Rather, the problem is that in the psychological obsession it depicts it is, by comparison to Citizen Kane, parochial. As an exploration of the mystery of the motivating force in one man's life, Kane has a universality about it which ensures its continued resonance. By contrast, Vertigo is a depiction of the consequences of a psychological hang-up-one which, furthermore, is finally resolved by the story. Its theme, while obviously intriguing, is less fundamental in our list of priorities, so its hold on us is looser. Both films are, in their different ways, exquisitely made, and full of enjoyable artifice, but Vertigo, despite coming nearly 20 years later, feels much more rooted in its time than Kane. It's likely that if you sat a group of teenagers down now and made them watch both for the first time, it would be Welles's movie which might still manage to strike more of a chord, especially with the boys.

Such a group would probably consider all the films on the Sight & Sound list ancient history, if they'd heard of them at all. In fact all of the titles in the top ten would be golden oldies to anybody under 40 — the most recent, 2001: A Space Odyssey, appeared in 1968. The relative obscurity of many of the others reflects a lingering sense, once much stronger than now, of the cinema critic's inferiority complex, and the need to show that movies were a valid art form, which might also go some way to explaining the absence of any of the great Hollywood musicals from the top ten.

More than this though, lists such as this give credence to the view that they just don't make 'em like that any more. Whether or not I agree with this is the question I have been asked most frequently (alongside, yes, what is my favourite film of all time) throughout a couple of decades of film reviewing. Once I would have shaken my head, affected a wistful look and said yes, things certainly ain't what they used to be.

But oddly enough the older I've got the less patient I've become with this view. Too many of the movies I choose to rewatch, in just the same way that music fans put on favourite albums, are from the past three decades. There are certainly fewer of them, and that's largely because Hollywood produces roughly half of what it did in its so-called Golden Age, and I'm definitely a Hollywood man. But in their different ways they are just as life-enhancing and life-reflective as anything that has gone before. Watching Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan (both 1998) for the umpteenth time recently, I realised that such films had added immeasurably to my life and that, as Churchill might have said, I had taken much more from the cinema than it had taken from me.

Perhaps fondness takes the place of admiration with the passing years. Like the critics polled for this list, I admire Welles and Hitchcock. But I'm not that sure that I'd want to include their films in the batch I would take to my desert island, and frankly that's a more honest — and probably more interesting — criterion to use in these matters. Sitting alone on the sand, I would have Cabaret or West Side Story to keep me company, which seems an altogether warmer prospect. What would you take?