# The greatest director in cinema history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 22, 2002, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297 "2002-12-22T01:05:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/41 "2002-12-23T13:26:17Z")
I say Hitchcock. From his best movies it’s clear that he so fundamentally understood the workings of film and pushed the boundaries of what exactly a movie could do, and what that could mean. _Rear Window_ is a movie about movies, and it also works as a great suspense story on its own. _Psycho_ is completely constructed just for shock value, and it doesn’t feel cheap. _The Birds_ manages to be unsettling mostly just by manipulating the “rules” of movies. I’m most impressed with artists who have complete control over their medium, and still manage to make works that entertain. The Coen Brothers get a close second from me, for the same reasons. The only reason I wouldn’t name them the greatest is because so much of their work is in homage to movies that came before instead of being completely new. That said, I definitely enjoy the Coen Bros.’ movies more than any other director’s. Welles made some great films, but I don’t really _enjoy_ any of them. They feel like presentations, statements of his genius, instead of movies. The same goes for Kubrick to some degree – his movies feel like experiments or deconstructions instead of stories. As for David Lean, to me his movies have always seemed like beautifully-filmed epics that have no soul to them. I’ve usually completely forgotten everything in a David Lean movie just hours after I’ve seen it. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/42 "2002-12-23T18:48:29Z")
Ingmar Bergman’s favorite director: Federico Fellini. Federico Fellini’s favorite director: Ingmar Bergman. ---
**Author:** ![Keith\_Berry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/22d042/32.png) [@Keith\_Berry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keith_Berry)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/43 "2002-12-23T19:44:45Z")
Akira Kurosawa comes in first place. Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Werner Herzog, and Satyajit Ray all come in behind him, but it’s hard for me to assign rankings. Give em all the No. 2 spot. ---
**Author:** ![Dread\_Pirate\_Jimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dread_pirate_jimbo/32/3897_2.png) [@Dread\_Pirate\_Jimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dread_Pirate_Jimbo)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/44 "2002-12-23T20:43:35Z")
I’d say Spielberg. Not only has he been consistent in terms of making huge profits, he has also had something to say. The American Film Institute lists 5 of his pictures in the top 100 (Schindler’s List comes in at #9), he’s won the Oscar (Hitchcock got shut out – a gross miscarriage of justice, but there it is), and he continues to make excellent movies that have massive appeal. A rare combination of smart and entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![JKilez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e5b9ba/32.png) [@JKilez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKilez)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/45 "2002-12-23T20:48:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jabba \* > \*\*Since so many of my other choices have already been taken, I shall nominate Jean Renoir, the most humane of directors. Check out _La Grande Illusion_ and _La Règle du Jeu_. \*\* I will second **Jabba’s** vote. Renoir’s take on class divisions is classic stuff. _The Grand Illusion_ and _The Rules of the Game_ are examples of filmmaking at its finest. I will throw in my own pick here–probably not the best director of all time, but too often overlooked–Louis Malle. He has made some truly distinctive and beautiful movies, _Le Souffle au Coeur_, _Au revoir Les Enfants_, _Fatale_, as well as one of my all time favorites, _My Dinner with Andre_. ---
**Author:** ![Avalonian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Avalonian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avalonian)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/46 "2002-12-23T21:00:21Z")
I admire subtlety and grace in a director, and no director is better at those things (in my opinion) than **Peter Weir**. I’ve yet to see a film of his that didn’t move me on some level. He gets my vote. Spielberg makes movies of great popular appeal, but that doesn’t necessarily make him the best director. He has all the subtlety of Gallagher’s Sledge-O-Matic. Hitchcock is definitely high on the list. He also had an admirable grace and told great stories. Perhaps the best suspense director ever. And Peter Jackson might be in the running, but it’s a bit early to say. _Lord of the Rings_ is (so far) quite an impressive undertaking, technically and otherwise. I think it’s safe to say that it will be seen as a revolutionary accomplishment, if he finishes it as well as he started it. Jackson’s previous films (especially _Heavenly Creatures_) establish him as a director of quality, LOTR may make him an artist of groundbreaking work. ---
