Sight & Sound

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Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). The Independent newspaper has described it as "highbrow but accessible".

Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today. Sight & Sound was published quarterly for most of its history until the early 1990s, apart from a brief run as a monthly publication in the early 1950s, but in 1991 it merged with another BFI publication, the Monthly Film Bulletin, and started to appear monthly.

The journal was edited by Gavin Lambert from 1949 to 1955. For 35 years, from 1955 to the beginning of the 1990s it was edited by Penelope Houston, and then in its relaunched form by Philip Dodd. It is currently edited by Nick James.

Sight & Sound has a more highbrow reputation than other film magazines. It says it reviews all film releases each month, including those with a narrow art house release, as opposed to the more mainstream focus of its competitors. Sight and Sound also currently features a full cast and crew credit list for each reviewed film.

Every decade, Sight & Sound asks an international group of film professionals to vote for their greatest film of all time. The Sight & Sound accolade has come to be regarded as one of the most important of the "greatest ever film" lists. The first poll, in 1952, was topped by The Bicycle Thief. The five subsequent polls (1962-2002) have been won by Citizen Kane.

Sight & Sound has in the past been the subject of criticism, notably from Raymond Durgnat, who often accused it of elitism, puritanism and upper-middle-class snobbery, although he did write for it in the 1950s.

[edit] Sight & Sound's Top Films of the Year 2005

01. Brokeback Mountain

02. A History of Violence

02. La niña santa (The Holy Girl)

04. 2046

04. Mysterious Skin

06. Le conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love)

06. The Descent

06. Moolaadé

06. Sud pralad (Tropical Malady)

10. De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)

10. Gegen die Wand (Head-On)

10. Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)

10. Last Days

10. Solntse (The Sun)

[edit] Further reading

Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (eds): Women and Film. A Sight and Sound Reader, London: Scarlet Press, 1994, 287 p.
Jacqueline Louviot: Le regard de Sight and Sound sur le cinéma britannique des années 50 et 60 (What Sight and Sound Saw: Sight and Sound on British Cinema during the Fifties and Sixties), French doctoral thesis, University of Strasbourg II, 1997, 980 p.
David Wilson (ed): Sight and Sound. A Fiftieth Anniversary Selection, London: Faber and Faber in association with BFI Publishing, 1982, 327 p.