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Sight & Sound Top Films
Critics Surveys 1952 - 1992
Since 1952, the British Film Institute magazine Sight and Sound has polled international critics for their "Top Ten" movies every ten years. S&S uses the designation of 'top ten' rather than 'best ten' to take into account personal subjectivity vs. critical objectivity and changing impressions.
Within the surveys from 1952 to 1982, only the top 20-30 films are listed, in order of popularity. The director's name and year of release are followed by the number of votes received. In respect to the source, the British title for the film is used, while the non-English title is used with translation, respecting the country of origin, while in many instances this is the name by which the movie was known in English countries.
I don't know exactly the number critics polled in 1952, but by 1982, S&S received lists from 122. In 1992, about 220 lists made up the survey, 101 of them from film directors, which make for some interesting variances. (This is being written in early 2002: A new S&S poll will be coming later this year.)
Note that even within just the top 10, by no. 10, films receive barely 10% of votes cast. Of perhaps 100,000 theatrical films released internationally over cinema's history, for 1992, listed are 131 films that gained 3 or more votes from the critics.
In our presentation of the Sight & Sound surveys, films receiving identical votes are listed chronologically, oldest first.
You can also speculate, if you wish, as I certainly do, on why some truly great cinema masterworks have not received even 3 votes, while Hawks Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life are included as well as a number of lesser Godard films. It seems that a great number of critics prefer intellectually challenging or ambiguous films over ones with more emotional content, thus the preference of Godard over Truffaut, for instance, or where with Sirk's film they find sly satirical touches that transcend the soap opera formula. This is not to say that these films are not special in their way.
At the same time, to limit oneself to only 10 film choices, is, to me, questionable and perhaps denigrating to the medium. Choices were limited in 1952 to perhaps 4 decades of film efforts, while today we have another 5 decades. Thus today we should have lists of no less than 25. I would hope that Sight and Sound would expand its survey to critics' Top 30 or even a Top 50, which would certainly offer the opportunity to create a much more balanced list of top films, while also allowing everyone's more whimsical choices. Here, I present my current Top 30 list in chronological order through 1992. Note that the ones with asterisks did not receive even 3 votes in that most recent poll.
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Dreyer - 1928)
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939)
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles - 1942)
* The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler - 1946)
* It's a Wonderful Life (Capra - 1946)
The Third Man (Reed - 1949)
* High Noon (Zinnemann - 1952)
Ikiru (Kurosawa - 1952)
* On the Waterfront (Kazan - 1954)
The Searchers (Ford - 1956)
Touch of Evil (restored version) (Welles - 1958)
Vertigo (Hitchcock - 1958)
* Judgment at Nuremberg (Kramer - 1961)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut - 1962)
* Lawrence of Arabia (Lean - 1962)
8 1/2 (Fellini - 1963)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone - 1968)
* The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah - 1969)
* Chinatown (Polanski - 1974)
* Star Wars (original version) (Lucas - 1977)
* Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (director's cut) (Spielberg - 1977)
Apocalypse Now (Redux) (Coppola - 1979)
* Chariots of Fire (Puttnam, Hudson - 1981)
* Blade Runner (original version) (Scott - 1982)
* E.T. (original version) (Spielberg - 1982)
* Field of Dreams (Robinson - 1989)
* Miller's Crossing (Coen - 1990)
* Thelma & Louise (Scott - 1991)
* Unforgiven (Eastwood - 1992)
That's the nature of film criticism.... we all have our favorites, each of us has our personal top list.
