40 Best Directors - from the Guardian

[pmw]

I know how everyone loves lists. Here's a list of The Guardian's 40 best directors (2003). Pretty interesting although fairly arbitrary...


1. David Lynch



2. Martin Scorsese



3. Joel and Ethan Coen



4. Steven Soderbergh


5. Terrence Malick


6. Abbas Kiarostami



7. Errol Morris


8. Hayao Miyazaki


9. David Cronenberg



10. Terence Davies



11. Lukas Moodysson


12. Lynne Ramsay

13. Bela Tarr


14. Wong Kar-wai


15. Pedro Almodovar


16. Todd Haynes

17. Quentin Tarantino


18. Tsai Ming-Liang


19. Aki Kaurismaki


20. Michael Winterbottom


21. Paul Thomas Anderson


22. Michael Haneke


23. Walter Salles


24. Alexander Payne


25. Spike Jonze


26. Aleksandr Sokurov


27. Ang Lee

28. Michael Moore


29. Wes Anderson


30. Takeshi Kitano


31. Richard Linklater


32. Gaspar Noé


33. Pavel Pawlikowski

34. David O Russell


35. Larry and Andy Wachowski


36. Samira Makhmalbaf


37. Lars von Trier


38. Takashi Miike


39. David Fincher


40. Gus Van Sant

[arsaib4]

I'm sure I'll think of others later but how can they miss Hou?

[Johann]

I like the list overall, but no mention of several key filmmakers makes me wonder.

Werner Herzog is in my top ten of favorite directors. His canon is awe-inspiring. Herzog is virtually fearless and he beats Linklater, the Andersons, and Spike Jonze easily.

Milos Forman, The Brothers Quay, Peter Greenaway, Jeunet & Carot, Agnes Varda and Julie Taymor are conspicuously absent.

Lynch, Malick, Scorsese, Sokurov, Kiarostami, Kaurismaki, Kar-Wei-all modern masters.

Where's Atom Egoyan? Where's Bertolucci?

I love lists, don't you?

[wpqx]

Here is my list of the top 100 of all time. It is sparse on modern directors, for the sole purpose that many have not made enough films yet. I realize that several important filmmakers may not be represented, considering I have no Iranian filmmakers for which I humbly apologize, but it is pretty comprehensive. Next to each director is my pick for their best film, which in itself is enough of a debate. Anyways, bitch or try your own so I can bitch.
1. Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey)
2. Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull)
3. Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal)
4. Jean-Luc Godard (Weekend)
5. David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia)
6. David Lynch (Eraserhead)
7. Buster Keaton (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)
8. Federico Fellini (8 ½)
9. Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)
10. Woody Allen (Annie Hall)

11. Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront)
12. Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris)
13. Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
14. Luis Bunuel (The Exterminating Angel)
15. Akira Kurosawa (Ran)
16. Jean Renoir (The Grand Illusion)
17. Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona)
18. Steven Spielberg (Schindler’s List)
19. Fritz Lang (M)
20. John Ford (The Searchers)

21. Zhang Yimou (To Live)
22. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather)
23. Robert Altman (Nashville)
24. Francois Truffaut (Jules and Jim)
25. Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not)
26. Ernst Lubitsch (Design for Living)
27. Billy Wilder (Some Like it Hot)
28. Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers)
29. Frank Capra (It Happened One Night)
30. Charles Chaplin (City Lights)

31. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
32. Sergio Leone (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
33. Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist)
34. Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings)
35. Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura)
36. John Huston (The Maltese Falcon)
37. Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin)
38. F. W. Murnau (Sunrise)
39. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Berlin Alexanderplatz)
40. Robert Bresson (Au Hasard, Balthazar)

