The greatest Filmmakers of all time

Was a Sicilian-born American film director and a creative force behind a number of films of the 1930s and 1940s, including It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Inspired the adjective "Capraesque". He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1986 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC. Is the second most-represented filmmaker (behind Steven Spielberg) on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time,

was an English filmmaker and producer.[2] He pioneered many techniques in the suspense, psychological thriller genres with land mark films like Rebecca,Suspicion, Notorious, Spellbound, Rope, Rear Window and The Man who knew too much. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognizable directorial style. Viewers are made to identify with the camera which moves in a way meant to mimic a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to manipulate the feelings of the audience and maximize anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing to demonstrate the point of view of the characters

Was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath. His four Academy Award for Best Directors (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record, and one of those films, How Green Was My Valley, also won Best Picture.

Was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered "classics": The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice, and directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston to Oscar wins in different films.

Is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. In a career spanning four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an archetype of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films, Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993),

Was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. He is popular for his films from a wide range of genres such as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rio Bravo (1959), and El Dorado (1967).

Was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies. Among his best-known films are The Ten Commandments (1956), Cleopatra (1934), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. While he continued to be prolific throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he is probably best known for his 1956 film The Ten Commandments (which is very different from his 1923 film of the same title). Also representative of his penchant for the spectacular was the 1952 production of The Greatest Show on Earth which gave DeMille an Oscar for best picture and a nomination for best director.

Was an Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.[1] Wilder is one of only five people who have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment). Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard. From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies.[2] Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), satires such as The Apartment (1960), and the romantic comedy Sabrina (1954). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances.

Is an Italian-American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most influential film directors.[1] One of America's most celebrated filmmakers, he epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, which included George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Woody Allen and William Friedkin, who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary filmmaking.[2][3]

He first came into limelight when he won an Academy Award for co-writing the script for Patton in 1970. His directorial fame escalated with the release of The Godfather in 1972. The film revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, garnering universal laurels from critics and public alike. It went on to win three Academy Awards, including his second, which he won for Best Adapted Screenplay, and it was instrumental in cementing his position as one of the prominent American film directors.

He followed it with an equally successful sequel The Godfather Part II, which became the first ever sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film, if possible, received even higher praises than its predecessor, and fetched him three Academy Awards- for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. In the same year was released The Conversation, which he directed, produced and wrote. The film went on to win the Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. His next directorial venture was Apocalypse Now in 1979, and it was as notorious for its lengthy and troubled production as it was critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War. It fetched him his second Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.

Is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won awards from the Oscars, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Directors Guild of America. Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, and violence. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of his era, directing landmark films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull,Goodfellas, Gangs of Ny,The Departed and Shutter Island.

Is an American film actor, director, producer, and composer. Active in film since 1954, throughout his career which has transcended seven decades, he has received five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, two Cannes Film Festival awards, and five People's Choice Awards, among other accolades. Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor for his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). These films in particular, as well as others, including Hang 'Em High (1968), Play Misty for Me (1971) (his directorial debut), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Pale Rider (1985), The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and/or critical acclaim. He has directed most of his star vehicles, but has also directed films he did not act in, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations and Changeling (2008), which received Golden Globe Award nominations.

Is an American actor, director and producer. He left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing, and has since gone on to direct several films, including the Oscar winning Cocoon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In 2003, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Howard made his directing debut with the 1977 project Grand Theft Auto. Howard went on to direct several TV movies. His big theatrical break came in 1982 with Night Shift. He has directed a number of high-visibility films, including Splash, Parenthood, Cocoon, Willow, Backdraft, Apollo 13 (nominated for nine Academy Awards and winning two), A Beautiful Mind (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director), Cinderella Man, Nixon/Frost, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

was an American film director and producer responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies.[1] His notable films include The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Ship of Fools (1965) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). His work was recognized with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1961, and over the course of his career he received nine Academy Award nominations.

Director Steven Spielberg once described him as "one of our great filmmakers, not just for the art and passion he put on screen, but for the impact he has made on the conscience of the world."[1] Film critic David Thomson described Kramer as a "hero of the 1950s" and an "enterprising producer," but also wrote of his later films that "commercialism, of the most crass and confusing kind, has devitalised all his projects".

