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Analysis of the 2012 Sight & Sound Polls

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FILMS:

DIRECTORS:

  • Overall Results
  • Results by Poll
  • Results by Voter Gender
  • Results by Voter Nation of Origin
  • Results by Voter Age
  • Background and Methodology

    Every ten years since 1952, Sight & Sound magazine polled critics, academics, and other film scholars to determine the best film of all time. Since 1992, the magazine also polled directors in a separate survey. In these polls, each respondent is asked to submit her or his list of the ten greatest films of all time. Films are then ranked based on the number of lists on which they appear. The list invariably results in what the Phi-Phenomenon calls a highbrow list.

    For the 2012 poll, Sight & Sound expanded its respondent pool from a few hundred respondents to well over one thousand people (846 critics and 359 directors). Of these, nearly all contributed ten films with the following exceptions. Peter von Bagh received separate invitations to each poll and named ten different films for each. Critic Edna Fainaru named only nine films. Director David O. Russell named eleven films, and directors Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino named twelve films each.

    In addition to noting whether the respondent was a critic (which included academics, archivists, distributors, and programmers) or a director, Sight & Sound also noted the gender of the participant and the nation of the respondent. This information was quite useful for the analyses below.

    Unlike the rest of the Phi-Phenomenon, which uses IMDB data, all analyses below use the Sight & Sound data for the title, year, director(s), and nation(s) of origin. If Sight & Sound did not provide information on year or nation of origin for a film, IMDb data were used unless the film in question was so obscure that it was not in the IMDb. When more than one nation is mentioned for a film or a respondent, the nation listed first is used to determine if the respondent or film is from an English-speaking nation. For the purposes of this analysis, English-speaking nations are defined as Australia, Canada (with deep apologies to residents of Quebec), Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All other nations are considered non-English speaking.

    Respondents

    The respondents to the critic poll are divided as follows:

    Women Men Total
    English-Speaking 104.00 341.00 445
    Non-English Speaking 95.33 305.67 401
    Total 199.33 646.67 846

    The respondents to the director poll are divided as follows:

    Women Men Total
    English-Speaking 20.00 119.00 139
    Non-English Speaking 31.33 188.67 220
    Total 51.33 307.67 359

    Within each poll, there is no significant relationship between gender and language (chi2 < .05, ns for each analysis). That is, for directors and for critics, the ratio of women to men is the same for English-speaking nations as it is for non-English-speaking nations. There is a significant relationship within each language group (chi2 > 5.00, p < .05 for both analyses) with women making up a higher percentage of critics than of directors and men making up a higher percentage of directors than of critics. For men, there is a significant relationship in that respondents from non-English-speaking nations make up a larger percentage of directors than they do of critics with respondents of English-speaking nations making up a larger percentage of critics than they do of directors (chi2 = 16.39, p < .01). The same relationship holds for women, but the relationship is at most marginally significant (chi2 = 2.76, p = .10). These analyses and all analyses involving gender exclude the two three-person groups made up of two men and one woman (which are responsible for the decimals in the tables above).

    Translation for those who are not statistical geeks: critics are more likely to be women and more likely to be from English-speaking nations than are directors.

    Most of the lists below contain a column giving percents. For lists of films, the figure is the percent of all ballots within a particular group (e.g., critics, voters from English-speaking nations). For example, if a film appeared on 15 of the 250 ballots that women cast, the percent would be 6.0% (15/250). For lists of directors, the figure is the percent of total votes. For women, this is out of 2,499 votes (249 ballots with ten votes each and one ballot with nine votes). If all of a director's receive a total of 49 votes, the percent would be 1.96% (49/2,499). For any list where two different groups are compared, the percent is the percent of ballots on which that film appeared in that group minus the percent of ballots on which that film appeared in the other group. For directors, it is the percent of votes that the director received in that group minus the percent of votes that the director received from the other group.

