Oscar-winning Italian movie Cinema Paradiso is the best foreign film of all time as far as the Brits are concerned.
Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 heart-tugger was ranked the greatest non-English language film ever made in a survey by British daily The Guardian, the results of which were published on Friday.
Second place went to France's 2001 whimsical, feel-good hit Amelie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet while the third spot was claimed by Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa's 1954 martial arts classic Seven Samurai.
But Italy was quickly back on the chart, taking fifth place with the Oscar-nominated La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, 1966), a film by Gillo Pontecorvo set during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence against French rule.
Vittorio De Sica's 1948 neorealist masterpiece Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) made eighth place in the survey, which The Guardian began in March.
However, Federico Fellini's best-known creation La Dolce Vita (1960) only made 19th place, three spots behind the 1994 Il Postino about a postman played by Massimo Troisi who learns to love poetry.
Roberto Benigni's multiple-Oscar-winning Holocaust movie La Vita e' Bella (Life is Beautiful) was last on the list at number 40.
Italian movie legends like Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Bernardo Bertolucci failed to make the list at all.
The Guardian's cinema critics, who commented on the readers' choices, rapped them over the Cinema Paradiso verdict.
The film, a sentimental tale of a young Sicilian boy's love for the movies and his friendship with the projectionist at the local cinema theater, was judged "clever and touching" by the critics.
But they added: "There is work to be done".
While approving the Battle of Algiers, saying that "one could argue that no modern movie has had more political influence", the critics were again scathing over the choice of Michael Radford's Il Postino.
"Is Postino better than Antonioni's La Notte? Than Rossellini's Open City?... than 20, 30, 40 other Italian films? Why is it that Italy is connected with this sweet air of aberration? Is it that we want to live in Italy?", they asked.
