Top 10 Directors of All Time: Recommendations

Here's my list; sorry, I'm only listing 5. Each director symbolizes (to me) a part of film history.

5. Billy Wilder -- Some Like it Hot, Sunset Boulevard
Wilder is the screenwriter/director. His dialogue is superb.

4. John Ford -- The Searchers, How Green was My Valley
Ford's work is admired by other directors and he almost singlehandedly created the genre of the Hollywood western, yet he made other films as well. He often used a group of actors (much like Scorsese)

3. Charlie Chaplin -- The Kid, City Lights, Modern Times, The Gold Rush
The great actor/director who made us laugh when film was young. He could create great pathos one minute and had us smiling the next.

2. Steven Spielberg -- Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List
The most successful director of all time; his films are blockbuster hits and yet he doesn't sacrifice quality. He is able to give the audience what they want.

1. Alfred Hitchcock -- Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, many others...
The man who created a film language all his own. No film class is complete without studying his technique. He really is the master.

P.S. -- I use these directors in a Media class I teach. I have replaced Ford with Eastwood because the kids know Eastwood a bit better, but I honestly admire Ford's work very much. I have also used George Lucas -- not because he is a great director, but because he symbolizes the era of special effects and digital filmmaking.

Others that should be on any list:

Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa

Yeah, I'd probably flip a coin between Hawks and Wilder. I'm tempted to throw John Huston into the mix, except he never really made a true "comedy". Of course many of his films have plenty of humor, but as a form he never tackled comedy. The droll Beat the Devil may be his closest, and there is plenty of darkly humorous satire in the likes of Wise Blood and The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean, but never a comedy the way Hawks and Wilder attacked the genre. Other than that, Huston did everything else.

And the more I think about it, I have to give the slight edge to Howard Hawks over Billy Wilder. Billy Wilder, for all his range, never made a Musical. Obviously Some Like it Hot has some music in it, but it isn't a Musical in the sense of breaking into fantasy asides full of song and dance to express emotion or interior thought. Not that Hawks was a master of the form or anything, but he did have a couple on his resume, the Danny Kaye vehicle A Song is Born (1948) and more lastingly Monroe and Jayne Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And if you accept that The Thing from Another World was at least partially directed by Hawks or overseen by him in some degree uncredited, then it gives him one from the Sci-Fi/Horror genre as well, something else Wilder can't claim. And while Hawks is one of the Western's true masters, Wilder never made any of those, either.

Now to be fair to Wilder, he was one of the greatest screenwriters to ever punch up the ol' Underwood, while Hawks, though an excellent cinematic storyteller, did not originate most of his material the way Wilder and his co-collaborators did. But the question wasn't who is a more versatile writer/director, just director, so I'm going with Mr. Hawks.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

That's true. I wasn't really trying to break down directors by which genres they embraced but more perhaps by how strongly they seemed to be able to express extreme differences in subject matter and tone. I realize though that Wilder has a constant factor of dark, acidic humor throughout, even if Ace in the Hole and Double indemnity seem very far removed from One, Two, Three in tone. It's interesting to me that Hawks and Wilder both tackled The Front Page though. Hawks changed a major character's sex in 1940, while Wilder actually seemed to relish throwing in a lot of believable swearing into his 1974 version. Now, Wilder did direct The Emperor Waltz with Bing Crosby which was advertised as a musical but it really only has a couple of songs, lots of background music and dancing plus an actual ballet sequence (I don't think Hawks ever attacked ballet.) It's also more entertaining than its reputation. Now, it's true that Wilder never tackled a western or a sci-fi, although some of the plotting of the Loch Ness Monster section in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes borders on sci-fi, and there are some modest western elements in Ace in the Hole which involves a man during the early 1950s being trapped and exploited in a New Mexico cave while attempting to recover Native American artifacts who is also being exploited by a newspaper reporter.



I'm not trying to cheat or anything, but just add a little bit to my last post. After all, how would I know that Holds was bringing a two-headed coin to his coin toss?