    Overall Results

    When votes from both polls are combined, the top-20 films are as follows:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 222 18.4%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 199 16.5%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 155 12.9%
    4 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 132 11.0%
    5 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 117 9.7%
    6 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 110 9.1%
    7 1963 Federico Fellini 104 8.6%
    8 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 89 7.4%
    9 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 86 7.1%
    10 Breathless 1960 Jean-Luc Godard 84 7.0%
    11 Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 79 6.6%
    12 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 78 6.5%
    13 Mirror 1974 Andrei Tarkovsky 77 6.4%
    14 Atalante, L' 1934 Jean Vigo 75 6.2%
    15 Godfather: Part I, The 1972 Francis Ford Coppola 74 6.1%
    16 Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman 73 6.1%
    17 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 72 6.0%
    18 Battleship Potemkin 1925 Sergei M Eisenstein 71 5.9%
    19 Seven Samurai 1954 Akira Kurosawa 70 5.8%
    20 Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 Robert Bresson 67 5.6%

    Overall, the average year of production was 1965, and 34.7% of votes were for films from English-speaking nations.

    Results by Poll

    The top-ten films according to critics are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 191 22.6%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 157 18.6%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 107 12.6%
    4 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 100 11.8%
    5 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 93 11.0%
    6 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 90 10.6%
    7 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 78 9.2%
    8 Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 68 8.0%
    9 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 65 7.7%
    10 1963 Federico Fellini 64 7.6%

    The top-ten films according to directors are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 48 13.4%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 42 11.7%
    3 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 42 11.7%
    4 1963 Federico Fellini 40 11.1%
    5 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 34 9.5%
    6 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 33 9.2%
    7 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 31 8.6%
    8 Godfather: Part I, The 1972 Francis Ford Coppola 31 8.6%
    9 Mirror 1974 Andrei Tarkovsky 30 8.4%
    10 Bicycle Thieves, The 1948 Vittorio de Sica 29 8.1%

    Overall, the results of the two lists correlate at r = .796. For those who are not statistically inclined, r is a measure of similarity with -1.000 meaning complete opposites, 0.000 meaning completely unrelated, and 1.000 meaning identical. This figure strongly raises the question of why Sight & Sound reports results separately when the results between the two polls are quite similar. (For the curious, when voters are sorted in alphabetical order by first name, voters in the first half correlate with voters in the second half at r = .932.) There are a few films that do better on one poll than the other (based on the percent of ballots that the film received on one poll compared to what it received on the other poll).

    Films that critics liked better than directors did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 13.9%
    2 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 7.1%
    3 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 6.9%
    4 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 6.3%
    5 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 6.2%
    6 Battleship Potemkin 1925 Sergei M Eisenstein 5.2%
    7 Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 5.0%
    8 Late Spring 1949 Ozu Yasujirô 4.8%
    9 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 4.1%
    10 Singin' in the Rain 1951 Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly 2.9%

    Films that directors liked better than critics did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 5.0%
    2 Fanny and Alexander 1984 Ingmar Bergman 4.4%
    3 Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese 3.9%
    4 Bicycle Thieves, The 1948 Vittorio de Sica 3.7%
    5 1963 Federico Fellini 3.6%
    6 Godfather: Part I, The 1972 Francis Ford Coppola 3.6%
    7 strada, La 1954 Federico Fellini 3.2%
    8 Gospel According to St Matthew, The 1964 Pier Paolo Pasolini 3.1%
    9 400 Blows, The 1959 François Truffaut 3.1%
    10 Hour of the Wolf 1968 Ingmar Bergman 3.0%

    For critics, the average year of production was 1964, and 34.8% of votes were fore films from English-speaking nations. Directors had a modest preference for newer films and a very slight preference for films from outside the English-speaking world. For directors, the average year of production was 1969, and 34.3% of votes were for films from English-speaking nations.

    Results by Gender

    Note that these data exclude two ballots submitted by three-person teams made up of two men and one woman.

    The top-ten films according to men are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 180 18.9%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 170 17.8%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 124 13.0%
    4 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 118 12.4%
    5 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 101 10.6%
    6 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 90 9.4%
    7 1963 Federico Fellini 86 9.0%
    8 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 76 8.0%
    9 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 74 7.8%
    10 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 66 6.9%

    The top-ten films according to women are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 42 16.8%
    2 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 31 12.4%
    3 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 29 11.6%
    4 Atalante, L' 1934 Jean Vigo 20 8.0%
    = Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 20 8.0%
    = Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 20 8.0%
    = Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 20 8.0%
    8 Breathless 1960 Jean-Luc Godard 19 7.6%
    = In The Mood For Love 2000 Wong Kar Wai 19 7.6%
    = Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975 Chantal Akerman 19 7.6%

    Overall, the results of the two lists correlate at r = .842. This means that men and women agree on the best films even more than critics and directors do. Still, there are a few films that do better with one gender than the other (based on the percent of ballots that the film received from men compared to what it received from women).

