This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
There are a lot of lists of the greatest movies ever — but the "greatest" list of the "greatest" movies is the one released once a decade by Sight and Sound magazine, the publication of the British Film Institute.
The Sight and Sound poll asks hundreds of critics (there's another list on which directors vote), to name the greatest movies of all time. And the list is usually considered definitive, because so many learned critics take part, and because it's been going for decades.
The latest list was released today, and it's setting off alarm bells around the movie blogosphere.
The surprise is that there's a new No. 1: Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1958), starring Jimmy Stewart as a detective obsessed with a mystery woman (Kim Novak), has unseated Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) at the top of the chart, where it rested for half a century.
Here's the top 10:
1. "Vertigo," Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
2. "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles, 1941
3. "Tokyo Story," Ozu Yasujiro, 1953
4. "La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game)," Jean Renoir, 1939
5. "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans," F.W. Murnau, 1927
6. "2001: A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick, 1969
7. "The Searchers," John Ford, 1956
8. "Man With a Movie Camera," Dziga Vertov, 1939
9. "The Passion of Joan of Arc," Carl Dreyer, 1927
10. "8 1/2," Federico Fellini, 1963
What do you think? If you have opinions on any of these 10, kindly leave them in the comments.