Sight & Sound

How is it that Citizen Kane gained the reputation as the greatest film ever made?

It’s not some conspiracy, or just a general assumption. There’s a specific reason for it, and it has everything to do with the British Film Institute.

In 1952, the British Film Institute’s magazine, Sight & Sound performed a poll of film critics to find out what they considered to be the greatest films ever made. That poll gets repeated every ten years, was last done in 2012, and will be done again in a couple of...