Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, or Ozu?

I think Kurosawa is the most prolific out of the three. He was a versatile filmmaker and has a large handful of brilliant films. Then again, Ozu's human tales are unmatched in world cinema - they are, quite simply, real filmmaking. Mizoguchi has a wonderful visual eye and is perhaps the most poetic of the three.

God, I'm so confused.

It's a brutal choice, and if I made the poll now, I would've included Kobayahi too, who's also brilliant. Harakiri provides one of the greatest subversions of theme in what seems initially to be a typical samurai feature, and Kwaidan is the most beautiful film ever made in a studio set. Mizoguchi, I believe, is the most formally sound filmmaker of the three, and being a fan of the long take (and a bit of a feminist), I find myself very drawn to his work. Kurosawa lived the longest by a large margin, so he has the most available films (though both Ozu and Mizoguchi have tons of lost silent films) and is definitely the most varied in terms of subject matter, but I never found him as visually or stylistically appealing as Ozu or Mizoguchi. A lot of people complain that Ozu doesn't. Have much range or that he'd simply been making the same film over and over. I think this is incredibly far from the truth. If anything, the similarities that Ozu's films share only make the differences more noticeable (to see this theory directly in action, watch the Korean film In Another Country). Actors who play similar roles from film to film become people instead of characters due to our familiarity, and his consistent rule breaking shooting style draws us into his world. They are three (four including Kobayashi) of the greatest, but Ozu stands above the rest for me.

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Mubi

^ I've heard the insipid "Ozu has no versatility" argument, too, and you're 100% right, it couldn't be further from the truth.

For example, there's a distinctive difference, thematically and stylistically, between Tokyo Twilight and, say, Good Morning. There is common similarities all amongst Ozu's films, yes, but that can be applied to pretty much any filmmaker. At the moment I'd rank the three as such...

Ozu
Kurosawa
Mizoguchi

It's still such a tough call, however.