By Britain’s Sight & Sound magazine last week announced the results of its once-a-decade poll of critics and filmmakers to reach a consensus on the greatest movie ever made. Long story short, they opted for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, even though that’s blatantly wrong. That’s all well and good, but what’s really interesting are the ballots cast by some of the most important directors not only working today, but in film history. Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Edgar Wright, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael Mann, Skyfall director Sam Mendes, Shame‘s Steve McQueen, and Thor‘s Kenneth Branagh were among those voting, and making fascinating observations on their selections.
Want to know what those selections were, including who described James Cameron’s Avatar as ‘a brilliant synthesis of mythic tropes’, or Carrie as a musical? (Hint: Neither are Tarantino). Follow the jump to find out. If you live in the UK, meanwhile, make a point of picking up a copy of the mag, as it provides fascinating insights into the minds of some great filmmaking talents, of whom over three hundred were polled.
THE SIGHT & SOUND GREATEST MOVIE POLL: DIRECTORS’ BALLOTS
QUENTIN TARANTINO
- The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Leone)
- Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
- The Bad News Bears (Ritchie)
- Carrie (DePalma)
- Dazed And Confused ( Linklater)
- The Great Escape (Sturges)
- His Girl Friday (Hawks)
- Jaws (Spielberg)
- Pretty Maids All In A Row (Vadim)
- Rolling Thunder (Flynn)
- Sorcerer (Friedkin)
- Taxi Driver ( Scorsese)
MARTIN SCORSESE
- 8 1/2 (Fellini)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
- Ashes And Diamonds (Wajda)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- The Leopard (Visconti)
- Paisan (Rossellini)
- The Red Shoes (Powell & Pressburger)
- The River (Renoir)
- Salvatore Giuliano (Rosi)
- The Searchers (Ford)
- Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
- Vertigo (Hitchcock)
EDGAR WRIGHT
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
- An American Werewolf In London ( Landis)
- Carrie (DePalma)
- Dames (Enright & Berkeley)
- Don’t Look Now (Roeg)
- Duck Soup (McCarey)
- Psycho (Hitchcock)
- Raising Arizona (The Coen Brothers)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
- The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Choice Quote: ‘Carrie turns Stephen King’s horror of adolescence into a full-blooded teenage pop opera. They didn’t need to turn it into a musical – it already was one.’
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
- Ashes And Diamonds (Wajda)
- The Best Years Of Our Lives (Wyler)
- I Vitteloni (Fellini)
- The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa)
- Yojimbo (Kurosawa)
- Singin’ In The Rain (Donen & Kelly)
- The King Of Comedy (Scorsese)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
- Sunrise (Murnau)
GUILLERMO DEL TORO
- Frankenstein (Whale)
- Freaks (Browning)
- Shadow Of A Doubt (Hitchcock)
- Greed (Von Stroheim)
- Modern Times (Chaplin)
- La Belle Et La Bete (Cocteau)
- Goodfellas (Scorsese)
- Los Olvidados (Bunuel)
- Nosferatu (Murnau)
- 8 1/2 (Fellini)
Choice Quote: ‘Full of iconic moments of pure cinema, pulp horror, carny noir, perverse melodrama – Freaks is still unclassifiable after many decades. Still sick, twisted, perverse and profoundly human.’
MICHAEL MANN
- Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
- Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- Avatar (Cameron)
- Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
- Biutiful (Inarritu)
- My Darling Clementine (Ford)
- The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (Dreyer)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Choice Quote: ‘Avatar is a brilliant synthesis of mythic tropes, with debts to Levi-Strauss and Frazier’s The Golden Bough.’
