Critics Best Films 1952 Sight and Sound

In 1952, inspired by the poll of filmmakers made by the Committee Festival Mondial du film et des Beaux arts of Belgique, the English film magazine Sight and Sound asked 85 film critics, 63 of whom submitted their lists. This is a sampling of some of those lists. Sight and Sound commented, "Most critics were unanimous in finding the question unfair. "

All 63 critics
1.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
2.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
.......The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
4.....Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
5.....Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty)
......Intolerance (D W Griffith)
7.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
......Le Jour se leve (Marcel Carné)
.......The {Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
10....Brief Encounter (David Lean)
......Le Million (René Clair)
......La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)

Lindsay Anderson
1.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
2.....They Were Expendable (John Ford)
3.....Zéro de conduite/L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
4.....The Childhood of Maxim Gorki (Mark Donskoy)
5.....The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
6.....Louisiana Story (Rober Flaherty)/ The River (Jean Renoir)
7.....Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings)
8.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
9.....Douce (Claude Autant-Lara)
......Antoine and Antoinette (Jacques Becker)
.......Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
10...Meet Me in St Louis (Vincente Minnelli)

Rudolph Arnheim
1.....The Wedding March (Erich von stroheim)
2.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
3.....The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman)
4.....Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
5.....Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk)
6.....Our Dailly Bread (King Vidor)
7.....Sous les toits de Paris (René Clair)
8.....Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty)
9.....Bicyle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
10...Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)


Alexander Astruc
1.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
2.....October (Sergei Eisenstein)
3.....Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)
4.....Nosferatu (F W Murnau)
5.....L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
6.....Vampyr (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
7.....¡Que Viva Mexico! (Sergei Eisenstein)
8.....You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang)
9.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
10...The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)

André Bazin
1.....Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
2.....The Pilgrim (Charles Chaplin)
3.....Broken Blossoms (D W Griffith)
4.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
5.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
6.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
7.....Le Jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
8.....The Little Foxes (William Wyler)
9.....Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
10...Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
André Bazin comments: "A series of personal awards, on critical reflection, rather than of original memories and impact. . ."

Georges Charensol
1.....The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
2.....Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty)
3.....The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
4.....Le Million (René Clair)
5.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
6.....Brief Encounter (David Lean)
7.....They Shall Bear Witness (Victor Sjöström)
8.....Broken Blossoms (D W Griffith)
9.....Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
10...Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)

Louis Chauvet
1.....Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty)
2.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
3.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
4.....Le Million (René Clair)
5.....The Lost Patrol (John Ford)
6.....The Green Pastures (Marc Connelly/William Keighley)
7.....Brief Encounter (David Lean)
8.....All About Eve (Joseph L Mankiewicz)
9.....The Blue Express (Ilya Trauberg)
10...The Heiress (William Wyler)

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
(no preferential order)
¡Que Viva Mexico! (Sergei Eisenstein)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
Intolerance (D W Griffith)
La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)
Sunrise (F W Murnau)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
The River (Jean Renoir)
Les Dernières Vacances (Roger Leenhardt)

Joseph-Marie Lo Duca
1.....The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
2.....Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty)
3.....The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
4.....The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
5.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
6.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
7.....Les Enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné)
8.....Paisà (Roberto Rossellini)
9.....Henry V (Laurence Olivier)
10...Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)

Lotte Eisner
1.....Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
2.....The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
3.....The Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith)
4.....Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
5.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
6.....L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
7.....Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo)
8.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
9.....Tabu (F W Murnau)
10....Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty)

Richard Griffith
"Order doesn't particularly mean anything"
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
Intolerance (D W Griffith)
Moana (Robert Flaherty)
Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison)
Arsenal (Alexander Dovchenko)
So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
Paris 1900 (Nicole Védrès)
Hallelujah (King Vidor)
The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim)

Curtis Harrington
(not in preferential order)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo)
La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
Vampyr (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
Dura Lex (Lev Kuleshov)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F Cline)
À nous la liberté (René Clair)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)

Penelope Houston
(alphabetical order)
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
October (Sergei Eisenstein)
La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)

