Page 1 of Vertigo - Best Film Ever??

BBC News is reporting that the BFI`s Sight and Sound magazine has named Alfred Hitchcock`s 1958 thiller Vertigo as the best film ever in a poll of 846 distributors, critics, academics and writers.

The poll is the first time Orson Welles` Citizen Kane has been denied the title by the BFI`s ten-yearly poll.

J Mark Oates

This item was edited on Wednesday, 1st August 2012, 18:42

I love hitchcock but prefer both Rear Window and Rope tbh.....never got Citizen Kane I`m afraid :(

saw Veritgo  well   it was ok but  not great, love other flick Hitchcock did, others that he didn`t get much credit for Rebecca  which David O Seleszick took credit  for  it.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 1st August 2012, 23:26

How can you say which is the best film ever? What defines that, and what separates one film from the rest?

I prefer Vertigo to Citizen Kane, but don`t think either of them are the best film ever.

Films that have had a lasting impression on me would include Ronald Coleman in A Tale of Two Cities, Katherine Hepburn in Little Women, Hepburn (again) and Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story, no I won`t try to go on, because the list is endless...probably why I have such a large DVD collection!

This item was edited on Thursday, 2nd August 2012, 09:17

For my money, the list is pretty pointless.  Unless you`re doing a Media Studies course and you want to get extra brownie points from that ponce of a tutor who develops catarrh just to pronounce Francois Truffaut correctly.

A truer indicator of a Best Movie is its bums-on-seats score - in which case Gone With The Wind remains unchallenged.  The BFI`s Best Movie list has nothing to do with popularity (except among film snobs), it`s all to do with buying into the whole "professional" film criticism/ cineaste/ cinephile movement intellectualising movie-going.

J Mark Oates

The problem with that "bums-on-seats" theory is that Avatar, Titanic and The Avengers are then classed as among "the best films ever made".

But you`re right, it is pointless. best/worst, good/bad... like morality it is all arbitrary.

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I saw the full list the other day, find it funny there`s literally a handful of films post 1980.

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The problem with that "bums-on-seats" theory is that Avatar, Titanic and The Avengers are then classed as among "the best films ever made".I think it`s a case of horses for courses - why I said the original Sight and Sound list was really only any good for Media Studies students - a "bums on seats" list is going to be more relevant to the general population looking for a popular film to watch than the BFI list which will be more challenging viewing and more relevant to people looking into movies as art.

For Sight and Sound`s readership, the list will be very relevant and it certainly sets the cat among the pigeons with Vertigo knocking Kane off the top slot after so many years.  Personally I`m unconvinced of the argument because I think Hitchcock made a number of much slicker movies.  I will concede that Vertigo has technical brilliance going for it, but I think Rope, Rear Window and Psycho are better told stories.

In a certain way I think it was unfortunate that the general press got hold of the story as I`d be worried that somebody might read the list, think "I`ve got to see some of these pictures!", loathe the first one they watch and be switched off from a whole bunch of incredible movies in consequence.  Most of the movies on the S&S list are full-on challenging watches, and if your usual cinematic fare is whatever the Dark Knight`s doing...

J Mark Oates

Yeah, very true. Although I think Vertigo and Citizen Kane are both very accessible films that have clearly had a long lasting influence on mainstream film making, with the only real hurdle for potential viewers being their `age` and whether they adapt to the rougher presentation and style of performance and direction. Citizen Kane always surprises me by how modern it feels, whereas Vertigo`s style feels very much a product of the time.

I don`t think it`s a bad thing this being reported and while I`m sure you`re right about some people instantly dismissing these films, it will be worth it for the few that use this to discover unseen classics and broaden their cinematic education.

I`m always concerned that an esoteric list like the Sight & Sound one is going to put off more people than it arouses curiosity in.  Cinema is the most accessible art form man has ever come up with.  In the silent days it was a universal language everybody could appreciate.  Even today billions of people go to the cinema.  Millions more than go to art galleries (and they`re usually free).

The problem is modern audiences are like those people who go to the Louvre, spend three minutes looking at the Mona Lisa, then whip round the rest of the exhibits before shooting off for an overpriced latte.

There are thousands of great movies.  Not just the ones singled out by the pseuds on the BFI panel.  Properly accessible movies just as amazing as La Regle du jeu.  I`m actually perfectly happy to see Vertigo, Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey in the critics` top ten.  I`m more worried to see Singin` In The Rain and Godfather I & II fall out of the top ten.  I`d have liked to have seen movies like Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story and King Kong (1933) placed higher than they were.

I`m worried that modern day audiences aren`t turned on by great movies of the past.  When I was young, BBC1 and 2 were always running great old black-and-white movies and I developed an abiding love for movies of the 1930s and 1940s - The Thin Man pictures, Universal Monsters, Charlie Chan, the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, the Flash Gordon serials.  Weird and wonderful movies liike Dr Erlich`s Magic Bullet, Monkey Business, Duck Soup, His Girl Friday.  The list is almost endless, and they`re practically all movies that would probably be dismissed as "it`s black-and-white, so it`s sh*te".  The Sight & Sound list doesn`t include any of those in the top ten.  Or the top twenty.  Singin` In The Rain scrapes in at number 20, Some Like It Hot at 42 and a handful of Chaplin and Keaton works between 30th and 50th place.  The Sight & Sound top fifty pongs of film snobbery to me, which doesn`t do the cause of cinematic art and selling it to the casual viewer any good at all.

J Mark Oates