After directing “Slumdog Millionaire” and “127 Hours,” Danny Boyle was ready for a little fun. And darned if he didn’t find it in “Trance,” which seems to be an art-heist thriller until it’s not.Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has overthrown “Citizen Kane” as the greatest film of all time, according to British magazine Sight & Sound. “Citizen Kane” had previously won the top spot in each decade since 1962. (“Bicycle Thieves” won the first Sight & Sound poll in 1952.)
“Vertigo” has risen in the poll’s estimation each decade since 1982 and came unusually close to unseating “Citizen Kane” in 2002.
The only two new entries to the Top 10 are Dziga Vertov’s experimental documentary “Man with a Movie Camera” (1929), making its first appearance at No. 8, and “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1927), which also appeared in the 1952, 1972 and 1992 polls. Both films are silent, making for an unusual (but not unprecedented) three silent films on the list. The other silent film is “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” (1927), which appeared for the first time in 2002, and rises to No. 5.
Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” ranked third, followed by Jean Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game”; F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise”; Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and John Ford’s “The Searchers.” Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2 ” was No. 10
For the first time this year, Sight & Sound also revealed an extended list of its top 50 films of all time. On this list, “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” dropped to Nos. 21 and 31, respectively. The two appeared together in the No. 4 spot last time, but this year Sight & Sound counted their votes separately.
Notably, there are only a handful of comedies, and only one film was directed by a woman: Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”
The most recent film to place in the top 50 was “Mulholland Dr.” (2002), coming in at No. 28.
The Sight & Sound poll was compiled from the Top 10 lists of 846 critics, programmers, academics and other movie-lovers, who together nominated more than 2,000 films.
As has been the tradition since 1992, Sight & Sound also asked a number of directors to nominate their picks for the greatest films. The top spot in the directors’ poll went to “Tokyo Story” (1953).
