* Other: Sight & Sound Magazine – 10 Best Films of All Time (poll for each decade)

Every ten years since 1952, Sight & Sound Magazine polled over 250 of the worlds leading film critics and directors and compiled a list of the Ten Best Films of All Time.  Filtered for only movies released through 1960, only two movies were in the TOP 3 of more than one of these six lists.  And only one movie was in each of the six lists.  We will count these three movies as the TOP 3 of all the Sight & Sound lists.  Then there were 9 movies that made it into the TOP 3 list for one of the decades.  We will count these like the TOP 10 of all their decade lists (along with the movies in the TOP 3).  Here is the master list that we came up with from the six decades followed by the TOP TEN for each decade:

MASTER TOP TEN LIST:

1. Citizen Kane (#1 five times)
2. Rules of the Game (#2 three times, #3 twice)
3. Battleship Potemkin (#3 once, but in the top 10 for every decade’s list)
4. The Bicycle Thief (#1 once)
5. L’Avventura (#2 once)
6. Vertigo (#2 once)
7. City Lights (#2 once)
8. The Gold Rush (#2 once)
9. Singin’ in the Rain (#3 once)
10. Tokyo Story (#3 once)
11. Seven Samurai (#3 once)

Here are the rest of the movies released through 1960that were in one of the TOP TEN lists:

• Brief Encounter
• General, The
• Greed
• Intolerance
• Ivan the Terrible
• L’Atalante
• La Terra Trema
• Le Jour Se Leve
• Le Million
• Louisiana Story
• Magnificent Ambersons, The
• Passion of Joan of Arc, The
• Pather Panchali
• Searchers, The
• Sunrise
• Ugetsu Monogatari
• Wild Strawberries

Here are the lists for each of the six decades that our master Sight and Sound list was based on (filtered for movies released through 1960, so some lists may have less than 10):

1952 TOP TEN

1. The Bicycle Thief
2. City Lights
3. The Gold Rush (tie for #2)
4. Battleship Potemkin
5. Intolerance
6. Louisiana Story (tie for #5)
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc
8. Greed (tie for #7)
9. Le Jour Se Leve (tie for #7)
10. Brief Encounter
11. Le Million (tie for #10)

1962 TOP TEN

1. Citizen Kane
2. L’Avventura
3. Rules of the Game
4. Greed
5. Ugetsu Monogatari (tie for #4)
6. Battleship Potemkin
7. The Bicycle Thief
8. Ivan the Terrible (tie for #7)
9. La Terra Trema
10. L’Atalante

1972 TOP TEN

1. Citizen Kane
2. Rules of the Game
3. Battleship Potemkin
4. L’Avventura
5. The Passion of Joan of Arc
6. The General
7. The Magnificent Ambersons (tie for #6)
8. Ugetsu Monogatari
9. Wild Strawberries (tie for #8)

1982 TOP TEN

1. Citizen Kane
2. Rules of the Game
3. Singin’ in the Rain
4. Seven Samurai (tie for #3)
5. Battleship Potemkin
6. L’Avventura
7. Vertigo (tie for #6)
8. Magnificent Ambersons (tie for #6)
9. The General
10. The Searchers (tie for #9)

1992 TOP TEN

1. Citizen Kane
2. Rules of the Game
3. Tokyo Story
4. Vertigo
5. The Searchers
6. Battleship Potemkin
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (tie for #6)
8. Pather Panchali (tie for #6)

2002 TOP TEN

1. Citizen Kane
2. Vertigo
3. Rules of the Game
4. Tokyo Story
5. Battleship Potemkin
6. Sunrise (tie for #5)
7. Singin’ in the Rain

See the lists online here: 10 Best Films of All Time