Steven Spielberg hails epic film as ‘greatest American movie of all time’

Steven Spielberg has named what he believes to be “the greatest American film” of all time.

The Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park director made the claim at an event honouring fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, whose credits include Gene Hackman drama The Conversation and Vietnam film Apocalypse Now.

But it’s Coppola’s first The Godfather film that Spielberg described as “the greatest American film ever made”.

At the 50th AFI Life Achievement Award, Spielberg, who first met Coppola in 1967, said: “When we’re young, it’s our parents we want to make proud, and then it’s our friends, and then it’s our colleagues, and finally, it’s our peers, but you, sir, are peerless.”

He said that the director has”taken what came before and redefined the canon of American film” and “inspired a generation of storytellers who want to make you proud of their work”.

Spielberg, whose other credits include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET and Schindler’s List, added: I always want to make you proud of my work.”

The pair first met at a film festival screening of a short film made by George Lucas in the late 1960s. The wunderkind trio would go on to establish themselves as the most famous filmmakers in the world the following decade, with Spielberg releasing Jaws, Coppola making the first two Godfather films and Lucas creating Star Wars.

At the time of its 1972 release, Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather was expected to be a flop due to its epic running time, with Paramount Studios convinced Al Pacino had been miscast in the role of Michael Corleone.

However, the film, which won Marlon Brando an Oscar for his role as crime boss Don Vito Corleone, defied expectations to become a box office hit and one of the most seminal films of all time.

At the Coppola celebration, which took place earlier this week, Hollywood star Robert De Niro jokingly thanked the director for not casting him in The Godfather as Sonny, the role played by James Caan, as it freed him up to play the young version of Brando’s character in the 1978 sequel.

De Niro described it as ”the best job I ever, never got”.