200 Great Directors' Best Films

These are the top rated films of each director listed by a consensus of critics polls, I’ve included my choices below those if they differ. I included some directors who only had one great picture, such as Laughton, Beatty, Attenborough, if I considered that one film important enough.
[Updated: 8.28.09*]

Allen, Woody: Manhattan (1979) US (photo rt) – I prefer Hannah and Her Sisters
Almodóvar, Pedro: All About My Mother (1999) Spain-France
Altman, Robert: Nashville (1975) US – My pick: McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Anderson, Paul Thomas: Boogie Nights (1997)*
Angelopoulos, Theo: The Travelling Players (1975) Greece
Antonioni, Michelangelo: L’Avventura (1960) Italy-France
Aronofsky, Darren: Requiem for a Dream (2000) US - many prefer Pi, not me
Ashby, Hal: Harold and Maude (1972)US
Attenborough, Richard: Gandhi (1982) UK - worth the two decades he spent
Beatty, Warren: Reds (1981) US
Beresford, Bruce: Driving Miss Daisy (1989) US - many prefer Breaker Morant
Bergman, Ingmar: Persona (1966) Sweden
Bertolucci, Bernardo: The Conformist (1969) Italy-France-Germany
Bogdanovich, Peter: The Last Picture Show (1971) US
Bondarchuk, Sergei: War and Peace (1968) Russia
Boyle, Danny: Trainspotting (1995) UK – mine: Slumdog Millionaire
Bresson, Robert: Au hasard Balthazar (1966) France
Brest, Martin: Midnight Run (1988) US – good, but I like Going in Style
Brooks, Mel: The Producers (1968) US
Buñuel, Luis: Viridiana (1961) Spain – I prefer The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeousie
Burton, Tim: Edward Scissorhands (1990) - I like Big Fish better
Cameron, James: The Terminator (1984) US – I like Aliens and Terminator 2
Camus, Marcel: Black Orpheus (1959) Brazil-France
Capra, Frank: It's a Wonderful Life (1946) US – I prefer Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Carné, Marcel: Les Enfants du paradis (1945) France
Cassavetes, John: A Woman Under the Influence (1974) US
Cavani, Liliana: The Night Porter (1973) Italy
Chaplin, Charles: City Lights (1931) US – I guess I’d pick Modern Times
Chen Kaige: Farewell, My Concubine (1993) Hong Kong-China
Cimino, Michael: The Deer Hunter (1978) US – he did another film?
Clément, René: Forbidden Games (1951) France
Clouzot, Henri-Georges: The Wages of Fear (1952) France-Italy
Cocteau, Jean: La Belle et la bête (1946) France
Cooper, Merian C./Ernest B. Schoedsack: King Kong (1933) US - admirable effects, stupid story
Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen: Fargo (1995) US – close, I’ll go with Raising Arizona
Coppola, Francis: The Godfather (1972) US – I like Godfather II best (photo rt)
Cukor, George: The Philadelphia Story (1940) US – close, I’ll take My Fair Lady
Curtiz, Michael: Casablanca (1942) US
Darabont, Frank: The Shawshank Redemption (1994) US
De Palma, Brian: Carrie (1976) US
De Sica, Vittorio: Bicycle Thieves (1948) Italy
Demme, Jonathan: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Deren, Maya: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) US
Dieterle, William: Portrait of Jennie (1948) US
Donen, Stanley/Gene Kelly: Singin' in the Rain (1952) US
Dovzhenko, Alexander: Earth (1930) Russia
Dreyer, Carl: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) France
Eastwood, Clint: Unforgiven (1992) US – Good, but I prefer Mystic River
Egoyan, Atom: The Sweet Hereafter (1997) Canada
Eisenstein, Sergei: Battleship Potemkin (1925) Russia
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner: Ali - Fear Eats the Soul (1974) Germany
Fellini, Federico: 8½ (1963) Italy
Fincher, David: Fight Club (1997) US - I still prefer The Game
Flaherty, Robert: Nanook of the North (1922) US
Fleming, Victor: Gone with the Wind (1939) US – gimme the giant girl in Wizard of Oz
Ford, John: The Searchers (1956) US – argh, I’ll take Mister Roberts
Forman, Milos: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) US – I like Amadeus
Fosse, Bob: Cabaret (1972) US – I think All That Jazz was more interesting