What are yours? ... are they no less? -- Simón Cherpitel
1952 S&S Survey
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica - 1949) 25
The Gold Rush (Chaplin - 1925) 19
City Lights (Chaplin - 1930) 19
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 16
Intolerance (Griffith - 1916) 12
Louisiana Story (Flaherty - 1947) 12
Greed (Von Stroheim - 1924) 11
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 11
Le Jour se Leve (Carne - 1939) 11
Le Million (Clair - 1930) 10
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939) 10
Brief Encounter (Lean - 1945) 10
La Grande Illusion (Renoir - 1937) 9
The Grapes of Wrath (Ford - 1940) 9
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 9
Que Viva Mexico (Eisenstein - 1931) 8
The Childhood of Maxim Gorki (Donskoi - 1938) 8
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin - 1947) 8
Earth (Dovzhenko - 1929) 7
Zero de Conduite (Vigo - 1933) 7
Broken Blossoms (Griffith - 1919) 6
Hallelujah! (Vidor - 1929) 6
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Bresson - 1945) 6
Birth of a Nation (Griffith - 1914) 5
L'Age d'Or (Bunuel - 1930) 5
Dreigroschenoper (Pabst - 1931) 5
A Nous la Liberte (Clair - 1931) 5
Man of Aran (Flaherty - 1934) 5
Stagecoach (Ford - 1939) 5
Henry V (Olivier - 1944) 5
Les Enfants du Paradis (Carne - 1945) 5
Los Olvidados (Bunuel - 1950) 5
Miracolo a Milano ('Miracle in Milan' De Sica - 1951) 5
1962 S&S Survey
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 22
L'Avventura (Antonioni - 1960) 20
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939) 19
Greed (Von Stroheim - 1924) 17
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi - 1953) 17
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 16
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein - 1943-46) 16
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica - 1949) 16
La Terra Trema (Visconti - 1948) 14
L'Atalante (Vigo - 1933) 13
Zero de Conduite (Vigo - 1933) 11
Pather Panchali (Ray - 1955) 11
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais - 1959) 11
The Gold Rush (Chaplin - 1925) 10
City Lights (Chaplin - 1930) 10
The Childhood of Maxim Gorki (Donskoi - 1938) 10
Sunrise (Murnau - 1927) 9
Earth (Dovzhenko - 1929) 8
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin - 1947) 8
The General (Keaton & Bruckman - 1927) 7
October (Eisenstein - 1928) 7
La Grande Illusion (Renoir - 1937) 7
Umberto D (De Sica - 1951) 7
Ikiru (Kurosawa - 1952) 7
Nazarin (Bunuel - 1958) 7
Intolerance (Griffith - 1916) 6
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 6
Limelight (Chaplin - 1952) 6
Tokyo Story (Ozu - 1953) 6
Nuit et Brouillard (Resnais - 1955) 6
Wild Strawberries (Bergman - 1957) 6
Pickpocket (Bresson - 1959) 6
L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad (Resnais - 1961) 6
1972 S&S Survey
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 32
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939) 28
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 16
8 1/2 (Fellini - 1963) 15
L'Avventura (Antonioni - 1960) 12
Persona (Bergman - 1967) 12
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 11
The General (Keaton - 1927) 10
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles - 1942) 10
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi - 1953) 9
Wild Strawberries (Bergman - 1957) 9
The Gold Rush (Chaplin - 1925) 8
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein - 1943-46) 8
Ikiru (Kurosawa - 1952) 8
Vertigo (Hitchcock - 1958) 8
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais - 1959) 8
Pierrot le Fou (Godard - 1965) 8
Sunrise (Murnau - 1927) 7
La Grande Illusion (Renoir - 1937) 7
The Searchers (Ford - 1956) 7
Viridiana (Bunuel - 1961) 7
