Corona | Coming Attractions

Every year 'round this time the British Film Institute compiles a list of the top 50 movies of all time, as selected by a who's who of film critics from around the globe. Movies go up the list and some movies fall down; the list changes as do the ever-changing likes of the critics, who also rotate in and out of the inclusive group.

This year in their 2012 Sight & Sound list there has been a dramatic change: the number one movie deemed the most culturally significant by film critics has been dethroned. That movie is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane which had been voted the top film for 50 years. Now it's fallen to the second-highest spot.

So what movie is the new top dog on Sight & Sound's list? None other than Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller Vertigo. The James Stewart / Kim Novak film only entered the notice of S&S's cinemaphiles in 1972, but it has been creeping up the chart over the last four decades.

I'll only present the top 10 on Sight & Sound's list here, then leave it up to you to follow the link afterward to see what films made the cut from #11 to #50.

1. Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
2. Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles)
3. Tokyo Story (1953, Ozu Yasujiro)
4. La Règle du jeu (1939, dir. Jean Renoir)
5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, dir. F.W. Murnau)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
7. The Searchers (1956, dir. John Ford)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (1939, dir. Dziga Vertov)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927, dir. Carl Dreyer)
10. 8½ (1963, dir. Frederico Fellini)

The top 50 movies as compiled by Sight & Sound for 2012.