Sight & Sound list 2012

[Mike Gebert]

The Kane is dead...

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)

Critics' second 10:

11. Battleship Potemkin
12. L'Atalante
13. Breathless
14. Apocalypse Now
15. Late Spring
16. Au Hasard Balthasar
17. Seven Samurai
Persona (tie)
19. The Mirror
20. Singin' in the Rain

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)

For the first time since 1962, the greatest movie ever made is not Citizen Kane, per the Sight & Sound international critics poll. Entertainment Weekly has a pretty good explanation why here:

Kane topped the list for 50 years not just because it’s one of the most entertaining films ever made but because of what it represented in the annals of film history: the emergence of the concept, within Hollywood at least, that a writer-director can be a singular auteur (as much as Pauline Kael, not to mention earlier film artists like Charlie Chaplin, F.W. Murnau, and D.W. Griffith, would beg to differ); as one of the rare times that a writer-director has been given virtually a blank check from a Hollywood studio to put his vision on screen; for its pioneering use of wide-angle lenses to achieve deep-focus cinematography; for its circular, self-reflexive narrative that throws out all screenwriting-class notions of a three-act script. But Nick James, the editor of Sight & Sound, suggests that critics and filmmakers voted more for personal than objective, historical reasons this time.

“This result reflects changes in the culture of film criticism,” James tells the BBC. “The new cinephilia seems to be not so much about films that strive to be great art, such as Citizen Kane, and that use cinema’s entire arsenal of effects to make a grand statement, but more about works that have personal meaning to the critic. Vertigo is the ultimate critics’ film because it is a dreamlike film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul mate.”

I would push that a little further. The fact is, if you look at the early versions of these polls, they had one overarching objective— to establish something, anything other than studio system Hollywood as the art side of the art of cinema. Most of the list consisted of alternatives to studio filmmaking— Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, Japanese cinema— and when American filmmakers made the list at all, they were either martyrs to the system (Griffith, Stroheim, Welles), or independent spirits (Chaplin, Flaherty, the Vidor of Hallelujah!, the Ford of The Informer). What they were not was guys who played the system and managed to turn out art under the guise of successful popular entertainment.

That started to change in 1972 and especially in 1982, when big, glossy, color movies that made a lot of money started turning up on the list or at least the runners-up, like The Searchers, Vertigo, 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, and Singin' in the Rain. By now it's clear that both critics and directors no longer have the need to bash Mayer, Warner, Cohn, et al. for creating the system, but treasure what the likes of Hitchcock and Ford could do within it.

As far as NitrateVille's area of primary interest, it's a mixed bag— great that Sunrise is up there on both lists, Joan of Arc is a love it or hate it movie but I understand the acclaim, but the idea that The Man With a Movie Camera is anything resembling a great film has always baffled me. What's a bummer is that silent comedy is absent this time; that was always the gateway drug for old movies, but not any more, apparently. But then it's not exactly a pleasure list, as evidenced by the one film here I've never seen at all, Tarkovsky's The Mirror. While the 1930s have vanished from the list entirely, save for Renoir in France; I might have a hard time naming outright masterpieces from the decade (though my list would have It's a Gift, and possibly King Kong) because what we love about the decade is often more the liveliness of the quick and dirty, the films of James Cagney as a body of work over any specific film.

[Jeff Crouse]

For the first time in 60 years of polling critics from around the world, three silent films made the list of the 10 Best Films: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) at #5, Man With the Movie Camera (1929) at #8, and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) at #10. Interestingly, it was the first time Battleship Potemkin (1925) failed to make the list. Several hundred critics, programmers, bloggers, and academics voted. The fact that 1/3 of all the movies selected were made before the era of sound proves that there has indeed been a surge of contemporary interest in silent films.

Personally, these would have been exactly the three representative silent movies I would have chosen despite their being nothing from early silent cinema or from the work of the great comedians like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and others.

And no: Citizen Kane (1941) was not ranked #1. Instead Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) dethroned it. The torch has passed, with the judgment of scholars altering the canon in light of prevailing evaluative criticism.

[SteppenBow59]

The Kane is dead...