Gavin Lambert
1.....Greed (Erich von Striheim)
2.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
3.....L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
4.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
5.....The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
6.....A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings)
7.....The Quiet Man (John Ford)
8.....Hallelujah (King Vidor)
9.....¡Que Viva Mexico! (Sergei Eisenstein)
10...Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)

Karel Reisz
(alphabetical order)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
Le Jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
Listen to Britian (Humphrey Jennings)
Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica)
Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel)
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
Wagonmaster (John Ford)

Paul Rotha
1.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
2.....Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
3.....The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
4.....An Italian Straw Hat (René Clair)
5.....Turksib (Victor A Turin)
6.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
7.....Kameradschaft (G W Pabst)
8.....L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
9.....Open City (Roberto Rossellini)
10...Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)

Sight and sound 10 Best Films list from 1962, click here

Sight and Sound 10 best films from 1962

In 1962, Sight and Sound asked a group of film critics to submit their choices for the ten best films of all time. This is a selection from those lists.

Henri Agel
1.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
2.....Broken Blossoms (D W Griffith)
3.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
4.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
5.....L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
6.....The Childhood of Maxim Gorki (Mark Donskoi)
7.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
8.....Madame de. . . (Max Ophuls)
9.....The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir)
10....Voyage en Italie (Roberto Rossellini)

Jean Douchet
1.....The Empress Yang Kwei Fei (Kenji Mizoguchi)
2.....The Tiger of Eschnanpur (Fritz Lang)
3.....Tabu (F W Murnau)
4.....Exodus (Otto Preminger)
5.....Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
6.....The Naked and the Dead (Raoul Walsh)
7.....Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
8.....The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman)
9.....Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
10....A Star is Born (George Cukor)


Lotte Eisner
1.....The Idiot (Akira Kurosawa)
2.....Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
3.....Nazarin (Luis Bunuel)
4.....Ivan the Terrible -- color sequence part II (Sergei Eisenstein)
5.....Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
6.....Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa)
7.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
8.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
9.....Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir)
10...Zéro de conduite (Jean Vigo)
Lotte Eisner comments: "I do not believe in your formula of ten best films -- The ones I give you are the ones I can see over and over again."

Curtis Harrington
1.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
2.....Zéro de conduite (Jean Vigo)
3.....La Règle de jeu (Jean Renoir)
4.....The Devil is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg)
5.....Dura Lex (Lev Kuleshov)
6.....Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
8.....I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)
9.....Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
10...L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)

Penelope Houston
(alphabetical)
L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
October (Sergei Eisenstein)
La Règle de jeu (Jean Renoir)
La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)

Arthur Knight
1.....The Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
2.....Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
3.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
4.....Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
5.....Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
6.....The Last Laugh (F W Murnau)
7.....Moana (Robert J Flaherty)
8.....The Apu trilogy (Satyajit Ray)
9.....Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
10...La Strada (Federico Fellini)

André S Labarthe
(no special order)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
La Pyramide humaine (Jean Rouch)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger)
Bebé mange sa soupe (Louis Lumière)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
Labarthe comments: "I have deliberately not spoken titles that will be written by everyone and anyone (Griffith, Stroheim, Murnau, Dreyer, Renoir, Rossellini, Hitchcock, Welles, Chaplin, and a few others ) preferring to cite films less likely to be so written. It is obvious that in 9 daysthis list will be very pronouncedly different from what it is today. Happily." (my translation)

Gavin Lambert
1..... L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
2.....El (Luis Bunuel)
3.....Nazarin (Luis Bunuel)
4.....Zéro de conduite (Jean Vigo)
5.....Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F Cline)
6.....Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
7.....Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
8.....Moana (Robert J Flaherty)
9.....The Loves of Jennie Ney (G W Pabst)
10...Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming)

Dwight MacDonald
1.....The Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith)
2.....Intolerance (D W Griffith)
3.....October (Sergei Eisenstein)
4.....Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton)
5.....The Gorki trilogy (Mark Donskoy)
6.....The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
7.....Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
8.....Les Enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné)
9.....Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
10,,,L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
MacDonald comments: "What no Chaplin, no Stroheim, no Dovchenko, no Pudovkin, no Clair, no Pabst, no Murnau, no De Sica, no Rossellini, no Visconti, no Fellini, no Ford, no Wellman, no Flaherty. Well, it's your idea."

