Little White Lies

About Little White Lies

Sight and Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI) in London. Founded in 1932, it is one of the oldest and most respected film publications in the world, combining in-depth criticism, interviews and essays with comprehensive reviews of every film released in the United Kingdom each month. Since 1952 it has conducted the decennial Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, a survey of critics, filmmakers and scholars whose results are treated as a defining statement on the cinema canon. Edited since 2019 by Mike Williams, the magazine remains in active monthly publication in print and digital editions.

Origins and early years

Sight and Sound was first published in 1932 as a journal devoted to the serious discussion of cinema. In an era when film was still widely regarded as mere popular entertainment, the magazine set out to treat the medium as an art form worthy of sustained critical attention. Its early issues carried essays on film aesthetics, the development of national cinemas and the social function of the moving image. In 1934, management of the magazine was handed to the newly founded British Film Institute, which has published it ever since. The BFI, established in 1933 as a registered charity with a Royal Charter, gave the journal an institutional home and a cultural mission: to develop audiences for film and to champion cinema as a serious art.

The quarterly decades

For most of its history, Sight and Sound was published quarterly, with the exception of a brief run as a monthly title in the early 1950s. The quarterly rhythm suited its character as a journal of record rather than a news-driven magazine: issues carried long essays, detailed surveys of national cinemas and considered appraisals of individual directors. Through the post-war decades it became a key forum for debates about film authorship, realism and the emerging new waves of European cinema. Its pages documented the arrival of Italian neorealism, the French New Wave and the British New Wave, often through the writing of critics who would themselves become influential figures in film culture.

Editorial lineage

The magazine's editors have shaped its identity across generations. Gavin Lambert edited Sight and Sound from 1949 to 1955, bringing a literary sensibility to its film writing. He was succeeded by Penelope Houston, who edited the magazine from 1956 to 1990 and presided over its transformation into the leading English-language journal of film criticism. The relaunch editor of the modern monthly magazine was Philip Dodd. In 1997 Nick James became editor, a tenure that would last 21 years and carry the magazine into the digital age. When James stepped down in 2019 to pursue freelance writing, the BFI appointed Mike Williams as Editor-in-Chief. Williams arrived with a background in cross-platform publishing, having previously been Editor-in-Chief of NME, where he oversaw its transition to a digital-first brand, and UK Managing Editor of Time Out in London.

The Monthly Film Bulletin merger

In 1991 Sight and Sound merged with another BFI publication, the Monthly Film Bulletin, and began to appear every month. The Monthly Film Bulletin had been the BFI's reviewing journal, carrying detailed plot synopses and credits for every film released in the UK. The merger gave the new monthly Sight and Sound a distinctive dual character: it retained the long-form essays and interviews of the old quarterly while adding comprehensive monthly reviews of all new releases, including those with only a limited art-house release. Unusually among film magazines, it publishes a full cast and crew credit list for each film it reviews, making it an invaluable reference for researchers and historians.

Reviews and critical approach

The magazine reviews every film released in British cinemas each month, from major studio blockbusters to small independent and art-house titles that receive only a handful of screenings. This comprehensiveness sets it apart from most consumer film magazines, which concentrate on films with a general release. Its critics write at length, placing films in historical and cultural context rather than simply grading them. Alongside reviews, each issue carries interviews with directors and actors, essays on film history and theory, reports from international festivals and surveys of developments in world cinema. The writing assumes an engaged, knowledgeable reader, and the magazine has long been a training ground for some of Britain's most distinguished film critics.

The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Since 1952, Sight and Sound has conducted its decennial poll of the greatest films of all time, asking an international group of film professionals to each name their ten greatest films. Until 1992 the votes of critics and directors were compiled into a single list; since then directors have been invited to participate in a separate poll, producing two parallel canons. The individual results are famously eclectic: in the 2002 poll, 885 different films received at least one mention. For decades the critics' poll was dominated by Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which topped every poll from 1962 to 2002, before being displaced in 2012 by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). The poll is widely regarded as the most authoritative survey of critical opinion in world cinema, and its results generate intense discussion each decade.

The 2022 poll and a new number one

The most recent poll, published in 2022, produced the biggest upset in the survey's history. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a nearly three-and-a-half-hour study of a Belgian housewife's daily routine, was voted the greatest film of all time by the critics, becoming the first film directed by a woman to top the list. Vertigo fell to second place and Citizen Kane to third. The result reflected both the expanded and more diverse electorate of the 2022 poll, which drew on 1,639 critics, programmers, academics and curators, and a broader reappraisal of feminist and avant-garde cinema. The directors' poll, meanwhile, chose Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as its number one. The 2022 results cemented the poll's reputation as a living document of film culture rather than a fixed monument.

Redesign and the digital era

Under Mike Williams, Sight and Sound has undergone a significant redesign and a renewed push across print and digital platforms. The magazine's new visual identity was created by the design consultancy Pentagram, with black, a colour closely associated with cinema, featuring heavily across the brand, and the masthead colour changing according to each issue's content. Williams has refreshed the editorial mix with new contributors and sections, greater access to the magazine's unique archive of interviews, and a quarterly collaboration with the seminal 1990s publication Black Film Bulletin. The print magazine is supported by digital channels offering real-time reviews and commentary, and subscribers gain access to the magazine's archive stretching back more than 80 years.

Circulation, readership and standing

Sight and Sound occupies a distinctive position in the British magazine market: a specialist cultural title with a loyal and discerning worldwide community of readers. Its 2022 ABC figure was 15,493 copies per issue, and the magazine is sold in print and digital editions with a cover price of £6.75. It is published from the BFI's London offices and distributed internationally. The magazine's responsible person, as recorded in its IPSO annual statement, is Chief Editor Mike Williams, and it adheres to the Editors' Code of Practice. Though its circulation is modest by the standards of consumer magazines, its influence on film culture, criticism and the historical record of cinema far exceeds its sales.

Cultural significance and legacy

Few publications have shaped the way cinema is understood as profoundly as Sight and Sound. For more than ninety years it has provided the critical language through which generations of filmmakers, critics and audiences have encountered film. Its decennial poll has defined the canon of great cinema; its reviews constitute a near-complete chronicle of British filmgoing since 1934; and its essays have nurtured successive waves of film scholarship. As the editorial voice of the BFI, it plays a central part in the Institute's cultural strategy for developing audiences for UK and international, historical and contemporary film, television and the moving image. In an age of fragmented online opinion, Sight and Sound remains a trusted arbiter of film culture, carrying the authority of its archive and the continuity of its critical tradition into each new issue.