Once every ten years, Sight & Sound magazine publishes its critics' poll of the greatest 50 movies of all time. The big shock this year (apart from the inclusion of the wildly over-rated 'In The Mood For Love') is that the total number of critics in the world has swollen in the last decade from 150 to a massive 853. We can only hope that swingeing austerity cuts bring about a reduction in this number before the next poll in 2022.
As usual, Video Dogs is the only place in this wide brown land where you can find all of these titles on DVD, with many now on Blu-ray.
1. Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (191 votes)
2. Citizen Kane
Orson Welles, 1941 (157 votes)
3. Tokyo Story Ozu
Yasujiro, 1953 (107 votes)
4. La Règle du
jeu Jean Renoir, 1939 (100 votes)
5. Sunrise: A
Song of Two Humans FW Murnau, 1927 (93 votes)
6. 2001: A
Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (90 votes)
7. The
Searchers John Ford, 1956 (78 votes)
8. Man with a
Movie Camera Dziga Vertov, 1939 (68 votes)
9. The Passion
of Joan of Arc Carl Dreyer, 1927 (65 votes)
10. 8½, Federico
Fellini, 1960 (64 votes)
11. Battleship
Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (63 votes)
12. L’Atalante Jean
Vigo, 1934 (58 votes)
13. Breathless Jean-Luc
Godard, 1960 (57 votes)
14. Apocalypse
Now Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 (53 votes)
15. Late Spring,
Ozu Yasujiro, 1949 (50 votes)
16. Au hasard
Balthazar Robert Bresson, 1966 (49 votes)
17= Seven
Samurai Kurosawa Akira, 1954 (48 votes)
17= Persona Ingmar
Bergman, 1966 (48 votes)
19. Mirror Andrei
Tarkovsky, 1974 (47 votes)
20. Singin’ in
the Rain Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951 (46 votes)
21= L’avventura
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (43 votes)
21= Le Mépris Jean-Luc
Godard, 1963 (43 votes)
21= The
Godfather Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 (43 votes)
24= Ordet Carl
Dreyer, 1955 (42 votes)
24= In the Mood
for Love Wong Kar-Wai, 2000 (42 votes)
26= Rashomon Kurosawa
Akira, 1950 (41 votes)
26= Andrei
Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966 (41 votes)
28. Mulholland
Dr. David Lynch, 2001 (40 votes)
29= Stalker Andrei
Tarkovsky, 1979 (39 votes)
29= Shoah Claude
Lanzmann, 1985 (39 votes)
31= The
Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola, 1974 (38 votes)
31= Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976 (38 votes)
33. Bicycle
Thieves Vittoria De Sica, 1948 (37 votes)
34. The General
Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926 (35 votes)
35= Metropolis Fritz
Lang, 1927 (34 votes)
35= Psycho Alfred
Hitchcock, 1960 (34 votes)
35= Jeanne
Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles Chantal Akerman, 1975 (34 votes)
35= Sátántangó Béla
Tarr, 1994 (34 votes)
39= The 400
Blows François Truffaut, 1959 (33 votes)
39= La dolce
vita Federico Fellini, 1960 (33 votes)
41. Journey to
Italy Roberto Rossellini, 1954 (32 votes)
42= Pather
Panchali Satyajit Ray, 1955 (31 votes)
42= Some Like
It Hot Billy Wilder, 1959 (31 votes)
42= Gertrud Carl
Dreyer, 1964 (31 votes)
42= Pierrot le
fou Jean-Luc Godard, 1965 (31 votes)
42= Play Time Jacques
Tati, 1967 (31 votes)
42= Close-Up Abbas
Kiarostami, 1990 (31 votes)
48= The Battle
of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 (30 votes)
48= Histoire(s)
du cinéma Jean-Luc Godard, 1998 (30 votes)
50= City Lights
Charlie Chaplin, 1931 (29 votes)
50= Ugetsu
monogatari Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953 (29 votes)
50= La Jetée Chris
Marker, 1962 (29 votes)