[RichmondBlue]

Originally Posted by spiney2

well its people who like to talk about movies rather than watch them. bfi .......

i found vertigo boring and rather silly with the psychoanalytic stuff .....

I like Vertigo, but there are several Hitchcock movies that I enjoy more. None of the top ten would be among my "desert island" choices.
I suppose it depends whether you watch as a student of film, or for pure entertainment. But shouldn't the greatest movies be those that entertain, films that the general public would happily watch over and over again ? I can't see many of the top ten falling into that category.

[Victim Of Fate]

I think it's important to understand exactly what the Sight and Sound list is.

For starters, it isn't an ordered list of the greatest film ever made. That's what they present it as, but that isn't how it's constructed. Each voter gets to choose ten films, unordered, that they believe are the greatest films ever made. It could be that nobody thinks Vertigo or Citizen Kane are the best, but that lots of people think they're the fifth best film ever.

The list shows the films about which there is most critical consensus that they are "great movies". That's why it skews so much towards older films rather than modern classics - because its difficult for a critical consensus to be established about something made ten years ago compared with the 80-90 years in which Sunrise or The Passion of Joan of Arc have had to establish a consensus.

The fact that In The Mood For Love and Mulholland Drive even made the top 30 is impressive considering how recent they are and how many good films are made these days.

That Vertigo topped the list means that there is now a greater consensus that Vertigo is a masterpiece than there is about Citizen Kane. There could be a number of reasons for this:

• Increasing re-evaluation of Vertigo, which was thought of more as a popcorn movie when it first came out and has been growing in estimation ever since.
• Backlash against Kane, with people thinking it might be a bit "over-rated".
• Changing demographics working against Kane. The poll this year was bigger than it has ever been before, so it may be that those new voters didn't respect Citizen Kane as much as the old guard.
• Voters who would have put Citizen Kane on their list leaving it off because they thought it was "safe". If people are voting for ten films they believe to be great, leaving Citizen Kane, the guaranteed winner, off their list opens up a space for a film that might not otherwise get mentioned. Enough people do this and Vertigo sneaks in ahead.

It was probably a combination of all of these factors.

[drop dead fred]

I wasn't a huge fan of Vertigo but in my opinion it was certainly better than Citizen Kane and 2001 combined.

I think people make these lists to sound more important than they are. One of my favourite films is Shawshank and when I was younger people said that I only said that I liked that film to seem more intelligent, that my favourite film was Airplane but I didn't want to admit that so as not to seem so childish or uncouth. It's the same thing here in my eyes but with a higher degree of self-importance.

Sure 2001 and Citizen Kane are very artsy, but I could not stand their pomposity. I like intelligent films that make you think but they to me seem to be trying to be intelligent and artsy for their own sake.

I agree with what someone said on the first page (sorry I didn't notice their name), no one messes with Jack Burton!

[CLL Dodge]

That poll was from the critics.

358 film directors were also polled. Their top 10:

1. Tokyo Story (1953)
2.= 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2.= Citizen Kane (1941)
4. 8 1/2 (1963)
5. Taxi Driver (1976)
6. Apocalypse Now (1979)
7.= The Godfather (1972)
7.= Vertigo (1958)
9. Mirror (1974)
10. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

So out go the silents and in come 4 films from the 70's.

Like with the critics' poll this is supposed to be what they consider the greatest films, not their favourite films.

[Lawro2]

Watched Vertigo today, did not enjoy it.

For me it doesn't even come close to Psycho, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder or Rope.