Have you actually seen The Godfather?

Everybody knows that The Godfather is one of the greatest gangster pictures ever made. That it features a majestic performance from Marlon Brando as Don Corleone and was directed with richness and gusto by the young Francis Ford Coppola. Everybody knows that The Godfather is a masterpiece – but how many have actually seen it?

Coppola's Oscar-winning 1972 saga, along with its brace of sequels, tops the list of films that people commonly claim to have watched, but never have. It is followed by the 1987 hit Dirty Dancing and the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption. The top 10 also finds room for such unseen classics as Taxi Driver, Gone With the Wind and It's a Wonderful Life.

The survey, commissioned by Orange as part of its Orange Wednesday cinema promotion, finds that one in five of us have lied about seeing The Godfather. Men, the survey suggests, are more likely to bluff about movies than women, with 58% admitting they had lied in the past compared with 38% of women.

"Most people tell the odd white lie so they can seem more knowledgeable to their friends," said a spokesman for Orange. "Others lie because they are embarrassed about appearing less cultured." It is not known whether the Orange spokesman has ever seen The Godfather himself.

The Godfather, for the record, is a mafia epic that stars Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall. It ends, as any fool knows, with a song-and-dance spectacular in which Don Corleone jumps into a swimming pool and falls in love with a mermaid. The two sequels that followed – in 1974 and 1990 respectively – were both set in outer-space.