Jean Renoir made many great films, but 'La Règle du jeu' (' The Rules of the Game,' 1939) has become the default choice. It is a delicious irony that Ozu's ' Tokyo Story' (1953) is in third place, in the very week it disappeared from IMDb's Top 250 after that site tweaked its rules. He needs an 'official masterpiece.' With Buster Keaton that film used to be ' The General' (1927), but after the restoration of all of his films his votes have become scattered, I suspect, among 'Sherlock Jr.,' 'Steamboat Bill Jr.' and other treasures. Why not more recent directors? To make the list, a director is punished if too many of his films are voted for.

Murnau's great silent ' Sunrise' (1927) is also on the list-three silents out of ten, and no Chaplin, Keaton or Eisenstein. The two new films are silent: Vertov's ' Man With a Movie Camera' (1929), and Dreyer's ' The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928). The most recent film in the critics' top ten, as it has been for years, is Kubrick's ' 2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968). This year's 846 voters looked further into the past. I believed a generational shift was taking place, and that as the critics I grew up with faded away, young blood would add new names to the list. What surprised me this year is-how little I was surprised. In the era of DVD, all of the films on the list are available in 1952, unless you had unusual resources, most of them could be found only in a few big cities. Their tangible value is to provide movie lovers with viewing ideas. But let's remember that all movie lists, even this most-respected one, are ultimately meaningless.

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