Greatest director of all time?

Glad to see Ford get mentioned in the poll. My all time favorite is probably Eastwood, but Hitchcock is my favorite of the choices and probably either way my 2nd or 3rd of all time.

Indeed. And out of these four Kurosawa is the one that I see more clearly the influence of current cinema. Hitchcock, for instance, made movies like stage plays, it was very different kind of cinema from modern Hollywood. Kurosawa's movies in the 1950's were much more like modern cinema than other director's, specially the blockbuster films.

It's really hard if not impossible to choose the single greatest director ever. One ought to at least create some categories to make it easier, but it wouldn't make it a piece of cake anyway. In the end the ultimate choice would be subjective anyway, because even though one can objectively call a filmmaker influential, it's still impossible to choose the one that was the most influencial. The most influencial in what? It's true that Kurosawa influenced Spaghetti Westerns and a lot of other films, but to me Miklos Jancso wasn't worse as he influenced my two favourite directors Bela Tarr and Theo Angelopoulos. Even though Kurosawa was a great figure we can go deeper and call Griffith the most influential filmmaker ever. He was the first one to use Griffith's ending. Almost every contemporary thriller uses it.

I voted for Tarkovsky before realizing that we were basing it off of their influence throughout the years. I guess that's sort of a testament to how Tarkovsky is so revered, yet seemingly so overlooked in discussions like this. Perhaps it's due to underexposure in the United States (I don't think Tarkovsky's anywhere near as popular in the United States as Akira Kurosawa, for example). In my last three years of film school, Kurosawa has been referenced countless times. Conversely, I've never had an instructor reference Tarkovsky unless I mentioned him or a film of his.

That said, people like Kurosawa and Hitchcock are far more prolific (by # of films produced) than Tarkovsky, so I can understand why they're more household names.

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Who would you have picked that isn't on the list?

It's just not a really good (popular) list. It's focusing way too much on arthouse cinema. Not that I have anything against that, but it's ridiculous to keep guys like Martin Scorsese out of this kind of lists. Certainly anno 2013.

It needs to be bigger.

I voted Kubrick by the way.

^Agreed. Surely Scorsese almost always polls higher than Tarkovsky, Ray, Ozu, and probably several of the other guys here on most lists of the greatest directors.

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Because the choices are so sporadic (no Grifftih or Chaplin), I voted for the best, which is Jean-Luc Godard.

Bresson is also missing.

Surely Griffith can be the only choice. He influenced some of the early masters (Chaplin, Welles), who influenced others (Kurosawa, Kubrick), who influenced others (Scorsese, PTA).

What? There are two arthouse directors here, Tarkovsky and Bergman. Maybe Goddard.

It is not when there are only 12 spots maximum.

I was restricted to 12 directors. If you want to get Scorcese into a top directors list it would have to be expanded into a top 50 list or just a top 10 American directors list.

Also, I think that Spielberg was more important than Scorsese for the development of modern film.

A more comprehensive list of most influential film makers would look like this, including only people that I think would be worth in a top 50:

Hollywood:
1 - Griffith
2 - Chaplin
3 - Ford
4 - Welles
5 - Hitchcock
6 - Kubrick
7 - Scorsese
8 - Spielberg
9 - Lucas (only because Star Wars' cultural impact far dwarfs any other movie)

Europe:
10 - S. Eisenstein
11 - F. Lang
12 - F.W. Murnau
13 - J. Renoir
14 - I. Bergman
15 - R. Bresson
16 - J. Goddard
17 - A. Tarkovsky

Asia:
18 - Mizoguchi
19 - Naruse
20 - Kurosawa
21 - Ozu
22 - Satyajit Ray
23 - Guru Dutt (Indian director, hugely influential in the development of the Indian film industry)
24 - Abbas Kiarostami
25 - Wong Kar-Wai

Animation (the far neglected medium which is increasingly influential as CGI effects and animated films expand in popularity, so I think that 5-6 people out of the top 50 filmmakers should be animators):
26 - Disney
27 - Tezuka
28 - Norstein
29 - Miyazaki
30 - Takahata
31 - Hideaki Anno (NGE's influence over the second largest screen entertainment industry in the world was gigantic)

I invite people to give names to fill the other 19.

While I love Tarkovsky's films I guess that Chaplin and Griffith should have taken his place, given their massive importance in the development of film.

While the case has been made that Griffith was the single most influential one because he was the first big one has to understand that being the first in the field doesn't mean that one is the most influential. I guess that Kurosawa was the director whose influence over modern film as practiced in Hollywood, Japan and much of the world is the greatest. Other very influential directors, such as Renoir and Hitchcock appear to be more dated than Kurosawa.

Influence over modern film: basically the influence over the historical development that lead to the way films that most people watch today.

So the economic size of the film industries should be taken into account: Bresson's influence over modern art films was huge but those films are watched by only a handful of people. The three biggest screen entertainment industries are US, Japan's and India's, in terms of number of people employed, each of these countries' screen entertainment industries employ tens of thousands of people (screen because I include TV series as well as films).

Perhaps, I think I would need to study film more to have a good answer but I guess if we narrow down to 5 directors, those would be:

- Griffth
- Renoir
- Welles
- Hitchcock
- Kurosawa

With Kurosawa being the youngest among the top five most influential directors and hence the one whose influence is more easily felt when watching modern films, since he is closer chronologically.

^Can't argue with that top five. Although I think most everyone on this poll is an 'arthouse filmmaker' in some way, except maybe for the four Hollywood directors listed.

You're really underrating Scorsese here. Two of his films made the Sight & Sound Top 50 list and are seen as MAJORLY influential. I'm talking about Raging Bull and Taxi Driver of course.

It's very clear which director was the most influential for today's household names like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and MANY more. "Martin Scorsese".

Spielberg earned more money, certainly, and he made some of the biggest blockbusters of all time, but I wouldn't call him more important than Scorsese when it comes down to influence on modern film.

Scorsese may still be 'young' to be in this kind of list, but some of his films had an undeniable effect on modern cinema.

Then again, it's impossible to really measure the greatness of a director. This is all just my opinion about greatness. It's completely impossible to make a list of 12 directors and tell that those are the 12 greatest directors of all time. You should have done it with another voting system, than a limited poll.

I must apologize for calling this 'not a very good list', though. It is impossible to make a good one with only 12 directors. I didn't mean it was YOUR fault, I meant there were too few entries possible. It's okay to add directors like Tarkovsky or Ray (although Indian cinema may not be underestimated) to this kind of lists, but it can be seen as unfair when there are only 12 entries. Just like Martin Scorsese would be seen as an unfair entry by you.

I never underrated him, as you can see I included him among the top 10 most influential American directors.

However, does he stand among the top 4 most influential Hollywood directors? If I have to restrict myself to 12 directors world wide so Hollywood couldn't have more than 4 spots, though I gave Europe 5 spots and India only 1 spot, India deserved more space so I should have taken one or two spots from Europe and given to India.

Overall, Kubrick, Welles, Hitchcock and Ford were certainly more important than Scorsese (as Chaplin and Griffith), those four beat him in terms of critical acclaim, box office performance, influence over other directors and cultural impact.

Tarantino and PTA movies aren't very popular if compared to the filmmakers influenced by Spielberg.

More? 10 times more, at least.

Besides Tarantino and PTA do you know more important directors who have been influenced by Scorsese? Because the number of people who watched a Tarantino, a PTA or a Scorsese film combined is much smaller than the number of people who watched Jaws, Jurassic Park and E.T. combined.

Overall, it is possible that the impact of Spielberg's movies directly over the public can be greater than the impact of all the movies made by all directors influenced by Scorsese.

In fact, even Miyazaki's influence, measured in by the number of people who watched stuff influenced by Miyazaki or directed by him (which includes all anime, plus all Pixar movies, plus most hollywood blockbusters involving CGI, such as Avatar and Snow White and the Huntsman) was probably greater than Scorsese's (and maybe greater than Spielberg's as well).

Scorsese is one of those directors that is loved by critics and film nerds but his impact over the general public is rather modest, given that his films never are among the top 5 highest grossing films of the year and neither are the films directed by those influenced by him.

What? I had 4 Hollywood directors among the 12 and only one Indian director. If I put Scorsese on the list it would have 5 Hollywood directors among 12, thus, too high a proportion.

Indian Cinema sells 3 billion tickets per year, compared to 1.4 billion tickets sold in North America. Clearly, India's importance is greater than you think. Bollywood is comparable to Hollywood in terms of overall influence over their respective cultural spheres (Hollywood: Americas and Europe, Bollywood: India, where 1.2 billion people live).

Thus there are probably around five or six Indian directors whose influence is greater than Scorsese. Though one must watch around 500 Indian movies before arriving at a list of greatest Indian directors.

And yes, Ray and Tarkovsky are considered greater directors than Scorsese by those who know the output of the three. Tarkovsky is considered the greatest Eastern European director of the last 60 years and Ray is considered the greatest Indian director of all time. While I would guess that Scorsese is one of the top 5 greatest American directors of the last decades.

No, they are not.

Ozu was a blockbuster wizard of the 1950's, his movies were watched by everyone in Japan in those days while Kurosawa was a combination of James Cameron and Spielberg in terms of financial success in his country, as his movies beat all records of most expensive Japanese film and highest grossing Japanese film.

Overall, directors such as Tarantino, PTA and Scorsese didn't achieve significantly greater commercial success than anybody on that list, including Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky's films sold millions of tickets on the Soviet Union. If arthouse means obscure, them PTA and Scorsese are arthouse directors, since his films never broke to the mainstream like Spielberg, Lucas and James Cameron and instead are niche films.

Let's see Scorsese box office track record in the US:

Hugo: 49th place
Shutter Island: 20th place
The Departed: 15th place
Gang's of New of York: 40th place
Casino: 35th place
Cape Fear: 12th place
Goodfellas: 26th place

Few Scorsese movies had decent box office performance and none achieved blockbuster status. Therefore, he stands between being an arthouse director and a commercial director.

Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Stanley Kubrick, for comparison, had superior commercial success than Scorsese. Hichcock's films such as Vertigo, Psycho and North by Northwest had similar box office performance as Nolan's Batman movies today.

Kurosawa, Naruse, Mizoguchi and Ozu in Japan also had greater commercial success than Scorsese in their respective countries.

Overall, it appears that Scorsese's influence over cinema can be roughly comparable to Mikio Naruse (maybe less, though, considering the status of Naruse in Japan as the third greatest Japanese director after Kurosawa and Ozu).

I went with Kubrick. The movies of his that I have seen have been excellent!

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@Guaporense: You completely ignore the fact that the American film business is WAY bigger than any other film business in the whole world. The proportion should be 5/12 or maybe 6/12. I'm saying this as a full blood European.

You're talking about Spielberg reaching way more people and making much more money, but that's just not a measure for greatness, in my opinion.

With that kind of arguments you could state that James Cameron should be called the greatest director of all time...

It's not about box office, it's about the films that overcome history.

The fact of being an arthouse director is not solely based on the fact of not being a big box office succes.

No way.

You are overrating the Japanese film business, like I've never seen before.

Guap, you have a very eccentric way of looking at film history and critical appraisal. I won't debate it, but as far as I know, you are one-of-a-kind. You seem to skew all your arguments to prove something which doesn't matter to most people, and there's a disconnect often in your logic and reasoning. Also, your constant use of hyperbole lessens any credibility you may have, but you're not alone around here with that. Nothing very important for me to say, but I felt like commenting.

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