Louis Marcorelles
1.....Poem of the Sea (Alexander Dovchenko, Julia Solntseva)
2.....A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
3.....Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
4.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
5.....The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl T Dreyer)
6.....It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
7.....Mr Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)
8.....Stella Dallas (King Vidor)
9.....Limelight (Charles Chaplin)
10...We Are the Lambeth Boys (Karel Reisz)

Jonathan Mekas
1.....Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
2.....Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
3.....The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
4.....Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
5.....Intolerance (D W Griffith)
6.....Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
7.....Lola Montès (Max Ophuls)
8.....Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
9.....Le sang d'un poete (Jean Cocteau)
10...Zèro de conduite (Jean Vigo)

Luc Moullet
1.....Voyage en Italie (Roberto Rossellini)
2.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
3.....One Exciting Night (D W Griffith)
4.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
5.....Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
6.....Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray)
7.....The Thing from Another Planet (Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks)
8.....The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim)
9.....Charlotte et son Jules (Jean-Luc Godard)
10...Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)

Karel Reisz
1.....L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
2.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
3.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
4.....Listen to Britian (Humphrey Jennings/Herbert McAllister)
5.....Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel)
6.....The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
7.....Wagonmaster (John Ford)
8.....L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
9.....Due soldi di speranza (Renato Castellani)
10...La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)

Jacques Rivette
1.....The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
2.....Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
3.....True Heart Susie (D W Griffith)
4.....Sunrise (F W Murnau)
5.....The River (Jean Renoir)
6.....Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
7.....L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
8.....Day of Wrath (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
9.....Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
10...Mr Arkadin (Orson Welles)

David Robinson
1.....Viridiana (Luis Bunuel)
2.....La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)
3.....City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
4.....The Apu trilogy (Satyajit Ray)
5.....The Gorki trilogy (Mark Donskoy)
6.....Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
7.....Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)
8.....The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim)
9.....Les Quatre Cents Coups (François Truffaut)
10...Anthology of the works of W C Fields (various)
supporting program: Le Mélomane (Georges Méliès)
David Robinson comments: "I would not attempt or presume to choose the ten best: all I can do is to name the films which I would choose to console a solitary exile. Can I cheat by choosing, one, a trilogy, two, an incomplete trilogy, and three, a nonexistent anthology."

Eric Rohmer
(chronological)
True heart Susie (D W Griffith)
The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman)
Sunrise (F W Murnau)
Le Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
Voyage en Italie (Roberto Rossellini)
Red River (Howard Hawks)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
La Pyramide humaine (Jean Rouch)
Eric Rohmer comments: "These are those films which, as I see it, should cinema disappear, would give the most exact idea of its best successes, amidst its highest ambitions."

Richard Roud
1.....Last Year in Mareinbad (Alain Resnais)
2.....L'Atalante (Jean Vigo)
3.....Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
4.....Cronaca di un amore (Michelangelo Antonioni)
5.....Le Dames du Bois du Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
6.....Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
7.....La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
8.....Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
9.....La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
10...Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)

Georges Sadoul
1.....Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein)
2.....Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
3.....Toni (Jean Renoir)
4.....Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
5.....Earth (Alexander Dovchenko)
6.....Le Million (René Clair)
7.....Greed (Ercih von Stroheim)
8.....Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
9.....Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
10...Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)

For some lists from Sight and Sound in 1952 click here

Recently, reading a critique of a contemporary French director, I was rather amused to see the author of that book state that, in the 50s and 60s, Positif was a less vociferous but more politicized rival of Cahiers du Cinema. It is my speculation that that author has not devoted a great deal of time in the archives researching either magazine. I would also have to say that pulling off being less vociferous while being more politicized is one neat little stunt.

He also reminded me of this little tidbit from Yale French Studies No.17 1956, an issue dedicated to Art of the Cinema. On page 110, in an article entitled Books in French on the Cinema in discussing French film reviews, it is stated:

"Cahiers du Cinéma (monthly, founded in 1951, deals with film as an art form; lively and controversial; scenarios general news)

Positif (a younger rival; contributors sometimes dogmatic, and violent in tone)"

That issue is available on-line at the JSTOR site for either subscribers to that services or card-holders at libraries which subscribed to that service.

