Directors who never won Best Director at the Oscars

Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks, Sidney Lumet

whoa. it's, uh, kinda more of an honor to be in that company than with the winners

add your own if you can think of them, great directors who weren't awarded, sure i didn't include many who deserve mention

David Lynch

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For me it has to be Krzysztof Kieślowski

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Hitchcock and Kubrick are usually the first two that pop up on such lists, especially since in the past decade Martin Scorsese and The Coen Brothers have finally become Oscar winners.

In addition to the already mentioned Sidney Lumet, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks, Robert Altman is another great who died without having won (in six nominations). Charlie Chaplin never even had a nomination. Though as with D.W. Griffith, F.W. Mernau, Sergei Eisenstein and Buster Keaton you can say their best and most influential work pre-dates the Oscars. Cecil B. DeMille never won, though he continued to make large spectacle films into the 1950s.

Terrence Malick is one of the most respected and critically acclaimed directors of his generation, but no wins (two nominations). Though he also took a self-imposed twenty-year break after his first two films in the '70s. John Cassavetes never won, only nominated once (A Woman Under the Influence), even though he was incredibly influential, artistically, for a couple generations of filmmakers and actors. Fritz Lang made great films for decades, but never even got a nomination. Billy Wilder won, but his mentor Ernst Lubitsch never did. Nor did the amazing Preston Struges. William Wellman is an all-time great with no Oscar.

Some of the biggest names from the '50s and '60s such as Otto Preminger, Stanley Kramer, Richard Brooks, John Frankenheimer, Arthur Penn, Norman Jewison, and Sam Peckinpah never won.

Of filmmakers who started their careers in the 1970s or 1980s and beyond, the aforementioned David Lynch as well as names such as Spike Lee, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, David Cronenberg, Peter Weir, Peter Bogdanovich, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Alexander Payne, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson, who all have their fanbases and arguments can be made for their worthiness. Though they are all still working, so hope isn't yet lost.

While Brits have won the Best Director Oscar over the decades, including David Lean, Carol Reed, John Schlesinger, Richard Attenborough, and more recently Sam Mendes, Danny Boyle and Tom Hooper, it never went to Michael Powell and/or Emerich Pressberger, Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Mike Leigh, Alan Parker, or Ridley Scott.

But no foreign language directors have ever won (while working in their native languages), including some of the best filmmakers the world has ever seen. Not just the previously mentioned Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Krzysztof Kieślowski, but Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Tati, Satyajit Ray, Roberto Rossellini, Pedro Almodóvar, Luis Buñuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Rainer Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wedners, Masaki Kobayashi, Yasujiro Ozu, Wong Kar-wai, and Andrei Tarkovsky.

And so it goes.

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That last paragraph in Holden's post is just shameful. Look at all that talent!

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Well, as often as people are disappointed by the choices the Academy makes among movies made in English, I can't forsee them ever actually giving Best Director and/or Best Picture to something made in another language. Miloš Forman (twice), Bernardo Bertolucci, Roman Polanski, Michel Hazanavicius, and Ang Lee (twice) have all won Best Director Oscars, but for work that is primarily in English (or, in the case of The Artist, mostly Silent).

Fellini did manage four nominations (La Dolce Vita, 8½, Satyricon, and Amarcord), and Bergman three (Cries & Whispers, Face to Face, and Fanny & Alexander). Kurosawa's only nomination was for RAN.

The directors branch has been sprinkling in a few foreign directors here and there, in the past couple decades or so. Pedro Almodóvar was nominted (Talk to Her), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colours: Red), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, which was about one thrid in English), and Fernando Meirelles (City of God) all got nods. Michael Haneke, just last year for Amour. And Roberto Benigni was nominated, for Life is Beautiful. But I don't forsee a foreign director winning anytime soon, not for a film made in a foreign language.

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By the way, is it fu*king Sunday, yet?!? The Academy Awards: I want to go to there.

It is rather odd that the list of directors who never won Oscars is a lot more impressive than the list of directors who have. Did Stanley Donen or Norman Jewison ever win? Donen should have at least been nominated for TWO FOR THE ROAD. I don't think Richard Brooks ever won either.

A lot of cinema geniuses never got an Oscar and most of them didn't even receive a nomination.

I listed Jewison, but no, he never won. One of his movies won Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night, but there was a split that year, and Mike Nichols won Best Director, for The Graduate (his only win). Norman Jewison was also nominated for Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck, and two more of his movies, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! and A Soldier's Story, got Best Picture nominations while he went unnominated. For the record, one of Hitchcock's movies won Best Picture, too: Rebecca. But John Ford won his second Director that year (of four, total), for The Grapes of Wrath.

