Submit Your Top Ten by emailing here
See what others in the AAFS have nominated for the top ten so far by going to the link below:
click here: AAFS Nominations
| Every ten years since 1952 the film magazine 'Sight and Sound' has conducted a survey of hundreds of international film directors and critics to establish the ten greatest films of all time. Note that the list is of 'greatest' not 'favourite' so the films chosen tend to lean towards historically significant, groundbreaking, influential and 'classic' films. September's issue of 'Sight and Sound' carried the results for 2002 and they are as follows: | |
Critics' Top Ten
1) Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
2) Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
3) La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) - Jean Renoir
4) The Godfather and Godfather Part 2 - Francis Ford Coppola
5) Tokyo Story - Ozu Yasujiro
6) 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
7) Battleship Potemkim - Sergei Eisenstein
8) Sunrise - FW Murnau
9) 8 1/2 - Frederico Fellini
10) Singing in the Rain - Gene Kelly
Director's Top Ten
1) Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
2) The Godfather and Godfather Part 2 - Francis Ford Coppola
3) 8 ½ - Frederico Fellini
4) Lawrence of Arabia - David Lean
5) Dr Strangelove - Stanley Kubrick
6) Bicycle Thieves - Vitorio De Sica
7) Raging Bull - Martin Scorcese
8) Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
9) Rashomon - Kurosawa
10) La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) - Jean Renoir
Citizen Kane has now been at the S&S number one spot for 40 years. Technically groundbreaking, cinematically daring, dramatically complex - Citizen Kane is a great film, but you’ve got to ask has nothing better been made since 1941? Who are they afraid of upsetting by nominating something made within the last 60 years for the top spot? In fact there isn’t a single film in either top ten from the 90s. Raging Bull was made more than 20 years ago.
Many films on the lists, like ‘Battleship Potemkin’ are interesting from a historical perspective because they changed the language of cinema and rightly belong at the core of a film studies course. But if historical significance is the selection criteria why no DW Griffith or Melies for that matter? In my view, the poll is disappointingly timid.
| For example, ‘Bicycle Thieves’ was one of the first films to use real settings, non-actors and a story line based on everyday situations, but arguably more interesting examples of ‘social realist’ films have been made since De Sica’s 1948 classic, by Ken Loach amongst others. Bicycles Thieves, however, is a safe bet. The weight of previous polls has I think, played too great a role in decisions about what should and shouldn’t be included in the canon of ‘film greats’. |  Bicycle Thieves (1948) |
Next month I will make some of the films on this list that are less easy to get hold of available to borrow. I have 'Rashomon', 'Battleship Potemkim' and 'Bicycle Thieves' so if you’d like to borrow them you can decide for yourself how great you think they are. ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ has recently been added to the film exchange list, as has ‘The Godfather Trilogy’. Vertigo and 8 ½ are also on the list. Does anyone have any of the remaining films?
I believe AAFS should now mount a challenge to the critics’ and directors’ rather stale lists. This means conducting a poll to find out our own 10 greatest. Simply nominate 10 films in rough order of merit that you think qualify as ‘the greatest films ever made’. You needn’t say why you think they are greatest although it would be great if you could. I think we should avoid nominating any on the S&S lists to give space for more personal choices, but if you feel you can’t bear to leave Godfather 2 or 8 ½ or something else from the list off your top ten go ahead and include it.
Submit Your Top Ten by emailing here
See what others in the AAFS have nominated for the top ten so far by going to the link below:
click here: AAFS Nominations
Click here for results of critics and film makers poll of top ten films of the last 25 years
Click here for a suggested top 100 films.