Interview with Jacques Rivette 2007

This is a translation of part of an interview with Jacques Rivette on the Les Inrocks site which is dated March 20 2007. (The complete interview in French )


Interviewer: Were the cells of cinephiles in the 50s, and notably that of Cahiers, similar to secret societies?

Rivette: The secret society, that's always the other people. . .It wasn't an accident if there were conflicts with other groups, other magazines, such as Positif, , ,But yes, of course. . .

Interviewer: The story of the cinephilia of the 50s, a foundation, nearly mythological, seen from today, has something of the novelistic about it, almost as if out of Balzac. Did you live this, at that time?

Rivette: We were all very surprised by what took place, by what they called the New Wave. No one from among us, whether it was François (Truffaut), Jean-Luc (Godard), Chabrol or Rohmer anticipated that it would take that dimension. Above all, this verified, after the fact, the appropriateness of what we all thought and what François wrote in his famous article, "A Certain Tendency of French Cinema", which nevertheless was an absolute rupture. Cahiers was thus pointed to by the institutions of criticism and film.

Interviewer: Can you tell us about your encounter with the Cahiers group?

Rivette: The great difference with the Positif critics, for example, was that we all wanted to make films. When I met François, Jean-Luc and the others on my arrival from Rouen, we would meet each other at the Cinémathèque française on the Avenue Messine where we went just about every night. Already, what differentiated us from other cinephiles, even if we were all snot-nosed kids (I was 21 and François 17), was that we wanted to make films. We had no idea at all how, I, for one, knew absolutely no one. François had just been released from military prison thanks to André Bazin and we fell in together right off because we wanted to become filmmakers. i was enrolled in the College of Arts but I did not have the least intention of pursuing these studies, it was just to be able to benefit from the advantages of the status of student.

Interviewer: Does the desire to make films date from your adolescence in Rouen?

Rivette: I retell this often (laughs). The guilty party is Jean Cocteau. The determining factor was the release of La Belle et la Bête, and, most of all, the publication of his diary of the shoot. I had read a lot of Cocteau, whom I liked a lot. At that time, I didn't much know what I wanted to do later on, and when i read this diary -- when he recounted the work with the crew, all the problems that he met up with, his skin disease, Jean Marais' wound, and so on -- I immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do. I told myself that cinema was a place where things happened, where one debated with people, where one invented and tried things, whether they worked or not. . .

Interviewer: You brought to Cahiers the relish for interviews and the idea of going over to the film set. . .

Rivette: That was most of all an excuse to see what happened on a film set. I went over to the one for Ophuls' Madame de..., I stayed there two or three days in a corner, i watched Ophuls work, Danielle Darrieux, but in the end I did not write anything. When it comes to the interviews, that came from the great vogue, at that time, of very long radio interviews with writers: Gide, Léataud and others. And there was Claudel, who edited the text of these interviews for Gallimard, and who, in principle, corrected nothing. I was leafing through this book when it just came out, and François and I said to each other, "This is what we should be doing!" And that is why we went with our tape recorder to see Jacques Becker.

Cahiers and Positif feudin', fightin' and concurrin'

One of the primary documents in the contention Cahiers du Cinema/Positif during was François Truffaut's Positif copie zéro which appeared in the January 1958 issue of Cahiers.
On page 43 of that same issue of Cahiers, at the top of the tableau for the monthly "conseil des dix" (council of ten), the Pakula-Mulligan film Fear Strikes Out was considered. 8 critics abstained on the film, including all the non-Cahiers critics leaving the other 2 critics - Jacques Rivette and Claude de Givray - to award that film 3 stars. A note below that tableau reads: (my translation)

It should be known that Fear Strikes Out , which Robert Aldrich ardently pointed out to us, and, which was only shown for a one week exclusive engagement -- thus explaining the abstentions of the majority of our "counsellors", is keenly recommended, likewise, by Jean Domarchi, Fereydoun Hoveyda, Roger Tailleur and François Truffaut.

And there it was Cahiers and Positif - in the person of Roger Tailleur - making common cause.