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The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine has revealed that the winner of its once in a decade Greatest Films of All Time poll is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, ending the 50-year reign of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, winner since 1962 and now in second place. 846 film experts from across the globe participated in the poll, placing Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story 3rd and Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu 4th. Two new entrants to the top 10 are both silent – Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera at no.8, the first documentary to make the Top Ten since 1952, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc in 9th place. Fifth place for Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (1927) by FW Murnau, sixth for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, seventh for The Searchers (1956) by John Ford and tenth for 8 1/2 (1963) by Federico Fellini.

Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound magazine said: "This result reflects changes in the culture of film criticism. The new cinephilia seems to be not so much about films that strive to be great art, such as Citizen Kane, and that use cinema's entire arsenal of effects to make a grand statement, but more about works that have personal meaning to the critic. Vertigo is the ultimate critics' film because it is a dreamlike film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul mate. In that sense it's a makeover film full of spellbinding moments of awful poignancy that show how foolish, tender and cruel we can be when we're in love."

Alessandro Zoppo