Was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career. Kubrick was noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, the variety of genres he worked in, his technical perfectionism, and his reclusiveness about his films and personal life. He maintained almost complete artistic control, making movies according to his own whims and time constraints, but with the rare advantage of big-studio financial support for all his endeavors. Kubrick's films are characterized by a formal visual style and meticulous attention to detail—his later films often have elements of surrealism and expressionism that eschews structured linear narrative. The film that first brought him attention to many critics was Paths of Glory, the first of three films of his about the dehumanizing effects of war. Many of his films at first got a lukewarm reception, only to be years later acclaimed as masterpieces that had a seminal influence on many later generations of film-makers. Considered especially groundbreaking was 2001: A Space Odyssey noted for being both one of the most scientifically realistic and visually innovative science-fiction films ever made while maintaining an enigmatic non-linear storyline. He voluntarily withdrew his film A Clockwork Orange from England, after it was accused of inspiring copycat crimes which in turn resulted in threats against Kubrick's family. His films were largely successful at the box-office, although Barry Lyndon performed poorly in the United States. Living authors Anthony Burgess and Stephen King were both unhappy with Kubrick's adaptations of their novels A Clockwork Orange and The Shining respectively, and both authors were engaged with subsequent adaptations. All of Kubrick's films from the mid-1950s to his death except for The Shining were nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTAs. Although he was nominated for an Academy Award as a screenwriter and director on several occasions, his only personal win was for the special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer. Nichols is one of only ten people to have won an all the major American entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. In 2001, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[1] He received the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2010. Nichols went on with making movies, many of them would deal with people and the faulty, confused world they live in. In the films The Graduate and Working Girl, he talked about those individuals who want to turn their lives around for the better. Another theme in Nichols' films is the faults in people that lead them to live imperfect lives: he would make this the subject of his dramatic films and his comedies.

Nichols' other films include The Fortune, Wolf, Silkwood, Regarding Henry, Catch 22, Working Girl, Closer, and the true story film, Charlie Wilson's War. Of the movie stars he worked with, Nichols would do three films with Meryl Streep, two films with Julia Roberts, and four films with three time Academy Award Winner Jack Nicholson. Two films that Nichols and Nicholson did were Wolf and Carnal Knowledge. He would also direct a hit remake, The Birdcage.

He soon began directing, and his first big hit was The Virginian (1929). It was the movie that turned Gary Cooper into a star (a fact Cooper never forgot; he and Fleming remained friends for life). Fleming's star continued to rise during the '30s, and he was responsible for many of the films that would eventually be considered classics, such as Red Dust (1932), Bombshell (1933), Treasure Island (1934), and the two films that were the high marks of his career: Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Sergio Leone (Italian: [ˈsɛrdʒo leˈoːne]; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.

Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include The Last Days of Pompeii, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America. In the early 1960s, historical epics fell out of favor with audiences, but Leone had shifted his attention to a sub-genre which came to be known as the "Spaghetti Western", owing its origin to the American Western. His film A Fistful of Dollars (Per un Pugno di Dollari, 1964) was based upon Akira Kurosawa's Edo-era samurai adventure Yojimbo (1961). Leone's film elicited a legal challenge from the Japanese director, though Kurosawa's film was in turn probably based on the 1929 Dashiell Hammett novel, Red Harvest. A Fistful of Dollars is also notable for establishing Clint Eastwood as a star. Until that time Eastwood had been an American television actor with few credited film roles.

Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada, the son of Ukrainian immigrant parents. His family moved to San Francisco, California. After his mother died, his father, Michael Dmytryk, remarried. In San Francisco, the boy attended local schools and became interested in the developing film industry. He eventually reached Hollywood for work.

In 1939 at the age of 31, Dmytryk became a naturalized citizen of the United States.Dmytryk made his directorial debut with The Hawk in 1935.[2] His best-known films from these early years were film noirs: Murder, My Sweet (1944), adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel, Farewell, My Lovely; and Crossfire (1947), for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination. He made two World War II films: Hitler's Children (1943), the story of the Hitler Youth; and Back to Bataan (1945), starring John Wayne. For a time, Dmytryk moved to England and was unofficially ostracized. Independent American producer Stanley Kramer was the first to hire him again, choosing him to direct a trio of low-budget films beginning in 1952. Next Kramer selected Dmytryk to direct The Caine Mutiny (1954); the World War II-drama, adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, was a critical and great commercial success. It was the second highest-grossing film of the year, and in 1955 received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor and other awards.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, Dmytryk continued to make films for major studios such as Columbia, 20th Century Fox, MGM and Paramount Pictures; his works in the 1950s included The Left Hand of God (1955), Raintree County (1957), The Young Lions (1958), and a 1959 remake of The Blue Angel.

Later in the 1960s and 1970s, he directed The Carpetbaggers (1964), Where Love Has Gone (1964) -both based on novels by Harold Robbins; Anzio (1968) - his last WWII film; Alvarez Kelly (1966), Shalako (1968), and Bluebeard (1972).

James Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his four classic horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era. He became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential filmmakers of the silent-film era and of alltime.