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Many of the directors who I would have put in a top 10 if I were to write one have already been mentioned. So I feel it's my duty to mention someone who hasn't, someone who - in my opinion - I feel could be described as one of the greatest film directors of all time.

That being: Andrei Tarkovsky. Of course he's not to everyone's taste but as I say if I were to write a list he would be in there. Whilst he has a rather impressive back catalogue a lot of whom I would consider classics; my personal favourites would have to be Stalker (1979) and The Mirror (1975).

My favourite director of all time would have to be Stanley Kubrick, but he's already been mentioned so I'm just putting that out there without expanding on it.

Other recommended directors that haven't been mentioned yet, plus a film of theirs I like:
Jean Luc Godard - Week End (1967)
Yasujirō Ozu - Tokyo Story (1953)
Federico Fellini - 8 1/2 (1963)
Jean-Pierre Melville - Army of Shadows (1969)
Werner Herzog - Aguirre The Wrath of God (1972)
Fritz Lang - M (1931)

Three greats who haven't been mentioned (and my personal favorites) are:

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Conversation (1974)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Rumble Fish (1983)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
Tetro (2009)


BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI

Il Conformista (1970)
Ultimo Tango a Parigi (1972)
Novecento (1976)
The Last Emperor (1987)
The Dreamers (2003)


DARREN ARONOFSKY

Pi (1998)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
The Fountain (2006)
The Wrestler (2008)

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Here are my top five:

Vincente Minnelli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincente_Minnelli
Favorite film: Gigi


Todd Solondz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Solondz
Favorite film: Welcome to the Dollhouse


Derek Jarman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Jarman
&feature=fvw
Jarman directed this Pet Shop Boys video.

Anthony Minghella
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Minghella
Favorite film: It's a toss up between Truly, Madly, Deeply and The Talented Mr. Ripley.


David Lean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lean
Favorite film: Summertime

Quote: Eat of the Ravioli!

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Louise Vale first woman to play Jane Eyre in the flickers.

Top 10 Directors of All Time

[ This list I have prepared with enough of pain and dissatisfaction in my mind as it is next to my capacity even now. Look I have not mentioned Charles Chaplin. It is painful really.]


1) Andrei Tarkovsky:
Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker.

2) Satyajit Ray:
Apu Trilogy(Pather Panchali, Apur Samsar, Aparajito), Abhijan, Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen, Nayak, Ashoni Samket …

3) Steven Spielberg :
Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park

4) Akira Kurosawa:
Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai

5) Ingmar Bergman:
Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Silence, The Virgin Spring Hour of the Wolf Shame, A Passion/The Passion of Anna

6) Federico Fellini:
La strada, Roma, Amarcord, Prova d'orchestra, La città delle donne, Intervista

7) Bernardo Bertolucci: Before the Revolution, La via del petrolio, Il Canale, L'ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, Little Buddha, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello, The Dreamers

8) Roman Polanski:
Rush Hour 3, The Revenge, A Pure Formality, Back in the U.S.S.R., Chinatown

9) Martin Scorsese:
Taxi Driver, New York, New York, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Bringing Out the Dead, The Aviator, The Departed


10) David Lean:
The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Summertime, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India

Akira Kurosawa
Jean Renoir
Ingmar Bergman
Eric von Stroheim
Alfred Hitchcock
Francis Ford Coppola
Sam Peckingpah
David Lean
Orson Welles
Stanley Kubrick

Matt Layden

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Here is the thread topic guys:

"Am interested in film history, so nice broad range would be good. Could you also put their most famous film and your personal recommendation?"

Let's stick with it.

Thanks

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Just looked up the guy on IMDb - he's just a key grip.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Matt Layden's not "just a key grip", he's one of the best key grips of all time!

(psst, Iro! I think that's Suspect's real name)

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I know.

He's directed some stuff, just hasn't been listed on IMDB.