41. William Wyler (Ben-Hur)
42. Andrzej Wajda (War Trilogy: A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds)
43. D. W. Griffith (Intolerance)
44. Roberto Rossellini (Voyage in Italy)
45. Nicholas Ray (They Live By Night)
46. Spike Lee (Malcolm X)
47. Roman Polanski (Chinatown)
48. Preston Sturges (Sullivan’s Travels)
49. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death)
50. Yasujiro Ozu (Good Morning)

51. George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story)
52. Raoul Walsh (White Heat)
53. Alain Resnais (Night and Fog)
54. Otto Preminger (The Cardinal)
55. Sydney Lumet (Network)
56. Krzysztof Kieslowski (The Decalogue)
57. Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu)
58. Werner Herzog (Aguirre the Wrath of God)
59. Wong Kar-Wi (Happy Together)
60. Luchino Visconti (Sandra)

61. Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark)
62. Satyajit Ray (The Apu Trilogy)
63. Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia)
64. Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
65. Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)
66. Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her)
67. James Cameron (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
68. Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front)
69. Vittorio de Sica (The Bicycle Thief)
70. Michael Curtiz (Casablanca)

71. King Vidor (The Big Parade)
72. Mervyn LeRoy (I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang)
73. Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
74. Max Ophuls (La Ronde)
75. Peter Bogdanovich (Paper Moon)
76. Richard Lester (Help!)
77. Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg)
78. Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky)
79. William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy)
80. Tim Burton (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure)

81. Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain)
82. Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart)
83. Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire)
84. Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc)
85. Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still)
86. Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs)
87. Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein)
88. Leo McCarey (Duck Soup)
89. Emir Kustirica (Underground)
90. Arthur Penn (Little Big Man)

91. Chen Kaige (The Emperor and the Assassin)
92. Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor)
93. Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris)
94. Brian DePalma (The Untouchables)
95. Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp)
96. George Stevens (A Place in the Sun)
97. Erich Von Stroheim (Greed)
98. Josef Von Sternberg (Morocco)
99. Robert Flaherty (Man of Aran)
100. Peter Weir (Gallipoli)

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by arsaib4
I'm sure I'll think of others later but how can they miss Hou?

Yeah!! How can they possibly miss HOU HSIAO HSIEN and ATOM EGOYAN and JLG???
I posted a list of my favorite active directors at a different site a couple of years ago. I think these were my top 3. I'm coming back with my list of 40 faves after dinner.

[oscar jubis]

The Guardian forgot that Herzog, Polanski, de Oliveira, Bertolucci, Altman, Saura, Godard and Wenders are still making movies. Leaving Hou out is inadmissible. Alphabetical order of favorite directors.

Pedro ALMODOVAR
Robert ALTMAN
Bernardo BERTOLUCCI
Jane CAMPION
David CRONENBERG
Jean Luc and Pierre DARDENNE
Terence DAVIES
Bruno DUMONT
Atom EGOYAN
Victor ERICE
Jean Luc GODARD
Todd HAYNES
Werner HERZOG
HOU Hsiao Hsien
Jim JARMUSCH
JIA Zhang Ke
Chen KAIGE
Abbas KIAROSTAMI
Emir KUSTURICA
Stanley KWAN
Mike LEIGH
Richard LINKLATER
Ken LOACH
David LYNCH
Terence MALICK
Hayao MIYAZAKI
Manoel de OLIVEIRA
Jafar PANAHI
Roman POLANSKI
Arturo RIPSTEIN
Carlos SAURA
Martin SCORSESE
Alexander SOKUROV
Bela TARR
Lars von TRIER
TSAI Ming Liang
Wim WENDERS
WONG Kar Wai
Edward YANG
YIMOU Zhang

"I'm sorry!":Theodoros Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Agnes Varda, Alberto Lombardi, Charles Burnett, Mohsen and Samira Makhmalbaf, Claire Denis, Catherine Breillat, Gianni Amelio, David Gordon Green, Lynn Ramsey, Kim Ki-Duk, Spike Lee, Coen Bros., Takeshi Kitano, Michael Winterbottom, Wes Anderson, Gaspar Noe, Techine, Guy Maddin, Alfonso Cuaron and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

[pmw]

Your "I'm sorry" list is hilarious. It does feel bad to leave some of those guys out.


