Sight & Sound

Well, I suppose it was inevitable - Citizen Kane has been dethroned at last in Sight & Sound’s latest poll. I’m not sure how much can be read into this - more than four as many critics and directors were surveyed than were surveyed ten years ago, so comparing the two results is a little difficult - but I don’t think it’s either a seismic change or simply an act of boredom, which are the two main analyses being offered.
As has often been stated, great directors who made many great films often have a hard time getting a title in the top ten; a lot of films get a respectable number of votes, but not enough to place. Alfred Hitchcock, who certainly made a lot of terrific movies, finally got Vertigo in the top ten in 1982, and from then on I think his fans started to coalesce around this film - back in 2002, Roger Ebert switched his vote from Notorious to Vertigo as he felt that the latter film had a better chance - and with each poll it has risen higher and higher, coming within five votes of besting Kane ten years ago. I noticed that Hitchcock’s other films have also gotten fewer and fewer votes with each poll, which supports this theory.
Apart from Vertigo and Kane switching places, four of the top five titles stayed the same (if you split the two Godfather films in the last poll and adjust the results). Another big surprise was Sunrise, which has continued to climb: as far as silent films go, it’s usually been Potemkin, Passion (which reliably places in every second poll), and Keaton or Chaplin. Now, with Potemkin finally dropping out of the top ten for the first time, it looks like Sunrise may be the film that fans of silents coalesce around. It’s far from my favorite silent film, but it’s a much more welcome choice than Potemkin - yes, Potemkin’s of historical value because of its technique, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer beyond that.
The most disappointing addition to the list was The Searchers; it’s been on the list before, and almost placed last time, so it’s not exactly a shock, but I’m always a little amazed at the acclaim for it. Like Hitchcock, John Ford began his career making silent movies, but unlike Hitchcock he never became much of an ‘actor’s director.’ He doesn’t have much of an ear for dialogue, either. I’ve never tried, but if I watched the film muted and with subtitles I might like it more. The landscapes are beautiful, to be sure, but the sets are distractingly obvious and I want to cringe almost every time a character talks.
As with the 2002 poll, I found the directors’ top ten picks more interesting - Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now are welcome additions, a Tarkovsky film has finally cracked the top ten, and Tokyo Story going from off the list to #1 was a most pleasant surprise. The directors don’t seem quite as mired in the distant past as the critics do: no silents, and four films from the 1970s. Hopefully this means that more modern films will finally get some appreciation on best-of-all-time-lists at last. “They don’t make great films anymore” is one of the most common, and most irritating, clichés in film criticism. There weren’t any more great films being made in the 1960s than in the 1990s, but since the bad movies are forgotten over time, we tend to see past decades as better than they were.

All-time top ten lists are among the most popular items for people to make into Youtube videos or blog posts, so I suppose I’ll have to make one too - given the topic, it would probably be very bad manners if I didn’t! I’ve always found this a very difficult question and have been avoiding it for a long time. Making a top ten list for only one decade on my Youtube account was tricky enough!
A lot of critics say they spend a long time thinking about forming their list, while others make one very quickly. I think the second method is best: a person’s favorites always change, so why not make it simply a freeze-frame of your own thoughts, if I can phrase it that way?
Having said all that, and trying to put it off just a little longer, here goes:

The Right Stuff (1983) by Philip Kaufman - my all-time #1 (the rest of the list is alphabetical)
The Apartment (1960) by Billy Wilder
Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles
City of God (2002) by Fernando Meirelles
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Sergio Leone
Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock
Schindler’s List (1993) by Steven Spielberg
Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese

Pretty soon I’ll be doing a series on my all-time favorite films, with an ultimate goal being an all-time top hundred. The reviews won’t come in any particular order - just as they come to me - so the ones I do first will probably end up near the top of the list, as they’ll likely be the ones I’m most sure belong on such a list. The first film write-up should be finished in a week or so, with regular reviews coming out every week thereafter. It will be interesting to see what my top ten will look like after approaching it more analytically rather than just spitting it out like I’ve just done!

As well, here’s a video I’ve made of the results of each Sight & Sound poll from 1952 to now. For the 2002 results I’ve split the two Godfather films but this doesn’t change the result all that much:

Now that Potemkin has fallen off the list, Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is the only film that has placed every time. Citizen Kane didn’t make it in 1952 (it hadn’t been seen since its modest 1941 release), but came pretty close.

Now for discussions, assuming anyone still reads what I put up here. What do you think of this year’s list? What about past polls? What would you have chosen instead? Let’s talk about anything and everything - this year has been pretty dreary so far, movie-wise, so this is as good a subject as any!