**Author:** ![DaFreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b77776/32.png) [@DaFreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaFreak)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/47 "2002-12-23T21:30:22Z")
Peter Jackson and no, not just because of the LOTR trilogy. When i first saw Brain Dead (in America its called Dead Alive or something) i was stunned. It was and still is one of the best horror comedies ever. the end where the dude kills a house full of zombies with a lawnmower is just hillarious 🙂 but ofcourse the LOTR thingy just ownz 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/48 "2002-12-23T23:44:33Z")
I don’t know that I would call him the best ever, nor have I ever seen him on anyone’s list of bests, but I do want to mention **Norman Jewison**. This is the guy who brought us _In the Heat of the Night_, the first _Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, Rollerball, A Soldier’s Story, Moonstruck,_ and _In Country_. These are all some very good movies with a range that puts everyone else to shame. ---
**Author:** ![Bucky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Bucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bucky)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/49 "2002-12-24T01:39:37Z")
Woody Allen gets my vote, although I’m not certain that he’s the best ever. I just want him considered. Some reasons: Dying is easy, comedy is hard. He has “zany madcap movies” like “what’s Up Tiger Lily?” and “Sleepers” along with one of the first mockumentaries in “Take the Money and Run.” He can direct drama. While “Interiors” has flaws, “Crimes and Misdeamenors” (sp?) is excellent. He can do parodies and period pieces like “Love and Death,” “Bullets over Broadway,” and the Greek chorus in “Mighty Aphrodite.” He can do straight up realism in “Hannah and her Sisters,” magical realism in his piece from “New York Stories,” and absurdist work in “Bananas.” He creates great ensemble casts. He has had as many actors and actresses win supporting Oscars in recent years as just about anyone. He is an innovator. Lots of people have ripped off his work in “Zelig” and “Purple Rose of Cairo.” He can work in black and white as well as color; his soundtracks are fabulous; he can tell stories with a narrator or without one. His string of consecutive excellent films has been snapped, but he still can put out wonderful films after being at it for well over thirty years. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/50 "2002-12-24T02:04:00Z")
I thought maybe Billy Wilder, but lots of people have picked him already, so I am going to go with **John Huston**. Some highlights: - Maltese Falcon, The (1941) Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948) Key Largo (1948) Asphalt Jungle, The (1950) Red Badge of Courage, The (1951) African Queen, The (1951) Moulin Rouge (1952) Beat the Devil (1953) Misfits, The (1961) List of Adrian Messenger, The (1963) Man Who Would Be King, The (1975) Under the Volcano (1984) Prizzi’s Honor (1985) \* ---
**Author:** ![Flowerchild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/858c86/32.png) [@Flowerchild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flowerchild)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/51 "2002-12-26T02:05:45Z")
I’m another vote for Hithcock, and Ed Wood, he won the golden Turkey award twice, you gotta show him a little respect. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_of\_Graymatter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/74df32/32.png) [@Baron\_of\_Graymatter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_of_Graymatter)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/52 "2002-12-26T15:57:40Z")
Already chosen, but… John Ford - If I could only have ONE western, it would be _Stagecoach_ John Huston - If only for _The Maltese Falcon_ ---
**Author:** ![McJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@McJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/McJohn)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/53 "2002-12-26T19:20:08Z")
Just wanted to muddy the waters a bit, here. I think naming a “best” artist in anything may be an exercise of limited usefulness: who’s “better”, Jacques-Louis David or Michelangelo? Shakespeare or Goethe? Britney or Cristina? See where I’m going with this? Having said that, I’d like to toss in a vote for a guy nobody’s mentioned yet, which is kind of not surprising, the largely unremembered genius of early 20th-century film, King Vidor. And here are a very few reasons why: 1.) He made “The Big Parade”, which no less a critic than Alistair Cooke considered the most insightful view of the unequalled carnage that was World War I trench warfare ever committed to film. If you don’t much care for silents, this one might well change your mind. 2.) He risked his career to do, as his first sound project, the all-black musical “Hallelujah”, which the suits at the studio assured him was going to be a ghastly flop. (That, half a century later, an explosive racial conflict broke out between klueless Klansmen and African-American residents of a town called Vidor in Texas is another one of those little cosmic ironies that annoy me from time to time.) 3.) He had the unenviable and uncredited task of handling the black-and-white sequences in “The Wizard of Oz” when Victor Fleming was hastily called away to the set of “Gone With the Wind” to replace the dismissed George Cukor (whose only crime appears to have been that, as an openly gay man in Hollywood, he just _might_ have known how rugged he-man hero Clark Gable got that screen test in the first place). I’m not certain about this, but recall reading someplace that he also worked on “GWTW” for a while in the directorial ruckus, but also didn’t get a lick worth of appreciation for that either. 