Sight and Sound Poll compared to Top Grossing Films

[John Cole]

You might like to compare this list to the list of films in the thread below started by Dynasty.

Here are the results of the recent Sight and Sound critics' s poll. The critics who voted for the films listed are made up of scholars, academicians, and popular reviewers, and their list is generally thought to reflect the best of world-wide cinema. It makes for an interesting comparison to the top grossing films of all time.

Note that the poll lists films that received at least five top ten votes.


Citizen Kane (Welles) 46 1
Vertigo (Hitchcock) 41 2
La Régle du jeu (Renoir) 30 3
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Coppola) 23 4
Tokyo Story (Ozu) 22 5
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) 21 6
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein) 19 7
Sunrise (Murnau) 19 7
8 1/2 (Fellini) 18 9
Singin' in the Rain (Kelly, Donen) 17 10
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) 15 11
The Searchers (Ford) 15 11
Rashomon (Kurosawa) 14 13
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer) 12 14
A bout de souffle (Godard) 11 15
L'Atalante (Vigo) 11 15
The General (Keaton) 11 15
Touch of Evil (Welles) 11 15
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson) 10 19
Jules et Jim (Truffaut) 10 19
L'avventura (Antonioni) 10 19
Le Mépris (Godard) 9 22
Pather Panchali (Ray) 9 22
La dolce vita (Fellini) 8 24
M (Lang) 8 24
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi) 8 24
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick) 7 27
Les Enfants du paradis (Carné) 7 27
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein) 7 27
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov) 7 27
Metropolis (Lang) 7 27
Some Like It Hot (Wilder) 7 27
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi) 7 27
Wild Strawberries (Bergman) 7 27
Andrei Roublev (Tarkovsky) 6 35
The 400 Blows (Truffaut) 6 35
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman) 6 35
La Grande Illusion (Renoir) 6 35
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles) 6 35
Modern Times (Chaplin) 6 35
Psycho (Hitchcock) 6 35
The Seventh Seal (Bergman) 6 35
Taxi Driver (Scorsese) 6 35
The Third Man (Reed) 6 35
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica) 5 45
Blade Runner (Scott) 5 45
City Lights (Chaplin) 5 45
Greed (von Stroheim) 5 45
Intolerance (Griffith) 5 45
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean) 5 45
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls) 5 45
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford) 5 45
Mirror (Tarkovsky) 5 45
Ordet (Dreyer) 5 45
Pierrot le fou (Godard) 5 45
Rio Bravo (Hawks) 5 45
Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi) 5 45
Shoah (Lanzmann) 5 45
The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos) 5 45
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard) 5 45

[marbles]

Citizen Kane is the most overrated movie of all time. Every time one of these little pretentious groups decides to tell us what is art, they have to remind us of its greatness. It's a very average movie.

As for the rest of the list, I can't comment much, since I've never seen most of them. The ones I have seen (Psycho, Singin' in the Rain, Godfather, Psycho, Some Like it Hot) are really good movies, though. I am a little surprised that Goodfellas wasn't in there somewhere.

[Jimbo]

John,

I may be in trouble having seen more movies from the list you posted than from the top 100 grossing movies of all time. Should I warm up my DVD player this winter and catch up on the blockbusters or settle for quality?

[marbles]

"Should I warm up my DVD player this winter and catch up on the blockbusters or settle for quality?"

You should never settle for less than quality, but I'm not sure that the artsy list is the best way to go about it.

When intentionally seeking out quality flicks, I go with past Best Picture winners, and that's produced pretty decent results. These movies are generally reasonable box-office successes with at least some credibility.

On that note, I just saw "Marty" on TCM last night (Best Pic 1955). Not surprisingly, it was a very good movie.

[SammyB]

Your opinion of the movie might change if you researched just why everybody thinks it is one of the best.

[John Cole]

Jimbo,

I'd settle for quality--and I'd argue strenuously that these are "artsy" movies. I know, though, I have a couple holes in my flim viewing and need to get a hold of Bresson and Goddard since I've only seen one of their films on the list. That would come close to finishing the list for me.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Artsy, indeed!

Congrats on pool stories, by the way.

John

[Jimbo]