When, in the summer of 2012, Vertigo, the newly crowned Greatest Film of All Time, appeared on just 191 of 846 submitted ballots for the most recent incarnation of the decennial Sight & Sound greatest films poll, I found myself wondering just what did the other 655 people think of it. Would it have made their top 20s, 50s, 100s? Did they—and indeed do they—even admire it at all? This poll seeks to address that question; or, at least, to go some way towards doing so.
Participants
were tasked with taking the top 100 films from the Sight & Sound poll, and
re-ranking them preferentially. They were also challenged to select up to
another 100 films that they believed to be as worthy of canonisation. (Full
details of their task cask can be found here.)
However, the undertaking proved troublesome for many. The noted Spanish critic Miguel
Marías, who had participated in a couple of my previous polls, stated that
there were 50 films on the list that he didn’t understand being on anyone’s Top
100, and about another 30 that he found downright bad or even very bad, and as
such couldn’t bring himself to participate. Plus, a number of others just found
the task of placing one great film above another to be a decidedly thankless one.
Never the less, 65 brave, assorted cinephiles accepted the challenge and came up with
the following:
