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If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

Preferential classification in the arts, based on arbitrary choice or empirical study, has a tendency to beget among the chattering classes some sort of mass hysteria.

L'Avventura

Preferential classification in the arts, based on arbitrary choice or empirical study, has a tendency to beget among the chattering classes some sort of mass hysteria. Cinephiles are no exception: Just look at the almost two-month-long back-and-forth fostered by year-end lists. But the pandemonium that starts every December doesn’t even compare with the brouhaha surrounding a “best films of all time” poll. Since the Sight & Sound list is the most venerable one of them all, I expect the conversation to be exceptionally bombastic.

All lists such as the one below are arbitrary (I am taking part in three separate polls this year, and there are differences on all of them based on the mood I was in when I collated the fuckers), but a form of catharsis is available especially when such a generalized survey is conducted among a rather large group of critics. It tends to shut people up, at least after the first few months of finger wagging, soap-box climbing, and pitchfork carrying. Even if one agrees with the eventual outcome or not, the result is what it is. It’s final. It won’t be disputed. And there’s nothing a critic—or a vocal group of them—could do about it. No amount of #TeamTokyoStory-ing will carry your beloved Ozu to the top of the list, matey. The results are in. It’s done. Tough titties if you don’t like it.

A sense of juvenile iconoclasm, especially among critics, seems to be the second side effect of any all-time top 10 poll, and, in the words of Lt. Aldo Raine, that I can’t abide. Among a number of people I talked to about the Sight & Sound poll, a key question was whether Citizen Kane would top the list again. Nick James, the editor of Sight & Sound, and who’s never placed Citizen Kane on his own lists, was recently quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying, “I do think it will be great for younger critics if they didn’t have to do due obeisance to Welles, who’s been at the center of an industry of admiration for a long time,” adding “If Citizen Kane doesn’t win, part of me will want to leap for joy—and the other part of me will be slightly sad for Orson.” Well, isn’t that majestically gracious and benevolent of James? I remember when I read The Brothers Karamazov in high school and detested it, shedding a sad, lonely tear for old Fyodor.

Maybe I’m just a spoon after a nightshift, but I believe that an approach like this is puerile and senseless. When we reconsider the Western canon, we don’t supplant older works just because of their age. We don’t paint over Dante, Homer, and Vigil in Raphael’s Parnassus and replace them with Eliot, Faulkner, and Nabokov. Disregarding older classics just so that we can keep the art form relevant is foolish. And it’s no different than cultural philistines taking issue with critical choices based on their own lack of judgment. Second guessing the nature of a poll does the complete opposite than cause its universal validation.

Still, these things are important, and the Sight & Sound poll matters the most among them. At least it’s garnered discussion. Because, lord knows, we critic types never discuss things enough.

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If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

10. Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

Nicolas Roeg elegantly weaves themes of loss, inadequacy, and despair in a tender study of agony and depression masquerading as a psychic mystery. Venice, beautifully shot by Anthony B. Richmond, becomes a character of its own, and Pino Donaggio’s haunting score lends an element of impending doom. Something’s amiss, but we just don’t know what. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are perfect as the grieving couple, whose fate seems to be predetermined. Don’t Look Now is just a terribly depressing film. But beautifully so.


If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

9. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)

Because Singin’ in the Rain is joyful and masterful and just plain lovely.


If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

8. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise (Luis Buñuel, 1972)

Episodic yet thematically coherent, Luis Buñuel’s 1972 masterpiece, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, is reminiscent of the master’s older works, but it contains an even more vibrant streak of social commentary—more so than in, say, Tristana. The director is in complete command of the surreal form here, fully conversant with the lessons he must have learnt from André Breton. In a film that is itself like a fever dream, the true meaning emerges during the actual dream sequences where the indelible links between the bourgeoisie, the clergy, the army, and the government are laid bare. There’s a reason these European types were always so damn angry.


If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

7. Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1986)

My ultimate lieblingsfilm’s message is that things end. Yes, endings are sad. But they can hold promise. Once the rot sets in, it’s impossible to revert back to a purer form. As such, Withnail and I’s most improbably touching line comes from the affable dealer Danny: “They’re selling hippie wigs at Woolworth’s. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.” Even though it’s set at the tail end of the ’60s, even though it ostensibly laments the passing of an era, the Bruce Robinson film’s true greatness is that it has a wider scope. It’s a reflection of a universal: giving up, going straight, getting your hair cut, letting go of a childish dream, and becoming a proper human being. And also an elegy for those of us who never quite manage it, I suppose.

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If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

6. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

During his famous 1968 interview with François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock remarked: “I feel it’s tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with Psycho we most definitely achieved this. It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film.” That’s why the film’s as potent today as it was 50 years ago. Regardless of the richness of its themes, or its finely textured nature, it essentially works as sick spectacle. And there’s nothing wrong with that.