Frankenheimer, John: The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - my pick: The Train
Frears, Stephen: Dangerious Liaisons (1988) US
Friedkin, William: The Exorcist (1973) US – yuck, French Connection is far better
Gance, Abel: Napoléon (silent, 1927) France
Gilliam, Terry: Brazil (1985) UK (photo rt)
Godard, Jean-Luc: Breathless (1959) France
Griffith, D.W.: Intolerance (1916) US
Hallström, Lasse: My Life as a Dog (1985) Sweden
Hamer, Robert: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) UK
Hawks, Howard: Rio Bravo (1959) US – r.u. kidding? His Girl Friday
Herzog, Werner: Aguirre - The Wrath of God (1972) Germany – I like Fitzcarraldo
Hitchcock, Alfred: Vertigo (1958) US
Howard, Ron: A Beautiful Mind (2003) US - my pick: Parenthood
Hughes, John: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) US
Huston, John: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) US - mine: The Maltese Falcon (42)* (photo bottom)
Ivory, James: A Room With a View (1986) US
Jackson, Peter: The Lord of the Rings (trilogy, 2001) US-New Zealand
Jewison, Norman: In the Heat of the Night (1967) US
Kaufman, Philip: The Right Stuff (1983) US
Kazan, Elia: On the Waterfront (1954) US (photo rt)
Keaton, Buster/Clyde Bruckman: The General (1926) US
Kiarostami, Abbas: Close-Up (1989) Iran
Kieslowski, Krszystof: Dekalog (Decalogue, 1988) Poland
Kubrick, Stanley: 2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) UK
Kurosawa, Akira: The Seven Samurai (1954) Japan
Lang, Fritz: M (1931) Germany
Laughton, Charles: Night of the Hunter (1955) UK - his only film as director
Lean, David: Lawrence of Arabia (1962) UK
Lee, Ang: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2002) China-Taiwan-US - he's underrated
Lee, Spike: Do the Right Thing (1989) US
Leone, Sergio: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Italy-US – I much prefer Once Upon a Time in America, the long version
LeRoy, Mervyn: Goldiggers of 1933 (1933)
Lester, Richard: A Hard Day's Night (1964) UK
Levinson, Barry: Diner (1982) US
Losey, Joseph: The Servant (1963) UK
Lubitsch, Ernst: To Be or Not to Be (1942) US – give me Trouble in Paradise
Lucas, George: Star Wars (1977) US
Lumet, Sidney: Network (1976) US
Lynch, David: Blue Velvet (1986) US
Mackendrick, Alexander: The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) US (photo rt)
Malick, Terrence: Days of Heaven (1978) US
Malle, Louis: Lacombe, Lucien (1974) France – my pick: Atlantic City
Mankiewicz, Joseph L.: All About Eve (1950) US
Marker, Chris: La Jetée (1962) France
Mazursky, Paul: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) US - never liked this, loved Enemies-A Love Story
McCarey, Leo: Duck Soup (1933) US
McLeod, Norman Z.: It's a Gift (1934) US
Meirelles, Fernando: City of God (2002) Brazil-Germany-France
Mendes, Sam: An American Beauty (1999) I like 2008's Revolutionary Road
Milestone, Lewis: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) US
Miller, George: The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) (1981) Australia
Minghella, Anthony: The English Patient (1996) US
Minnelli, Vincente: The Band Wagon (1953) US – I like Meet Me in St. Louis
Mizoguchi, Kenji: Ugetsu monogatari (1953) Japan
Morris, Errol: The Thin Blue Line (1988) US - I prefer the pure documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Mulligan, Robert: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) US
Murnau, F.W.: Sunrise (silent, 1927) US *Best Silent*
Nair, Mira: Salaam Bombay! (1988) India
Nichols, Mike: The Graduate (1967) US (photo rt)
Nolan, Christopher: Memento (2000) US
Ophüls, Max: Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) US
Ozu, Yasujiro: Tokyo Story (1953) Japan
Pabst, G.W.: Pandora's Box (silent, 1928) Germany
Pakula, Alan J.: All the President's Men (1976) US
Pasolini, Pier Paolo: The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) France-Italy
Peckinpah, Sam: The Wild Bunch (1969) US
Penn, Arthur: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) US