    Films that men liked better than women did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 6.8%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 6.2%
    3 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 4.5%
    4 Ordet 1955 Carl Theodor Dreyer 4.4%
    5 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 4.2%
    6 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 4.0%
    7 Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese 3.6%
    8 Psycho 1960 Alfred Hitchcock 2.8%
    9 Gertrud 1964 Carl Theodor Dreyer 2.8%
    10 Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman 2.6%

    Films that women liked better than men did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975 Chantal Akerman 5.4%
    2 Touki Bouki 1973 Djibril Diop Mambéty 4.8%
    3 In The Mood For Love 2000 Wong Kar Wai 4.2%
    4 Singin' in the Rain 1951 Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly 3.3%
    5 Meshes of the Afternoon 1943 Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid 3.3%
    6 Beau Travail 1998 Claire Denis 3.1%
    7 Piano, The 1992 Jane Campion 2.9%
    8 Solaris 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky 2.6%
    9 Imitation of Life 1959 Douglas Sirk 2.4%
    10 Battle of Algiers, The 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo 2.3%

    I am sure that it is just a coincidence that four of the films above that women like more than men do have female directors, whereas one would have to look a long time on the list of films that men like more than women do to find a female director.

    For men, the average year of production was 1964, and 35.9% of votes were for films from English-speaking nations. Women had a modest preference for newer films and for films from outside the English-speaking world. For directors, the average year of production was 1969, and 30.2% of votes were from English-speaking nations.

    Results by Voter Nation of Origin

    The top-ten films according to respondents from non-English-speaking nations are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 101 16.3%
    2 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 99 15.9%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 87 14.0%
    4 1963 Federico Fellini 72 11.6%
    5 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 71 11.4%
    6 Breathless 1960 Jean-Luc Godard 53 8.5%
    = Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 53 8.5%
    8 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 52 8.4%
    9 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 51 8.2%
    10 Rashomon 1950 Akira Kurosawa 47 7.6%

    The top-ten films according to respondents from English-speaking nations are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 123 21.1%
    2 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 98 16.8%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 68 11.6%
    4 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 64 11.0%
    = Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 64 11.0%
    6 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 61 10.4%
    7 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 46 7.9%
    8 Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 44 7.5%
    9 Atalante, L' 1934 Jean Vigo 41 7.0%
    10 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 37 6.3%

    Overall, the results of the two lists correlate at r = .852. This means that English speaking and non-English speaking voters agree on the best films more than critics and directors do and more than men and women do. Still, there are a few films that do better with voters from some nations than from other nations (based on the percent of ballots that the film received by voters from non-English-speaking nations compared to what it received by voters from English-speaking nations. Films that respondents from non-English-speaking nations liked better than respondents from English-speaking nations did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 1963 Federico Fellini 6.1%
    2 Modern Times 1936 Charles Chaplin 5.6%
    3 Rashomon 1950 Akira Kurosawa 4.8%
    4 Andrei Rublev 1966 Andrei Tarkovsky 4.0%
    5 City Lights 1931 Charles Chaplin 3.9%
    6 Amarcord 1972 Federico Fellini 3.5%
    7 Breathless 1960 Jean-Luc Godard 3.2%
    8 Ordet 1955 Carl Theodor Dreyer 2.8%
    9 strada, La 1954 Federico Fellini 2.7%
    10 Metropolis 1927 Fritz Lang 2.6%

    Films that respondents from English-Speaking nations liked better than respondents from non-English-speaking nations did include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 5.1%
    2 Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975 Chantal Akerman 3.9%
    3 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 3.6%
    4 Battle of Algiers, The 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo 3.4%
    5 Jetée, La 1962 Chris Marker 3.3%
    6 Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The 1943 Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 2.9%
    7 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 2.7%
    8 General, The 1926 Buster Keaton 2.7%
    9 Lawrence of Arabia 1962 David Lean 2.7%
    10 Performance 1970 Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg 2.6%

    For both groups, the average year of production was 1965. In what should be little surprise, respondents from English-speaking nations were more likely to select films from English-language nations than were respondents from non-English-speaking nations. Respondents from English-speaking nations picked films from English-language nations 38.1% of the time, whereas respondents from non-English-speaking nations did so 31.5% of the time.

