilogy.
I'm trying to make up, apparently not ringing the Messiah of Evil bell louder 10 years ago, right now. You should make note of it.
I never did use Hulu so I missed that. But I guess the Criterion having a movie and the movie being "well known" are two very different things. I just looked at Criterion the other day and they have lots of movies that are probably good that I've never heard of.
People are countering what I'm saying with "no, it (
Dielman and
Cleo) was always around, this is rigged", but I tell ya, I have been on movie forums for 16 years as of October-passed, and maybe I saw
Varda's name mixed in late with some other French directors of the 60s, and sure, maybe there was
a thread
once a long time ago on a lost-to-time forum about
Cleo, and who knows, maybe someone had even mentioned Dielman somewhere in all that, but most of the movies on previous lists have been talked about ad nauseam, way past the point where there is anything left to say.
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire? Obviously good enough to get a shit-ton of people to vote for it so why was there almost no talk about it anywhere? Especially when everyone I know personally who did see it (on my recommendation), reported back that it was "amazing"? I don't think it's because it wasn't a good movie. If there is a conspiracy afoot at
Sight & Sound, I think it is probably that the breadth of voices heard was far too narrow for far too long, not that including more voices was the conspiracy to woke-up their list. (Oh shit, I said what everyone's been dancing around to keep Yoda at bay!) If anything, including more voices creates
less (perceived) collusion, not more.
What I'm hearing, and I'm talking about me, through my ears, just the way it sounds to me, is that a lot of people just don't like change. I mean,
Vertigo moving from 2 to 1 a decade ago was this huge freaking deal. So yeah, more voices included in the process resulting in a film by a woman about a woman that a lot of men may be bored with if they can't focus on the artistry of the film shooting up to No.1 can feel like too much change for some people, I get it. But that's what it sounds like to me. People angry about too much change and looking for a boogeyman to blame it on, in this case, poor Jeanne Dielman.
One other thing. The recency of films has
never mattered in this poll, so it shouldn't matter now.
L'Avventura debuted as the No.2 film of all-time when it was just 2 years old.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour was 3 years old when it debuted on the list at No.11 all time.
Marienbad had been out just over a year when it debuted at 26.
So there is no conversation to be had about recency and that I really don't want to hear.
Finally, I do think
Get Out deserves to be on the list, low, sure, but on the list (I wouldn't be mad if it was 110 or 120 either) and I honestly feel like people who can't see that haven't watched the film honestly or need to re-watch it or maybe make sure that their television works right or something. It's an amazing film.
All of that was just about your first paragraph.
No, I'm kidding I'm really just responding to the general tenor I'm hearing around here, which I had really hoped would not be what I heard when I came here, but I knew it was possible and it is what it is. It's disappointing, but then again, I expect if the list was all old films that were all pre-approved by the cork-sniffingest of our constituency here, there would still be outrage and argument over the order or how could such and such possibly be left off or whatever. That's just the way the cookie crumbles I suppose.
On
Pather Panchali, the one thing I will say about that is that that is a film that has been talked about nearly to death. And has been for a long time. I don't know shit about Indian cinema either but I've heard that movie talked about practically as much as any non-Hollywood film, it has been championed by really famous people very loudly (Scorsese never shuts up about it and claims that he watches it every time he gets ready to make a film to remind him how to make a film) and I've even seen a short documentary about Ray's filmmaking and another about Pather Panchali specifically. So I don't think it's a great example of an obscure film that turned out to be a masterpiece and the foil for Jeanne.