1. Alfred Hitchcock - 20 Mentions
2. Eric Rohmer - 19
3. Howard Hawks - 18
3. Howard Hawks - 18
4. John Ford - 16
5. Ernst Lubitsch - 15
6. Robert Bresson - 13
6. Kenji Mizoguchi - 13
6. Manoel de Oliveira - 13
6. Jean Renoir - 13
6. Jean Renoir - 13
10. Luis Buñuel - 12
10. Hou Hsiao-hsien - 12
12. Charles Chaplin - 11
12. Clint Eastwood - 11
14. Jean-Luc Godard - 10
14. Abbas Kiarostami - 10
14. Yasujiro Ozu - 10
14. Josef von Sternberg - 10
14. Yasujiro Ozu - 10
14. Josef von Sternberg - 10
18. Mikio Naruse - 9
18. Max Ophüls - 9
18. Max Ophüls - 9
18. Roberto Rossellini - 9
21. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - 8
21. D.W. Griffith - 8
21. Fritz Lang - 8
21. Leo McCarey - 8
21. Jacques Rivette - 8
26. Frank Borzage - 7
26. Buster Keaton - 7
26. F. W. Murnau - 7
26. Nicholas Ray - 7
26. Satyajit Ray - 7
26. Alain Resnais - 7
26. Orson Welles - 7
33. Carl Theodor Dreyer - 6
33. Andrei Tarkovsky - 6
33. Andrei Tarkovsky - 6
33. Jacques Tourneur - 6
33. Raoul Walsh - 6
37. Michelangelo Antonioni - 5
37. René Clair - 5
37. David Cronenberg - 5
37. Sergei Eisenstein - 5
37. Werner Herzog - 5
37. Werner Herzog - 5
37. Jim Jarmusch - 5
37. Terrence Malick - 5
37. Aki Kaurismäki - 5
37. Krzysztof Kieslowski - 5
37. Stanley Kubrick - 5
37. Aki Kaurismäki - 5
37. Krzysztof Kieslowski - 5
37. Stanley Kubrick - 5
37. Nagisa Oshima - 5
37. Maurice Pialat - 5
37. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 5
37. Preston Sturges - 5
37. Tsai Ming-liang - 5
37. Billy Wilder - 5
37. Wong Kar-wai - 5
37. Billy Wilder - 5
37. Wong Kar-wai - 5
Four Mentions Each: Chantal Akerman, Wes Anderson, Boris Barnet, Albert Brooks, John Cassavetes, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Terence Davies, Claire Denis, Jia Zhangke, Takeshi Kitano, Mitchell Leisen, Vincente Minnelli, Jafar Panahi, Raoul Ruiz, Ousmane Sembene, Victor Sjöström, Aleksandr Sokurov, Béla Tarr, Jacques Tati, Luchino Visconti, Andrzej Wajda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wim Wenders, Edward Yang.
Three Mentions Each: Lisandro Alonso, Kamal Amrohi, James Benning, Ingmar Bergman, Charles Burnett, Jane Campion, Jean Cocteau, Pedro Costa, George Cukor, Cecil B. DeMille, Jacques Demy, Arnaud Desplechin, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Guru Dutt, Louis Feuillade, Robert Flaherty, Victor Fleming, Samuel Fuller, Ernie Gehr, Ritwik Ghatak, Walter Hill, Hong Sang-soo, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Mike Leigh, Harold Lloyd, Anthony Mann, Michael Mann, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Otto Preminger, Hiroshi Shimizu, Erich von Stroheim, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Agnès Varda, James Whale.
Two Mentions Each: Robert Aldrich, Vijay Anand, Roy Andersson, Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Jacques Becker, Budd Boetticher, Stan Brakhage, Lino Brocka, Alberto Cavalcanti, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Chen Kaige, Souleymane Cissé, Michael Curtiz, Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Jonathan Demme, Maya Deren, Atom Egoyan, Victor Erice, Federico Fellini, Emilio Fernández, David Fincher, Abel Gance, Curtis Hanson, Im Kwon-taek, Shohei Imamura, Miklós Jancsó, Humphrey Jennings, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lev Kuleshov, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kwan, Liu Jiayin, David Lynch, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Chris Marker, Lucrecia Martel, Hayao Miyazaki, João César Monteiro, Ermanno Olmi, Cristi Puiu, Glauber Rocha, Martin Scorsese, Tony Scott, William A. Seiter, Don Siegel, Douglas Sirk, Michael Snow, John M. Stahl, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Seijun Suzuki, Frank Tashlin, Maurice Tourneur, Tsui Hark, King Vidor, Jean Vigo, Yamanaka Sadao, Robert Zemeckis.
