Lists of the best of things are dead and gone, kids, but what should replace them? The Independent offers us the most overrated albums, a stance that may have made sense 20-odd years ago, when Rolling Stone touted a canon ludicrously top-heavy with white male rockers from the 60s and 70s (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Springsteen, et al). Now, however, there is no such consensus, no icons against which we can be clastic. Sgt Pepper and Astral Weeks are still in place, but who ever thought Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor or A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships by The 1975 had risen to any sort of cultural prominence from which they deserved to be knocked down? Even the authors of the list lack the courage of their pitchfork-wielding convictions; the greatness of PJ Harvey's Let England Shake is acknowledged, it just isn’t necessarily as good as some of her earlier stuff.
Rather more coherent, in methodology at least, is a poll organised by the blog They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? This time there’s a defined canon against which rage (the 2022 Sight & Sound poll) but it’s not just the resulting list of 100 films in the crosshairs; it’s any of the 4,336 films that received even a single vote, and are excluded from consideration in this selection. So, in theory at least, this should be a list of overlooked, forgotten gems, the ones that established critics and filmmakers either hadn’t seen or didn’t want to admit they liked. And there are such nuggets; but it also reveals that the great and good asked to contribute to the S&S poll had managed to miss such copper-bottomed classics as Grand Hotel, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Angels With Dirty Faces, Goodbye Mr Chips, Heaven Can Wait, Dead of Night, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Brighton Rock, Jour de Fête, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bad Day at Black Rock, Bob le Flambeur, Spartacus, A Fistful of Dollars, The Ipcress File, Wait Until Dark, Claire’s Knee, Little Big Man, Vanishing Point, Marathon Man, The Long Good Friday, Diva, Mephisto, A Zed and Two Noughts, City on Fire, Radio Days, Midnight Run, Man Bites Dog, Reservoir Dogs, Fallen Angels, City of Lost Children, Shall We Dance?, Pi, Audition, Tears of the Black Tiger, Lagaan, Downfall, Gomorra...
Which inevitably sets up another list, another canon, against which another band of discontents can vent their fury. A process that can continue over and over again, until we get to the point when someone complains that Sgt Pepper or Citizen Kane or War and Peace or the Mona Lisa doesn’t get the critical love it deserves in these polls and we start all over again.
