Is Sight and Sound’s 100 Greatest Films Too Tasteful?

Last week, the British film magazine Sight and Sound released the results of its decennial poll of what it calls “the greatest films of all time.” In 1952, the first year the magazine conducted its survey, Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic “Bicycle Thieves” was voted No. 1. Ten years later, it was supplanted by Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane,” which held that position until 2012, when it was knocked from its berth by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” This year, Chantal Akerman’s 1975 tour de force, “Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” supplanted “Vertigo,” shocking the world (OK, some movie people). The Times’s chief film critics discussed the poll and what it means.