4.) He made “Duel in the Sun” for David O. Selznick, famed git-outta-my-way-you’re-only-the-director producer, and managed to set the screen afire. And then he did it again. 5.) According to the fascinating page-turner “A Cast of Killers” by Sidney Kirkpatrick, Vidor ended up solving the famous unsolved mystery of who killed early film director William Desmond Taylor in the early 1920s. That he appears to have started this as an exercise in screenplay development and ended up seeing it as a matter of justice surprises me not one whit. 6.) He made “Street Scene”, a filmed adaptation of what was considered an absolutely unfilmable Broadway oddity by playwright Elmer Rice, and he built an extraordinary block-long set that makes watching the movie an absolutely captivating experience. 7.) Despite a personal life marked by great unhappiness with at least three different wives, and great temptation in the person of the one who got away, Vidor presents women in his movies as complex and fully-realized characters with souls and brains, in addition to bodies. Over and over again in his movies, and in his life, Vidor stuck up for the persecuted little guy, without condescension, oversimplification, or dumbing-down, and he managed consistently to make movies that were exciting without being mindless. His work is well worth checking out, if you haven’t seen one of his movies. ---
**Author:** ![SC\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@SC\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SC_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/54 "2002-12-26T19:38:08Z")
Kevin Smith, for always giving himself the best dialogue in any of his films. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/55 "2002-12-27T14:08:43Z")
Directors whose films I love even though they aren’t the “greatest” in cinematic history: Ron Howard and Rob Reiner. Apollo 13, When Harry Met Sally, A Beatiful Mind, Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/56 "2002-12-27T21:12:16Z")
**Ron Howard** is another guy in the running for greatest director if his career keeps going. He’s incredibly young to have created all the great films he’s made so far, and has another good 30 years left in him yet. And somehow, I think he’s got some even better films in him than we’ve seen so far. He hasn’t made his “Schindler’s List” yet - the movie that will really establish him as one of the greats. I’d vote him “Most promising great director.” Thumbs down for Rob Reiner, though. He’s made some fine movies, and a couple of great ones (“The Princess Bride” and “This is Spinal Tap”). But he’s also made a few mediocre movies (“The Story of Us”, “The American President”), and a truly crappy one (“North”). It looks to me like his career may have already peaked, and based on what he’s made today he wouldn’t be in the top 30. ---
**Author:** ![CyberPundit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@CyberPundit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CyberPundit)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/57 "2002-12-27T21:41:53Z")
Talking about promising young directors what about M Night Shyamalan who is only 31. I have only seen Signs and while I didn’t think it quite held together, the man clearly has some skills both as a director and a screenwriter. I can see him developing into a great director. Other promising young directors include Spike Jonze and Alexander Payne. ---
**Author:** ![grendel72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/91b2a8/32.png) [@grendel72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grendel72)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/58 "2002-12-27T22:04:01Z")
Well, if we’re talking new talent, I’d have to say Tetsuro Takeuchi tops my list. The only movie he’s credited with on the IMDB is **Wild Zero** , but considering that it’s _the best movie ever made_ he definitely shows promise. ---
**Author:** ![imperrfections](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eada6e/32.png) [@imperrfections](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/imperrfections)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/59 "2002-12-27T22:06:43Z")
come on everyone! Baz Lurhmann! while i don’t think Strictly Ballroom was anything phenomenal, Moulin Rouge and Romeo+Juliet have to be the two most visually unique movies ever made. i can’t wait to see what he does with his new movie Alexander the Great. ---
**Author:** ![Jabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@Jabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jabba)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297/60 "2002-12-27T23:26:10Z")
I still think _Strictly Ballroom_ is Luhrmann’s best film Shyamalan has never bettered _The Sixth Sense_ in my opinion and Ron Howard has never directed a decent scene, let alone a film. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-greatest-director-in-cinema-history/144297.md?page=4)