Will it Be Citizen Kane Again?
 

Every decade since the 1950s, Sight and Sound magazine has published its top ten films of all time. With the exception of the first poll, in 1952, when it was topped by Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane has been at number one every time. The last poll, in 2002, went like this:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Vertigo
3. La Regle du jeu
4. The Godfather (Pts 1 and 2)
5. Tokyo Story
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. Battleship Potemkin
8. Sunrise
9. 8 1/2
10. Singin' in the Rain

I like Citizan Kane but have never quite understood its enormous reputation. So I'm not (necessarily) expecting people to provide alternative top tens but I'd be interested in any comments or films that you think deserve to make that list and those already on it that you just don't get the appeal of.

For the record, they also do a top ten directors, the 2002 version looking like this:

1. Orson Welles
2. Alfred Hitchcock
3. Jean-Luc Godard
4. Jean Renoir
5. Stanley Kubrick
6. Akira Kurasawa
7. Federica Fellini
8. John Ford
9. Sergei Eisenstein
Joint 10. Francis Ford Coppola/Yasujiro Ozu

Again, i know polls are always silly but any glaring ommisions or names on the list that you don't agree with?

CK is one of my favourite movies of all time, it is very much a classic and deserves all of the kudos it gets. With the invention of the occasional new technique chucked in to boot. Orson Welles was only 25 when he made this film and it was his first film ever after being in theatre and radio for the years previous.

I'd never knock CK. It is great but I've never quite seen why it's considered so great. In a way, despite Sight and Sound being a British magazine, CK is a very 'American' choice, Welles being something of a maverick against the Hollywood system. It fits America's fascination with rebel 'outlaw' figures. So I suppose in that sense it could be considered Hollywood's first anti-Hollywood film. In terms of Welles inventing new techniques, though, wasn't he really just applying methods already in circulation in Europe? It's difficult to think of a technique used in CK not already present in the films of say Renoir, etc? Being the first to import those ideas into Hollywood may be reason enough to qualify CK as the greatest Hollywood film ever but no more than that, I'd say.

s & s is in many ways like uncut magazine in that they like looking to the past and never the present.

I don't like ranking things. Citizen Kane is a great movie, but how can you say it's better than 2001? And how could you say that 2001 is better?

They're both movies that are solid 10/10s. And there's way more than ten 10/10 films.

Same with directors.

I'd like to see Allen, Truffaut, Leone, Tati, and Gilliam up there, but who do you remove? I think you need to take away the numbers and expand the amount for each list.

And these lists always have bias towards things that don't really enter into how good the film is.

I obviously can't argue with that but even Scorsese says it's real impact was on American cinema. Fair enough, though. I suppose I'm just slightly surprised that after all these years it's still holding on to the top spot. I certainly don't wanna sound like I have anything against the film, though.

i work at the media section of my university's library. today somebody came up to me and told me that he has to write a paper about some film about a citizen kane, so he wanted to know if we have it and if that is indeed the name of the film.

I've never been able to appreciate Citizen Kane, or 2001. I understand Orson Welles' role as a renegade in the industry, but Kane has never been my cup of tea, and I found 2001 to be quite dull in comparison to many of Kubrick's other works. Maybe I'm red-flagging my ignorance on the subject, but I am a film school graduate - so I have at least somewhat of an idea what I'm talking about.

As far as new additions to the list go, it'd be nice to see one of Jodorowsky's works up there, and agree with SpectralJulian on the fact that Allen, and Leone are also very list-worthy. But SpectralJulian is also right in the fact that there are definitely more than ten 10/10 films out there, and it'd be difficult to select a top ten of those, and rank them based on mass appeal. It's quite a silly list, if you truly think about it.

Yeah off course only art students can understand art :D Sorry I ticked off a bit when I read that...

I wasn't really blown away by Citizen Kane, while I really liked the other Welles films I saw. Regarding 2001 I love it (if I can see how the "slow" pace can bore some people I still think it suits the film perfectly).

Haha, I was moreso trying to validate my own opinion, rather than trying to invalidate anyone else's. It's not every day you hear someone openly disliking either of those films, and the natural assumption would be, "WELL HE JUST DOESN'T APPRECIATE THE ART OF FILM!". But now that you mention it, I should check out more of Welles' work - I sorta dropped him like a hot potato after CK.

Any recommendations?

A couple things about 2001:

People love it for the final two acts, not the first two acts.

What mystifies me about the film is just how ominous it is. We have the obelisk, HAL, the silence, space, the planets, Jupiter and its moons, the infinite. The art direction and choice of music (especially the Ligaveti) is quite wonderful. There's really nothing like it.

My favorite Kubrick films would be The Shining, 2001, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, and Paths of Glory.

The Killing is great too.

I honestly don't care much for Clockwork Orange or Full Metal Jacket, I don't consider Spartacus to be a Kubrick film, and the others I haven't seen.

Gilliam is amazing.

Although Ford is listed in the director's top ten it seems absurd that not one of his movies made the actual film top ten. Especially considering that when Welles' himself was asked who his greatest influence was, his now famous reply was, "John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.”