Czech classic ‘Daisies’ ranked #28 on Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time

Věra Chytilová’s Czech New Wave classic Daisies (Sedmikrásky) has seen a surge in worldwide popularity in recent years, making a BBC list of cinema’s 100 greatest comedies in 2017, rating #6 on a BBC list of the 100 greatest films directed by women in 2019. It received a stunning new 4K transfer from the Czech National Film Archive, re-releasing in U.S. cinemas earlier this year and popping on blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection just last month.

Now, it’s cracked the BFI’s 2022 Sight and Sound poll to come in at number 28 among the greatest films of all time, sliding right in between Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah at 27 and Martin Scorsese’s endlessly influential Taxi Driver at 29.

The Sight and Sound poll, conducted just once every ten years, is the preeminent list of the greatest movies ever made. Every decade since the 1950s, the British Film Institute has asked the world’s most respected film critics to compile a personal top ten, and the results are compiled into the Sight and Sound poll. This year, the BFI nearly doubled its number of critic participants, resulting in a number of surprises.

When Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane was referenced as the best movie ever made, it was largely because of its success in the Sight and Sound poll from 1962 through 2002, topping the list for half a century.

But Kane was unseated as the universally-accepted best film by Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo in 2012, and now both have been topped by Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Ackerman’s film is a masterpiece, but also an arthouse movie that is inaccessible to the general public in ways previous selections weren’t; the title alone, a French-language street address, will be enough to turn away most viewers. Cinephiles who haven’t seen Jeanne Dielman, meanwhile, have something to really look forward to.

Daisies, too, might be an unusual inclusion in the top 30 for most readers, but is deserving of (re)discovery. The giddily subversive call for resistance against the patriarchy served as a perfect metaphor for the burgeoning Prague Spring and Czech New Wave movements, during which artists and filmmakers rose against communist oppressors.

Director Věra Chytilová is also worthy of review for film fans unlikely to be exposed to more of her work. While friends and compatriots like Miloš Forman fled to Hollywood and great success, Chytilová was banned from filmmaking for eight years following the release of her 1970 Cannes entry Fruit of Paradise.

Afterwards, she continued to make films in communist Czechoslovakia in relative obscurity, poking at censors with playfully surreal and subversive takes on modern life. Her 1992 movie The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (Dědictví aneb Kurvahošigutntag) is a local comedy classic, and awaits international discovery.

Daisies appears to be the first Czech or Czechoslovak movie to be included in the top 100 in a Sight and Sound poll, though full lists of the earlier editions are hard to come by. In the 2012 Sight and Sound poll, Daisies came in at #202. František Vláčil’s epic Marketa Lazarová was the highest-rated Czech movie in that poll, coming in at #154.

Czech film critics have chosen Marketa Lazarová as the best Czech movie made in a few different polls, most notably a 1998 Projekt 100 poll and a 2011 survey by Respekt.

And while Daisies is the only Czech film to rank among Sight and Sound’s 100 best of all time, it doesn’t rate among the top 50 Czech movies at ČSFD, the local version of IMDb, where 1999’s Cosy Dens (Pelíšky) continues to reign as the top-rated movie.

The full top 100 from the 2022 Sight and Sound poll:

• 1. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

• 2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

• 3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

• 4. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)

• 5. In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2001)

• 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

• 7. Beau travail (Claire Denis, 1998)

• 8. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

• 9. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

• 10. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1951)

• 11. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)

• 12. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

• 13. La Règle du Jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)

• 14. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

• 15. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

• 16. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943)

• 17. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)

• 18. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

• 19. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

• 20. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

• 21. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)

• 21. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)

• 23. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)

• 24. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)

• 25. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

• 25. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

• 27. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

• 28. Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

• 29. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

• 30. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

• 31. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

• 31. 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

• 31. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

• 34. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)

• 35. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

• 36. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)

• 36. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

• 38. À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

• 38. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)

• 38. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

• 41. Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

• 41. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

• 43. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

• 43. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)

• 45. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)

• 45. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

• 45. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)

• 48. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)

• 48. Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)

• 50. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)

• 50. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1992)

• 52. News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)

• 52. Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

• 54. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

• 54. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

• 54. Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

• 54. Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963)

• 54. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982)

• 59. Sans soleil (Chris Marker 1982)

• 60. Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash 1991)

• 60. La dolce vita (Federico Fellini 1960)

• 60. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016)

• 63. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz 1942)

• 63. GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese 1990)

• 63. The Third Man (Carol Reed 1949)

• 66. Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty 1973)

• 67. The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda 2000)

• 67. Metropolis (Fritz Lang 1927)

• 67. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966)

• 67. The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948)

• 67. La Jetée (Chris Marker 1962)

• 72. My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki Hayao 1988)

• 72. Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini 1954)

• 72. L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni 1960)

• 75. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk 1959)

• 75. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi Kenji 1954)

• 75. Spirited Away (Miyazaki Hayao 2001)

• 78. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991)

• 78. Sátántangó (Béla Tarr 1994)

• 78. Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette 1974)

• 78. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin 1936)

• 78. Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder 1950)

• 78. A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1946)

• 84. Blue Velvet (David Lynch 1986)

• 84. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard 1965)

• 84. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard 1988-1998)

• 84. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)

• 88. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

• 88. Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)

• 90. Madame de… (Max Ophüls, 1953)

• 90. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1962)

• 90. Ugetsu (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)

• 90. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)

• 90. Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 1999)

• 95. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)

• 95. The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)

• 95. Once upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

• 95. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

• 95. Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1965)

• 95. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)