There is only 1 Film Maker for me, his name is

STANLEY KUBRICK

Here's my top 10, and more so.

1. Stanley Kubrick --- 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Akira Kurosawa --- Ikiru
3. Ingmar Bergman --- The Seventh Seal
4. Stan Brakhage --- Black Ice
5. Michelangelo Antonioni --- L'Avventura
6. Robert Bresson --- Au Hasard Balthazar
7. Maya Deren --- A Study in Choreography for the Camera
8. Federico Fellini --- 8 1/2
9. Alfred Hitchcock --- Rear Window
10. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger --- The Tales of Hoffmann

I want to go ahead and do five more, (which is still pretty limiting).

11. Satyajit Ray --- Pather Panchali
12. Jean-Pierre Melville --- Le Samourai
13. John Ford --- The Searchers
14. Charles Chaplin --- City Lights
15. Martin Scorsese --- Raging Bull

Though a very constricting list. Those are my top 10, (and 15).

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

It's tough to whittle a list down to just ten, but I'll gtive it a go.
EDIT: The films listed next to each name are my recommendations, or why I think that director deserves a place on my list.
Let's start with my three favorites:

1. Alfred Hitchcock; Rebecca, Notorious, Rear Window

2. Akira Kurosawa: Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Ran

3. Billy Wilder: Sunset Blvd., Some Like it Hot, Witness for the Prosecution

Then it get a bit more problematic.

Best director of musicals? Vincente Minnelli: An American in Paris, Gigi, Meet Me in St.Louis

Westerns and screwball comedies? Howard Hawks: His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, Rio Bravo


That makes five.


6. Francois Truffaut: The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Small Change


7. Lasse Hallstrom: My Life as a Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Chocolat

8. Steven Spielberg: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List.

9. Charlie Chaplin: City Lights, Modern Times, The Gold Rush

Now who to choose for #10? I think for me it comes down to Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola.Although undenibly brilliant, Scorsese' films just don't hold the same place in my heart that The Godfather and Apocalypse Now do. On the other hand, Coppola's body of work is much smaller, and has a couple of clunkers in it. What to do, what to do???
I know! A cop-out. (It's my list, so what the hell.).

Tied for #10:
Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now

Martin Scorsese: Mean Streets, The Last Waltz, Taxi Driver

My Top 10

1. John Ford : The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Quiet Man

2. Billy Wilder : Some Like it Hot, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard

3. Akira Kurosawa : Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Kagemusha

4. Stanley Kubrick : 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory

5. Alfred Hitchcock : Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest

6. Martin Scorsese : Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver

7. Jean-Pierre Melville : Bob le Flambeur, Army of Shadows, Le Samourai

8. Steven Spielberg : Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Schindler's List

9. Robert Altman : Nashville, MASH, The Long Goodbye

10. Francis Ford Copolla : The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

I've noticed that in limiting my list to 10, I've lfet off some significant directors that deserve some mention. Some have already been mentioned by others:
David Lean: Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Great Expectations,
and Stanley Kubrick: 2001, ASO, Dr Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange,

but there is at least one other that may not have been previously mentioned:
Stanley Donen:Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Singin' in the Rain (Best Musical Ever Made), and Charade (the best Hitchcock movie never made by Hitchcock),

NOTE: I had originally planned to include Carol Reed (The Third Man, Our Man in Havana), and Alexander Mackendrick (Sweet Smell of Sucess, The Ladykillers (1955)), but although both were undeniably gifted directors, their respective bodies of work are, I feel, too small for inclusion in a "10 Best" list. But they are still worth checking out, so Ive included them here.

And no, I haven't forgotten Tarantino, Rodriguez, Cameron, or Scott; all are good directors; it's just that stacked against the names in my top 10 list, they just don't quite make the grade (although Ridley Scott comes closest by about a mile).

...and I can't believe after all that, I left off Clint Eastwood. He continues to show, film after film, that he is just an amazing director.