If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

5. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Well, Casablanca is just a terribly romantic film, isn’t it? Free-associating now. You have people singing “La Marseillaise” and pissing off Conrad Veidt. There’s also Sydney Greenstreet, like a North African Jabba the Hutt, king of all he surveys and eats. Humphrey Bogart’s little nod to the band. Sam (Dooley Wilson) doing his best to lie, and failing. Ingrid Bergman’s eyes, both when she remembers Paris and when she adores her new lover, facing the Nazi menace with courage. Also Claude Rains in one of the finest performances in the history of film. Michael Curtiz’s assured direction. Max Steiner’s assured score. Ingrid Bergman’s eyes. Oh, I’ve said that before, haven’t I? Well, fuck it…Ingrid Bergman’s eyes.



If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

4. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

The greatest of all great westerns, and a deep, dark, and daunting look at the recesses of America’s foundation. More than that, though, The Searchers is a sprawling epic that takes place over almost a decade—the sort of book adaptation that would be divided into two or three parts these days. The Duke is magnificent, but it’s the terrific chemistry between him and Jeffrey Hunter that propels the film. Ethan and Martin are spiritual ancestors of Riggs and Murtaugh. The Monument Valley locations offer the film an elemental feel, and John Ford, one of the greatest artists in the history of mankind, produces his best and, strangely, most intimate work.



If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

I don’t remember when I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, possibly on Turkish TV in the early ’80s, but I remember when I saw it the way it was meant to be seen: at the Curzon Mayfair in London in, appropriately, 2001. Sat centrally near the front of the theater, I let the screen invade my peripheral vision, and was immersed in the grandeur of Kubrick’s juxtaposition of creation and destruction, and how the two go hand in hand. There are other motifs elegantly weaved throughout the narrative (what is HAL but a modern day Frankenstein’s monster?), but it is the magnificent visuals that carry 2001: A Space Odyssey to the pantheon of the greats.

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If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

2. L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

L’Avventura contains what is possibly my favorite final shot in all of cinema. A dense, involving, mysterious wonder of ur-feminist cinema, the film leaves so many questions unanswered. Where is Anna? Why is Sandro such an asshole? Why does Claudia comfort Sandro in the end? I have my theories, as do you, probably, but those are secondary (even tertiary, maybe) to the general feel of the languid existence of the post-war European petit bourgeois, which Michelangelo Antonioni holds at emphatic contempt. And the scenery is gorgeous. You don’t get to see this sort of existential angst in even the best National Geographic documentaries.



If I Had a Sight & Sound Film Ballot: Ali Arikan’s Top 10 Films of All Time

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Technical bravura aside (and formally, it’s still spectacular), Citizen Kane is so incredibly entertaining. A larger-than-life main character? Check. A genuinely engrossing central mystery? Check. A daring and revealing detective story? Check. I must have seen the film at least 15 times, and various scenes nearing 50, and I can’t really single out a moment that stands out above the others. Every time I think about the film, I tend to concentrate on a different element. Today, it’s Greg Toland’s gothic cinematography and Van Nest Polglase’s unsettling art direction. For a modern-day fable that would turn out to be as prophetic for its creator as it would be analogous to his newspaper-magnate nemesis, the shadows and the light create a dichotomy that empowers the film throughout. To be honest, I really don’t understand why we’re even arguing whether or not this is the best film of all time. Of course it is. Sheesh.


Ali Arikan’s Mother’s Top 10 Films of All Time

I was visiting my parents when I wrote this, and when I told my mum about my assignment, she proceeded to tell me her top 10 of all time…

1. Dr. Zhivago
2. The Godfather
3. Hair
4. Victor/Victoria
5. The Music Lovers
6. Some Like It Hot
7. Broadcast News
8. Two Women
9. Susuz Yaz
10. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof


Ali Arikan’s Mother’s Top 10 Films of All Time

Well, Dad wants to share his all-time top 10 too, so here we go (and, once again, a more fun list than mine)…

1. Bicycle Thieves
2. The Godfather
3. Burn!
4. The 400 Blows
5. The 10th Victim
6. Rocco and His Brothers
7. Alexander Nevsky
8. Seven Samurai
9. A Man and a Woman
10. Vanishing Point

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Special Mention: The Conversation (even I didn’t have a special mention, father!).

Editor’s Note: In light of Sight & Sound’s film poll, which, every decade, queries critics and directors the world over before arriving at a communal Top 10 list, we polled our own writers, who didn’t partake in the project, but have bold, discerning, and provocative lists to share.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

Ali Arikan

Ali Arikan is the chief film critic of Dipnot TV, a Turkish news portal and iPad magazine, and a regular contributor to RogerEbert.com. Ali’s work has appeared in IndieWire, Fandor, Chicago Sun-Times, Vogue, Vulture, Sabah of Istanbul, and The Times of London.

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