Citizen Kane still tops critical list

Asked to name the top 10 films of all time, the average person might include Star Wars, Casablanca or Some Like It Hot.

But ask the world's most respected directors and critics and you will get a more unexpected list, where obscure Japanese offerings rank alongside Citizen Kane - the undisputed best-ever film.

Unveiled today, the poll of directors conducted every decade by the British Film Institute has again concluded Orson Welles's 1941 classic is the best film of all time.

The BFI's international poll, run since 1952, consulted 144 professional critics - including the Evening Standard's Alexander Walker - and 108 directors, including Sam Mendes, Quentin Tarantino, Joel Schumacher and Bernardo Bertolucci.

Not a single British film made either best-ever film top 10. However French, Russian, Japanese and Italian films are all represented among the predominantly American films listed. These are movies most video shop members wouldn't even consider renting - including Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story and Jean Renoir's anti-authoritarian classic La RÈgle Du Jeu.

The highest-placed British film in either list was The Third Man, which the critics put at 35th place. The lists show that box-office success is no indication of cinematic quality. The highest-grossing film on either list is 1972's The Godfather, which is the world's 151st top-earning film. It took £255 million.

The most recent film to appear is Martin Scorsese's 1980 boxing epic Raging Bull, which came joint sixth on the directors' list.

Welles starred and directed in Citizen Kane, which follows the fortunes of multimillionaire newspaper proprietor Charles Foster Kane from an ambitious editor to an embittered, manipulative and lonely old man. Kane was based on the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who was so outraged by the thinly-veiled portrait he attempted to buy and burn the negatives. Welles emerged as the directors' favourite director in the poll, which was conducted by the BFI's Sight and Sound magazine. Five of his films received votes. The magazine's editor, Nick James, said the results crown Welles as "the Shakespeare of modern cinema".

Choosing their favourite films of all time was clearly a difficult prospect for some.

Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer told Sight and Sound the ordeal was: "Probably one of the hardest bloody things I've ever been asked to do. It ranks alongside trying to get a parking permit out of Camden council. Anyway, here it is. I can't even look at it anymore."

Lewis Gilbert, who directed The Spy Who Loved Me and Educating Rita, agreed: "How do you judge the great silent films against the modern technical wonders? The great comedies against the great dramas? A lot of films were great in their time but do not stand up in modern times."