Sight & Sound 1952 - Critics' Greatest Films of All Time
by SforgeO | created - 02 Dec 2022 | updated - 02 Dec 2022 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama
In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.
Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Elena Altieri
Votes: 175,117 | Gross: $0.33M
2. City Lights (1931)
G | 87 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
With the aid of a wealthy erratic tippler, a dewy-eyed tramp who has fallen in love with a sightless flower girl accumulates money to be able to help her medically.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers
Votes: 196,021 | Gross: $0.02M
3. The Gold Rush (1925)
Passed | 95 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
A prospector goes to the Klondike during the 1890s gold rush in hopes of making his fortune, and is smitten with a girl he sees in a dance hall.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman
Votes: 118,624 | Gross: $5.45M
(=2)
4. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Not Rated | 66 min | Drama, History, Thriller
In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskiy, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Ivan Bobrov
Votes: 61,435 | Gross: $0.05M
5. Intolerance (1916)
Passed | 163 min | Drama, History
The story of a poor young woman separated by prejudice from her husband and baby is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, F.A. Turner
Votes: 16,718 | Gross: $2.18M
6. Louisiana Story (1948)
Approved | 78 min | Adventure, Drama
The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.
Director: Robert J. Flaherty | Stars: Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, E. Bienvenu, Frank Hardy
Votes: 2,152
(=5)
7. Greed (1924)
Not Rated | 140 min | Drama, Thriller, Western
The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved.
Director: Erich von Stroheim | Stars: Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller
Votes: 10,757 | Gross: $0.16M
8. Le Jour Se Leve (1939)
Not Rated | 93 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.
Director: Marcel Carné | Stars: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty, Jules Berry
Votes: 8,270 | Gross: $0.03M
(=7)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Passed | 114 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1431, Jeanne d'Arc is placed on trial on charges of heresy. The ecclesiastical jurists attempt to force Jeanne to recant her claims of holy visions.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz
Votes: 60,645 | Gross: $0.02M
(=7)
10. Brief Encounter (1945)
Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Romance
Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey
Votes: 44,219
11. Le Million (1931)
Not Rated | 91 min | Comedy, Musical
An impoverished painter and his rival engage in a race across Paris to recover a jacket concealing a winning lottery ticket.
Director: René Clair | Stars: Annabella, René Lefèvre, Jean-Louis Allibert, Paul Ollivier
Votes: 3,839
(=10)
12. The Rules of the Game (1939)
Not Rated | 110 min | Comedy, Drama
A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély
Votes: 31,315
(=10)
13. Citizen Kane (1941)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Mystery
Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
Votes: 465,875 | Gross: $1.59M
14. The Grand Illusion (1937)
Not Rated | 113 min | Drama, War
During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Votes: 38,863 | Gross: $0.17M
(=13)
15. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Passed | 129 min | Drama
An Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl, joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin
Votes: 99,926 | Gross: $0.06M
(=13)
16. Gorky 1: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938)
98 min | Biography, Drama
A drama reveals the great writer's inauspicious early years as an orphan raised by conniving relatives.
Director: Mark Donskoy | Stars: Aleksei Lyarsky, Varvara Massalitinova, Mikhail Troyanovskiy, Elizaveta Alekseeva
Votes: 779
17. Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Passed | 124 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan, Robert Lewis
Votes: 19,126 | Gross: $0.33M
(=16)
18. ¡Que viva Mexico! (1932)
Not Rated | 88 min | History
Having revolutionized film editing through such masterworks of montage as Potemkin and Strike, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein emigrated west in hopes of testing the capabilities of the American film industry.
Directors: Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Félix Balderas, Sara García, Martín Hernández, David Liceága
(=16)
19. Earth (1930)
Unrated | 75 min | Drama
In the peaceful countryside, Vassily opposes the rich kulaks over the coming of collective farming.
Director: Aleksandr Dovzhenko | Stars: Stepan Shkurat, Semyon Svashenko, Yuliya Solntseva, Yelena Maksimova
Votes: 6,401
20. Zero for Conduct (1933)
Not Rated | 47 min | Drama
In a repressive boarding school with rigid rules of behavior, four boys decide to rebel against the direction on a celebration day.
Director: Jean Vigo | Stars: Jean Dasté, Robert le Flon, Louis Lefebvre, Du Verron
Votes: 9,360
(=19)
21. Broken Blossoms or the Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama, Romance
A frail waif, abused by her brutal boxer father in London's seedy Limehouse District, is befriended by a sensitive Chinese immigrant with tragic consequences.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp, Arthur Howard
Votes: 11,057
22. The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945)
Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Romance
A society lady engineers a marriage between her lover and a cabaret dancer who is essentially a prostitute.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Paul Bernard, María Casares, Elina Labourdette, Lucienne Bogaert
Votes: 4,832
(=21)
23. Hallelujah (1929)
Passed | 109 min | Drama, Musical
A sharecropper decides to become a preacher after falling for a vamp from the city.
Director: King Vidor | Stars: Daniel L. Haynes, Nina Mae McKinney, William Fountaine, Harry Gray
Votes: 2,000
(=21)
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