Film Nitrate

Of all the film polls conducted, there is generally no argument that the most respected poll is Sight & Sound magazine's once-in-a-decade survey of critics' top ten films. The first of these polls was published in 1952, and of the seven polls that have been conducted, only three films have come on top. Since 1962, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane has reigned supreme, untouchable until 2012 when Hitchcock's Vertigo finally dethroned it. However, in that very first poll it was a film that was still only four years old that came out above all others. The film was made in Italy by Vittorio De Sica - Bicycle Thieves . By 1962, the film had dropped to 7th in the top 10, before falling out out completely by the 70s, and has never returned since (though as recently as 2012 in the magazine's parallel 'Director's Poll' Bicycle Thieves slipped in at number 10, suggesting a resurgence, at least among directors.). It's easy to over-analyse these polls, but it ...