Positif Poll

(The following was contributed by George C. Wu.)




Here are the top 20 movies of all time as voted on by past and present critics of the staff of Positif. Positif polled 72 critics on one of its anniversaries. I don't remember the year of this poll, but it was in the early 90s. The top 20 were:


  1. Rules of the Game (1939, Renoir)
  2. Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
  3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
  4. Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
  5. L'Atalante (1934, Vigo)
  6. 8½ (1963, Fellini)
  7. Sunrise (1927, Murnau)
  8. Barry Lyndon (1975, Kubrick)
  9. The General (1927, Keaton)
  10. Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Mizoguchi)
  11. Nosferatu (1922, Murnau)
  12. Le Plaisir (1951, Ophuls)
  13. Touch of Evil (1958, Welles)
  14. Rio Bravo (1959, Hawks)
  15. M (1931, Lang)
  16. Children of Paradise (1945, Carne)
  17. Ugetsu (1953, Mizoguchi)
  18. Senso (1954, Visconti)
  19. To Be or Not to Be (1942, Lubitsch)
  20. Persona (1966, Bergman)
As you can see, 6 movies tied for 14th place. Just for your interest, #21 was The Bandwagon and #22 Wild Strawberries. There are a whole bunch of ties after those.