One Mention Each: Maren Ade, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Shinji Aoyama, Gillian Armstrong, Bahram Beizai, Bernardo Bertolucci, Brad Bird, Les Blank, Peter Bogdanovich, John Boorman, Frank Capra, Leos Carax, Marcel Carné, John Carpenter, Youssef Chahine, Vera Chytilová, Joseph Cornell, Cameron Crowe, Tacita Dean, Roy Del Ruth, Manmohan Desai, William Dieterle, Bruno Dumont, E. A. Dupont, Marguerite Duras, Blake Edwards, Maurice Elvey, John Emerson, Jean Epstein, Metin Erksan, Jean Eustache, Asghar Farhadi, Bobby & Peter Farrelly, Forugh Farrokhzad, Fei Mu, Paul Fejos, Michelangelo Frammartino, Hollis Frampton, Augusto Genina, Aleksei German, Miguel Gomes, James Gray, Jean Grémillon, Valeska Grisebach, Luca Guadagnino, José Luis Guerín, Sacha Guitry, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Robert Hamer, Michael Haneke, William S. Hart, Hal Hartley, Ron Havilio, Mike Hodges, King Hu, Sammo Hung, John Huston, Otar Iosseliani, Tamizo Ishida, Joris Ivens & Marceline Loridan, Ken Jacobs, Raj Kapoor, Elia Kazan, Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, Mehboob Khan, Kim Ki-Young, Henry King, Kô Nakahira, Yoshifumi Kondô, Alexander Korda, Peter Kubelka, Zacharias Kunuk, Claude Lanzmann, Charles Laughton, Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, Paul Leduc, Paul Leni, Jerry Lewis, Joseph H. Lewis, Maurice L'Herbier, Max Linder, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, Joseph Losey, Louis & Auguste Lumière, Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpsteen, Alexander Mackendrick, Johnny Mak, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Károly Makk, Rouben Mamoulian, Yasuzo Masumura, Paul Mazursky, Julio Medem, Georges Méliès, Jean-Pierre Melville, Lewis Milestone, Errol Morris, Radu Muntean, Kira Muratova, Celina Murga, Amir Naderi, Marshall Neilan, Yuri Norstein, Garin Nugroho, Victor Nunez, Christian Nyby, G.W. Pabst, Marcel Pagnol, Sergei Paradjanov, Edwin S. Porter, Corneliu Porumboiu, H. C. Potter, Yakov Protazanov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Harold Ramis, Mani Ratnam, Carol Reed, Michael Reeves, Nicolas Winding Refn, Carlos Reygadas, Leni Riefenstahl, Jean Rouch, Bimal Roy, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Paul Schrader, Campbell Scott & Stanley Tucci, Mrinal Sen, Yasujiro Shimazu, Jerzy Skolimowski, Steven Spielberg, Wladyslaw Starewicz, Wolfgang Staudte, Mauritz Stiller, Jan Svankmajer, Quentin Tarantino, Bertrand Tavernier, André Téchiné, Gerald Thomas, Johnnie To, Ilya Trauberg, François Truffaut, Edgar G. Ulmer, Ram Gopal Varma, Dziga Vertov, Lars von Trier, Wang Bing, Andy Warhol, Lois Weber, William A. Wellman, Robert Wiene, Robert Wise, John Woo, William Wyler, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Yoo Hyeon-Mok, Krzysztof Zanussi, Zheng Junli.
8 comments:
Excellent blog, but either I missed something-- or there is no Fellini on this list.. Probably in the top 5 directors ever (renoir, bergman, fellini, kurosawa, tarkovsky) in my opinion.
also- I hope you're familiar with TheAuteurs.com (much better than IMDb), the people on there are really passionate about cinema and know what they;re talking about.. I'd imagine you'd like it. Once again, very good blog
I'm surprised not to see any mention of the great Julien Duvivier on this list.
Original Reader Comment:
Michael,
You're insane.
Now that the preliminaries are dispensed with, I think the main flaw with your system is the propensity for massive ties, like the 17-way photo-finish for 42nd place and the 31-person debacle that is 59th, not to mention the tigher, perhaps more interesting knots at 33rd, 25th, and 17th. Not to worry: I have a solution that is as clever, and probably as insane, as your methodology.
Take these masters of cinema, these geniuses, great artists of the twentieth century, and pit them against each other in no-holds-barred Battle Royale-style cage matches.
It will immediately become obvious, not to mention statistically incontrovertible, who is really the 42nd (and 12th, and 17th, and 20th, and 25th, etc.) greatest film director of the sound era.
