Coppola says The Godfather was not among his best work

It's good to know the veteran film director Francis Ford Coppola has retained a positive sense of his own worth. Talking to Time magazine about the robbery at his studio in Buenos Aires, in which his computer was stolen, complete with the script to his new film Tetro with Matt Dillon, he said: "The script was finished. It made Hamlet look like garbage, but it's gone." All said without the hint of a smile, apparently.

Coppola recently said in another magazine interview - as reported here - how disappointed he was with actors Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson for becoming "lazy and uninterested in taking risks". Now it seems he's just as disappointed with his cinema fans. He told Time that we are all wrong to consider The Godfather and Godfather II to be among his best films.

He lists as his top five: The Rain People (1969), The Conversation (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983) and one that hasn't yet been released - which means we can't judge - called Youth Without Youth. It's a love story starring Tim Roth and Alexandra Maria Lara (pictured on set with Coppola above), based on a novella by the late Romanian-born philosopher Mircea Eliade. ·