It’s Official: Vertigo is Better than Citizen Kane

If anyone else is sick of pseudo-cinastes topping their best-of lists with Citizen Kane, well there’s relief in sight. The Sight & Sound poll has listed Vertigo at the top of its critic’s list for the first time in fifty years. It’s pretty unremarkable, but the difference between the critic’s and director’s list is pretty interesting. Both Taxi Driver and The Godfather make the director’s list while neither film appears on the critic’s list. It’s notable that more esoteric, technical masterpieces like The Passion of Joan of Arc and 2001: A Space Odyssey make the critic’s list, only 2001 appears on the director’s list. Are critics more pretentious than directors? Or is the fact that directors prefer narrative over experimental forms less telling than we’re assuming it is?

Both lists in their entirety at the link.

(From A.V Club)