This is the end,
Beautiful friend...
This is the end,
My only friend, the end...

[Mike Gebert]

I merged two topics on this that appeared at about the same time, and decided this was a better forum for it.

[Rollo Treadway]

Mike, here's my suggestion for the next masthead:

[LouieD]

Vertigo is terrible.

[ColemanShedman]

I too don't understand the inclusion of Man With a Movie Camera. Even more baffling is the exclusion of The Godfather. As for Vertigo, I like it but I'm not even sure it is Hitchcock's best film. Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho certainly could be considered superior to it.

[Monsieur X]

I like VERTIGO, but I like KANE better. I simply can't stand 8 1/2 or 2001. They simply baffle me, and it baffles me even more to see things like this, with them ranked so highly.

[WaverBoy]

Vertigo is terrible.

You're just sore because Hitch left El Brendel on the cutting-room floor.

[Michael O'Regan]

As is the case with all such lists - it's meaningless, when you get right down to it.

[LouieD]

Vertigo is terrible.

You're just sore because Hitch left El Brendel on the cutting-room floor.

Nice theory, but the movie is still boring as hell. Not even Hitchcock could save this turkey.

[bobfells]

Perhaps we finally have proof that the only purpose of such lists is to generate debate as to what's NOT on them.

I recall seeing Orson Welles on the Tonight Show long ago where he expressed skepticism that CITIZEN KANE would continue to be ranked as the "best American film of all time." When Johnny Carson questioned him, Welles said the CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI used to be on all the top ten film lists in years gone by but now (circa 1970) you don't see it listed very often. Very perceptive, Mr. Welles!

[Mike Gebert]

I've gradually come to appreciate Vertigo, but it's still hard not to believe that critics like it because it's the most analyzable, least immediately and obviously enjoyable of his films.

That it should top this spinachy list doesn't surprise me...

I disagree strongly that lists are meaningless, though. They may not answer any question definitively, because there is no such answer, but they tell you a lot about what people valued at a particular time and place. So all this is interesting for what it says about the people who voted such a thing, regardless of what you think of the films themselves.

[Frederica]

I disagree strongly that lists are meaningless, though. They may not answer any question definitively, because there is no such answer, but they tell you a lot about what people valued at a particular time and place. So all this is interesting for what it says about the people who voted such a thing, regardless of what you think of the films themselves.

I'll say. These people have turned watching movies into work and joyless work at that.

[gathering]

Ah, Dame Fredwoman, how you read my mind, consumed and feeble as it is with doomed fighting trucks of the future.

Four out of the list of fifty are films made by the Antonio Salieri of 20th century cinema, Jean-Luc Godard? I catch my breath with contempt for such craziness. And then I humbly apologize to Signor Salieri. Godard I cough up like a hairball. It's a list of many marvelous films, of course, but any of those polled for it would curl up and die before listing, say, Now Voyager or War of the Worlds or National Velvet or Pinocchio etc. etc. etc. So I don't hold with it.

[Brooksie]

I disagree strongly that lists are meaningless, though. They may not answer any question definitively, because there is no such answer, but they tell you a lot about what people valued at a particular time and place. So all this is interesting for what it says about the people who voted such a thing, regardless of what you think of the films themselves.

I'll say. These people have turned watching movies into work and joyless work at that.

I was briefly an apprentice film critic to a then well known reviewer from a large Sydney newspaper. BOY they were a cynical, humorless lot. In mixed company, you were expected to deem every film a 'stinker' (except those that were clear 'masterpieces'). I've rarely seen more fun sucked out of a cinema-going experience. It was not for me.

[boblipton]

If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line,
as a man of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms,
and plant them everywhere.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter
of a transcendental kind.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
"If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man
this deep young man must be!"

Be eloquent in praise of the very dull old days which have
long since passed away,
And convince 'em if you can, that the reign of good Queen Anne was
Culture's palmiest day.
Of course you will pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new, and
declare it's crude and mean,
And that art stopped short in the cultivated court
of the Empress Josephine,
And everyone will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
"If that's not good enough for him which is good enough for me,
Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth
this kind of youth must be!"