Stanley Donen was never even nominated. Most surprisingly, perhaps, Singin' in the Rain didn't get nominated even for Best Picture! And Two for the Road is a bigtime favorite of mine, too. Its only nomination was for Frederic Raphael's screenplay. Though that was also the year of In the Heat of the Night, so Jewison and Donen couldn't both have won that year, anyway.

Richard Brooks I mentioned above, as well. He had three nominations at least, for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Professionals, and In Cold Blood.

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But as I like to point out in these types of threads about one director or another actor who somehow never won an Oscar, don't just reel off (yes, pun intended) two or three of their best works and grumble about, 'How could they not have won?!?', but go back and look at, not just who actually won in that category, but what other great filmmakers and performers did some of their best work in that same year. You can't give out three Oscars in the same year to different directors.

I did that in both this Sidney Lumet thread, and this Robert Altman thread, both regarding their lacks of Oscars.

Sometimes the examples are snubs that happened on Oscar night, in the category, like two of Scorsese's most infamous losses to Robert Redford's Ordinary People and Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, for Raging Bull and GoodFellas, respectively. But other times, you have to go a bit deeper.


Take one of the biggies, Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was nominated as Best Director four times: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon.

2001: A Space Odyssey, which could be considered his crowning achievement in many respects, is one of those that was a pretty clear snub at the ceremony, itself. Carol Reed won, for Oliver!, and it won Picture, too. I love Carol Reed, but I think any cinema fan worth their salt can see it's kind of ridiculous that he won for Oliver!, but not for The Third Man or Fallen Idol (both of which he was nominated for), and that doesn't take into account Odd Man Out or Our Man in Havana. Oliver! isn't a bad movie, nor poorly made, but its influence and place in cinema history is, by now, merely a fotnote, while 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to influence and inspire, and will continue to do so.

That year's Oscar nominees also included Gillo Pontecorvo and his best work, The Battle of Algiers, and among those not nominated was Sergio Leone for Once Upon A Time in the West and Roman Polanski for Rosemary's Baby.



So context and timing do contribute to these filmmakers not ever winning Oscars, or winning much later in their careers. You can't have Kubrick and Leone both win, even if you think 2001 and OUATITWest are both deserving efforts. That neither of them won sucks, but then we'd add Carol Reed to the ranks of great directors who never won. Though there's definitely more longterm cinema nerd cred in losing for The Third Man than for winning for Oliver!.

Dr. Strangelove is my favorite of Kubrick's masterpieces, and he lost out to George Cukor and My Fair Lady. That was Cukor's only Oscar, having previously been nominated for Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, A Double Life and Born Yesterday, and unnominated for the likes of Gaslight, Dinner at Eight, Camille, and A Star is Born. Again, I think it's pretty easy to say Kubrick's film has more lasting impact and influence than My Fair Lady, but at the very least, unlike Oliver!, you can at least still hold My Fair Lady up as a great film in the Musical genre.

1964 also had Hiroshi Teshigahrara's Women in the Dunes, Godard's Bande à Part, Luis Buñuel's Diary of a Chambermaid, Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Masaki Kobayashi Kwaiden, and Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night.

I'm very happy to give it to Kubrick and Strangelove over all of them, but, again, you begin to understand why so many greats, especially greats working in languages other than English, go unnominated or without wins.



Without even getting into whether the Academy would, as a group, have ever rewarded a movie as dark and challenging as A Clockwork Orange, even in 1972, just artistically and worthiness, it lost out to William Friedkin and The French Connection. That film is hardly an upbeat bunch of daisies, either, but at least it is more firmly genre and, compared to A Clockwork Orange, anyway, more conventional. I am a huge, huge fan of The French Connection, but while I don't begrudge it its win, I would very easily have voted for both Kubrick as Director and Clockwork for Picture.

The other nominees were Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Norman Jewison (Fiddler on the Roof), and John Schlesinger (Sunday Bloody Sunday). Pretty strong group. And it doesn't even include Robert Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist), Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude), Eric Rohmer (Claire's Knee), or Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs).

Again, very confortable naming Kubrick the Best Director for A Clockwork Orange, but strong arguments can be made for Altman, Bertolucci, Ashby, and for the actual winner, Billy Friedkin. There can't be a five-way tie, then it becomes meaningless. Somebody is always snubbed. Always. And after a career, some of these filmmakers wind up on this never won an Oscar list, accompanied by righteous indignation and genuine befuddlement. Well, again, here's part of how that happens. Though I know it's much more fun just to be angry and call the Oscars stupid.



