Film AwardMovie Picture

The Greatest Films of All Time: Critics Top 250 Films (2012): VERTIGO

James Stewart Vertigo

Vertigo and the other Greatest Films of All Time Critics Top 250 Films have been announced. BFI’s Sight & Sound Magazine Critics’ Top 250 Films house many surprises and have sparked much discussion. The voting on the top 250 Films “involved over 1,000 critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles, and receiv[ed] 846 top-ten lists from correspondents in 73 countries, citing 2,045 different films.”

Many of the top films I have never seen before, which is a shame because I would like to see what makes a top film a top film.

Advertisement
 

A note on the list: “many numbers seem to be skipped. Essentially, tied films start to pile up at the point at which the voting was tied, and then the numbering resumes for the film(s) with the next number of votes. So, for example, three films tied for position #21, and those are effectively films #21-23, with the count resuming at #24.”

The James Stewart Vertigo photo:

James Stewart Vertigo

James Stewart Vertigo

The Greatest Films of All Time: Critics Top 250 Films (2012) List:

1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
4. La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
11. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
12. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
13. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
14. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
15. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)
16. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
17. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa Akira, 1954)
17. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
19. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)
20. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951)
21. L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
21. Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
21. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
24. Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1955)
24. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
26. Rashomon (Kurosawa Akira, 1950)
26. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
28. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
29. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
29. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
31. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
31. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
33. Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria De Sica, 1948)
34. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
35. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
35. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
35. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
35. Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994)
39. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
39. La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
41. Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
42. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
42. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
42. Gertrud (Carl Dreyer, 1964)
42. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
42. Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)
42. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
48. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
48. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1998)
50. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
50. Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953)
50. La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)

53=
“Rear Window” (1954)
“North By Northwest” (1959)
“Raging Bull” (1980)
56=
“M” (1931)
“Touch Of Evil” (1958)
“The Leopard” (1963)
59=
“Sherlock Jr” (1924)
“Sansho dayu” (1954)
“La Maman et la Putain” (1973)
“Barry Lyndon” (1975)
63 =
“Modern Times” (1936)
“Sunset Blvd.” (1950)
“The Night Of The Hunter” (1955)
“Wild Strawberries” (1957)
“Rio Bravo” (1958)
“Pickpocket” (1959)
69=
“A Man Escaped” (1956)
“Blade Runner” (1982)
“Sans soleil” (1982)
“Blue Velvet” (1986)
73=
“La Grande Illusion” (1937)
“Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945)
“The Third Man” (1949)
“L’eclisse” (1962)
“Nashville” (1975)
78=
“Once Upon A Time In The West” (1968)
“Chinatown” (1974)
“Beau Travail” (1998)
81=
“The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942)
“Lawrence Of Arabia” (1962)
“The Spirit Of The Beehive” (1973)
84=
“Greed” (1925)
“Casablanca” (1942)
“The Colour Of Pomegranates” (1968)
“The Wild Bunch” (1969)
“Fanny And Alexander” (1984)
“A Brighter Summer Day” (1991)
90=
“Partie De Campagne” (1936)
“A Matter Of Life And Death” (1946)
“Aguirre, Wrath Of God” (1972)
93=
“Intolerance” (1916)
“Un chien andalou” (1928)
“The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp” (1943)
“Madame de…” (1953)
“The Seventh Seal” (1957)
“Imitation Of Life” (1959)
“Touki-Bouki” (1973)
“A One And A Two” (2000)

Check out the full list of 250 films here.

Leave your thoughts on the list below in the comments section. For more Film Awards photos, videos, and information, visit our Film Awards Page, subscribe to us by Email, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook.

Source: Slashfilm, Theplaylist

FilmBook's Newsletter

Subscribe to FilmBook’s Daily Newsletter for the latest news!

Thank you for subscribing.

Something went wrong.

Rollo Tomasi

Rollo Tomasi is a Connecticut-based film critic, TV show critic, news, and editorial writer. He will have a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 2025. Rollo has written over 700 film, TV show, short film, Blu-ray, and 4K-Ultra reviews. His reviews are published in IMDb's External Reviews and in Google News. Previously you could find his work at Empire Movies, Blogcritics, and AltFilmGuide. Now you can find his work at FilmBook.
Back to top button
Share via
Send this to a friend