Vertigo is better than Citizen Kane.
The British Film Institute has released its new Top 50 films of all time. I know, it's a list, but as lists go this is the grand poobah. It's a really important one where all the best critics, distributors and academics from around the world choose "important" movies once a decade.
US film critic Roger Ebert wrote this interesting piece about his vote in the BFI poll and why he chose Tree of Life as his new inclusion and "propaganda title". Interestingly, Tree of Life was apparently just one point away from being included in the top 100.
The news this year is that, after 50 years at number one, Citizen Kane has been knocked off the top spot by Vertigo. I'm glad. As you may remember from my first blog, I named Vertigo as one of the five films I couldnt do without. It was one of my desert island DVDs.
It was exciting to see such a personally treasured movie on the daytime news yesterday. This gave me a bit of a thrill:
Vertigo is a beguilingly beautiful movie. I think it is better than Citizen Kane. It is one of those films that at first watch is quite bewildering, but when you watch it again the film blooms in your mind like a flower, like one of those flowers in Vertigo that people remember so vividly. These ones:
Actually, here are some more pictures of Vertigo, because, wow, it is a beautiful movie. Look at this:
And this:
And this:
What is interesting about Citizen Kane being toppled by Vertigo is that we have replaced a film about truth with one about illusion.
Citizen Kane is about the destructive, mundane and tedious nature of truth. The journalists are on a quest for the truth of a single man. That truth turns out to be something obscure and mundane. There are countless moments where the barbed nature of truth is revealed. At one point, Kane writes a scathing newspaper review of his wife's operatic performance. He has written the truth and, even though it's written under another name, it's a harsh truth.
Citizen Kane is a gritty treatise on the truth. The truth is a bummer and it hurts and its boring - that's what Citizen Kane is about.
But with Vertigo, Citizen Kane has been replaced by a film utterly submerged in deception, illusion and fantasy. Vertigo is about the destructive power of illusion, how it can take hold of a mind and wrestle it free from reality. It's about the power of fantasy and the bargain you strike when you fall into that world and leave the truth behind.
So does this change mean are we retreating into fantasy as a society? Has truthiness won? Depends who you ask. Vertigo was chosen by a group of people with a deep love for movies. In a way, Vertigo is about the act of film making - the creation of illusion.
I think many film lovers prefer illusion to that hardest of taskmasters - reality. The flowers of Vertigo will always be preferable to the arrows of truth in Citizen Kane.
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Best British film ever: Hotel Paradiso. Farts are funny.
Both V and CK are excellent. Note that Bernard Herrmann wrote the music for both of these (and several others in the top 50, including the original, unused score for 2001).
Vertigo is a great film, but the idea of a 'top film of all time' is kinda silly.
Firstly: There is no best film. there can't be - 'best' is far too subjective.
Secondly: Vertigo (imho) is far better than Citizen Kane. I'm an avid film fan, and Citizen Kane is an overhyped, self-indulgent, far-too-long film. Whereas I found Vertigo compelling, enjoyable & aesthetically pleasing.
Kane was fairly revolutionary when it was made, with much "wow" factor. But it has not really - in my view at least - aged well. Vertigo has still got it. It may start ageing at some point, but not yet.
So good call, BFI.
Obviously the critics hadn't seen Battleship when they made this call.
ANYTHING directed by Hitchcock is brilliant, my personal favourite is the Birds, the Rear Window and oh all of them. And Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, don't know who directed that.
This debate just proves the pointlessness of such lists. These are not new movies. Neither movie has changed, one has not just suddenly got better and the other suddenly worse so if there was any merit, logic or process in the creation of this list then their relative position on the list would not change. Ever!
I agree with it topping the list.
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I'll take Vertigo over Citizen Kane any day!