    Results by Age

    In a draft of this page, the Webmaster speculated on how he was unlikely to resist the temptation to try to determine when respondents were born in order to analyze difference by age. He knows himself very well. A search of the IMDb for directors and of Wikipedia for all respondents came up with the year of birth for 392 of the respondents. These divide almost evenly with 194 born in 1908 (Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira) through 1959 and 198 born from 1960 through 1986 (American critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky).

    Unfortunately, this is decidedly a nonrandom sample. It includes 80.2% of the directors (thank you, IMDb) but only 12.3% of the critics. It includes 35.9% of the men but only 19.6% of the women. At least it appears to include similar proportions of respondents from non-English-speaking nations and from English-speaking nations (32.3% and 32.8%). Furthermore, it would not be a stretch to suggest that the more distinguished critics and directors are more likely to have Wikipedia pages and, if they have a page, are more likely to have detailed information such as birth dates.

    The smaller sample did differ as a whole from the entire respondent pool. Respondents with unknown birth years liked the following films more than did respondents with known birth years.

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 6.51%
    2 Man with a Movie Camera 1929 Dziga Vertov 4.80%
    3 Mulholland Dr 2003 David Lynch 2.88%
    4 Late Spring 1949 Ozu Yasujirô 2.86%
    5 Battleship Potemkin 1925 Sergei M Eisenstein 2.68%
    6 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 2.63%
    7 Wild Strawberries 1957 Ingmar Bergman 2.57%
    8 Histoire(s) du cinéma 1988-2004 Jean-Luc Godard 2.55%
    9 In The Mood For Love 2000 Wong Kar Wai 2.49%
    10 argent, L' 1983 Robert Bresson 2.46%

    Respondents with known birth years liked the following films more than respondents with unknown birth years did.

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Bicycle Thieves, The 1948 Vittorio de Sica 3.23%
    2 strada, La 1954 Federico Fellini 3.22%
    3 Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese 3.19%
    4 Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman 2.74%
    5 Fanny and Alexander 1984 Ingmar Bergman 2.65%
    6 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 2.49%
    7 argent, L' 1928 Marcel L'Herbier 2.40%
    8 Hour of the Wolf 1968 Ingmar Bergman 2.31%
    = One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975 Milos Forman 2.31%
    10 Apartment, The 1960 Billy Wilder 2.22%

    The differences between the voters with known birth years and voters with unknown birth years means that the next two lists should be taken with a fair amount of skepticism. Still, the top films according to older voters (i.e., those born before 1960) are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 39 20.1%
    2 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 30 15.5%
    3 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 26 13.4%
    4 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 24 12.4%
    5 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 22 11.3%
    6 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 18 9.3%
    = Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 18 9.3%
    = Seven Samurai 1954 Akira Kurosawa 18 9.3%
    9 1963 Federico Fellini 17 8.8%
    10 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 16 8.2%
    = Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman 16 8.2%

    The top-ten films according to younger voters (i.e., those born in 1960 or later) are:

    Rank Title Year Director Total votes % of ballots
    1 Tokyo Story 1953 Ozu Yasujirô 28 14.1%
    2 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 27 13.6%
    3 Vertigo 1958 Alfred Hitchcock 25 12.6%
    4 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968 Stanley Kubrick 22 11.1%
    5 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 21 10.6%
    6 1963 Federico Fellini 19 9.6%
    = Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 19 9.6%
    8 Mirror 1974 Andrei Tarkovsky 17 8.6%
    9 Godfather: Part I, The 1972 Francis Ford Coppola 16 8.1%
    10 Bicycle Thieves, The 1948 Vittorio de Sica 15 7.6%

    Overall, the results of the two lists correlate at r = .721. When the sample is limited to films with at least one vote by a voter with a known birth date, the two lists correlate at r = .684. This means that older and younger voters generally agree on their top films but noticeably less than critics and directors do. Films that older voters like more than younger voters do include:

