Alfred Hitchcock tops greatest films poll for first time in 50 years

Once a decade BFI poll sees Vertigo pip Citizen Kane to the top
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2 August 2012

The BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine has announced the winner of its Greatest Films poll is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, ending the 50-year reign of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, winner of the once-a-decade poll since 1962.

846 film experts participated in the poll, placing Welles’ epic in second, Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story third and Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu fourth. Two new films to make the top ten are both silent – Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera at number eight, and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc in ninth place.

The most recent film in the top ten is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in sixth place.

The poll is Sight & Sound’s seventh, and the full results are published in the September issue as well as at www.bfi.org.uk/sightsoundpoll2012.

Made in 1958, psychological suspense drama Vertigo first entered the Sight & Sound poll in 1982 - two years after the director died.

Starring Kim Novak and James Stewart, Vertigo trumped Citizen Kane by 34 votes this time around.

Kim Novak said in a recent interview with the BFI that: ‘I remember when I played it I felt absolutely stripped naked. I felt so vulnerable.

“He knew exactly what he wanted. The façade was everything to him [Hitchcock]. He was obsessed with the look. It was as if he was Jimmy Stewart, making sure that she was dressed exactly the way Madeleine was. He was playing the part of Jimmy Stewart.”

The Critics’ Top Twenty-Five Greatest Films of All Time are:

1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

4. La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)

5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

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

7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

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

10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

11. Battleshop Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

12. L'Atalante

13. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

14. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

15. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)

16. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

17= Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954); Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

19. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)

20. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Grace Kelly, 1952)

21= L'aventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960); Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963); The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

24= Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955); In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

Vertigo will go on general release at cinemas across the UK from September 7; screening at BFI Southbank, Sept 7-27

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