What are some examples of movie directors creating 3+ consecutive classics?
Such as:
Stanley Kubrick - Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange
Rob Reiner - Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery (arguably classics, I know)
Peter Jackson - Cheating, but the 3 LOTR movies.
If not for 1941 in the middle, Spielberg would have consecutively directed Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.
Others?
Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959),** Psycho **(1960), and The Birds (1963)
David Lean - Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965).
And if you don’t count his war documentaries, Frank Capra had from 7 to 12 in a row, depending on how tough your standards are.
Billy Wilder directed and wrote all of these. The bolded ones are in IMDBs top 250 movies as well as other Wilder movies.
**1950 Sunset Blvd.
**
1951 Ace in the Hole
**1953 Stalag 17 **
1954 Sabrina
1955 The Seven Year Itch
1957 The Spirit of St. Louis
**1957 Witness for the Prosecution **
1957 Love in the Afternoon
1959 Some Like It Hot
**1960 The Apartment **
I counted wrong in my other post, but here’s nine in a row from Capra:
1934 It Happened One Night
1936 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
1937 Lost Horizon
1938 You Can’t Take It with You
1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
1941 Meet John Doe
1944 Arsenic and Old Lace
1946 It’s a Wonderful Life
1948 State of the Union
Francis Ford Coppola:
The Godfather
The Conversation
The Godfather, Part 2
Apocalypse Now
Three of those are in the IMDB top 50; two of them are in the top 5.
John Ford:
Stagecoach (1939)
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Tobacco Road (1941)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Charlie Chaplin: **The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux **, and Limelight
Howard Hawks: Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, and His Girl Friday. A couple of lesser films, then To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Red River
George Stevens: A Place in the Sun, Shane and Giant
Preston Sturges: Christmas in July, The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero.
I can’t remember his name, and these movies are by no means “classics”, but isn’t there a director who has only directed three movies in his life…and all three have been Oscar noms? He had a movie up in the last year or three
George Lucas: The Phantom M . . . . pfft
Sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face.
But I think you could count early George Lucas as an example. His first three movies as director were THX 1138, American Graffiti, and Star Wars. If he had just stopped there, he’d have been fine.
The Coen brothers qualify (I know Joel is listed as the director but people say they actually work as co-directors). Their first three movies were Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller’s Crossing, which I feel were all classics.
Sir T-Cups, perhaps you’re thinking of Terrence Malick:
Although he’s 67 years old, the only films that he has directed are the following:
Lanton Mills (1969)
Badlands (1973)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Tree of Life (2011)
(He’s written or co-written other films.)
Arguably, for only six films in 42 years (and the first one was just a short), he has a pretty good reputation for consistently good films.
I haven’t seen all of Akira Kurosawa’s movies, but the ones I have seen have all been great, whether an epic war film, or a police procedural, or a samurai film, or a modern family drama. In 15 years he made:
Rashomon (1950)
The Idiot (1951) (haven’t seen this one)
Ikiru (1952)
Seven Samurai (1954)
I Live in Fear (1955)
Throne of Blood (1957)
The Lower Depths (1957) (haven’t seen this one)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Yojimbo (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
High and Low (1963)
Red Beard (1965)
He started taking 5 years between movie, then came back with these gems:
Dodes’ka-den (1970)
Dersu Uzala (1975) (my all-time favorite Kurosawa)
Kagemusha (1980)
Ran (1985)
I’d keep 1941 in there. I love that movie. I think it’s very underrated, but even if not, I always have a great time watching the goofy thing. True, maybe it’s not a “classic” like those others, but I like it just as much.
You’re thinking of Stephen Daldry. His first three films, Billy Elliot, The Hours, and The Reader all earned him best director nominations. He is the first director to accomplish such a feat.
Boom!
That’s it…thank you.
Spielberg does qualify with five in a row: Raiders, E.T., Temple of Doom, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sum, Last Crusade
Justin_Bailey, you’ve skipped Always. You’ve also skipped Twilight Zone: The Movie, although it’s possible to argue that it’s not a Spielberg film, since he was just one of four directors of it:
How 'bout John Landis:
Animal House (1978)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Trading Places (1983)