Every 10 years, starting in 1952, Sight & Sound has reached out to filmmakers, academics, and critics all over the world to try to determine the current consensus on the greatest films ever made. Their 2012 poll is most definitely a blueprint that every cinephile should start with.
The last poll was also the first time Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” failed to take the number one spot on either the Critics or Director’s lists. The last poll, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” dethroned ‘Kane,’ a film that held the top spot for almost three decades. “Vertigo” beat ‘Kane’ 191 to 157.
The following are 2012’s Critics results:
Vertigo (1958)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Tokyo Story (1953)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Searchers (1956)
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
8½ (1963)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
L'Atalante (1934)
Breathless (1960)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Late Spring (1949)
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Seven Samurai (1954)
Persona (1966)
Mirror (1975)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Assuming they follow tradition, there will be another poll done in 2022, and it will most likely be the most polarizing results we’ve seen in a very long time. A shake up is no doubt about to occur due to how hyperpoliticized things have become these last 10 years.
Will there be a new number 1? At this point, I don’t think ‘Kane’ will gain back the top spot. Instead, based on the film's steady rise over the last decade, I'm almost inclined to believe that Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” will be our new #1, solely based on its sheer influence alone; Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” both owe a major debt of gratitude to Kubrick’s magnum opus.
Speaking of “There Will Be Blood” and “The Tree of Life,” will this be the year both of these modern-day masterpieces crack the top 100? One film that is definitely bound to skyrocket is Spike Lee's “Do the Right Thing,” which has managed to gain significant relevance in the era of “Black Lives Matter,” not to mention it was named Best Film of the 1980s in a recent World of Reel poll.
I can also imagine that with a more youthful pool of voters there will be much more attention paid to Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ movies. It’s been 50 years since the first one came out and it’s prime time for it to finally crack the top 20. In 2012, “The Godfather” finished 21st and “The Godfather Part II” 31st.
If I do end up being sent a ballot this year, voters tend to not know until they open their email inbox, I’ll have to assume that “The Godfather,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Vertigo,” “The Rules of the Game,” “The Searchers,” “Sunrise,” “L’Avventura,” “Mulholland Drive,” and “Bicycle Thieves” will all figure prominently on my final list.
If there’s one thing I can plea for, with voters of this decade’s edition of the poll, is to please keep the woke politics out of it. No, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and “Moonlight,” albeit good movies, don’t deserve top 250 inclusion.
Also, yes, Alfred Hitchcock was, at times, a misogynist to his actresses, but that doesn’t mean some of his indisputably great movies should be downgraded. Ditto John Wayne and “The Searchers,” a film with racial undertones, but whose impact to film history is undeniable.
You see, 2012 was the biggest ever expansion of the Sight and Sound voter pool, by both diversity and sheer numbers, and in the next two polls I think we can expect that trend to continue in ways that both disrupt and bring a little more color and gender to the final results. This could also, sadly, mean younger voters who just haven’t seen enough of films history to be a part of such a prestigious poll and would, say, include “The Shawshank Redemption” or “The Dark Knight” on their ballots — both great movies, but nowhere near the 100 greatest ever. My warning for BFI is quite simple; Dont IMDB-fy the poll.
Bassim Tariq was the first one in the chair. The "Mogul Mowgli" director spent two years building out the Mahershala Ali vehicle before exiting in 2022, and he's now letting the air out on this one.