Hitchcock's "Vertigo", Edges Out "Citizen Kane" as the Greatest Movie Ever

GATE ^ | 8/2/12 | Chuck Wolk

[Fledermaus]

Not quite. The innovation Wells introduced is still used today.

As dramatic a change in cinema as the three camera filming of the sitcom created by Desi Arnaz.

[morphing libertarian]

After seeing I Claudius (still have the old VCR tapes around somewhere), I read about 2,000 pages of Roman History. Livy from the beginning and various others through the year of 4 caesars.

[trisham]

I’ve never liked “Citizen Kane”, so I’m glad to see this, but “Apocalypse Now”? That movie is dreadful, along with some others.

[Sans-Culotte]

Vertigo isn’t even Hitchcock’s best...The Birds and Psycho are both better films. Citizen Kane is AMAZING. I’ve seen it over thirty times and every time I watch it...I see something new for me. Just another opinion...yours may be different...that’s baseball.

I agree about KANE. I can watch it over and over. However, I've never cared for THE BIRDS.

[CaptainK]

You left out “Notorious”.

[Borges]

It wasn’t instituted for commercial reasons. The industry wanted to stave off federal censorship - which there was a very real threat of since a 1915 Supreme Court decision had stated that films did not have free speech protection (that would be overturned by another decision in 1952).

[sargon]

What kind of garbage list of "greatest films" is this?

I haven't even heard of 2/3 of the films in this list. Ridiculous...

[Borges]

How many foreign films do you watch?

[Pappy Smear]

I really was unimpressed by Vertigo. I kept waiting for it to be interesting, or have some action. Never came. I know it is often ranked as a great movie, so I tried watching with an "artsy-tartsy" mindset, or taking it in the context of when it was made. Still doesn't do it for me.

[Bratch]

But compared to the current deviant cultural state-of-affairs across all fifty states here in 2012, Hollywood in the 1930s/40s/50s would actually be pretty tame!

That's not really true.

Hollywood has always been pretty wild...it's just that during the times you listed, the studios had much more sway with the media than they do today. Anything untoward was suppressed by the moguls and publicists in order to keep up the illusion of decency.

For example, google "The Garden of Allah".

(HINT: It has nothing to do with the Arab guy.)

[Borges]

There’s a case to be made that the film errs in giving the game away too early and switching from a mystery to an unpleasant psychological study that makes the Jimmy Stewart character unsympathetic.