Vertigo named as greatest film of all time

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ came out on top of a poll that aims to name ‘the greatest film of all time’. The film replaced ....

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ came out on top of a poll that aims to name ‘the greatest film of all time’. The film replaced Orson Welles’ 'Citizen Kane'. 

The said poll features a panel selected once every decade by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine. For the last 50 years, 'Citizen Kane' has been the top pick. This decade, however, the glory went to 'Vertigo', a 1958 thriller revolving around a retired cop with a fear of heights. It starred James Stewart and Kim Novak, and is known as Hitchcock’s most personal creation. 

The film became famous for a special camera trick Hitchcock himself invented to capture the main protagonist’s vertigo on film. Hitchcock used a simultaneous zoom-in and pull-back of the camera called the ‘dolly zoom’ or ‘trombone shot’ that created a disorientating depth of field.

The film, which 846 distributors, critics and academics chose as the greatest film of all time, won over the previous titleholder by just 34 votes. Ten years ago, however, it was short only five votes from toppling 'Citizen Kane'.

Its success in taking the top spot coincides with the launch of the Genius of Hitchcock season by the BFI. The show is a major retrospective that aims to celebrate the ‘master of suspense’. 

The Critics’ Top Ten Greatest Films of All Time are:  

•         Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
•         Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
•         Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
•         La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
•         Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
•         2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
•         The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
•         Man with a Movie Camera (DzigaVertov, 1929)
•         The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
•         8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)