Movie about cooking potatoes declared greatest of all time

https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/00638537-48 ... -bruxelles

"Never before was the materiality of woman's time in the home rendered so viscerally..." That critic apparently never vacuumed the living room floor or did the laundry?

In fairness, every art-film obsessive has seen this 3-hour movie. How many have watched it twice is another question. Citizen Kane held the same distinction ("greatest') for many years, followed (more recently) in this BFI poll by Vertigo in 2012. But as of 2022 (it's done every 10 years), this gender-studies result along with (if you ask me) plenty of other bloopers in the top 100.

In truth John, I'd never even heard of it. I went to film school; studied all the 'classics', all the auteurs and cinéma vérité crowd; The Ozus and the Fellinis. But this I have never heard of. It is a sign of the times that the No.1 film is also the most acceptable in today's climate. It was right to move on from the Citizen Kanes and the Hitchcocks - they don't speak to young people as much now and they need their own idols, but this is very obscure indeed and I doubt many have heard of it either.

Compare the directors' list vs the critics and it becomes obvious that what's a great film for the the critics today is influenced more by social justice trends, than actual filmmaking quality, which most of them probably wouldn't be able to recognize if it smacked them in the face. The directors however, consistently rank 2001, Vertigo, and Citizen Kane at the top. Who could quibble with those choices?

The other thing to say about it is, nobody actually votes for the "greatest" movie. It looks like each contributor lists his/her ten favorites, unranked, from everywhere and anywhere, and the movie with the most mentions, even if it's everyone's last choice, is declared the "greatest". Relatively few hits are needed to "win", thanks to the huge pool of actual and potential submissions. But BFI insists on calling the "winner" the "greatest", even if nobody who listed it actually believes that.

What's most interesting, if they get the database working, is looking at each director's personal ten. But that doesn't seem to be available now.

When I was in filmschool, there was one of these very posh critic types, who was showing us something here that the BBC once made called, 'Play For Today'. I being an ignorant working class kid, from the North, made an impertinent suggestion, 'It's a film really'; 'No it's not!'; 'Yes it is, it's shot on 16mm, has MS, wides, CUs, over the shoulders, etc.'; 'You're wrong, it's a play!';'It's not like any play I've seen from a theatre seat'; 'Well you're just wrong!'. In those days, the simple formulae would be: Anything French=good, anything US/British commercial=bad, it still seems to be the case amongst the chattering classes and sadly I think David's right, virtue signalling earns a lot of medals even though bums on seats often says otherwise.