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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.
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.
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 | 8½ | 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.
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 | 8½ | 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 | 8½ | 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 | 8½ | 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.
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 | 8½ | 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.
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 | 8½ | 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 | 8½ | 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.
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 | 8½ | 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 | 8½ | 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.
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) |
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% |
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% |
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% |
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% |
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 |