Top 10 American Directors?

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So many good movies, so little time.
1. John Ford
2. Alfred Hitchcock
3. Stanley Kubrick
4. Billy Wilder
5. Howard Hawks
6. Steven Spielberg
7. Francis Ford Coppola
8. Charlie Chaplin

After that I struggle between :
  • Martin Scorsese
  • Orson Welles
  • The Coen Brothers
  • Woody Allen
  • Frank Capra
  • William Wyler
  • Michael Curtiz
  • Robert Altman
  • Ernst Lubitsch
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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
Top 10 American Directors, cool

2. Alfred Hitchcock
4. Billy Wilder
8. Charlie Chaplin

After that I struggle between :
  • William Wyler
  • Michael Curtiz
  • Ernst Lubitsch
Hmm... Maybe Hollywood directors would fit better into what you're asking, which Orson Welles was decidedly not a Hollywood director. The industry wouldn't have him.
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Mubi



My top 10 American directors - minimum 3 movies, average rating out of 100 in brackets.

1. Martin Scorsese (85.33)
2. Sidney Lumet (83.00)
3. Quentin Tarantino (81.88)
4. Coen Brothers (77.75)
5. Francis Ford Coppola (77.17)
6. Stanley Kubrick (76.50)
7. Jonathan Demme (75.67)
8. Clint Eastwood (73.67)
9. Robert Rodriguez (72.67)
10. David Fincher (67.50)

Hopefully they are all American



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
My top 10 American directors - minimum 3 movies, average rating out of 100 in brackets.

1. Martin Scorsese (85.33)
2. Sidney Lumet (83.00)
3. Quentin Tarantino (81.88)
4. Coen Brothers (77.75)
5. Francis Ford Coppola (77.17)
6. Stanley Kubrick (76.50)
7. Jonathan Demme (75.67)
8. Clint Eastwood (73.67)
9. Robert Rodriguez (72.67)
10. David Fincher (67.50)

Hopefully they are all American
You pass!



USA Born

1) Stanley Kubrick
2) David Lynch
3) John Ford
4) Martin Scorsese
5) Francis Ford Coppola
6) Coen Brothers
7) Orson Welles
8) Quentin Tarantino
9) Steven Spielberg
10) Victor Fleming



Must be doin sumthin right
Wes Anderson
Joel & Ethan Coen
Brian De Palma
Jonathan Demme
Howard Hawks
Jim Jarmusch
Richard Linklater
David Lynch
Martin Scorsese
Quentin Tarantino


Don't think Lubitsch/Wilder can really be considered American directors, otherwise they'd supplant Scorsese and Lynch on my list

HM for Spike Lee, PTA, Spielberg, George Stevens and Kubrick



So many good movies, so little time.
I'm stunned that some people wouldn't consider Billy Wilder an American director.

Born in 1906, came to America in 1933. Became a citizen in 1934.

All of his good movies, and there were many, were made in America.

#1 Comedy on AFI.

Had 3 movies in AFI Top 100 Movies of All Time.

Directed the best film noir ever.

AFI Life Achievement Award

He wrote 5 films in AFI top 100 Comedies.

If Billy Wilder is not an American director than no one is.



Must be doin sumthin right
Yeah it's just silly semantics. But I mean are you gonna say then that anyone who made their best movies in the US counts? Like Roman Polanski's one of my favorite filmmakers ever and his absolute best movies were made through Hollywood but yeah putting him on here would be tough. And a lot of my favorite Hollywood directors from the 30s/40s/50s fall under the same umbrella of being born in Europe like Wilder so I went with Hitchcockian's standard of "USA born"

I agree though Wilder probably is less of a borderline case than others and should probably count



So many good movies, so little time.
It is semantics and whether Kubrick and Hitchcock are American or English directors can be argued either way.

But when you look at the settings of Hitchcock's great films - Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, San Francisco ... and where they were made, it's pretty hard to say he is not an American director. He did become a citizen. But to include him on a list of great English directors would also be correct to me.

Being considered an American director has nothing to do where someone is born. It has to do with where they created their best work, and about the style and settings of their films.