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Citizen Kane 1941 Orson Welles 9.50%
    2 Sunrise 1927 F. W. Murnau 7.30%
    3 Searchers, The 1956 John Ford 7.26%
    4 Règle du jeu, La 1939 Jean Renoir 6.82%
    5 Passion of Joan of Arc 1927 Carl Theodor Dreyer 5.72%
    6 Some Like It Hot 1959 Billy Wilder 5.19%
    7 Seventh Seal, The 1957 Ingmar Bergman 5.17%
    8 grande illusion, La 1937 Jean Renoir 4.67%
    9 Seven Samurai 1954 Akira Kurosawa 4.23%
    10 Ugetsu Monogatari 1953 Mizoguchi Kenji 4.15%

    Rank Title Year Director % Difference
    1 Taxi Driver 1976 Martin Scorsese 12.09%
    2 Modern Times 1936 Charles Chaplin 5.02%
    3 Apocalypse Now 1979 Francis Ford Coppola 4.44%
    4 Come And See 1985 Elem Klimov 4.02%
    5 Apartment, The 1960 Billy Wilder 4.01%
    6 Beau Travail 1998 Claire Denis 3.54%
    = Manhattan 1979 Woody Allen 3.54%
    8 There Will Be Blood 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson 3.02%
    9 Close-Up 1989 Abbas Kiarostami 3.00%
    10 Videodrome 1983 David Cronenberg 2.53%

    The sample of voters with known birth dates like English-language films more than voters as a whole do. Within the sample, younger voters liked English-language films more than older voters did (45.4% to 41.5%). The average year of production for films liked by voters with known birth dates was 1965, the same as for all respondents. However, there was a noticeable difference between older and younger voters. The average year of production for older voters was 1961, whereas the average year of production for younger voters was 1970.

    Directors

    The following lists rank directors based on how often their films appear on ballots. Whenever Sight & Sound credited more than one director for a film, the votes are evenly divided among all directors, which occasionally results in directors receiving fractions of votes. All percentages refer to the percent of total votes rather than the percent of ballots. The directors most often mentioned on ballots are:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes Top Film
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 390 3.24% Vertigo (1958)
    2 Jean-Luc Godard 311.5 2.58% Breathless (1960)
    3 Orson Welles 299 2.48% Citizen Kane (1941)
    4 Ozu Yasujirô 253 2.10% Tokyo Story (1953)
    5 Stanley Kubrick 252 2.09% 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
    6 Andrei Tarkovsky 234 1.94% Mirror (1974)
    7 Francis Ford Coppola 227 1.88% Apocalypse Now (1979)
    8 Federico Fellini 226 1.87% 8½ (1963)
    9 Ingmar Bergman 225 1.87% Persona (1966)
    10 Jean Renoir 223 1.85% Règle du jeu, La (1939)
    11 Robert Bresson 214 1.78% Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
    12 Carl Theodor Dreyer 213 1.77% Passion of Joan of Arc (1927)
    13 Akira Kurosawa 198 1.64% Seven Samurai (1954)
    14 John Ford 195 1.62% Searchers, The 91956)
    15 Luis Buñuel 177 1.47% Viridiana (1961)

    By Poll

    The directors that critics preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 318 3.76%
    2 Jean-Luc Godard 232 2.74%
    3 Orson Welles 231 2.73%
    4 Ozu Yasujirô 189 2.23%
    5 Jean Renoir 179 2.12%
    6 Carl Theodor Dreyer 158 1.87%
    = John Ford 158 1.87%
    8 Stanley Kubrick 157 1.86%
    9 Andrei Tarkovsky 153 1.81%
    10 Robert Bresson 149 1.76%

    The directors that other directors preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Federico Fellini 97 2.70%
    2 Stanley Kubrick 95 2.64%
    3 Francis Ford Coppola 82 2.28%
    = Ingmar Bergman 82 2.28%
    5 Andrei Tarkovsky 81 2.25%
    6 Jean-Luc Godard 79.5 2.21%
    7 Martin Scorsese 75 2.09%
    8 Alfred Hitchcock 72 2.00%
    9 Akira Kurosawa 71 1.97%
    10 Orson Welles 68 1.89%

    Directors that critics liked better than other directors did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 1.76%
    2 Jean Renoir 0.89%
    3 Orson Welles 0.84%
    4 John Ford 0.84%
    5 F. W. Murnau 0.78%

    Directors that other directors liked better than critics did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Federico Fellini 1.17%
    2 Martin Scorsese 0.94%
    3 Stanley Kubrick 0.79%
    4 Pier Paolo Pasolini 0.71%
    5 Ingmar Bergman 0.59%

