GREAT DIRECTORS - who do you consider the very best? (1 Viewer)

[ScottRichard]

Alfred Hitchcock

Howard Hawks

William Wyler

Anthony Mann

Preston Sturges

Douglas Sirk

Sergio Leone

Clint Eastwood

Steven Spielberg

Martin Scorsese

 

[sleroi]

Akira Kurosawa
Steven Spielberg
John Carpenter
Buster Keaton
John Frankenheimer

 

[Vic Pardo]

Another of the "craftsman" directors: George Seaton, whose work went from A Day at the Races and What's So Bad About Feeling Good? at one end and The Country Girl and The Proud and the Profane at the other. Not to mention 36 Hours, Airport and the classic Miracle on 34th Street in between.


We could use more craftsmen.

MIRACLE is not only heartwarming and all that, but just such a well-made, well-acted movie by any objective standard. And it includes a lot of location filming in NYC a year before Jules Dassin's NAKED CITY (1948) took all the press for that.


One of Seaton's best works is the highly underrated APARTMENT FOR PEGGY (1948), a Technicolor drama starring William Holden as a returned war vet and Jeanne Crain as his wife and what happens when he decides to go back to college. This is my parents' generation and this is what life was like for them after the war. I don't think you can get a better time capsule of the period than this.


Seaton later directed Holden in the excellent location-filmed WWII spy thriller, THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962), with Klaus Kinski in a small but key role late in the film.

 

[RMajidi]

In no particular order:

Hitchcock
Ford
Wyler
Hawks
Wilder
Spielberg
Lean
Curtiz
Sturges (Preston)
Lubitsch
Lang

I agree with every one of your choices here, Alex.

Among directors already mentioned by others, I'd vote for John Huston, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Carol Reed, Sidney Lumet, Frank Capra, Raoul Walsh, Robert Wise, Anthony Mann and Leo McCarey.

Among directors not yet mentioned by anyone, I'd include Fred Zinnemann and Michael Powell.

A Man For All Seasons, by itself, would be cause enough for me to include Fred Zinnemann here. Of course, he also created many more celebrated works - across multiple genres - including: High Noon, Oklahoma!, From Here To Eternity, A Nun's Story, The Sundowners, The Day of the Jackal and Julia.

Like William Wyler, Zinnemann focussed on stories that examined the humanity and nobility of characters under diverse extremes. He also shared Wyler's happy knack of drawing out career-best performances from his actors.

Edit: Perhaps Robert Siodmak deserves a mention for his range extending from noir/suspense classics The Killers, Criss Cross and Spiral Staircase to ...Cobra Woman!!!

 

[Jtchance1]

Howard Hawks
Michael Curtiz
John Ford
Alfred Hitchcock
John Sturges
Anthony Mann
William Wyler
Henry Hathaway
Frank Capra
Steven Spielberg

 

[cinemiracle]

Ingmar Bergman seems to be missing from readers lists. In my opinion he was one of the greatest of the great directors His THE SEVENTH SEAL ,.Kon Ichikawa( THE BURMESE HARP) and Luchino Visconti (ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS) are among my favourite directors. The above films listed are my all time top 3 favourite films.

 

[Angelo Colombus]

Ingmar Bergman seems to be missing from readers lists. In my opinion he was one of the greatest of the great directors His THE SEVENTH SEAL ,.Kon Ichikawa( THE BURMESE HARP) and Luchino Visconti (ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS) are among my favourite directors. The above films listed are my all time top 3 favourite films.

Truffaut, Fellini, Tarkovsky and Tati are some of my favorite directors.

 

[Tino]

Spielberg
Curtiz
Ford
Scorsese
Cameron
Hitchcock
Kubrick
Nolan

 

[DigniT@DigniT!]

Micheaux
Barry Jenkins
Stanley Kubrick
Spike Lee
Martin Scorsese
David Lean
Francis Ford Coppola
Bob Fosse
Vincente Minnelli
Ernst Lubitsch
Billy Wilder
Hitchcock
Fellini
Michael Curtiz
George Stevens
Kurosawa
Powell and Presberger
Melvin Van Peebles
Spielberg
Gordon Parks
George Cukor
Bogdonavich
Ashby
Pakula
Lumet
Carol Reed
Orson Welles
Kobayashi (The Human Condition)
Bergman
Russell
Sirk
Renoir
Polanski