The New Sight & Sound Poll . . .

[Jerry Roberts]

I never thought it would happen but the great "Citizen Kane" has been dethroned by Hitchcock's "Vertigo". Normally, I detest movie lists but there are a short few that I take seriously, and the Sight & Sound poll is one of them.

The lists of the better film is basically irrelevant, but as a personal choice, I have to agree on the scale that I would rather spend an evening with Vertigo than Citizen Kane. Not that one is better than the other, it's just that Hitchcock's film means so much more to me,

Here are the new lists:

The Critics’ Top 10
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
4. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
5. Sunrise: A Song for Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1927)
10. 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

The Directors’ Top 10
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, 1976)
6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
7. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
7. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)
10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

I do, however take, the Sight & Sound poll seriously.

[Gregory J. Smalley]

VERTIGO passing CITIZEN KANE is big news. I personally agree that VERTIGO is the better film, but historically KANE is the more revolutionary and influential one. Ultimately these rankings are trivia, but as trivia goes they're pretty interesting.

[Jennie Kermode]

Vertigo has long been my favourite Hitchcock, for all that I admire the Gothic surrealism of The Birds or the sheer craft of Rear Window. Although I'm not sure I'd seriously call it the best film ever, I do think it's better than Citizen Kane and, furthermore, the standout film on this particular list. I stand, however, with those who have already said elsewhere that the problem with Sight & Sound's list is the absence of radical visions. These films are not only strong, they're safe. It's illustrative of why the most interesting work rarely comes out of committee approaches to art.

[Jerry Roberts]

Vertigo is, to my taste, Hitchcock's best film. It is also the most heartbreaking love story I have ever seen. Think about it:

We have a man who is duped into falling passionately and obsessively in love with a woman whom he discovers never existed. The woman hired to play that part falls in love with that man so deeply that she is willing to pretend to be the fantasy woman that he has fallen in love with. So she dresses like that woman and essentially becomes her at the cost of her own identity in an effort to complete his fantasy.

There is so much poignancy in that relationship because it represents so many marriages in which the man gets into his mind the image that he wants his wife to uphold, and how willing that woman is to fulfill that need.

[antonbitel]

...I stand, however, with those who have already said elsewhere that the problem with Sight & Sound's list is the absence of radical visions. These films are not only strong, they're safe. It's illustrative of why the most interesting work rarely comes out of committee approaches to art.

The list results from number-crunching of Top Tens submitted by many hundreds of critics, so inevitably lots of individual choices get pushed out (as happens with all polls/awards, including of course OFCS's). However, S&S does publish every single individual's choices, too, and there is plenty of 'radical vision' to be found there (only in far less synoptic form): http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter