Film Rather spoiling the fun of finding out by reading the magazine, Sight & Sound tonight released their 2012 list of the greatest film of all time and here it is:
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)
There are a few changes. A new rule which means films have to be treated separately has led to The Godfathers dropping out leaving room for The Searchers, an also ran in 2002 to sneak in and Singing In The Rain is gone with interestingly considering its lack of availability in this country at time of voting (soon out on Eureka), The Passion of Joan of Arc is in.
Vertigo dethroning Citizen Kane after five decades is making headlines but there's been a series of articles in the magazine suggesting essentially that it was time to give another film a chance so it's not really. The backlash was bound to happen eventually. Personally I'd still go for Kane but that might have more to do with a bad experience with Vertigo during my film course at uni.
Here's what happened when I watched it in sequence with the rest of Hitchcock's films. It isn't my favourite, one to be admired intellectually rather then entertained in the purest sense, which is presumably why it topped this poll which is essentially a list of academically significant works. Odd to see Potemkin having dropped out but editing style is still generally covered by the Vertov.
The fringier directors list is understandably more eclectic:
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)
Tokyo Story right at the top with Bicycle Thieves which topped the poll when it was first attempted back in 1953 nudging in at the bottom, throwing out half the choices from last time.
Mirror's a bit of surprise; of all Tarkovsky's films that 's perhaps the least accessible, even if it's one of his most beautiful At least The Tree of Life's not there as predicted. It'll be at least twenty years before we know if that has (dinosaur) legs.
Back in April, I posted my own contrarian list:
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Annie Hall (Allen)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
Hamlet (Branagh)
All The President's Men (Pakula)
Rear Window (Hitchcock)
Blade Runner (Scott)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Magnolia (Anderson)
1/10. Oh well.
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