WOODY ALLEN
- Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
- The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- Amarcord (Fellini
- 8 1/2 ( Fellini)
- The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
- Rashomon (Kurosawa)
- La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir)
- The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)
- Paths Of Glory (Kubrick)
KENNETH BRANAGH
- Manhattan (Allen)
- Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger)
- Au revoir les enfants (Malle)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- Brief Encounter (Lean)
- The Third Man (Reed)
- The Searchers (Ford)
- Napoleon (Gance)
- Tootsie (Pollack)
Choice Quote: ‘Manhattan is rhapsodic musically, visually and emotionally. The grim comedy of city lives turned to poetry.’
BONG JOON-HO
- A City Of Sadness (Hou)
- Cure (Kurosawa K.)
- The Housemaid (Kim)
- Fargo (Coen Bros)
- Psycho (Hitchcock)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- Touch Of Evil (Welles)
- Vengeance Is Mine (Imamura)
- The Wages Of Fear (Clouzot)
- Zodiac (Fincher)
SAM MENDES
- The Godfather Pt II (Coppola)
- Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
- There Will Be Blood (Anderson)
- Blue Velvet (Lynch)
- Vertigo (Hitchcock)
- Fanny And Alexander (Bergman)
- The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
- Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- Kes (Loach)
FERNANDO MEIRELLES
- Enter The Void (Noe)
- The Tree Of Life (Malick)
- Goodfellas (Scorsese)
- Zabriskie Point (Antonioni)
- Vidas Secas (Pereira dos Santos)
- Iracema (Bodanzky)
- Arabian Nights (Pasolini)
- Ran (Kurosawa)
- Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
- The Thin Red Line (Malick)
Choice Quote: ‘There are two films I was very influenced by: one is Goodfellas. The structure of City Of God is based on this film.’
PAUL GREENGRASS
- The Battle Of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
- Battleship Potempkin (Eisenstein)
- Z (Costa-Gravas)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- Breathless (Godard)
- The War Game (Watkins)
- The Gospel According To St. Matthew (Pasolini)
- Kes (Loach)
- Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
- Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
STEVE McQUEEN
- The Battle Of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
- Zero De Conduite (Vigo)
- La Regle Du Jeu (Renoir)
- Tokyo Story (Ozu)
- Couch (Warhol)
- Le Mepris (Godard)
- Beau Travail (Denis)
- Once Upon A Time In America (Leone)
- The Wages Of Fear (Clouzot)
- Do The Right Thing (Lee)
MICHEL HANAVICIUS
- City Girl (Murnau)
- City Lights (Chaplin)
- To Be Or Not To Be (Lubitsch)
- Citizen Kane (Welles)
- The Apartment (Wilder)
- The Shining (Kubrick)
- North By Northwest (Hitchcock)
- The Third Man (Reed)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs (Hand)
Choice Quote: ‘Citizen Kane is the foundation, the Bible, the ABC of cinema.’
DAVID O. RUSSELL
- It’s A Wonderful Life (Capra)
- Chinatown (Polanski)
- Goodfellas (Scorsese)
- Vertigo (Hitchcock)
- Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- Young Frankenstein (Brooks)
- The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)
- The Godfather (Coppola)
- Blue Velvet (Lynch)
- Groundhog Day (Ramis)
RICHARD AYOADE
- Persona (Bergman)
- Le Mepris (Godard)
- Raging Bull (Scorsese)
- Ordet (Dreyer)
- Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
- Crimes And Misdemeanours (Allen)
- The Apartment (Wilder)
- Tokyo Story (Ozu)
- Make Way For Tomorrow (McCarey)
- Badlands (Malick)
GASPAR NOÉ
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
- Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel)
- Scorpio Rising (Anger)
- King Kong (Schoesdack & Cooper)
- Salo or The 120 Days Of Sodom (Pasolini)
- Eraserhead (Lynch)
- Angst (Kargl)
- Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
- I Am Cuba (Kalatozov)
- Love/Amour (Haneke)
Choice Quote: ‘2001 is a movie I’ve seen more than any other in my life. My life altered when I discovered it when I was about seven in Buenos Aires. It was my first hallucinogenic experience, my great artistic turning point and also when my mother finally explained what a foetus was and how I came into the world.’