To say William Wyler, Billy Wilder, or Michael Curtiz are not American directors because they were born somewhere doesn't seem correct to me.

And to say Kubrick is an American director because he was born here and Hitchcock wasn't because he was born in England, seems to really confuse the issue, and get it wrong.



Must be doin sumthin right
Ah, oh well. You're probably right but I just did the US born thing to make it easier. Nobody wins here anyway because then there's somebody like Lubitsch who was born in Europe BUT all his notable films were made here BUT they're practically all set in Europe and feel like they come from a foreign perspective (to me at least) BUT they star some very American people like Jimmy Stewart and Jennifer Jones and whoever else

Either way I'm an idiot because I forgot to put Preston Sturges and Albert Brooks and probably a million others on my list



Obviously it would have been helpful to further explain what you were asking. To me if you ask about our favourite American directors you're asking about people that were simply born in America.

Anyway, as for what you do seem to be asking - for me, Wilder is definitely an "American" director, but Hitchcock could go either way. Obviously on a surface level (settings, actors, where he worked) his later work was most certainly heavily Americanised but his British upbringing was a huge influence on his films.

My list, no particular order (if I'm counting Hitch, he'd probably replace Darren Aronofsky)

Allen
PT Anderson
Kubrick
Linklater
Wilder
Lynch
Scorsese
Tarantino
Aronofsky
Coen brothers

Honorable mention: Spielberg, Fincher, Payne, Altman, Zemeckis



Martin Scorsese



Gangster Rap is Shakespeare for the Future
It is semantics and whether Kubrick and Hitchcock are American or English directors can be argued either way.
Hitchcock had already made over 20 films by the time he came to America, at age 40. If you've ever heard Hitchcock talk, it's clear that he's much more influenced by his silent years, some would consider him a silent director who worked with sound rather than a sound director. This is why I suggested calling him a Hollywood director rather than an American one, since he had considerable influence over the industry, but I wouldn't be comfortable calling a man who lived half of his life, including all of his years of development (teenage and twenties) in England, an American director.

To say William Wyler, Billy Wilder, or Michael Curtiz are not American directors because they were born somewhere doesn't seem correct to me.
Again, these directors were made and assembled in Europe, before being shipped off to America years later. They influenced Hollywood and were influenced by Hollywood, but I don't think you can consider them wholly American directors when they were not just born somewhere else, but were raised, grew up, found their sensibilities, and learned about the world somewhere else, where they made their films is irrelevant to their status as an American director.



no order:
scorsese, pt anderson, coen brothers, sidney lumet, spike lee, clint eastwood, kubrick.

i hesitate on eastwood.



Hello gentlement, here is my TOP 10 BEST DIRECTORS (not all american)

1. Stanley Kubrick
2. Martin Scorsese
3. Brian de Palma
4.Quentin Tarantino
5. Francis Ford Coppola
6. David Fincher
7. Oliver Stone
8. Milos Forman
9. Alfred Hitchcock
10. David Lynch

In a TOP 20, i would surely add Spike Lee

find TOP 10 more on my blog:TOPBESTCinema . com
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check my video blog: www.TOPBESTCinema.com



Hello gentlement, here is my TOP 10 BEST DIRECTORS (not all american)

1. Stanley Kubrick
2. Martin Scorsese
3. Brian de Palma
4.Quentin Traction
5. Francis Ford Coppola
6. David Fincher
7. Oliver Stone
8. Milos Forman
9. Alfred Hitchcock
10. David Lynch

In a TOP 20, i would surely add Spike Lee

find TOP 10 more on my blog:TOPBESTCinema . com
lolwut



1. Kubrick
2. Coppola
3. the guy who directed The Empire Strikes Back
4. Ridley Scott
5. James Cameron
6. Martin Scorsese
7. Steven Spielberg
8. David Lynch
9. Paul Thomas Anderson
10. Zemeckis

Oh yeah, James Cameron > Martin Scorsese and David Lynch.



Autocorrect, or unknown master of American movies?!?!
I'd say the former. He did make me google it, though.