These are the top 3 most influential films and actors of all time, as per a study

Wizard of Oz is most influential film of all time, followed by Star Wars and Psycho, according to a study. Researchers at University of Turin in Italy calculated an influence score for 47,000 films listed in internet movie database(IMDb).

score was based on how much each film h been referenced by subsequent films. study, published in journal Applied Network Science, found that top 20 most influential films were all produced before 1980 and mostly in US.

Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film.

"We propose an alternative method to box office takings -- which are affected by factors beyond quality of film such as vertising and distribution -- and reviews -- which are ultimately subjective -- for analysing success of a film," said Livio Bioglio, le author of study.

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"We have developed an algorithm that uses references between movies as a measure for success, and which can also be used to evaluate career of directors, actors and actresses, by considering ir participation in top-scoring movies," Bioglio said.

Applying algorithm to directors, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick ranked third, fifth and sixth respectively.

When researchers used ar approach to remove bias of older movies --which, because y were produced earlier, can potentially influence a greater number of subsequent films -- Hitchcock, Spielberg and Brian De Palma occupied top spots inste.

When applied to actors, algorithm ranked Samuel L Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Tom Cruise as top three.

researchers ticed a strong bias towards male actors; only female in top ten was Lois Maxwell, who played recurring role of Miss Moneypenny in James Bond franchise.

" scores of top-ranked actresses tend to be lower compared to ir male colleagues,"  Bioglio said.

" only exceptions were musical movies, where results show moderate equality, and movies produced in Sweden, where actresses ranked better compared to actors," Bioglio said.

To calculate influence score for 47,000 films investigated in this study, researchers treated films as des in a network and measured number of connections each film has to or films and how influential films connected to it are.

Similar methods have alrey been widely applied to measuring impact of work in or fields, such as scientific publications.

" idea of using network analysis for ranking films is t completely new, but to our kwledge this is first study that uses se techniques to also rank personalities involved in film production," Bioglio said.

researchers suggest that ir method could be used for research in arts and by film historians. However, y caution that results can only be applied to Western cinema as data on IMDb are strongly biased towards films produced in Western countries.