For instance, "Grizzly Man" Werner Herzog would make short work of the cunning yet doughy Stanely Kubrick, the maple syrup-guzzling (though not averse to violence) David Cronenberg, the effete Chabrol, the pacifistic (i.e., wussy) Charlie Chaplin (that boxing match in City Lights was clearly rigged), and the, let's say for the sake of argument and based on what I've seen of his films, probably malnourished Satyajit Ray. Herzog got shot in the gut and continued with an interview: 'nuff said.
pt. 2:
For 42nd, pretty much everybody quickly drops out of the competition and you're left with a three-way, alcohol-fueled, bare-knuckled, bare-chested street fight between John "Big Trouble" Cassavetes, Anthony "Dr. Broadway" Mann, and Vincente "The Reluctant Debutante" Minnelli. I give it to Cassavetes: he's hungry. (I know what you're thinking: don't underestimate the repressed anger of Albert Brooks and the intimidating reach of Jacques Tati. Wajda survived the Holocaust. Suzuki fought in WWII. To all this I say: Whooptee-do. Look in Cassavetes' eyes, man. He's an animal!)
4th might come as a surprise: Godard is the clear victor. Hear me out. Ozu would be too blitzed on American bourbon to raise his eyelids, let alone his fists, plus his mom probably wouldn't even let him fight, and "sad sack" Renoir would go down like a little match-stick girl with a sucker punch to that big gut. Take off the bear costume and put down the cheese, JR! This is a competition for 4th best sound director, not a day in the country! You're about to enter a whirlpool of fate! (Thank you, IMDB.)
17th obviously goes to Fassbinder. The guy's a lunatic. In his prime Welles might put up a fight with his reach and his mass, but post-1950 his weight becomes a liability. One swift punch to Ophuls' nose and he'd crumble like a cheap suit.
Sternberg probably wins 20th because I have a feeling he can scan people's brains and make their heads explode. Sorry, Luchnio Visconti! You're damned to die in venice, and there's nothing that Rocco OR his brothers can do to help you!
John Ford vs. Robert Bresson. Please. Ford had a frigging eyepatch for God's sake. An eyepatch. Ford in 2 rounds, and he barely breaks a sweat. He begs for a shot against Godard, but the Vegas boxing commission denies his request on the grounds that Jean-Luc could die. Ward Bond has to hold him back while his buddy Howard Hawks gloats good-naturedly. Hitch is above the fray. Rohmer smokes and makes another movie.
Appropriately, Clint Eastwood stands alone. I don't blame any of these guys for not challenging him: Did you see those movies with him and the monkey?! Holy shit!
The 59th place bout is such a clusterfuck I hate to even try to predict, but I can tell you who the leaders are on my scorecard: Borzage, Fuller (the favorite at 5:1), the Dardenne Boys (depends on how well they use the tag-team advantage), Ousmane Sembene (fought for the Free French, the toughest Frenchmen around (which isn't saying much) (ZING!)), and the dark horse of the leaders, Chantal Akerman. Yeah, I said it. As one of the only women in the field, she's angry, she's got something to prove, sort of a "fighting on behalf of all women" thing, and, let's face it, chicks fight dirty. Hair pulling, fingernails, groin stuff, you name it. Women are dirty.
pt. 3 -
Picking a winner in this contest is tough, but I'm going outside all the favorites for a true dark horse, one you probably missed on your tip sheets: Emilio Fernandez. First of all, he's half Kickapoo Indian. Listen to me when I say this: Do not fuck with the Kickapoo. Consider yourselves warned. He even already has a fighter nickname: "El Indio." Second, he dropped out of school to fight in a revolution. Third, when that didn't work out he ESCAPED FROM PRISON. (Thank you wikipedia.) This guy's a true badass, LITERALLY a revolutionary. He would mop the floor with those fruity Dardennes and the drunk Americans (NB: I'm assuming Borzage was an alcoholic because he was Swedish). El Indio "Mercenary of Death" Fernandez is obviously the 59th best film director since 1930.
May the most animalistic, out-of-control, brawling master of the cinematic arts win.
-Matt Hauske
How can Andrei Tarkovsky (my top1 director) get only 6???? Nobody knows him??? :( Pls watch his 7 only films.. Read his books... and watch and read again... Poetic cinema he calls... true..
Because the point system I am using is 1 point for each film cited; in other words, I have included six of his seven full-length films on my annual lists - not a bad percentage at all! In fact, I think I even cited three of his films as among the ten-best of their respective decades! (The only one that is not cited, if memory serves is "Ivan's Childhood," which is a great film to be sure, but was released in a year 1962 with many other great films as well.) So, don't imagine that this is any sort of slight on Tarkovsky, who certainly is one of the very greatest of all directors.
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