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must
excite your languid spleen,
An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato,
or a not-too-French French bean.
Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle
in the high aesthetic band,
If you walk down Picadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your flowery way,
"If he's content with a vegetable love which would certainly not
suit me,
Why, what a most particularly pure young man
this pure young man must be!"

--W.S. Gilbert, Patience

These lists are about publicity, mostly for Sight and Sound.

Bob

[mndean]

"This result reflects changes in the culture of film criticism"

I'll say.

[Jim Roots]

I was briefly an apprentice film critic to a then well known reviewer from a large Sydney newspaper. BOY they were a cynical, humorless lot. In mixed company, you were expected to deem every film a 'stinker' (except those that were clear 'masterpieces'). I've rarely seen more fun sucked out of a cinema-going experience. It was not for me.

Wow! What were you expected to say in stag company?

Jim

[Richard M Roberts]

All lists may not be meaningless, but Sight and Sound's lists certainly are and always have been.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[mndean]

There has always been a fantasy that film criticism can be objective. Mike is right that lists such as this tells you more about the people who wrote them than the films listed.

[George O'Brien]

"Vertigo" the greatest film of all time? Greater than "Sunrise" or Kane?

As Mrs. Bisonette says when she is informed that it is raining: TWADDLE!

[LouieD]

"Vertigo" the greatest film of all time? Greater than "Sunrise" or Kane?

As much as I love "Sunrise", I'd choose "Caddyshack" over it 90% of the time.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Here's the full "Top 50" list instead of just the top 10 or 20. NORTH BY NORTHWEST is far better a film than VERTIGO, but not quite as full of psychological clues about Hitchcock's personal hangups that critics love to expound upon. THE GENERAL and CITY LIGHTS both made it on the top 50, so there is some silent comedy. POTEMKIN is there, but at number 11--just barely didn't make the top 10. GODFATHER parts 1 and 2 are also both on the top 50. Three of the four Godard films are at least among his best, if not listed in the order they should be (and I've not seen HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA), but he's definitely overrepresented. I actually enjoy MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA very much, much better than POTEMKIN. One of these days I need to get around to watching TOKYO STORY and ORDET and ANDREI RUBLEV. There are about 10 other titles on the top 50 I have never seen, most of which I had never really heard of before, but I do have half of this top 50 on Blu-ray. Overall it's an interesting list of films that film buffs probably ought to see at some point, but any "top" anything lists are really just an assertive way of saying "favorite" so that those making the list sound like some sort of authorities instead of like hopeless fanboys for their pet genres and directors. We can all make our top 10 and top 50 film lists, and they'll all probably change every year, if not every day or two.

SIGHT & SOUND top 50 for 2012

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)
11. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
12. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
13. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
14. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
15. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)
16. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

17. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa Akira, 1954)
17. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

19. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)
19. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951)

21. L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
21. Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
21. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

24. Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1955)
24. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)

26. Rashomon (Kurosawa Akira, 1950)
26. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

28. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

29. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
29. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

31. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
31. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

33. Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria De Sica, 1948)
34. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

35. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
35. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
35. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
35. Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994)

39. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
39. La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

41. Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)

42. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
42. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
42. Gertrud (Carl Dreyer, 1964)
42. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
42. Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)
42. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)

48. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
48. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1998)

50. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
50. Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)
50. La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)

[Nick_M]

Satantango? Seriously, SATANTANGO??? I'll never forgive Tarr for wasting my entire day on that interminable and pretentious piece of crap. For all its praise, I see it as proof that critics and cineastes will admire all sorts of dreadful sh-, er, garbage, as long as they're subtitled. Unless for some godforsaken reason you already like Tarr's films, skip it, skip it, skip it.

[ColemanShedman]

My meaningless list. (I limited myself to one film per director and required at least one documentary, one animated film, and one foreign film).

10. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
9. Pinocchio (1940)
8. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
7. There Will Be Blood (2007)
6. La Strada (1954)
5. City Lights (1931)
4. The Godfather (1972)
3. Psycho (1960)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Take that, Sight and Sound!

[Mike Gebert]

I knew Satantango would be on there. It's exactly the kind of thing you have to be an insider to appreciate. Or even to have seen, all 7 hours of it. It's like when Jonathan Rosenbaum would publish his top 20 in the Reader and it would look like this:

TOP 20: Le Insanite du Butterflies (Cleverpuss, France), In the Land of Misery (Slumeen, Egypt), Sorrows and Despair (Mikkelstumpf, Finland)...

RUNNERS-UP: Goodfellas (Scorsese, USA)...

God forbid anything anyone has seen be on it. I mean, really, parts of this are like the drive-in that Tab Hunter ran in Polyester that had Marguerite Duras double bills (and where is India Song, dammit?) A triple bill of Shoah, Jeanne Dielman and Satantango, how much fun could that be? I mean, I'm not averse to many of the capital-G Great Filmmakers on here, I love Ozu (particularly the early funny ones), my Bresson wouldn't be Balthasar but Diary of a Country Priest and A Man Escapes are great, and so on, but honestly, I was watching The Constant Nymph, and if your idea of the movies has no room for florid overblown 40s Warner Brothers with all those great character actors (Charles Coburn steals it), you're a movie totalitarian as far as I'm concerned.

I suppose it will be quickly inevitable that we make our own lists, so:

1. The Palm Beach Story
2. Notorious
3. It's a Gift
4. The Earrings of Madame de...
5. Dr. Strangelove
6. The Searchers
7. Our Hospitality
8. Seventh Heaven
9. I Know Where I'm Going
10. The Godfather I & II

[bobfells]

I never do lists but just to prove that every rule has an exception, here is a very personal list of my Top Ten. I think it's absurd to name any one film as the No. 1 Best if only due to different genres. It would be like saying a drama is inherently superior to a musical so any A-1 drama will always beat out an A-1 musical. So let's not go there - please regard the following ten as "finalists" of equal ranking:

1. THE GODFATHER 1 and 2
2. LOVE ME TONIGHT
3. CITY LIGHTS
4, CASABLANCA
5. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
6. DODSWORTH
7. SHERLOCK JR.
8. NAPOLEON
9. SUNSET BOULEVARD
10, THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD

ROTHSCHILD makes the list because of its treatment of anti-Semitism, an issue rarely tackled in films anywhere and at any time.

[Rollo Treadway]

I suppose it will be quickly inevitable that we make our own lists

OK, I'm game - with the usual disclaimer that tomorrow the list might look quite different:

1. The General
2. Sunrise
3. Duck Soup
4. Double Indemnity
5. My Man Godfrey
6. The Asphalt Jungle
7. Kumonosu-jô (Throne of Blood)
8. The Lavender Hill Mob
9. To Be or Not to Be
10. Frankenstein

Anyone who dares to ask "Which Frankenstein?" will be found sleeping with the water lilies.

[Stonesfan]

I guess it's just me but I really love Vertigo. I remember watching it for the first time on a sunny summer day in 1999 at the age of 15 and being more deeply and profoundly moved by it than any other film I had ever seen up to that point in my entire life...and I wasn't watching it with any baggage of expecting it to be "great" or something (I expected it to be good, of course).

I don't really want to join in on the bashing of the S&S poll. No one is saying you have to like every film on the list, or that you must think 8 1/2 is a masterpiece because it's on there. I'm sure there is some critic polled who has 8 1/2 on his list, but not a single one of his other entries made the top 10, and one of his other entries may very well be something like Casablanca or Duck Soup. I guess I'm trying to say that, at the risk of sounding like some film-snob fuddy-duddy, I do take film seriously as art and I believe the S&S poll is one of the few outlets that echoes that sentiment. Lord knows if you disagree with that stance there are plenty of other much more worthless lists (the AFI tripe, the imdb Top 250).

I just think the S&S poll is, at the same time, both serious AND fun, not one or the other.

Anyway, at the risk of being an elitist film snob, my top ten:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Black Narcissus
The General
The Grapes of Wrath
Persona
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Sweet Smell of Success
Throne of Blood
Vertigo
Woman in the Dunes

(For the record, if I were to make a top 50 it would include the likes of Duck Soup, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and Babe alongside the likes of 8 1/2).