Mouchette (Bresson - 1966) 7
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick - 1968) 7
1982 S&S Survey
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 45
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939) 31
Singin' in the Rain (Kelly & Donan - 1952) 15
The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa - 1954) 15
8 1/2 (Fellini - 1963) 14
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 13
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles - 1942) 12
Vertigo (Hitchcock - 1958) 12
L'Avventura (Antonioni - 1960) 12
The General (Keaton - 1927) 11
The Searchers (Ford - 1956) 11
Andrei Roublev (Tarkovsky - 1966) 10
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick - 1968) 10
Greed (Von Stroheim - 1924) 9
The Third Man (Reed - 1949) 9
Jules and Jim (Truffaut - 1961) 9
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 8
The Godfather (Coppola - 1972) 8
Sunrise (Murnau - 1927) 7
Touch of Evil (Welles - 1958) 7
1992 S&S Survey - Critics' Choices
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 43
La Regle du Jeu ('Rules of the Game' Renoir - 1939) 32
Tokyo Story (Ozu - 1953) 22
Vertigo (Hitchcock - 1958) 18
The Searchers (Ford - 1956) 17
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 15
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 15
L'Atalante (Vigo - 1933) 15
Pather Panchali ('Song of the Little Road' S.Ray - 1955) 15
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick - 1968) 14
Sunrise (Murnau - 1927) 10
Bicycle Thieves (DeSica - 1949) 10
Singin' in the Rain (Kelly, Donan - 1952) 10
8 1/2 (Fellini - 1963) 10
The General (Keaton, Bruckman - 1927) 9
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa - 1954) 9
L'Avventura (Antonioni - 1960) 9
City Lights (Chaplin - 1931) 8
Paisan (Rossellini - 1946) 8
Letter From An Unknown Woman (Ophuls - 1948) 8
Ugetsu Monogatori (Mizoguchi - 1953) 8
A Bout de Souffle ('Breathless' Godard - 1959) 8
Pierrot le Fou (Godard - 1965) 8
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky - 1966) 8
Raging Bull (Scorsese - 1980) 8
Intolerance (Griffith - 1916) 7
Rear Window (Hitchcock - 1954) 7
Wild Strawberries (Bergman - 1957) 7
Some Like It Hot (Wilder - 1959) 7
Grand Illusion (Renoir - 1937) 6
Children Of Paradise (Carne - 1945) 6
Journey To Italy (Rossellini - 1953) 6
Madame de ... ('Earrings of...' Ophuls - 1954) 6
Ordet (Dreyer - 1955) 6
Touch of Evil (Welles - 1958) 6
Le Mepris ('Contempt' Godard - 1963) 6
Music Room (S.Ray - 1963) 6
Pickpocket (Bresson - 1963) 6
Gertrud (Dreyer - 1964) 6
Mirror (Tarkovsky - 1975) 6
Stalker (Tarkovsky - 1979) 6
Greed (von Stroheim - 1924) 5
Gold Rush (Chaplin - 1925) 5
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov - 1929) 5
M (Lang - 1931) 5
Trouble In Paradise (Lubitsch - 1932) 5
To Be Or Not To Be (Lubitsch - 1942) 5
My Darling Clementine (Ford - 1946) 5
Germany, Year Zero (Rossellini - 1947) 5
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin - 1947) 5
Third Man (Reed - 1949) 5
Ikiru ('To Live' Kurosawa - 1952) 5
North By Northwest (Hitchcock - 1959) 5
Rio Bravo (Hawks - 1959) 5
La Dolce Vita (Fellini - 1960) 5
Jules & Jim (Truffaut - 1962) 5
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her (Godard - 1966) 5
Nashville (Altman - 1975) 5
Fanny And Alexandra (Bergman - 1983) 5
Shoah (Lanzmann - 1985) 5
Decalogue (Kieslowski - 1988) 5
Birth Of A Nation (Griffith - 1915) 4
October (Eisenstein - 1928) 4
Un Chien Andalou ('Andalusian Dog' Bunuel - 1929) 4
L'Age d'Or ('Golden Age' Bunuel - 1930) 4
Scarlet Empress (von Sternberg - 1934) 4
Modern Times (Chaplin - 1936) 4
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks - 1938) 4
Stagecoach (Ford - 1939) 4
Listen To Britain (Jennings - 1942) 4
