re: Sight and Sound poll OUT -- Vertigo #1

Now this is a list:

Andrew Lampert

Artists and Models 1955 Frank Tashlin (Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis -- personally I prefer the other Tashlin-M&L film, Hollywood or Bust)
Bimbo's Initiation 1931 Dave Fleischer (a Betty Boop cartoon)
Bleu Shut 1970 Robert Nelson
Head 1968 Bob Rafelson (The Monkees movie!!!)
Kitch's Last Meal 1978 Carolee Schneemann
Lancelot Du Lac 1974 Robert Bresson
Long Goodbye, The 1973 Robert Altman
NYC Street Scenes and Noises Fox Movietone News
Portrait of Jason 1967 Shirley Clarke
Zero de Conduite 1933 Jean Vigo


Lampert's Comments

"Feel free to laugh. In no way do I expect you to accept this canonical compendium at face value. My list was not made solely to champion the little guy or to represent the ‘other’. It’s more a record of past experience and current feelings rather than an objective attempt to stratify history. If you tell me that one of these films is playing, chances are I’ll be there. Without a doubt I will emphatically insist that you must go. A few of my picks are shorts, and one title (NYC Street Scenes) is raw footage from a newsreel. Feature length is in large part a ruse: a film is over when it is finished, whether counted in seconds or hours. The classics endure (Touch of Evil being far better than Citizen Kane) and will out rule my selections, which is OK. I don’t necessarily suggest that my choices are better, but for me, writing today, they are the best."

It's about more than Vertigo and Citizen Kane. Nick James, the guy in the charge of the S&S poll, made it clear last time (2002) that he did not want Kane to win, but it still won. This time he took measures to knock it off, adding a lot more voters -- younger voters.

The object was to get PC/inclusive -- newer films, but also foreign films.

I saw this online:

In 2002, the point (as Nick James made clear in his essay that accompanied the poll) was to try to find "new" perspectives... that's why, a few months later, they polled the same people to find "The Best of the Decade" (1992-2002) in a special poll, because they DID think that, by eliminating the "old" people, they would get a bunch of people who would vote for newer films...

But the 2002 poll turned out to be not as "radical" a change as Nick James had hoped (and he acknowledged this).

Yet the old films still won. There's no film on the list more recent than 1968, and only three films from the color era. If anything, they could use some more radicals to make the list less stodgy.

Hey thanks for linking those movies. They are on the agenda to watch hopefully this coming up week.