    By Gender

    The directors that men preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 322 3.38%
    2 Orson Welles 262 2.75%
    3 Jean-Luc Godard 252.25 2.65%
    4 Stanley Kubrick 220 2.31%
    5 Ozu Yasujirô 209 2.19%
    6 Jean Renoir 189 1.98%
    7 Carl Theodor Dreyer 184 1.93%
    = Francis Ford Coppola 184 1.93%
    9 Federico Fellini 183 1.92%
    10 Andrei Tarkovsky 178 1.87%

    The directors that women preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 68 2.72%
    2 Jean-Luc Godard 59.25 2.37%
    3 Andrei Tarkovsky 56 2.24%
    4 Ingmar Bergman 49 1.96%
    5 Ozu Yasujirô 44 1.76%
    6 Federico Fellini 43 1.72%
    = Francis Ford Coppola 43 1.72%
    8 Orson Welles 37 1.48%
    = Robert Bresson 37 1.48%
    10 Akira Kurosawa 34 1.36%
    = Jean Renoir 34 1.36%

    Directors that men liked better than women did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Orson Welles 1.27%
    2 Stanley Kubrick 1.03%
    3 Martin Scorsese 0.89%
    4 Carl Theodor Dreyer 0.77%
    5 John Ford 0.67%

    Directors that women liked better than men did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Wong Kar Wai 0.58%
    2 Jane Campion 0.57%
    3 Chantal Akerman 0.49%
    4 Djibril Diop Mambéty 0.47%
    5 Lars von Trier 0.46%

    By Voter Nation of Origin

    The directors that respondents from non-English speaking nations preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Jean-Luc Godard 185 2.98%
    2 Alfred Hitchcock 183 2.95%
    3 Federico Fellini 156 2.51%
    4 Andrei Tarkovsky 146 2.35%
    5 Ozu Yasujirô 144 2.32%
    6 Orson Welles 141 2.27%
    7 Ingmar Bergman 134 2.16%
    8 Francis Ford Coppola 128 2.06%
    9 Charles Chaplin 122 1.96%
    = Stanley Kubrick 122 1.96%

    The directors that respondents from English speaking nations preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 207 3.54%
    2 Orson Welles 158 2.70%
    3 Stanley Kubrick 130 2.22%
    4 Jean-Luc Godard 126.5 2.16%
    5 Jean Renoir 112 1.91%
    6 Ozu Yasujirô 109 1.86%
    7 Robert Bresson 104 1.78%
    8 Francis Ford Coppola 99 1.69%
    9 Carl Theodor Dreyer 97 1.66%
    10 Ingmar Bergman 91 1.55%

    Directors that respondents from non-English speaking nations liked better than respondents from English-speaking nations did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Charles Chaplin 1.50%
    2 Federico Fellini 1.32%
    3 Andrei Tarkovsky 0.85%
    4 Jean-Luc Godard 0.82%
    5 Michelangelo Antonioni 0.65%

    Directors that respondents from English speaking nations liked better than respondents from non-English-speaking nations did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 0.59%
    2 Michael Powell 0.55%
    3 Emeric Pressburger 0.55%
    4 Nicolas Roeg 0.49%
    5 Chantal Akerman 0.46%

    By Age

    The directors that older respondents preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Alfred Hitchcock 60 3.09%
    2 Orson Welles 59 3.04%
    3 Jean-Luc Godard 55.5 2.86%
    4 Federico Fellini 53 2.73%
    5 Ingmar Bergman 52 2.68%
    6 Jean Renoir 50 2.57%
    7 Akira Kurosawa 49 2.52%
    8 Carl Theodor Dreyer 47 2.42%
    9 Stanley Kubrick 42 2.16%
    10 Andrei Tarkovsky 38 1.96%
    = John Ford 38 1.96%

    The directors that younger respondents preferred include:

    Rank Director # of Votes % of Votes
    1 Francis Ford Coppola 48 2.42%
    = Martin Scorsese 48 2.42%
    3 Stanley Kubrick 47 2.37%
    4 Alfred Hitchcock 45 2.27%
    5 Andrei Tarkovsky 43 2.17%
    = Federico Fellini 43 2.17%
    7 Jean-Luc Godard 42.75 2.16%
    8 Ozu Yasujirô 40 2.02%
    9 Ingmar Bergman 38 1.92%
    10 Orson Welles 36 1.82%

