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Ok Zwee, here's my pick.
The greatest director of all time is YASUJIRO OZU. I choose him because he had his own style. That's something that every great director has, but let me explain-being a Japanese director, his country was isolated from western styles until at least the 1930s. (By style I mean every aspect of cinematic language that was invented, mainly by Griffith's Birth of a Nation.) Every film ever made, with the exception of early Asian cinema (particularily the films of Ozu) has told its story on the foundations of the Griffith film. Yasujiro Ozu was a director who made films like no other, EVER. He invented his own cinematic language, and as a result his films are more like poems than films at all.
Ozu violated every visual rule laid down by western cinema. The camera never moves. THere are no tracking shots, not even small moves. The camera is often placed on the floor, or the level of a tatami mat. Dialogue scenes are shot with the characters not facing each other, so the camera can lend them their privacy. Sometimes the camera is moved from one side 180 degrees to the other, making things seem to switch from one side of the screen to the other. If you'll notice, this is never done in Western films, because it breaks the line between the audience and the story. Japanese poets sometimes use "pillow words", stray words to provide rhythm between lines. Ozu uses pillow shots to connect scenes and to allow us to consider the beauty in ordinary things. His style invites the viewer to contemplate and take part in his films, making the emotions in them magnified tenfold.
The films themselves are all wonderful. They are quiet, almost always family dramas, dealing with rites of passage and changes in everyday lives. Films are stories, ABOUT emotions. His movies are so beautiful, so tender, so loving towards their characters, that emotions flow through the audience freely. I've never met a person who has seen his "Tokyo Story" and had dry eyes afterward. All of his films are masterpieces. He never made a bad one.
If any of you have seen any of his films, you have an idea of what i'm talking about. If not, then I recommend Tokyo Story, Floating Weeds, Early Spring, Late Spring, and Autumn Afternoon.
Not to take away from Stanley Kubrick, because he is indeed one of the greatest of all filmmakers.
Zwee, why is Kubrick the greatest? You never have explained it completely to me.
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