Sight & Sound: 1952 Critics Poll

Top films as voted by international critics. The Sight & Sound poll is probably the most renowned film poll. Critic Roger Ebert described it as "...by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies – the only one most serious movie people take seriously."

# Film Year Country Director
1 Bicycle Thieves 1948 Italy Vittorio De Sica
2 City Lights 1931 USA Charlie Chaplin
3 The Gold Rush 1925 USA Charlie Chaplin
4 Battleship Potemkin 1925 Soviet Union Sergei Eisenstein
5 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages 1916 USA D.W. Griffith
6 Louisiana Story 1948 USA Robert Flaherty
7 Greed 1924 USA Erich von Stroheim
8 Daybreak 1939 France Marcel Carné
9 The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928 France Carl Theodor Dreyer
10 Brief Encounter 1945 UK David Lean
11 The Rules of the Game 1939 France Jean Renoir
12 Le Million 1931 France René Clair
13 Citizen Kane 1941 USA Orson Welles
14 Grand Illusion 1937 France, France Jean Renoir
15 The Grapes of Wrath 1940 USA John Ford
16 The Childhood of Maxim Gorky 1938 Soviet Union Mark Donskoy
17 Monsieur Verdoux 1947 USA Charlie Chaplin
18 Hurray Mexico! 1932 USA, Mexico Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein
19 Earth 1930 Soviet Union Oleksandr Dovzhenko
20 Zero for Conduct 1933 France Jean Vigo
21 Broken Blossoms 1919 USA D.W. Griffith
22 Les Dames du bois de Boulogne 1945 France Robert Bresson
23 Hallelujah 1929 USA King Vidor