And your actual list destroys the Guardian list which is frought with errors...Paul Thomas Anderson #21? Give me a break....
P

[oscar jubis]

Thanks P. Glad you enjoyed it. P.T. Anderson at #21 surprised me too, as well as Soderbergh at #4 all-world. Then again, I'm sure some will look at my list and wonder who the heck is Arturo Ripstein?

[Johann]

wpqx's list is damn fine. I can't bitch about that one at all.

I could be nitpicky tho...

oscar's lists are always founded on objective precision. When I read his lists or comments on particular films I know he's done some grand thinking on them.

Lists are templates for one's taste and they can be a good barometer for figuring out how a person thinks.

Example: If I gave you this list as my all-time top ten, you might think I was oblivious to great movies (and deserved a shot to the head):

Spacecamp
Showgirls
Gymkata
D.C. Cab
Stop! or my mom will shoot
Batman and Robin (1997)
Agent Cody Banks
Party Monster
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
White Chicks

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by oscar jubis
Then again, I'm sure some will look at my list and wonder who the heck is Arturo Ripstein?

it certainly won't be me, El Lugar Sin Limites, Deep Crimson, Principyo E Fin, among others, to say that he's been ignored is an understatement.

I'm not a huge fan of lists, here people are only presenting their Top 40 responding to Peter's post but what's the criteria here? top 40 alive, dead or both? directors who have made a decent film in the last 2 decades? directors whose films are being shown at a theater near us? To me it's a slight to any great director to be left out, some others have been mentioned but what if the list was a top 50 or a top 30, that would certainly make a difference, wouldn't it? What i am unsuccessfully trying to say is that why is there a limit, why can't all the great directors in the world be on a list, together.

From what i understood after reading the guardian is that they listed the top 40 directors "who are leading the way" and this should not only automatically trigger the inclusion of Hou as I mentioned but also of Claire Denis and Olivier Assayas just to mention two.

[cinemabon]

Isn't it more a question of contemporary versus classic? I noticed on the first list, that these were directors whose work was principly within the last 15 years or so. So then one might conclude that the list is not the 40 best of all time, but the 40 best currently. Clearly that focus is narrow minded. Surely, these gentlemen (women) did not come up cinema styles that were totally original as they merely built on all that has been done before. Surpisingly, the current generation of filmmakers are retisent to acknowledge anything before 1990 because that would mean there work is shallow, just copying what has been done before and say their work, because it was done recently is "more" original.

The true nature of what it means to be great, is not whether it is defined by the young or the old, but whether or not the story can hold water over time. A director that is considered brilliant today, years later will leave critics scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss was about.

WPQX has a pretty difinitive list, although I wouldn't leave Oscar out of the fray just yet! His definitions can convolute even the most ardent filmmaker into stardom... he should have been a lawyer!

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by cinemabon
So then one might conclude that the list is not the 40 best of all time, but the 40 best currently.

That's what I concluded based solely on who was included in the list pmw posted. So my list includes only active directors. No problem. What I didn't like about the list, generally speaking, is the exclusion of older directors who are still active (except for Miyazaki and Scorsese, who are listed).

I wouldn't leave Oscar out of the fray just yet! His definitions can convolute even the most ardent filmmaker into stardom... he should have been a lawyer!

Tell 'em Bon! Don't nobody leave me out of the fray, not just yet that is :))

Well I do believe cinema is "alive and (very) well". I love the old Classics and I revisit them often. But nostalgia will not help you discover the wonderful films being made today. Films that often come from far away and out-of-the-way places. Films that the mainstream press doesn't tell you about because they don't have publicity budgets and people hired to push 'em.

Lawyer?! hmm, thanks but I think psychotherapy presents more of a challenge, and it's more of an art, so to speak.