Citizen Kane tops film list again
Citizen Kane has been voted the best film of all time in the world’s largest and most authoritative international poll of both film critics and directors.
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles), which has topped the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound magazine poll for the last four decades, kept Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) hanging in second place.
In the Directors’ Poll, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola) were also breathing down the neck of the omnipresent Citizen Kane in a race for the title.
The twin polls, held every ten years, secured contributions from many of the world’s leading film directors and critics, including such luminaries as Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Bernardo Bertolucci, Tim Robbins, Sam Mendes and Cameron Crowe, to establish the ten best films of all time.
Other films appearing in both the directors’ and critics’ top tens include La Regle du jeu (Renoir) and 8-1/2 (Fellini).
The most recently made film to fight its way onto the Directors’ Poll is Raging Bull (Scorsese), made in 1980.
While the classic musical Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly, Donen), danced into tenth place on the Critics’ Poll, astonishingly, not a single British film made it into the critics’ top ten – the highest placed was The Third Man (Reed) in 35th position.
Sight & Sound magazine, celebrating its 70th year in print, polled over 250 of the world’s leading contemporary critics and directors who nominated a total of more than 700 different films in their top ten lists.
The critics’ and directors’ lists are compiled separately.
The Critics’ Poll began in 1952 and is now in its fiftieth year. Internationally respected, this year it polled the largest number of critics ever from countries as far afield as Bangladesh, Cuba, Estonia and the Philippines.
Well-known critics who voted include Barry Norman, Jonathan Ross and Mark Kermode from the UK, and Camille Paglia, Roger Ebert and David Denby from the USA.
The Directors’ Poll is the second to be held, (the first was in 1992) and was supported by a host of leading international film directors.
The editor of Sight & Sound, Nick James, comments:
“The Critics’ Poll is a touchstone for worldwide film opinion. For the last forty years Citizen Kane has topped the Critics’ Poll confirming Orson Welles, the director, as the Shakespeare of modern cinema.
Pushing all the resources of a Hollywood studio to its limits, the film is a dazzling formal experiment and compelling portrait of a great man’s life”.
Critics’ Top Ten Films: 1 Citizen Kane 1941, 2 Vertigo 1958, 3 La Regle du jeu 1939, 4 The Godfather and The Godfather Part II 1972, 1974, 5 Tokyo Story 1953, 6 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968, 7 Sunrise 1927, 8 Battleship Potemkin 1925, 9 8-1/2 1963, 10 Singin’ in the Rain 1951.
Directors’ Top Ten Films: 1 Citizen Kane (Welles) 1941, 2 The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Coppola) 1972, 1974, 3 8-1/2 (Fellini) 1963, 4 Lawrence of Arabia (Lean) 1962, 5 Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick) 1963, 6 Bicycle Thieves (De Sica) 1948, 7 Raging Bull (Scorsese) 1980, 8 Vertigo (Hitchcock) 1958, eq 9 Rashomon (Kurosawa) 1950, La Regle du jeu (Renoir) 1939, Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) 1954