Here comes the cinephile debate of the day: After polling 846 film experts, BFI’s Sight & Sound declared Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to be the #1 greatest film of all time, topping Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story, and classics from Renoir, Murnau, Kubrick, and more of your favorite all-timers. It’s a triumph long in coming for the Hitchcock pic, which only first made Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade list in 1982 and has been working its way up the ranks of critical opinion since. Does the 2012 poll finally have it right?
Culled from Top Ten lists from 846 critics, academics, writers, and programmers, Sight & Sound’s GOAT survey is at its widest to date. The full ten:
The Critics’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
4. La Règle 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)
Somewhere out there, Kim Novak is raising her fist in victory while William Friedkin – who told Movieline Citizen Kane set the bar for cinematic greatness so high, trying to match it is what keeps him going – is probably shaking his damn head.
Meanwhile, 358 filmmakers were polled for a separate director’s choice, yielding some interesting differences in opinion:
The Directors’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time
1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) and Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) (tie)
“Olivier spent his last 30 years as a workaholic, reproducing the same rigorous performance schedule that had characterized his rise to fame. He worked so intensely, and for so long, that many interpreted it as a means of making penance for his behavior toward Leigh. Still, there are dozens of plays, movies, roles, and dalliances this piece hasn’t even touched. I could spend another 4,500 words of your time simply describing his 1960s career, the influence of his filmic Shakespeare, or the dozens of accounts, some more substantial than others, that he was bisexual. But for all of his genius, all of his work in sustaining and rejuvenating the theater before, during, and after World War II, his passion for Leigh — and hers in return — remains his defining feature.” [The Hairpin]