Pennebaker, D.A.: Don't Look Back (1967) US
Polanski, Roman: Chinatown (1974) US
Pollack, Sydney: Tootsie (1982) US
Pontecorvo, Gillo: The Battle of Algiers (1965) Algeria-Italy (photo rt)
Powell, Michael/Emeric Pressburger: A Matter of Life and Death (1946) UK – I think I prefer The Red Shoes, and A Canterbury Tale
Rafelson, Bob: Five Easy Pieces (1970) US
Ramis, Harold: Groundhog Day (1993) US
Ray, Nicholas: Johnny Guitar (1954) US – easily In a Lonely Place
Ray, Satyajit: Pather Panchali (1955) India
Reed, Carol: The Third Man (1949) UK – I actually prefer Outcast of the Islands
Reiner, Rob: This Is Spinal Tap (1984) – my pick: When Harry Met Sally
Reisz, Karel: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) - I love Morgan!
Renoir, Jean: The Rules of the Game (1939) France – like many others, I prefer La Grande Illusion; they’re close in the poll
Resnais, Alain: Last Year at Marienbad (1961) France-Italy – not a big fan, but Hiroshima, Mon Amour over this
Richardson, Tony: Tom Jones (1963) UK
Riefenstahl, Leni: Triumph of the Will (1935) Germany (Nazi)
Ritt, Martin: Hud (1963) US - although Norma Rae is more inspirational
Rivette, Jacques: Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) France
Roeg, Nicolas: Don't Look Now (1973) UK – I vastly prefer Walkabout, even Performance
Roehmer, Eric: My Night at Maud's (1969) France
Rossellini, Roberto: Voyage in Italy (1953) Italy
Rossen, Robert: The Hustler (1961) US
Salles, Walter: Central Station (1998) Brazil-France - a tossup, or: The Motorcycle Diaries
Sandrich, Mark: Top Hat (1935) US - I prefer the hilarious The Gay Divorcee
Sayles, John: Lone Star (1995) US
Schlesinger, John: Midnight Cowboy (1969) US
Scorsese, Martin: Raging Bull (1980) US – right, but Taxi Driver is close
Scott, Ridley: Blade Runner (1982) US – yes, but Gladiator is close
Sharpsteen, Ben: Fantasia (1940) US
Siegel, Don: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) US
Singer, Bryan: The Usual Suspects (1995) US
Sirk, Douglas: Written on the Wind (1956) US
Sjöström, Victor: The Wind (1928) US
Spielberg, Steven: Jaws (1975) US – over E.T., Close Encounters, Schindler’s List? I even liked Minority Report, Raiders/Lost Ark, Pvt. Ryan more..
Stanton, Andrew: Wall-E (2008) US - not listed yet, I added him for this and Finding Nemo
Stevens, George: Shane (1953) US
Stone, Oliver: JFK (1991) US - me and Oscar prefer Platoon
Sturges, John: The Magnificent Seven (1960) US
Sturges, Preston: The Lady Eve (1941) US
Szabó, István: Mephisto (1981) Hungary
Tarantino, Quentin: Pulp Fiction (1994) US – inspired by Wong Kar-Wai
Tarkovsky, Andrei: Andrei Rublev (1966) Russia (photo rt)
Tati, Jacques: Playtime (1967) France
Tornatore, Giuseppe: Cinema Paradiso (1988) Italy-France
Tourneur, Jacques: Out of the Past (1947) US
Truffaut, François: Jules et Jim (1961) France
Vidor, King: The Crowd (1928) US
Vigo, Jean: L’Atalante (1934) France
Visconti, Luchino: The Leopard (1963) Italy – not a fan of this, give me Death in Venice
von Sternberg, Josef: The Blue Angel (1930) Germany
von Stroheim, Erich: Greed (1924) US
von Trier, Lars: Breaking the Waves (1996) Denmark-Sweden
Wajda, Andrzej: Ashes and Diamonds (1958) Poland
Washowski Brothers, Andy and Larry: The Matrix (1999)*
Weir, Peter: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Australia – I like Fearless, many like Witness
Welles, Orson: Citizen Kane (1941) US
Wertmuller, Lina: Seven Beauties (1976) Italy - first woman director nominated for best directing Oscar®
Wilder, Billy: Some Like it Hot (1959) US – good but mine: Sunset Boulevard (photo rt)
Wise, Robert: West Side Story (1960) US - co-dir w Jerome Robbins
Wong Kar-Wai: Chungking Express (1994) Hong Kong – and the sequel Fallen Angels
Wyler, William: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) US
Zemeckis, Robert: Back to the Future (1985) US
Zhang Yimou: Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Hong Kong – my pick: Hero, one of my favorite films, China’s top grossing
Zinnemann, Fred: High Noon (1952)US

