After enjoying a fifty year run as the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane has finally been toppled, giving its title to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least, according to the latest BFI Sight and Sound critics poll, which every ten years takes votes from over 2,000 800 critics worldwide and compiles them into the ten films that represent something like a consensus of the greatest films ever made.
As Andrew and Ryan indicated in their recent Top Ten podcast, making such a list is kind of a fool’s activity, but when this many critics are polled, at the very least what emerges is a snapshot of the general critical climate and what today’s critics consider the most important films ever. It’ll never be definitive, but it’s a fun process, and the results do tell us something about what’s considered necessary to be cinematically literate – at least to Sight & Sound magazine and the critics they include in their poll.
Here’s the new list (source):
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
4. La Regle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
And for reference, here’s the previous list, from 2002:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Vertigo
3. La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game)
4. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II
5. Tokyo Story
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. The Battleship Potemkin
7. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
9. 8½
10. Singin’ in the Rain
So, The Godfathers are out (perhaps because of a new rule requiring them to be voted for separately instead of together), Battleship Potemkin gets booted, and Singin’ in the Rain, the only musical on the list, is nowhere to be seen. In their place, two silents – Man with a Movie Camera and The Passion of Joan of Arc, and one of 2002′s runner-ups, John Ford’s The Searchers.
The new list contains five American films, one Japanese film, one French film, one Soviet film, one Danish film, and one Italian film. The newest film on the list is 1968′s 2001: A Space Odyssey. See the Top 50 List for a bit more variety.
What do you think of the new list? Better than the old one? Worse? Both out of touch with reality?
*edit: sorry, I had the wrong number of critics, thanks to reading too quickly. My bad.
I have no arguments against the quality of the films on that list. However, only about ten of the films in that list were made after 1970 (only 6 of which were released in my lifetime – i.e. post 1982).
That’s why I can’t help but think that this list is an example of “old critics voting for old movies.”
Like really, why ignore most of the last 40 years of movies? I don’t mean to sound cynical, but hopefully most of those old-time critics will die off in the next decade the next list will be more varied.
Thanks for the reminder about the longer list – I added a link to the Top 50 near the bottom of the post. I’m having trouble getting that page to load, though. I guess it’s getting a lot of traffic right now.
I saw a few of the critics’ individual lists back when the voting was going on, and there were a lot of newer movies on them. My guess is that the greater consensus on which older films are great gave them a boost, while the votes for newer films were spread among too many options to give many of them any real chance.
Yeah, I had trouble loading as well. I had to use a cached copy to see the list.
They also had top rated filmmakers vote on the poll.
Worth pointing out Director’s list:
DIRECTOR’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
=2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
=2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980)
6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
=7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
=7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)
10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
The directors apparently appreciate New Hollywood a little more, don’t go much further than that either, do they?
In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Drive were both top 30.
Interesting…
I somewhat shamefully have to say that I’ve only seen 15 films of the 50:
Citizen Kane
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
2001: A Space Odyssey
Man with a Movie Camera
Battleship Potemkin
Breathless
Apocalypse Now
Rashomon
Taxi Driver
Bicycle Thieves
Metropolis
Psycho
The 400 Blows
The Battle of Algiers
City Lights
Damn I can’t open the top 50. The top 10 isn’t drastically different from before, other than the order. Nice to see Man With a Movie Camera in there though, I love that film. Not sure it’s a top 10 film, but it was waaaay ahead of its time.
I haven’t seen Joan of Arc or 8 1/2 yet, but Masters of Cinema are doing Dreyer’s film soon so I look forward to checking it out.
I managed to get onto the Top 50. There’s still a distinct lack of more recent titles, but it’s an undeniably strong list. I’ve seen 30 which I was fairly surprised by – not a bad amount. I have been trying to catch up on my classics lately though.
After seeing this sight and sound list, I realized that I like TIFF’s Essential 100 list from 2010 a lot more:
http://tiff.net/essential/about/essential100
Not one film past 1968? As interesting and daring at the time as THE SEARCHERS was, it is still a tad overrated, I think people really love that key ‘out the door’ shot.
I’d love to see Apocalypse Now or Safe or Inland Empire (Or The Wild Bunch or Unforgiven or Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford if you want to put a western in there…)
Apocalypse Now is within the Top 15. Inland Empire will never make it – too divisive, and a divisive film will never make a consensus list.
I think the newest films on the Top 50 list, as toro pointed out, are In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Drive (a less-divisive Lynch film).
Let’s revisit the top 10 from the OFC’s Top 100:
10. Alien (R. Scott, 1979)
9. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
8. Godfather Part II, The (Coppola, 1974)
7. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
6. Blade Runner (R. Scott, 1982)
5. Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
1. Godfather, The (Coppola, 1972)
Awesome, I’ve not seen that before. I know you explain on the linked page that it was a pain in the arse to put together, but it’d be interesting to collate another one of those someday
Full 250 List
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/critics/
All 4 of Malick’s films are on there
Tarantino comes in tied for 127 with Pulp Fiction
Miyazaki at 154 with Tortoro
Morris is on right near the end with The Thin Blue Line