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Totoro and Spirited Away Included in Sight & Sound Magazine Poll of 100 Greatest Films
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The website of the British Film Institute (BFI) has published its eighth "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, which has been held every ten years since 1952. For the first time in the poll's history, two anime films have made the Top 100 list. Both are by Hayao Miyazaki: his 1988 film My Neighbor Totoro (right) in joint 72nd place and his 2001 film Spirited Away (below) in joint 75th place. Despite being technically three places apart, the films are listed next to each other.
The poll is based on the votes of 1,639 film directors, critics and other specialists, up from 846 in Sight & Sound's previous "Greatest Film" poll in 2012. As ANN reported at the time, no anime or indeed animated film made the top 100 poll in 2012, although My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away were included in three sub-polls in Sight & Sound magazine. For example, My Neighbor Totoro was voted the eighth best Japanese film of all time.
In the new poll, My Neighbor Totoro shares 72nd place with films including Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, and Spirited Away shares 75th place with films including Sansho the Bailiff by Kenji Mizoguchi.
The highest ranked live-action Japanese film is Yasujiro Ozu's family drama Tokyo Story (1953), which was ranked the fourth greatest film overall, down one place from the 2012 poll.
Other Japanese films in the list include Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in 20th place; Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring in joint 21st place; Kurosawa's Rashomon in joint 41st place; Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff, which as already mentioned, is in joint 75th place; and Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari in joint 90th place.
Citizen Kane by Orson Welles was ranked the greatest film ever in five Sight and Sound polls, from 1962 to 2002. In 2012, however, Kane fell to second place, behind Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. In 2022, there is a new Great Film poll winner, the 1975 French-Belgian film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, directed by Chantal Akerman.
