Jaws voted the greatest film ever made – that’s staggeringly wrong

So, what is the greatest movie of all time? It’s a question that’s constantly sprung on me – in the pub, at the school gates, mouth clamped open at the dentist – any time someone discovers that I’m a film critic.

Thankfully, Empire has now answered the question for us. The movie bible has just updated its list of the 100 greatest films ever made and the result is staggering.

Staggeringly wrong.

Not because the 100 films on this list are bad. Quite the opposite. They are all heavily laminated mainstream classics. The Godfather (#2). Goodfellas (#7). The Star Wars franchise (#4 and #8). The Lord Of The Rings (#9). The Shawshank Redemption (#3). Have you fallen asleep yet? If not I suggest you count down the list from one to 100 and you’ll soon be nodding off.

Seven Spielbergs. Five Nolans (including Inception #6, The Dark Knight #10). Scorsese. Cameron. Coppola. Tarantino.

Men in suits. Men with guns. Men looking tortured in rooms with low lighting. Men being brilliant. Men being violent. Men having complicated feelings about power.

This is actually the daddy of all lists. By which I mean it might have been compiled by your dad, methodically circling the Radio Times for what to watch over Christmas, back when there were only four terrestrial channels.

Can you guess what’s No.1? Here’s the one shocker. It’s… Mamma Mia!2!

No, not seriously. Just joking. Top spot goes to Jaws.

Steven Spielberg’s shark movie is a flawless masterpiece of suspense, craft and populist terror that practically invented the summer blockbuster. I love Jaws. Everyone loves Jaws. Even sharks probably love Jaws. But is it the greatest film of all time? Seriously?! Even Spielberg himself would argue with that – when pushed he’s said he personally considers Schindler’s List the best film he ever made.

So what IS the best film of all time? Depends who you’re asking. What – me? Damn. Let me frantically backpedal for a second to say that ‘best’ is categorised in two different ways. The first is ‘greatest’.

Here I’d fight for Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953), an elegant, intensely devastating family drama that’s so exquisitely calibrated it hurts. Or Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959), with Marilyn Monroe’s ‘jello on springs’ turn – it’s the movie I’ve rewatched more than almost any other and surely the greatest comedy ever made.

Or, if I really wanted to win the pub fight, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) – because who’s going to argue with me if it involves watching a movie, however remarkable, that’s 201 minutes long?

As for my favourite film, that’s easy. It’s crazy folk horror The Wicker Man (1973). Christopher Lee in a dress; Britt Ekland out of one; pagan weirdness; an unsettling soundtrack – it captures the underlying weirdness of Britishness like nothing else. It’s the movie I’ve actually rewatched, in all its versions, more than any other.

And I’m not apologising.

Disagree? Good! Because though any ‘Best Films Of All Time’ list pretends to settle an argument – its only real purpose should actually be to start one.

Because the fun of trawling through Empire’s list isn’t ‘where is Citizen Kane?’ (#52, since you ask, below an Avengers film, if you’re wondering), it’s asking what is a list actually for?

A good list should irritate you awake. 

It should make you cheer, splutter, text someone, rewatch something or rant about it on social media. A great list should, in fact, do what Quentin Tarantino did last month in Sight & Sound, when he called post-pandemic Hollywood ‘a flavourless sausage factory’ and declared there hadn’t been a single good film made since the pandemic – a claim so deranged even he likely doesn’t even believe it.

You may violently disagree – I do, for the record. I’d counter with The Zone Of Interest, Backrooms, One Battle After Another – and that’s just before I’ve properly started throwing my toys around. But it sparked a conversation.

Where are the films that make a list feel alive? The strange ones. The female ones. The non-Hollywood ones. There are a handful of female-directed entries here, clustered around the lower end. There are six foreign-language films. Six. Out of a hundred. There’s literally an entire world of cinema out there guys!

Yes, of course The Godfather has to be there, looming over proceedings like a giant granite bust. It’s Spielberg’s fave American film BTW. But it also needs surprises, provocations, private passions and something that can bust you out of your algorithm.

But the best lists should make cinema feel bigger, not smaller. They should be a discovery. A prompt that the greatest film of all time might well be one we haven’t seen yet.