For 50 years, “Citizen Kane” has sat alone as the greatest film of all time, much like its title character locked away in a giant palace, untouched.
Now, a giant has toppled.
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has bested “Citizen Kane” as the number one film ever made in the Sight and Sound Poll, a list organized by Sight and Sound magazine and voted on by critics and writers from around the world.
Roger Ebert calls the list essentially the only film poll that matters, and it is such because it has been conducted every 10 years since 1952 and surveys the best of the best in film.
Citizen Kane has been number 1 since 1962 when it overcame Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” the reigning champ from 10 years prior. Since then, “Vertigo” has been on every list since 1972, climbing to as high as number 2 in 2002. This year, “Vertigo” received 191 votes from its 847 participants, dwarfing “Kane’s” 151.
This year’s full list is as follows.
- “Vertigo” – Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
- “Citizen Kane” – Orson Welles, 1941
- “Tokyo Story” – Yasujiro Ozu, 1953
- “The Rules of the Game” – Jean Renoir, 1939
- “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” – F.W. Murnau, 1927
- “2001: A Space Odyssey” – Stanley Kubrick, 1968
- “The Searchers” – John Ford, 1956
- “Man With a Movie Camera” – Dziga Vertov, 1929
- “The Passion of Joan of Arc” – Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1927
- “8 1/2” – Federico Fellini, 1963 Continue reading “2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced”