2012 Sight & Sound Poll

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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by OscarGuy »

What board and it died or something?
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Sabin »

RIP, Other Board. Good times.
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Greg »

Here is my list from the same board:

1: JFK - Stone - 1991
2: Citizen Kane - Welles - 1941
3: Schindler's List - Spielberg - 1993
4: Casablanca - Curtiz - 1943
5: Gone With The Wind - Fleming - 1939
6: Lawrence Of Arabia - Lean - 1962
7: Bicycle Thieves - De Sica - 1949
8: Spellbound - Hitchcock - 1945
9: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial - Speilberg - 1982
10: Singin' In The Rain - Donen and Kelly - 1952
11: Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - Nichols - 1966
12: La Grande Illusion - Renoir - 1938
13: Through A Glass Darkly - Bergman - 1961
14: The Godfather - Coppola - 1972
15: Contact - Zemeckis - 1997
16: Amadeus - Forman - 1984
17: Hud - Ritt - 1963
18: 2001: A Spce Odyssey - Kubrick - 1968
19: Bringing Up Baby - Hawks - 1938
20: The Social Network - Fincher – 2010
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by dws1982 »

Another message board that I (and a few others here) frequent did "Best Movies of All Time" poll with the participants. Here were the results:
1. All About Eve
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. The Silence of the Lambs
4. Citizen Kane
5. Casablanca
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. La Dolce Vita
8. Fanny & Alexander
9. A Clockwork Orange
10. Mulholland Drive
Other than the number two (and maybe number three) pick, it's fairly respectable.

We submitted top twenty lists to determine the results. Here was mine:
1) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
2) Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
3) In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
4) The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
5) Violent Summer (Valerio Zurlini)
6) How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
7) Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
8) Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
9) Come and See (Elem Klimov)
10) Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
11) The Young Girls of Wilko (Andrzej Wajda)
12) Siberiade (Andrei Konchalovsky)
13) The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray)
14) The Earrings of Madame de... (Max Ophuls)
15) To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
16) The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
17) Stars in My Crown (Jacqus Tourneur)
18) A Lion in the House (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)
19) Nora Prentiss (Vincent Sherman)
20) Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by ksrymy »

Reddit user PrimusPilus, in the /r/TrueFilm subreddit, gives a really good insight on Vertigo's topping the poll.

"The triumph of Vertigo over Citizen Kane in this most recent Sight & Sound poll is probably attributable to two things:

First, as mentioned elsewhere, the voting this year was opened up to many times the number of critics who had voted in previous polls. And,

Second, Vertigo's ascendancy reflects the supremacy of the psychoanalytic modes of film interpretation that have held sway in academia since the 1970s.

Kane, we should recall, achieved its preeminent status among film's cognoscenti largely due to the efforts of Andre Bazin and his disciples at the Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s. Of course, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer & Co all venerated Hitchcock as well, but Kane benefited from a mystique that was a product of its not being seen in Europe during the Second World War; the hungry young Turks of the Cahiers set about the business of making the film canon, and of having film taken seriously as an art unto itself. Kane's numerous formal technological innovations and stylistic syntheses made a dynamic and lasting impact during that period.

It was always inevitable that Kane would slip from its top spot, if for no other reason than as the years pass, its innovations seem less obvious when not considered in context. Also, Vertigo more perfectly previewed the preoccupations of the "Me generation" and its subsequent, self-involved Gen-X/Y offspring. Kane, by contrast, seems more a relic of a different era, the product of a young, incendiary brilliance whose silhouette was only magnified against the backdrop of the mechanical Studio System; by the time Vertigo came along, that Studio System was dead, gutted by the Paramount Decrees and the competition of television.

The 2012 Sight & Sound poll, I think, reflects the fact that today's critical consensus is more comfortable with (and impressed by) the genius of Vertigo's exploration of the interior landscape than it is with the the genius of Kane's Expressionist apotheosis."
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Big Magilla »

My favorite Hitchcocks are broken into three groups.

British period - The 39 Steps

Early Hollywood period (1940-1953) - Notorious

Late Hollywood period - Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho and North by Northwest in about that order
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Greg »

Seeing Vertigo top the Sight And Sound poll reminds me that I am probably fairly unusual in that my favorite Hitchcock is Spellbound.
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by ksrymy »

Roger Ebert has a good article on the situation here and provides us with a viewer's wonderful interpretation of the San Francisco Bay scene in Vertigo.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/08 ... e_lis.html
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Big Magilla »

I wouldn't say Vertigo is light-years better than Citizen Kane, but I have always liked it better. Tokyo Story, too. Sunrise; The Searchers; The Passion of Joan of Arc; Late Spring; Andrei Rublev[/i; The Bicycle Thieves]; Psycho; The 400 Blows, La Dolce Vita never grow old.

I re-watched Singin' in the Rain recently. While it's still holds up, it's probably as over-rated now as it was under-valued when it first came out.
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by ksrymy »

THANK GOD! It's about damn time they realize that Vertigo is lightyears better than Citizen Kane.

I also just checked Ordet out from the campus library so I'm excited to see how that goes as I think Dreyer is one of the five best directors ever.

It's good to see they're not snubbing all modern film. The inclusions of In the Mood for Love and especially Mulholland Dr. make me very happy.

It's crazy for see Singin' in the Rain fall down so low too.

I've been nerding out about S&S releasing this list for a few years now and it pays off. I'm very happy with their selections.
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Re: 2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Precious Doll »

Here is the top 50. I have also included the top 10's from 1992 to 1952.

1. Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (191 votes)

2. Citizen Kane
Orson Welles, 1941 (157 votes)

3. Tokyo Story
Ozu Yasujiro, 1953 (107 votes)

4. La Règle du jeu
Jean Renoir, 1939 (100 votes)

5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
FW Murnau, 1927 (93 votes)

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (90 votes)

7. The Searchers
John Ford, 1956 (78 votes)

8. Man with a Movie Camera
Dziga Vertov, 1939 (68 votes)

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Dreyer, 1927 (65 votes)

10. 8½
Federico Fellini, 1963 (64 votes)

11. Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (63 votes)

12. L’Atalante
Jean Vigo, 1934 (58 votes)

13. Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960 (57 votes)

14. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 (53 votes)

15. Late Spring
Ozu Yasujiro, 1949 (50 votes)

16. Au hasard Balthazar
Robert Bresson, 1966 (49 votes)

17= Seven Samurai
Kurosawa Akira, 1954 (48 votes)

17= Persona
Ingmar Bergman, 1966 (48 votes)

19. Mirror
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974 (47 votes)

20. Singin’ in the Rain
Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951 (46 votes)

21= L’avventura
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (43 votes)

21= Le Mépris
Jean-Luc Godard, 1963 (43 votes)

21= The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 (43 votes)

24= Ordet
Carl Dreyer, 1955 (42 votes)

24= In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-Wai, 2000 (42 votes)

26= Rashomon
Kurosawa Akira, 1950 (41 votes)

26= Andrei Rublev
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966 (41 votes)

28. Mulholland Dr.
David Lynch, 2001 (40 votes)

29= Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 (39 votes)

29= Shoah
Claude Lanzmann, 1985 (39 votes)

31= The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, 1974 (38 votes)

31= Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976 (38 votes)

33. Bicycle Thieves
Vittoria De Sica, 1948 (37 votes)

34. The General
Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926 (35 votes)

35= Metropolis
Fritz Lang, 1927 (34 votes)

35= Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 (34 votes)

35= Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman, 1975 (34 votes)

35= Sátántangó
Béla Tarr, 1994 (34 votes)

39= The 400 Blows
François Truffaut, 1959 (33 votes)

39= La dolce vita
Federico Fellini, 1960 (33 votes)

41. Journey to Italy
Roberto Rossellini, 1954 (32 votes)

42= Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray, 1955 (31 votes)

42= Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder, 1959 (31 votes)

42= Gertrud
Carl Dreyer, 1964 (31 votes)

42= Pierrot le fou
Jean-Luc Godard, 1965 (31 votes)

42= Play Time
Jacques Tati, 1967 (31 votes)

42= Close-Up
Abbas Kiarostami, 1990 (31 votes)

48= The Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 (30 votes)

48= Histoire(s) du cinéma
Jean-Luc Godard, 1998 (30 votes)

50= City Lights
Charlie Chaplin, 1931 (29 votes)

50= Ugetsu monogatari
Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953 (29 votes)

50= La Jetée
Chris Marker, 1962 (29 votes)

Top 10 from 1992 to 1952

1992

1) Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941 (43 votes) US
2) The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939 (32) FR
3) Tokyo Story Yasujiro Ozu, 1953 (22) JP
4) Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (18) US
5) The Searchers John Ford, 1956 (17) US
6) L'Atalante Jean Vigo, 1934 (15) FR
6) The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928 (15) FR
6) Pather Panchali Satyajit Ray, 1955 (15) IN
6) Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (15) USSR
10) 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (14) UK

1982
1) Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941 (45 votes) US
2) The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939 (31) FR
3) The Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa, 1954 (15) JP
3) Singin' in the Rain Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952 (15) US
5) 8 1/2 Federico Fellini, 1963 (14) IT
6) Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (13) USSR
7) L'Avventura Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (12) IT
7) The Magnificent Ambersons Orson Welles, 1942 (12) US
7) Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (12) US
10) The General Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman (11) US
10) The Searchers John Ford, 1956 (11) US

1972
1) Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941 (32 votes) US
2) The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939 (28) FR
3) Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (16) USSR
4) 8 1/2 Federico Fellini, 1963 (15) IT
5) L'Avventura Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (12) IT
5) Persona Ingmar Bergman, 1967 (12) SW
7) The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928 (11) FR
8) The General Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman (10) US
9) The Magnificent Ambersons Orson Welles, 1942 (10) US
10) Ugetsu Monogatari Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953 (9) JP
10) Wild Strawberries Ingmar Bergman, 1957 (9) SW

1962
1) Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941 (22 votes) US
2) L'Avventura Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (20) IT
3) The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939 (19) FR
4) Greed Erich von Stroheim, 1924 (17) US
4) Ugetsu Monogatari Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953 (17) JP
6) Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (16) USSR
6) The Bicycle Thief Vittorio De Sica, 1949 (16) IT
6) Ivan the Terrible Sergei Eisenstein, 1943-46 (16) USSR
9) La terra trema Luchino Visconti, 1948 (14) IT
10) L'Atalante Jean Vigo, 1934 (13) FR

1952
1) The Bicycle Thief Vittorio De Sica, 1949 (25 votes) IT
2) City Lights Charles Chaplin, 1930 (19) US
2) The Gold Rush Charles Chaplin, 1925 (19) US
4) Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (16) USSR
5) Intolerance DW Griffith, 1916 (12) US
5) Louisiana Story Robert Flaherty, 1947 (12) US
7) Greed Erich von Stroheim, 1924 (11) US
7) Le Jour se leve Marcel Carne, 1939 (11) FR
7) The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928 (11) FR
10) Brief Encounter David Lean, 1945 (10) UK
10) Le Million Rene Clair, 1930 (10) FR
10) The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939 (10) FR
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2012 Sight & Sound Poll

Post by Big Magilla »

The wait is over.

Sight & Sound Magazine announced the winners of their decennial film poll to determine the greatest movies earlier today on Twitter. All told, 846 critics and 358 directors weighed in with their personal top tens, giving us these master lists. Here are the critics' favorites:

1. "Vertigo"
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"

And from the directors:

1. "Tokyo Story"
2. "2001: A Space Odyssey"
2. "Citizen Kane"
4. "8 1/2"
5. "Taxi Driver"
6. "Apocalypse Now"
7. "The Godfather"
7. "Vertigo"
9. "The Mirror"
10. "Bicycle Thieves"

For point of reference, here's how the Sight & Sound poll looked in its last iteration, from 2002, First, again, the critics' picks:

1. "Citizen Kane"
2. "Vertigo"
3. "The Rules of the Game"
4. "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II"
5. "Tokyo Story"
6. "2001: A Space Odyssey"
7. "Battleship Potemkin"
7. "Sunrise"
9. "8 1/2"
10. "Singin' in the Rain"

And the directors' picks:

1. "Citizen Kane"
2. "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II"
3. "8 1/2"
4. "Lawrence of Arabia"
5. "Dr. Strangelove"
6. "Bicycle Thieves"
6. "Raging Bull"
6. "Vertigo"
9. "Rashomon"
9. "The Rules of the Game"
9. "Seven Samurai"

At very first glance, there are some very unexpected results. This is the first time since 1952 that "Citizen Kane" has not topped the critics' poll (this is just the third directors' poll; it topped both previous iterations). There are three new films -- or three new old films, I guess: "The Searchers," "Man With the Movie Camera," and "The Passion of Joan of Arc." And that means three films are out: "Battleship Potemkin," "Singin' in the Rain," and, most surprisingly "The Godfather."

We'll have plenty more about Sight & Sound's poll in the days and week ahead. In the meantime, how do you think this year's poll holds up against 2002's list?

Read more of Sight & Sound's "The 50 Greatest Films of All Time."
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