Book lists 'Kane' as world's No. 1 movie

RENO, Nev., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A new U.S. book on world cinema, "99 Remarkable Films of the World," lists Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece, "Citizen Kane," as the No. 1 movie of all time.

Published by Zyxum Publishing, the film guide by journalist Rajan Zed puts the 1952 Gene Kelly musical, "Singin' in the Rain," at No. 2, while the 1942 Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman classic, "Casablanca," is No. 3.

"Compressing about 150,000 feature films into a list of 99 was a gigantic and agonizing exercise and cuts were torturous and painful. It broke my heart to see some great films vanish off the list. Ranking always generates argumentation, but there is an eternal allurement to rank and rate," Zed said in a statement.

Director Steven Spielberg had the most films on the list -- five -- followed by Francis Ford Coppola, Billy Wilder, John Ford, Martin Scorsese, Charles Chaplin and Frank Capra with three each.

The newest film named in the book is "Fargo" from 1996, while the oldest is "The Birth of a Nation" from 1915. The majority of the films on the list -- 71 -- were made in the United States.