The World's greatest director?

Re: The World's greatest director?
I was going to ask you about him actually.

I noticed you had a few of his movies in your list of favorites. Which one would you recommend starting with?

I hadn't realized that Sight and Sound had finally released the 100 films -- the 10 best films has been on their site for a year or so. Could you provide a link to the 100 film list (and does it included a list of the director's poll?)

It's difficult to pick one -- they all have their distinct styles and acumen and the top. Everyone will, of course, have their personal favorite. Because film is a collaborative effort and the scripwriter and cinematographer are the two most important other arts involved, it's been difficult for some film historians to subscribe to the auteur theory.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/

Here's their results of the best director poll:
1 Orson Welles

1 Alfred Hitchcock

3 Jean-Luc Godard

4 Jean Renoir

5 Stanley Kubrick

6 Akira Kurosawa

7 Federico Fellini

8 John Ford

9 Sergei Eisenstein

10 Francis Ford Coppola

10 Yasujiro Ozu

Lightwizard; I'm having trouble locating the 100. Here's the critics' top 50. (They've listed for both critics and directors, and done an overall 100).

Title
Votes
Rank


Citizen Kane (Welles)
46
1

Vertigo (Hitchcock)
41
2

La Régle du jeu (Renoir)
30
3

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Coppola)
23
4

Tokyo Story (Ozu)
22
5

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
21
6

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
19
7

Sunrise (Murnau)
19
7

8 1/2 (Fellini)
18
9

Singin' in the Rain (Kelly, Donen)
17
10

Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
15
11

The Searchers (Ford)
15
11

Rashomon (Kurosawa)
14
13

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
12
14

A bout de souffle (Godard)
11
15

L'Atalante (Vigo)
11
15

The General (Keaton)
11
15

Touch of Evil (Welles)
11
15

Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
10
19

Jules et Jim (Truffaut)
10
19

L'avventura (Antonioni)
10
19

Le Mépris (Godard)
9
22

Pather Panchali (Ray)
9
22

La dolce vita (Fellini)
8
24

M (Lang)
8
24

The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
8
24

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
7
27

Les Enfants du paradis (Carné)
7
27

Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
7
27

Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
7
27

Metropolis (Lang)
7
27

Some Like It Hot (Wilder)
7
27

Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
7
27

Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
7
27

Andrei Roublev (Tarkovsky)
6
35

The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
6
35

Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
6
35

La Grande Illusion (Renoir)
6
35

The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
6
35

Modern Times (Chaplin)
6
35

Psycho (Hitchcock)
6
35

The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
6
35

Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
6
35

The Third Man (Reed)
6
35

Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
5
45

Blade Runner (Scott)
5
45

City Lights (Chaplin)
5
45

Greed (von Stroheim)
5
45

Intolerance (Griffith)
5
45

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
5
45

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls)
5
45

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
5
45

Mirror (Tarkovsky)
5
45

Ordet (Dreyer)
5
45

Pierrot le fou (Godard)
5
45

Rio Bravo (Hawks)
5
45

Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi)
5
45

Shoah (Lanzmann)
5
45

The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)
5
45

Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard)
5
45



The 3 Mizoguchi listed here made the overall 100, Life of Oharu just the critics' 100. The directors (mainly Anglo-American had less Mizoguchi films in their lists; as i said, he's very neglected in America and most of the English-speaking world)

Enthusiast in Training; start with Sansho. It's involving and accessible, but don't expect action-packed helter-skelter pacing. It has a very high rating- 9.1 or 9.2- on ymdb, so should suit most tastes, except for viewers with a 5 second attention span. Ugetsu (a beautiful ghost story/drama) is probably still his most famous film, perhaps the one to try after that. 47 Ronin is long, slow and demanding so not a good starting point (though it does have some awesome camerawork)!

I haven't seen that director's films since my old Hollywood art film theater days and since I belong to NetFlix, there's no excuse!

Well, i must admit i'd half expected an outburst of vehement alternative claims, for Bergman, Fellini, Scorsese, Spielberg... Don't get me wrong, i'm not asking to be contradicted, and i'm delighted with the interest shown. I agree with 3 of the top 5 S&S directors in lightwizard's list; Hitch, Kubrick and Renoir. I also rate Tarkovsky.

Well, here's a vote for Scorsese. And one for Bergman and one for Fellini.

And, just to throw a wild card out there: Jean-Pierre Melville. I just saw "Bob Le Flambeur"--hard to imagine Godard without Melville...

A good point. Godard (Truffaut and the rest of the band) certainly acknowleged a debt to Melville, and Bob le Flambeur in particular. You're right, it feels like the most Godardian pre-Godard film, at least that i can think of right now.

Godard went to pay his respects at Mizoguchi's grave. Rohmer and Rivette were/are great fans, too.

The director with the most movies on the AFI top 100 is Steven Spielberg with 5 (ET, Schindler's List, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder each directed four films on the list. Ten other directors each directed three (Martin Scorsese, David Lean, George Stevens, Frank Capra, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, William Wyler, John Ford, and Charlie Chaplin). Victor Fleming was the only director with two top ten films, although he shared directing duties with three other uncredited talents for Gone With the Wind (1939).

Despite having at least 3 AFI top 100 films, Hitchcock, Capra, Kubrick, Chaplin, and Scorsese never won an Oscar for best director.

Entertainment Weekly's Top 50 Directors:

Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles
John Ford
Howard Hawks
Martin Scorsese
Akira Kurosawa
Buster Keaton
Ingman Bergman
Frank Capra
Federico Fellini
Steven Spielberg
Jean Renoir
John Huston
Luis Bunuel
D.W. Griffith
Ernst Lubitsch
Robert Altman
George Cukor
Woody Allen
Vincente Minnelli
Francis Coppola
Michael Powell
Stanley Kubrick
Billy Wilder
Satyajit Ray
Roman Polanski
Francois Truffaut
Preston Sturges
Sergei Eisenstein
Fritz Lang
Jean-Luc Godard
Sam Peckinpah
F.W. Murnau
David Lean
Werner Herzog
Nicholas Ray
Josef Von Sternberg
Douglas Sirk
Max Ophuls
Louis Malle
Sergio Leone
Sidney Lumet
Oliver Stone
Bernardo Bertolucci
Jonathan Demme
Jacques Tati
Otto Preminger
Spike Lee
Tim Burton
Jerry Lewis

The AFI list should be taken with a big pinch of salt, as it leans far too heavily on Oscar winners and nominees and leaves out all-time masterpieces like Sunrise, Night of the Hunter, Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Band Wagon, To Be or Not to Be- that feature strongly in international polls (e.g Sunrise in the all-time top 10 in at least 4 major polls since 2000). As you point out with the overlooked directors, The Oscars have hardly been infallible in their selections.

Malle, Preminger, Lewis (and probably a few others) have no place in a top 50 that leaves out Dreyer, Ozu, Bresson and Mizoguchi- all are major figures in international cinema. Most of the other Entertainment Weekly selections are pretty sound, i think.

The AFI list should be taken with a big pinch of salt, as it leans far too heavily on Oscar winners and nominees and leaves out all-time masterpieces like Sunrise, Night of the Hunter, Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Band Wagon, To Be or Not to Be- that feature strongly in international polls (e.g Sunrise in the all-time top 10 in at least 4 major polls since 2000). As you point out with the overlooked directors, The Oscars have hardly been infallible in their selections.

Malle, Preminger, Lewis (and probably a few others) have no place in a top 50 that leaves out Dreyer, Ozu, Bresson and Mizoguchi- all are major figures in international cinema. Most of the other Entertainment Weekly selections are pretty sound, i think.