Barry Lyndon is wonderful, but I think probably a little more understandable that Kubrick didn't get the win, here. At least understandable when considering its Pop-Cultural impact (or lack, thereof). First of all, it was an incredibly strong year. Three of Stanley's fellow nominees are three names that always appear on this no Oscar list: Robert Altman for Nashville, Sidney Lumet for Dog Day Afternoon, and Fellini for Amarcord. Who won was Milos Forman, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here you can argue personal taste and artistic merit forever and ever, and come out with each of them being deserving. But, only one of them could win. How are Altman and Kubrick and Fellini on this list? Partially because One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a fantastic fu*kin' movie.

And that doesn't even include Spielberg for Jaws (!!!), John Huston for The Man Who Would Be King, Akira Kurosawa for Dersu Uzala, Truffaut and The Story of Adele H, Peter Weir for Picnic at Hanging Rock, Arthur Penn for Night Moves, or Lina Wertmüller's Swept Away....

Man...bring on the '70s MoFo list, already!

As for what Kubrick went unnominated for, including Paths of Glory, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, again, go year by year and you'll find three or four deserving directors in each year. Some of whom also never got "their" Oscar.

Whatareyougonnado?

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Woah..that ***** just changed while I was posting. Freaky-deaky!

Scorsese's most infamous losses to Robert Redford's Ordinary People and Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, for Raging Bull and GoodFellas,


I'm one of the few people on the planet who think the Academy got it right with Redford and ORDINARY PEOPLE, but I do think Scorcese should have won for GOODFELLAS.

In the Academy's defense they are living in the now. It's hard to tell how movies age over time and whose work becomes classics. But having said that some of the names that didn't win, the Academy has to being saying "whoops".

Being a big Christopher Nolan fan, I am hoping the Academy doesn't look back and say "whoops" to him. I fear they won't if he stays with these big spectacle movies. They tend to neglect the directors in those films. I still think he should have won for The Dark Knight in 09 and the Picture should of won (neither even nominated). He made the best picture that year, anyways. I mean hell the Academy change the rules of nominations for the best picture because of it, why didn't they just let it win! Frustrating.

I really hope, as I have stated before on here, that he goes through with his Howard Hughes project. Nolan said it's the best thing he has ever written. He shelved it because Scorcese beat him to the punch in the Aviator in 04 (a Hughes project). But enough time has passed and it's about the end of his life when he was going insane, whereas the Aviator was about his whole life. It seems like it is perfect for the Oscars if he lowers the scale of the movie and makes it more intimate. The Academy are suckers for a good bio pic. I think him and Jim Carrey were going do it, but I have an even better choice, Bryan Cranston! It makes too much sense. He can balance the insanity and charm of Hughes plus he is around the same age as Hughes was at the proposed time Nolan wrote about Hughes life. I'd love to see Cranston get some Academy love after knocking my socks off with Breaking Bad and dominating the Emmys.

Nolan + Cranston + Bio Pic -Big Scale = Raining of Golden Statues

Ha just a dream scenario though.

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Personally, I think right now Peter Weir is the one director I would route for the directing gong, he's always trying something different whether it's the subject of the film, or the style. He's seventy years old, most directors burn out of ideas at that stage, but he's managed to remain interesting. In retrospect he has managed to get superb dramatic performances out of actors, who tend to be more blockbuster orientated/less dramatic - Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams. And he seems like a decent chap from interviews I've seen.

Holden, that was an amazing history! I loved how you point out the other films. Whenever people talk about people that haven't won, it's important to know who they were up against. It really comes down to timing so much of the time.

And I am one of the few that think Costner deserved to win for DWW.

*hides*

I was wondering other films Mike Nichols was nominated for other than WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? As for SINGIN IN THE RAIN, I believe Jean Hagen's supporting actress nomination was the only one the film received, correct?

Mike Nichols also got Best Director nominations for Silkwood (James L. Brooks and Terms of Endearment won) and Working Girl (Barry Levinson and Rain Man won).

And Singin' in the Rain was also nominated for Best Score.

It still blows my mind that those were the only nominations that SINGIN IN THE RAIN received.

That directores can not take the Oscar award
Robert Altman (1925-2006) , Orson Welles (1915-1985) , Alfred Hitchock (1899-1980) , Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) , Howard Hawks (1896-1977) , Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) , Sergio Leone (1929-1989) , Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) , Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) , Akira Kurosawa (1936-1993) , Stanley Kramer (1913-2001) , Fritz Lang (1890-1976) , Federico Fellini (1920-1993) , Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) , Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) , Jean-Luc Godard (1930-) , Otto Preminger , Arthur Penn (1922-2010) , John Cassavetes (1929-1989)