{"id":21384,"date":"2012-08-01T20:20:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T00:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=21384"},"modified":"2013-01-21T18:13:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T23:13:32","slug":"vertigo-unseats-citizen-kane-in-sight-and-sounds-annual-best-film-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/01\/vertigo-unseats-citizen-kane-in-sight-and-sounds-annual-best-film-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"VERTIGO Unseats CITIZEN KANE in Sight And Sound’s Annual Best Film Poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For the last five decades, Sight and Sound<\/em> magazine’s every-ten-year-poll of film critics and filmmakers has always reached the same consensus – That Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane<\/strong> was the greatest film of all time.<\/p>\n

But the pillars of cinematic heaven were shaken today when Sight and Sound<\/em> released the results of their latest poll which states that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo<\/strong> has taken the top spot, bumping Citizen Kane<\/strong> down to number two. Vertigo<\/strong> first made it onto the poll in 1972 where it tied at #11. By 1982 it was able to claw its way up to #7. In 1992 it had jumped to #4, and in 2002 it jumped again to #2.<\/p>\n

Sight and Sound<\/em> polled over 800 “film critics, academics, distributors, writers and programmers from all corners of the globe” in order to achieve the rankings announced today. (Disclosure – I was not asked to participate. The nerve.)<\/p>\n

Here is the poll’s Top Ten –<\/p>\n

1. Vertigo<\/strong> (Hitchcock, 1958)<\/p>\n

2. Citizen Kane<\/strong> (Welles, 1941)<\/p>\n

3. Tokyo Story<\/strong> (Ozu, 1953)<\/p>\n

4. La R\u00e8gle du jeu<\/strong> (Renoir, 1939)<\/p>\n

5. Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans<\/strong> (Murnau, 1927)<\/p>\n

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/strong> (Kubrick, 1968)<\/p>\n

7. The Searchers<\/strong> (Ford, 1956)<\/p>\n

8. Man with a Movie Camera<\/strong> (Dziga Vertov, 1929)<\/p>\n

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc<\/strong> (Dreyer, 1927)<\/p>\n

10. 8 \u00bd<\/strong> (Fellini, 1963)<\/p>\n

You can read all of Sight And Sound<\/em>‘s coverage of their annual poll here.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that I am a bit surprised by this turn of events. Not so much that the critical group-think has shifted somewhat. That was bound to happen over time. I’m just mildly surprised that the film to unseat Welles’s masterpiece was Vertigo as I frankly don’t think it is his best work. Sure, I would put it in his top five, where it would be sharing space with Strangers On A Train<\/strong>, Notorious<\/strong>, Psycho<\/strong> and North By Northwest<\/strong>. Granted these are based on personal preference, but in a way, aren’t all these lists?<\/p>\n

Vertigo<\/strong> certainly wasn’t a big hit with critics when it was first released and even when the critical move to re-evaluate Hitchcock as an artist rather than as a showman started in the 1960s, the film was not one that would be part of those discussions. But Vertigo<\/strong> was one of five of Hitchcock’s films that were taken out of circulation in 1973 and I am forced to wonder if its reemergence to public view ten years later led critics to embrace it a bit more enthusiastically due to its renewed availability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KANE’s half-century reign has been disrupted by the Hitchcock classic.<\/div>\n

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