Note: Currently at 182, I intend to add to this list until I have at least 200 directors

The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 42)

Director Film Counts in the Critics 1000

Directors with the most films in the critics top 1000.


Top Ten:
1. John Ford (18)
2. Fritz Lang (16)
3. Luis Bunuel (15)
4. Alfred Hitchcock (14)
5-6. Ingmar Bergman (13), Jean-Luc Godard (13)
7. Federico Fellini (12)
8-10. Howard Hawks (11), Stanley Kubrick (11), Akira Kurosawa (11)

10 each: Chaplin, Mizoguchi, J.Renoir
9 each: Scorsese, Visconti, Powell (9 total, 7 w Pressburger)
8 each: Allen, Altman, Bresson, Huston, Rossellini, von Sternberg, Welles, Wilder
7 each: Bertolucci, Cassavetes, Kieslowski, Lubitsch, Lynch, Ophuls, Ozu, Peckinpah, Rohmer, Powell & Pressburger, Spielberg, Tarkovsky, Trauffaut

Alphabetical List, four or more films
Total films in the top 1000, those 86 with 4+, represents 561 films. Followed by total in the top 200, then the [highest ranked film]

Allen (8) – 2 [#113: Manhattan]
Almodovar (4) [#635: All About My Mother]
Altman (8) – 2 [#67: Nashville]
Antonioni (6) – 3 [#38: L’avventura]
Bergman (13) – 5 [#40: Persona]
Bertolucci (7) – 1 [#65: The Conformist, photo right]
Bresson (8) – 3 [#61: Au hasard Balthazar]
Buñuel (15) – 7 [#68: Viridiana]
Capra (6) – 2 [#45: It’s a Wonderful Life]
Cassavetes (7) – 1 [#156: A Woman Under the Influence]
Chaplin (10) – 4 [#23: City Lights]
Clair (4) [#275: Le Million]
Cocteau, Jean (4) [#196: La Belle et la bête]
Coen Bros (5) [#288: Fargo]
Coppola (5) – 4 [#6: The Godfather]
Cukor (5) – 1 [#142: The Philadelphia Story]
De Sica (4) – 2 [#14: The Bicycle Thief]
Demy, Jacques (4) [#248: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg]
Donen (4) w Kelly (2:] – 1 [#11: Singin’ in the Rain]
Dreyer (5) – 4 [#17: The Passion of Joan d’Arc]
Eisenstein (6) – 3 [#8: Battleship Potemkin]
Fassbinder (6) – 1 [#186: Ali-Fear Grips the Soul]
Fellini (12) – 5 [#5: 8 ½]
Flaherty, Rob't (4) [#210: Nanook of the North]
Ford (18) – 6 [#7: The Searchers]
Forman (4) – 1 [#131: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, photo rt]
Godard (13) – 4 [#33: Breathless]
Griffith (5) – 3 [#51: Intolerance]
Hawks (11) – 4 [#63: Rio Bravo]
Herzog (5) – 1 [#91: Aguirre-The Wrath of God]
Hitchcock (14) – 5 [#2: Vertigo]
Hou Hsiao-Hsien (4) [#287: The Time to Live and the Time to Die]
Huston, J (8) – 2 [#111: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre]
Kazan (6) – 1 [#104: On the Waterfront]
Keaton (7) – 2 [#30: The General]
Kiarostami (6) – 1 [#191: Close-Up]
Kieslowski (7) – 1 [#132: Dekalog]
Kubrick (11) – 6 [#4: 2001-A Space Odyssey]
Kurosawa (11) – 4 [#9: Seven Samurai, photo right]
Lang, F (16) – 2 [#53: M]
Lean (6) – 2 [#13: Lawrence of Arabia]
Lubitsch (7) – 2 [#71: To Be or Not To Be]
