Directors Whose Work Has Impacted Me
by filmanthology | created - 19 Apr 2014 | updated - 20 Apr 2014 | PublicA working list...began as an impulse...to be refined and expanded as more thought is put into it.
1. Charles Chaplin
Writer | The Great Dictator
Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...
Few students of film are not forced to consider at some point that Chaplin very well might be the so-called "Greatest Director."
Depending on my mood (especially while watching one of his films): I sometimes entertain the notion that Chaplin is in fact the greatest ever.
2. Yasujirô Ozu
Writer | Tôkyô monogatari
Tokyo-born Yasujiro Ozu was a movie buff from childhood, often playing hooky from school in order to see Hollywood movies in his local theatre. In 1923 he landed a job as a camera assistant at Shochiku Studios in Tokyo. Three years later, he was made an assistant director and directed his first ...
Much of the international cinema movement cites Ozu as being the greatest director ever. His shot innovation and focus on character is truly a legacy that we all experience in our modern film experience for sure.
It is a pity that few in the U.S. have any appreciation or familiarity with his work.
3. D.W. Griffith
Director | The Birth of a Nation
David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 ...
Surly no description needed here.
4. Martin Scorsese
Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...
There is no greater a film scholar then Scorsese.
All of his films are imbued with a devotion to what once was but reinterpreted and presented in a fashion that is not ambiguous but eerily familiar to anyone who has seen thousands of films.
His entire body of work will be more fully appreciated as the decades pass. Just a Brutal Artist for sure.
I think the day will come--long after Scorsese's career has ended--that he is in fact commonly viewed as the greatest director the world of cinema has ever seen.
I cannot recall (perhaps the initial release of "The Crying Game")being as offended by a film as I was when watching "Wolf of Wall Street."
5. Paul Thomas Anderson
Director | Punch-Drunk Love
Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making...
This might a little presumptive... but PTA appears to be capable of extraordinary work.
The opening 15-20minutes of "There Will be Blood," is some of the most powerful 15-20minutes of film in the last 20 years. Just a breath taking opening.
6. Steven Spielberg
Producer | Schindler's List
One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...
I do not like Spielberg per se. Just a bit too sterile for my tastes but credit must be given where greatness is apparent.
Spielberg is certainly the most polished and technically perfect director on this list. In watching "Schindler's List" frame by frame I found only one disrupted shot sequence.
I think his work will be remembered/studied not for its artistic achievement but rather its technical aspects. Spielberg is the modern equivalent of John Ford--just an almost diabolical level of control of the image. A master class in directing for sure.
7. John Ford
Director | The Quiet Man
John Ford came to Hollywood following one of his brothers, an actor. Asked what brought him to Hollywood, he replied "the train". He became one of the most respected directors in the business, in spite of being known for his westerns, which were not considered "serious" film. He won six Oscars, ...
I am American by birth... what can I say?
The Great John Ford.
8. Kathryn Bigelow
Director | Zero Dark Thirty
A very talented painter, Kathryn spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. At 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting building, literally in an old bank vault, where she made art and waited to be ...
Like Spielberg another case of a director whose control of the image could serve as a master class.
There does not appear to be a weak spot in any of her feature films. In fact, her films seem to out-muscle most of her male peers.
9. Werner Herzog
Director | Fitzcarraldo
Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...
If James Joyce ever directed a film perhaps it would appear as something similar to what Herzog has done in his features and his documentaries.
Herzog is not for the faint of heart--a stripped and bare knuckle director.
It is a rare occasion that one might fear being physically hurt while watching a film. But Herzog does it and further reminds me of watching an adventure film as a child and truly fearing the sense of impending doom awaiting the hero.
10. Terrence Malick
Writer | Days of Heaven
Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.
A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen ...
I have never seen a feature that attempts what Malick is doing. Most philosophical centered pieces are abstractions in a very nonlinear and post-modernist way... but Malick is doing something much different.
Obviously, Malick is the most 'artist-like' director on this list. And I hope financiers do not snuff out the flame--this guy burns bright.
11. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Director | Biutiful
Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director.
González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born ...
One Word: Intense.
12. Joel Coen
Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...
uh yeah.
No other working director has amassed such body of critically praised work and at the sometime had the work met with such mass and popular appeal.
With few lapses, Coen virtually directs a memorable film every year.
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