Magnificent Ambersons (Welles - 1942) 4
Ivan The Terrible (Eisenstein - 1944) 4
Black Narcissus (Powell, Pressburger - 1946) 4
Out Of The Past (Tourneur - 1947) 4
Limelight (Chaplin - 1952) 4
Sansho Dayu ('Sansho the Bailiff' Mizoguchi - 1954) 4
Night of the Hunter (Laughlin - 1955) 4
Seventh Seal (Bergman - 1957) 4
Vivre sa Vie ('My Life To Live' Godard - 1962) 4
Charulata (S.Ray - 1964) 4
Au Hazard Balthazar (Bresson - 1966) 4
Chimes At Midnight (Welles - 1967) 4
Weekend (Godard - 1967) 4
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone - 1969) 4
Performance (Cammell, Roeg - 1970) 4
Travelling Players (Angelopoulos - 1975) 4
Kings Of The Road (Wenders - 1976) 4
Apocalypse Now (Coppola - 1979) 4
L'Argent (Bresson - 1983) 4
Once Upon A Time In America (Leone - 1984) 4
Yellow Earth (Kaige - 1986) 4
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies - 1988) 4
Strike (Eisenstein - 1924) 3
Metropolis (Lang - 1926) 3
The Crowd (Vidor - 1928) 3
The Wind (Sjostrom - 1928) 3
Boudu Save From Drowning (Renoir - 1932) 3
La Signora di Tutti (Ophuls - 1934) 3
Une Partie de Campagne ('Day in the Country' Renoir - 1936) 3
His Girl Friday (Hawks - 1940) 3
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren - 1943) 3
Meet Me In St. Louis (Minnelli - 1944) 3
Brief Encounter (Lean - 1945) 3
Spring In A Small Town (Mu - 1948) 3
La Terra Trema ('The Earth Trembles' Visconti - 1948) 3
Banshun ('Late Spring' Ozu - 1949) 3
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder - 1950) 3
Rashomon (Kurosawa - 1951) 3
Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi - 1952) 3
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks - 1953) 3
Aparajito ('The Unvanquished' S.Ray - 1956) 3
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Resnais - 1959) 3
Imitation of Life (Sirk - 1959) 3
The World of Apu (S.Ray) - 1959) 3
Peeping Tom (Powell - 1960) 3
Accattone (Pasolini - 1961) 3
La Notte ('The Night' Antonioni - 1961) 3
L'Eclisse ('The Eclipse' Antonioni - 1962) 3
Ozuanma No Aji ('Autumn Afternoon' Ozu - 1962) 3
The Leopard (Visconti - 1963) 3
Persona (Bergman - 1966) 3
Belle de Jour (Bunuel - 1967) 3
Playtime (Tati - 1968) 3
Conformist (Bertolucci - 1970) 3
The Godfather (Coppola - 1972) 3
The Godfather Part II (Coppola - 1974) 3
Jeanne Dielman (Akerman - 1975) 3
Ai No Corrida ('In the Realm of the Senses' Oshima - 1976) 3
Passion (Godard - 1982) 3
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg - 1988) 3
Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (Bae - 1989) 3
1992 S&S Survey - Directors' Choices
Citizen Kane (Welles - 1941) 30
8 1/2 (Fellini - 1963) 16
Raging Bull (Scorsese - 1980) 16
La Strada (Fellini - 1954) 12
L'Atalante (Vigo - 1933) 11
Modern Times (Chaplin - 1936) 10
Vertigo (Hitchcock - 1958) 10
The Godfather (Coppola - 1972) 10
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer - 1928) 9
Rashomon (Kurosawa - 1951) 9
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa - 1954) 9
The Godfather Part II (Coppola - 1974) 9
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick - 1968) 8
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein - 1925) 7
La Regle du Jeu (Renoir - 1939) 7
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming - 1939) 7
Tokyo Story (Ozu - 1953) 7
La Dolce Vita (Fellini - 1960) 7
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean - 1962) 7
Another word on the British Film Institute. They are responsible for producing the best TV series on film appreciation since Richard Schickel's memorable Men Who Made the Movies in the mid-1970s: Martin Scorsese's intimate & astute Personal Journey Through American Movies.
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