"It tells a most unlikely tale about a wife-murder, and tells it for more than two hours in a style that is slow, wordy and, apparently, casual," sniffed the Manchester Guardian's film critic 54 years ago. To clarify, what he may have meant to say is that Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is nothing less than the greatest film of all time.

The reappraisal was due on Wednesday after the 1958 film topped the British Film Institute's much-respected Greatest Films poll, which it has been conducting once every decade since 1952.

Vertigo managed to end the reign of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, which has topped the list since 1962.

"I was a little surprised," said Nick James, the editor of Sight & Sound magazine, which carries out the poll. "I remember hoping last time that Citizen Kane would get knocked off and it never happened, so yes, I was surprised. And delighted."

Vertigo's achievement is all the more impressive because the poll, which is considered one of the most authoritative, was bigger and more international this year than ever before, with 846 critics and writers having their say.

James said Vertigo's victory reflected changes in the culture of film criticism. "Cinephilia has changed in that there's less of a massive respect for the all-singing, all-dancing, every technological achievement in one film kind of film, like Citizen Kane.

"People are moving towards more personal films, ones that they can react to personally in their own lives, and Vertigo is that kind of film, especially if you watch it more than once. It is a film that grows and grows on you."

"It feels like a much more contemporary film than Citizen Kane, which is a lot of bombast and is very theatrical and slightly hammy by modern acting standards. Vertigo is about our inner life."

Third in the critics' list is Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, the 1953 Japanese drama. "I watched this film just three days ago and I couldn't stop crying," said James. "It tells you more about family life than any recent Hollywood film, I would suggest, even how we live today. It is very poignant and sad and heartbreaking and fabulous – it is a masterpiece."

Ozu's film came top in a parallel poll among directors – 358 of them participated including the likes of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen and Mike Leigh. In the directors' poll, Tokyo Story won over Citizen Kane and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in joint second. They were followed by 81/2; Taxi Driver; Apocalypse Now; The Godfather and Vertigo in joint seventh place; then Tarkovsky's Mirror and, in 10th, place Bicycle Thieves, which topped the first critics' poll in 1952.

The success of Vertigo reflects the remarkable change in fortune Hitchcock has had with critics, some of whom once looked down on him as little more than a Hollywood thriller director.

To be fair to the 1958 Guardian critic, he found a lot to like in Vertigo and praised the director's mastery of suspense. But he added: "This does not, indeed, mean that Vertigo is really a worthwhile film. Even Hitchcock's mastery cannot obliterate its essential dottiness or banish impatience during its second unnecessary hour."

These days the BFI, which is currently showing a retrospective of the director's films, believes Hitchcock should be studied in schools alongside Shakespeare and Dickens.

Although a British director tops the poll, there are precious few British films in the top 100. Some might argue that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a British film – ranked 6th – but the first unarguably British film is Carol Reed's The Third Man at 73rd.

The contemporary love affair with silent films, after the success of The Artist, continues with two new entries in the top 10: Dziga Vertov's avant garde documentary Man With a Movie Camera at number 8, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc in 9th place. There is a paucity of offerings from the last 20 years, with the only ones making an impact being Wong Kar-Wei's 2000 film In The Mood For Love – at 24 – and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, from 2001, at 28.

Full results of the poll will be published in the next issue of Sight & Sound, out on Saturday, as it celebrates its 80th birthday with a revamped look and a new digital edition archive.