Lumet (4) [#283: Network]
Lynch (7) – 1 [#107: Blue Velvet]
Mankiewicz (4) – 1 [#72: All About Eve]
Mann, A (4) [#589: Man of the West]
McCarey (4) – 1 [#103: Duck Soup]
Melville, Jean-P (6) [#280: Le Samourai]
Minnelli (5) – 1 [#157: The Band Wagon]
Mizoguchi (10) – 2 [#54: Ugetsu Monogatari]
Murnau, F.W. (6) – 3 [#12: Sunrise]
Ophüls, Max (7) – 2 [#77: Letter From an Unknown Woman]
Ozu, Yasujiro (7) – 2 [#10: Tokyo Story]
Pabst (4) – 1 [#189: Pandora’s Box]
Pasolini (5) – 1 [#159: Gospel According to St. Matthew, photo rt]
Peckinpah (7) – 1 [#158: The Wild Bunch]
Polanski (5) – 1 [#36: Chinatown]
Powell & Pressburger (7) – 4 [#126: A Matter of Life and Death]
Ray, Nicholas (6) [#241: Johnny Guitar]
Ray, Satyajit (6) – 3 [#59: Pather Panchali]
Renoir, Jean (10) – 3 [#3: The Rules of the Game]
Resnais (6) – 2 [#89: Last Year at Marienbad]
Rivette, Jacques (4) – 1 [#181: Celine and Julie Go Boating]
Roeg, Nicolas (4) – 2 [#136: Don’t Look Now]
Rohmer, Eric (7) [#278: My Night at Maud’s]
Rossellini (8) – 3 [#86: Voyage in Italy]
Scorsese (9) – 4 [#18: Raging Bull]
Scott, Ridley (4) – 1 [#46: Blade Runner]
Sirk (6) – 1 [#199: Written on the Wind]
Spielberg (7) – 3 [#106: Jaws]
Sturges, Preston (5) – 3 [#114: The Lady Eve]
Tarkovsky (7) – 3 [#41: Andrei Rublev]
Tourneur, Jacques (4) [#117: Out of the Past, photo right]
Truffaut (7) – 2 [#42: Jules et Jim]
Vidor, King (6) – 1 [#178: The Crowd]
Visconti (9) – 3 [#66: The Leopard]
von Sternberg, Josef (8) [#255: Blue Angel]
von Stroheim, Erich (4) – 1 [#64: Greed]
Weir (4) [#526: Picnic at Hanging Rock]
Welles (8) – 4 [#1: Citizen Kane]
Wenders (4) [#247: Wings of Desire]
Wilder (8) – 4 [#22: Some Like it Hot]
Wong Kar-Wai (5) [#328: Chungking Express]
Wyler (5) – 1 [#122: The Best Years of Our Lives]

- Those with 2+ in the top 200 that didn't make the list above -
Leone (3)– 3 [#73: Once Upon a Time in the West] - only 3 but all in top 200
Malick (2)– 2 [#164: Days of Heaven]

Those with 3: Paul Thomas Anderson, Theo Angelopoulos, Luis García Berlanga, John Boorman, James Cameron, Marcel Carné, Chen Kaige, David Cronenberg, Michael Curtiz, Brian De Palma, Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Humphrey Jennings, Jerry Lewis, Joseph Losey, Terrence Malick, Louis Malle, Albert & David Maysles, Nikita Mikhalkov, Arthur Penn, Otto Preminger, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Carol Reed, Rob Reiner, Glauber Rocha, George Stevens, Jean-Marie Straub, Jacques Tati, Andrzej Wajda, Raoul Walsh, Robert Wise, Zhang Yimou, Fred Zinnemann

The Critics 1000 list can be seen and downloaded at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Surprises
John Cassavetes with 7, has more films in the top 1000 than Kazan (6), Lean (6). Coppola (5), Wyler (5), Dreyer (5), