I’m not the judge of that distinction, but Sight and Sound magazine, the paper supplement of the British Film Institute, has published just such a list every ten years since 1952, and 2012 signals yet another iteration of what is essentially the Olympics of great films. The list is broken down into two polls: the Critics’ Top Ten and the Directors’ Top Ten.
The list is a radiant swatch of film history covering nearly a century of films from a number of countries, east and west. A look back into the poll since 1952 will show that the same pantheon of movies usually makes it onto the list every year, but 2012 marks a sea change in the jockeying for number one as the Critics’ Poll has unseated Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, having occupied the throne every year since it came out, in favor of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo. Outraged or overjoyed, it’s a telling spectacle to see which movies endure and which get shuffled off the list and into the dustbin of, “It was just pretty good. What were we thinking a decade ago?”
2012 Critics’ Top Ten
- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
- Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
- La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)
- Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
- The Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
- 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
2012 Directors’ Top Ten
- Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
- 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, available on Netflix Instant)
- The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- The Mirror (Andrei Tartakovsky, 1975)
- The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948, available on Netflix Instant)
It’s of particular note to the artistry and endurance of La Règle de jeu that it is the only film to appear somewhere on every Critics’ Top Ten list since the inception of the poll.
Kyle Dunn / Editor in Chief
Which movies do you think should have made the list? Does Vertigo deserve the top spot? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
One of the films I highly recommend is a German War fil thta’s not in print. It’s called “Stalingrad” Their is a version with the english voices dubbed over which sound pretty convincing. This simply blew everyother war movie out of the water. It’s simply the most organic of any of the movies made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilB2ukvXXfc
Their pretty much what you’d expect. Nothign earth shattering here except the Godfather and Vertigo. i know I’d have STrangers on a Train,Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Horse Feather, Duck Soup, Take the Money and Run, Patton, The Longest Day. Lot’s of other good ones. No you guys have your reasons.
It’s funny that you should mention ‘The Great Dictator’ and ‘Patton,’ which are both great movies in their own right. The middle-aged critics and academics certainly prefer movies that are rich and have a controlled sense of awareness as opposed to movies that are just viscerally pleasing. That’s why, I think, virtually no comedies, musicals, and few westerns or romantic tales appear on the list.
In a phrase: critics rate movies higher, at least in this poll, in which the director’s stamp pervades the whole finished product.
I appreciate the inclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey on both, and especially Taxi Driver on the directors’ list, which is phenomenal.