Directors name Godfather best movie

8:06pm Wednesday 24th September 2008

Filmmakers have named big-screen classic The Godfather their favourite movie of all time.

The Francis Ford Coppola Mafia film, starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, beat the likes of Gone with the Wind and Taxi Driver in the poll.

Directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Sam Mendes, Mike Leigh, Guillermo Del Toro, Cameron Crowe and Pedro Almodovar took part in the survey for Empire magazine.

Raging Bull came second, one of two Martin Scorsese films starring Robert De Niro in the top ten.

Taxi Driver, the 1976 movie also featuring Jodie Foster, was fifth in the poll of 31 filmmakers.

Gene Kelly's Singin' In The Rain (1952) was third, followed by Stanley Kubrick's 1963 film Dr Strangelove.

The top ten also featured Once Upon a time in the West, starring Henry Fonda, The Third Man, based on the Graham Greene novel, blockbuster Gone with the Wind, Billy Wilder's film The Apartment and Andrei Rublev, a 1966 Russian film based on a 15th Century Russian icon painter.

In a separate Empire magazine poll of over 10,000 cinema-goers, filmmakers and critics combined, The Godfather also came first, but followed by Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.