    Directors that older respondents liked better than younger respondents did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Carl Theodor Dreyer 1.46%
    2 Jean Renoir 1.41%
    3 Orson Welles 1.22%
    4 John Ford 1.15%
    5 Mizoguchi Kenji 1.04%

    Directors that younger respondents liked better than older respondents did include:

    Rank Director % Difference
    1 Martin Scorsese 1.29%
    2 John Cassavetes 0.90%
    3 Woody Allen 0.85%
    4 Francis Ford Coppola 0.62%
    5 Michael Haneke 0.60%

    Voter Specific Data

    In addition to ranking films and directors, the voters can be ranked themselves. For example, some voters submitted ballots that contained films similar to other voters as a whole. Other voters submitted very idiosyncratic lists that included films that appeared on very few other ballots. The next two lists rank voters based on the number of votes that the films on that voter's ballot received on the other ballots. For example, suppose that a 1,206th ballot included the following films:

    Adding the votes from other respondents (18 + 24 + 18 + 20 + 0 + 74 + 4 + 9 + 1 + 70] gets a sum of 238 votes from other respondents, a somewhat idiosyncratic ballot. All references to the # of Votes refers to this score. The following voters submitted ballots that most resembled the poll results as a whole:

    Rank Voter Gender Role Nation # of Votes
    1 Gabriele Barrera Male Critic Italy 1131
    2 Roman Gutek Male Programmer Poland 1058
    3 Peggy Chiao Female Academic Taiwan 1031
    4 Jim Sinclair Male Programmer Canada 1030
    5 Liz Helfgott Female Critic US 1029
    6 Jan-Christopher Horak Male Archivist US 1018
    7 Demetrios Matheou Male Critic UK 1006
    8 Roger Ebert Male Critic US 976
    9 Luciano Monteagudo Male Critic Argentina 974
    10 Richard Koszarski Male Critic US 958

    The following voters submitted the most idiosyncratic ballots:

    Rank Voter Gender Role Nation # of Votes
    1 Ferroni Brigade Mixed Critic Austria, Germany 3
    = Olaf Möller Male Critic Germany 3
    3 Barbara Wurm Female Critic Germany, Austria 4
    = Martial Pisani Male Critic France 4
    5 Santiago Gallego Male Critic Spain 5
    = Slavoj Zizek Male Critic Slovenia 5
    7 Luke McKernan Male Archivist UK 6
    8 Ally Derks Female Programmer Netherlands 7
    = David Curtis Male Academic UK 7
    = Gary Thomas Male Programmer UK 7

    Voters can also be ranked based on their tendencies to prefer older or newer films. These analyses exclude films that for which neither Sight & Sound nor the IMDb could provide a year of production and films with installments that spanned multiple years. The voters who preferred the oldest films include:

    Rank Voter Gender Role Nation Average Year
    1 Luke McKernan Male Archivist UK 1925
    2 Catherine A. Surowiec Female Critic UK 1934
    3 David Rudkin Male Other UK 1936
    4 Pierre Rissient Male Programmer France 1937
    5 Casper Tybjerg Male Academic Denmark 1938
    6 Pierre Leon Male Director France 1938
    7 Luís Oliveira Male Programmer Portugal 1939
    8 Frank Kessler Male Academic Netherlands 1939
    9 Hiroshi Komatsu Male Academic Japan 1939
    10 Aki Kaurismäki Male Director Finland 1940

    Voters who preferred the newest films include:

    Rank Voter Gender Role Nation Average Year
    1 Marc Munden Male Director UK 2002
    2 Pawel Pawlikowski Male Director UK, Poland 2001
    3 Christine Dollhofer Female Programmer Austria 2000
    4 Zina Saro-Wiwa Female Director UK, Nigeria 1999
    5 Ludmila Cvikova Female Programmer Netherlands 1999
    6 Paolo Bertolin Male Programmer Italy 1997
    7 Javier Packer-Comyn Male Programmer France 1995
    8 Ally Derks Female Programmer Netherlands 1995
    9 Daniel Frampton Male Critic UK 1995
    = Mania Akbari Female Director Iran 1995

    Conclusions and Other Thoughts

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    This page was last modified on August 26, 2013