Greatest Filmmaker of all times

That's one of the first things that I thought of, but that also doesn't take into consideration the amount of different filmmakers a given number of the majority of people are aware of.

That's a scary realism but of course this came to mind as well.

Perhaps because "the best" doesn't mean anything. Today, the "best" meal was a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich, but that's because I didn't choose something else that meal or the rest of the day and couldn't possibly know if that was really the best choice. Now, if less people were pretty adamant about a couple people in particular that a general person wouldn't be familiar with, to me that takes the name into more consideration, not to say I think it's even worth the time to decide who the best filmmaker is, but is Metallica really the best metal band ever? Of course not. The Beatles aren't the best rock band, New York pizza isn't the best pizza, etc. In the realm of art, the lesser recognized artist is generally of higher quality, that's just how it's been for ages.

This also makes me think why we have a forum for this. Is it because culture encourages unwarranted competition in areas where it's irrelevant (art) and thus the people fight amongst each other things that could never be proven?

Summed up rather well i thought.

Directors for which almost every film is good/great;

Kubrick
Scorsese
Nolan
Hitchcock

As the above post states, the Big name directors Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Cameron etc have made without question some of the best films of all time but they don't always hit. Spielberg was King of KIngs in the 90s but in my opinion hasnt made a "Great" film since Saving Private Ryan. I remember watching an interview with Spielberg where he states that he is working on up to 5 scripts at a time which cannot be a good thing.

Eastwood did it all and for like 5 decades already ?
Hmm, If we look at Efficiency(Quality), Kubrick is the best 1000x times over, definitely!
Kubrick made like ONLY 8 films, I think all of them Mega Classics, Masterpieces and all of them DIFFERENT from each other, what a great man in the history of mankind!

To me a good movie needs to have a good story. Ironically to me, most of Kubricks movie's(except the shining) didn't really have a well crafted, deepgoing or unique story. His movies felt like drafts of stories or like he is trying to make a story while filming lol.
But his movies were so artistic that I was able to enjoy them and find them as masterpieces, he was that good! Only director I know that can make me watch a movie without a story and actually find the movie good!
By the way, another fun fact of Kubricks movies in my life: Most of his movies I found extremelly boring and strange the first time I saw them except for Full metal jacket which I liked instantly. I had to rewatch space odessy, shining and orange and strangelove.

Hitchcock

Kubrick would be a top contender.

But just to throw in a wild card: Robert Altman.

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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Goodness I can't pick one, So I'll go with Five potentials.

Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles
Stanley Kubrick
Steven Spielberg
Christopher Nolan

Steven Spielberg.

1. Alfred Hitchcock- Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, Rope, The Birds
2. Martin Scorsese- Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, The Departed, Raging Bull
3. Stanley Kubrick- 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining
4. Francis Ford Coppola- The Godfather I, II, and III
5. Ridley Scott- Blade Runner, Alien
6. Christopher Nolan- The Dark Knight, Inception, Batman Begins
7. Don Siegel- Dirty Harry, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
8. James Cameron- The Terminator, Avatar
9. David Fincher- Zodiac, The Social Network
10. Steven Spielberg- Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

My personal opinion, and the list changes constantly. The films listed are the ones that each director has in my Top 50.

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

Stanley Kubrick,he made classic masterpieces in every genre...who else can make one of the most memorable classic in comedy,horror,war,drama and 2 classic science fictions...

In my opinion...
1)Clint Eastwood
2)Steven Spielberg
3)Martin Scorsese
4)Woody Allen
5)Francis Ford Coppola
7)Frank Capra
8)William Wyler
9)James Cameron
10)Alfred Hitchcock

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My current favorite is Stanley Kubrick, he is in my opinion the most technically ingenious filmmakers. of this media. Classics in every genre, from his horrifying X rated satire A clockwork orange and his borderline soft core porno, to his hilarious Vietnam war epic and his marvelous titled Dr. Strangleove or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
He would have been a bugger to work with though.

James Cameron and Steven Spielberg are greatest film makers of all time they change the perception of film making .......

No they didn't do anything near that magnitude. Georg Meliés did, for example.

I am gonna have to go with Alfred Hitchcock. He geared the suspense genre forward and he could create suspense out of almost nothing. Overall, I think he's a great suspense director and I admire some of his work as a suspense/horror fan.

For the overall bulk and quality in their contribution to the visual medium, either Conrad Hall or Roger Deakins.

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Have you ever held a lion in your arms? I have. He smelled funky.

I'd go with David Lean. Lawrence of Arabia alone makes him one of the best and my personal favorite. And the guts to pick an unknown in basically his film debut (Peter O'Toole) was amazingly brilliant and utterly gutsy.

I cannot name just one. The best I can possibly do is select the two best, in my humble opinion---Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston.

Honorable mentions would be Welles, Spielberg, Wilder, Kubrick, Scorsese, Coppola and Ford.

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"Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another" - Plato

James Cameron has changed the technology of filmmaking several times and Steven Spielberg almost single-handedly invented the summer blockbuster.

Now, you can say wether or not those are bad things, but they, undeniably changed cinema.

I don't think there's an actual answer to this question. There's too many filmmakers who are really great at certain things.

Besides, the answer is actually Federico Fillini. Duh.

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Several times? The only thing I can think of besides better CGI with Avatar is underwater stuff, which he couldn't have influenced that much on The Abyss because scientists were already doing something similar.

/blockbusters

Word, Fellini, Meliés, the magicians.

The Abyss (1989) also featured one of the very first CGI effects sequences - that of the snake like creature composed entirely of seawater. Nevertheless Jurrasic Park is the film most people think of when you talk groundbreaking CGI, but that wasn't released until 1993.

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