Vertigo topples Citizen Kane in BFI’s Top 50 Greatest Films
And the loser is – Citizen Kane. After 50 years at the top of the Sight & Sound poll, Orson Welles’s debut film has been convincingly ousted by Alfred Hitchcock’s 45th feature Vertigo – and by a whopping 34 votes, compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago. So what does it mean? Given that Kane actually clocked over three times as many votes this year as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its six predecessors.
But it does mean that Hitchcock, who only entered the top ten in 1982 (two years after his death), has risen steadily in esteem over the course of 30 years, with Vertigo climbing from seventh place, to fourth in 1992, second in 2002 and now first, to make him the Old Master. Welles, uniquely, had two films (The Magnificent Ambersons as well as Kane) in the list in 1972 and 1982, but now Ambersons has slipped to 81st place in the top 100.
So does 2012 – the first poll to be conducted since the internet became almost certainly the main channel of communication about films – mark a revolution in taste, such as happened in 1962? Back then a brand-new film, Antonioni’s L’avventura, vaulted into second place. If there was going to be an equivalent today, it might have been Malick’s The Tree of Life, which only polled one vote less than the last title in the top 100. In fact the highest film from the new century is Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, just 12 years old, now sharing joint 24th slot with Dreyer’s venerable Ordet…
The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time
The Top 10 in the British Film Institute poll:
1. Vertigo (Here, again, is Chris Marker’s wonderful essay, Free Replay.)
2. Citizen Kane
3. Tokyo Story
4. The Rules of the Game
5. Sunrise
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. The Searchers
8. Man With A Movie Camera
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc
10. 8 1/2
Now that we’re well enough to get up and change the disc we can stop watching Babar and re-view the Top 10. (We miss the Quiapo Cinematheque.)
Dammit who borrowed our Murnau?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 6th, 2012 at 09:49
Unfortunately I’ve only seen the first two on the list. Must locate the others.
August 6th, 2012 at 12:41
Man With A Movie Camera looks like a new addition to the list.
August 6th, 2012 at 15:22
I have always put off Tokyo Story after seeing 10 minutes or so of it. Now, I’ve finally lost/can’t locate the disc. From this list, I haven’t seen Sunrise and The Man with a Movie Camera.
August 6th, 2012 at 19:22
Yeah we just turned the house upside down looking for Citizen Kane. Haha Citizen Kane has become our Rosebud.