10 favourite all-time film directors

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

Hmmm, any film buffs out there? Just for fun I thought I'd list my 10 favourite directors as they sprung to mind (thinking about it too much would have resulted in too much editing), along with those films of theirs that had the strongest impact on me.

In no particular order:

Ingmar Bergman - The Seventh Seal, Smiles of a Summer Night, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander
Alejandro Jodorowsky - El Topo, The Holy Mountain
François Truffaut - Les quatre cents coups, Jules et Jim, L'amour à vingt ans, Fahrenheit 451, La peau douce, Baisers volés, La Nuit américaine
Federico Fellini - La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8½, The Clowns, Roma, Amarcord, Ginger and Fred
Andrei Tarkovsky - My Name Is Ivan, Solaris, Stalker, The Sacrifice
Hal Hartley - The Unbelievalble Truth, Trust, Simple Men, Amateur
David Mamet - House of Games, Homicide, Oleanna, The Spanish Prisoner, State and Main
Stanley Kubrick - The Killing, Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut
John Sayles - Return of the Secaucus 7, The Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Lone Star, Men with Guns, Limbo, Sunshine State
Billy Wider - Five Graves to Cairo, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment

[mic]

I can't think on the top of my head of a name I would put ahead of the directors you chose. However, I really do like David Lynch's work. Just watched Elephant Man again the other day, which in my opinion is a great movie. If you add Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, I think he deserves some consideration.

I'll try to think about other names later.

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

mic said:

I can't think on the top of my head of a name I would put ahead of the directors you chose. However, I really do like David Lynch's work. Just watched Elephant Man again the other day, which in my opinion is a great movie. If you add Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, I think he deserves some consideration.

I'll try to think about other names later.

It is a bit of a difficult game because of the arbitrary limit of 10 directors. I decided to leave von Trier, Kieslowski and the Coen brothers off my list. Plus there are obviously many others who have enriched my life.

I look forward to your list.

*

Tarkovsky at that festival was given the Telluride Medal and then stalked to the edge of the stage, a fierce mustached figure in jeans and cowboy boots, to angrily say (in words translated by the gentle Polish director Zanussi): "The cinema, she is a sleeper. First she charge a nickel, now she charge five dollars. When she learns to give it away, she will be free," (The next night, the actor Richard Widmark, also honored, replied: "I want to name you some pimps. Hitchcock ... Fellini ... Bergman ... Orson Welles ...")

*

"Almost no one knew for sure what they had seen after one viewing [in reference to Fellini's 8½]." True enough. But true of all great films, while you know for sure what you've seen after one viewing of a shallow one.

[Cranky]

I don't know if I could count myself as a film buff. We only see 40-50 films a year.

As for directors, I hardly care who they are. Having said that...

Spielberg.....consistently delivers a high quality product.

Kubrick.

[mic]

I should have thought about it a bit more before posting...

Louis Malle : Zazie dans le metro, Ascenceur pour l'échafaud.
Hitchcock... how could I forget about him ?
Jean Renoir La Bête humaine, Welles, and of course Stanley Kubrick who has done such a fantastic work.

And for todays directors : Jarmusch (Dead Man, Coffee and Cigarettes - haven't yet seen this one, but I have heard a lot of good things about it), Lynch, Tarantino,...

Kubrick
Hitchcock
Lynch
Malle
Renoir
Leone
Scorsese
Coppola
Jarmusch
Tarantino

I'm probably missing names again, but this list seems ok for me.

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

mic said:

I should have thought about it a bit more before posting...

Nah...or you may never have made it around to posting.

*

I'll take the liberty of listing my favourite films by your list of directors.

Kubrick - hard to dispute the breadth and depth of his oeuvre
Hitchcock - The Lady Vanishes, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Marnie What deep, unresolved psychological trauma kept him off my list?
Lynch - Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Straight Story, Mulholland Drive
Malle - The Benny Golson/Miles Davis soundtrack for Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Atlantic City, My Dinner with André, Vanya on 42nd Street
Renoir - Une partie de campagne, Grande illusion, Déjeuner sur l'herbe
Leone - For a Fistfull of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker, My Name Is Nobody, Once Upon a Time in America
Scorsese - Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours, Color of Money, Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Bringing Out the Dead
Coppola - Godfather, The Conversation, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Dracula
Jarmusch - Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth
Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1

I'm probably missing names again, but this list seems ok for me.

Picking just 10 isn't easy.

[Disgruntled70sHab]

I'd have to say that different directors put out some pretty good films, but to land one director better than the other is difficult.

What I look for in a movie is realism. You normally tell within the first 10 or 15 minutes whether or not you're going to be interested. And even then, it sometimes takes me less than that.

Case in point. My wife loves adventures. She and I went to see the original Lora Croft. As soon as I saw the opening scene I looked at my watch and leaned over to Mrs. Dis and said, "... how long is this movie?" Instant celebacy!

Directors.

Steven Spielberg is extremely versitaile and has hit the mark on several films.

* Schindler's List was a movie that hit home with me (was able to visit Oscar Schindler's grave site while in Jerusalem; Mount Zion cemetary)

* Saving Private Ryan is quite possibly the best war movie to hit the big screen in many years. Though, like many Hollywood movies, it too, is historically inaccurate.

* Star Wars was way ahead of it's time. Fabulous movies for sure.

*Indiana Jones films are definitely faves of Mrs. Dis and I.

* Jurassic Park films are just plain entertaining.

* And why The Colour Purple didn't win best picture was a crime, IMHO.

I like Francis Ford Coppola efforts in The Godfather movies. You can't argue about back-to-back Oscars for The Godfather parts 1 and 2. However, Coppola lost me when he brought in his daughter to play Michael's daughter in part 3. I thought the theme he used was very effective; the Vatican Bank scandle of the 80's and he did his research very well. But that girl may have cost them another Oscar.

I think Clint Eastwood did an exceptional job in Unforgiven. It is one of my favourite westerns of all time.

Tarantino's movies might be violent, but I'll watch them if only to listen to the dialogues. Pulp Fiction is a popular one with me just on the dialogue.

Mel Gibson did an extremely entertaining, albeit historically inaccurate, film in Braveheart. Thoroughly entertaining though.

Ridley Scott did well with Gladiator, but left out some information on Blackhawk Down. Scott really did his homework in Gladiator. The timeline and characters historically matched up as did the way the opening battle scene. That particular scene dipicted how the Romans joined battle very accurately. However, when I saw Russell Crowe using stirrups (which weren't around for a while yet) ... While an excellent movie dipicting modern urban warfare, Blackhawk Down doesn't tell the whole story. There was more than one reason why the Somolies came down on the Americans so hard and that part of the story was left out.

I find that some of Stanley Kubric's (RIP) films are overdone. To me, Kubric was the master of melodramatics. Full Metal Jacket was probably one of the worst war films I've seen. But, that's just my opinion.

Again, I think different directors did well in different movies. But, the most consistent, me thinks, is Spielberg.

Cheers.