Currently rated the best movie of all time
By the most respected critics/filmmakers poll of 'Sight and Sound' magazine. This overtakes 'Citizen Kane'.
shareIt's now become homework which is not cool BUT it is the greatest film ever made.
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MovieChat Forums > Vertigo (1958) Discussion > Currently rated the best movie of all ti...
TBH, I find this to be more enjoyable to watch than Citizen Kane, which always seemed a little ponderous to me.
shareIt is tremendous -- could watch anytime.
shareI might agree, if I could ever decide on a favorite film.
IMHO one of the reasons it scores so high is that you can't really appreciate this movie until you've seen it several times. Film critics see all the great films over and over, of course they'll give extra love to one that isn't ruined by repeat viewings, it just gets better!
Indeed.
shareThe "Sight and Sound" international vote which dethroned Citizen Kane and installed Vertigo as "The Greatest Film of All Time" was taken in 2012.
2022 is next year. The Sight and Sound vote seems to occur once a decade in the year ending in "2."
I wonder if Vertigo will hold on as long as Citizen Kane did.
I don't really even like Citizen Kane, but it is a better movie than Vertigo because it had an actual point. Vertigo was just a kind of mystery thriller love story entertainment movie that was fairly well done for a wide audience. Kane was a morality play ... but while one was tight and moved fairly fast, Kane went on forever and to today's standards was single threaded and made for slower minds ... which drives modern audiences crazy.
shareNot as good as Gigi though.
shareSight and sound 2012 lists only 1 musical in top 100. Singin’ in the rain. Next is Red Shoes at 117, if that can be considered a musical. Gigi is certainly a great film but doesn’t get much love among younger generations nowadays…
shareI'm just being facetious. Gigi won the Best Picture Oscar the year Vertigo came out. I don't think Vertigo was even among the nominees. Not that the Oscars often choose the best picture as Best Picture, but still, that one's egregious.
shareIt’s better than Oliver! or Chicago, at least.
“Best” is always so subjective. I like Magnificent Ambersons much more tha Citizen Kane, for instance.
I believe that everybody knows there cannot be an objective "Best Movie of All Time."
We all have our "personal favorite of all time." Maybe more than one, but not MANY more than one.
And yet, Sight and Sound took it upon itself to get one named.
It was Citizen Kane for so many years that one felt that would never change.
When it DID change -- to Vertigo -- there was some head scratching.
For Vertigo never drew much of an audience -- Hitchcock had many bigger hits, three of them right AFTER Vertigo(North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds.) I always kind of felt that the international critics picked Vertigo BECAUSE it wasn't much of a hit -- that confirmed its bonafides as "an art film." David Lynch circa 1958. Or they were just being contrarian.
But if any director DESERVED to have one of his films named the best of all time ...it was Alfred Hitchcock. The man who never won the Best Director Oscar when Ron Howard did. The man whose sole Best Picture -- Rebecca -- was as much a Selznick picture, and while good, not in the class of what would come later.
Hitchcock never WON an Oscar, though the bosses GAVE him an honorary one (eh, it wasn't voted by the members. An Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that never gave Hitchcock -- one of the masters of movie art AND science -- an Oscar, isn't really an academy of anything.
An so, for that reason alone, its kinda nice that Vertigo is at the top of the list for a decade...maybe more?
Also, as someone else around here has noted, Vertigo has TWO genuses making it work: Hitchocck(the visual, the story), and Bernard Herrrmann(the MUSIC, in an overture that enwraps the listener in almost too MUCH mystery -- the movie can't match the score.) The love music for the kiss in the hotel room is symphonic AND cinematic.
So Vertigo wins for Hitchcock AND Herrmann (and for Saul Bass, who did the credits, with Herrmann music, for Vertigo, NXNW, and Psycho...and no more.)
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The actors almost don't matter in Vertigo with Hitchcock's grand visuals(San Francisco and coastal environs in gorgeous Technicolor by DP Robert Burks) and Herrmann's great music. Some felt James Stewart was too old and he DOES hurt the movie now, nuzzling blond sexburger Kim Novak -- but then she is turned into an Ice Queen in an awkward gray suit(that Novak hated, to tears) for most of the movie, almost dowdy. It works. Stewart works, too. Deep emotional work. (Though Cary Grant was more suave and fun; and Anthony Perkins was more handsome and mysterious.)
There is much in Vertigo worthy of study, and it works on one's emotions in a way that has very little to do with "usual" movie plotting.
What movie will replace Vertigo as the Best of All Time? 2001 maybe, to get Kubrick in? Or perhaps The Godfather. Raging Bull has its followers.
Me...I'd go with ...Psycho. Hitchcock and Herrmann again (and Bass for the last time) in what one critic called "the Citizen Kane of Horror Films." So there.
But that's personal.
Alas, its ten years since the 2012 poll and Vertigo is not Number One anymore.
In the 2022 poll, Vertigo DID get voted Number Two.
Number One is: "Jeanne Dielman" a 1975 French film.
Never hoid of it.
But I have 10 years to find out.
Maybe Vertigo will return in 2032.
PS. Citizen Kane used to be Number One and got that slot for three or four decades. Poor Vertigo only got one decade.
"Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" is definitely an "art film," and very much an acquired taste. Most folks would find it repetitive and boring. In contrast, "Vertigo" and "Citizen Cane" are much more accessible films.
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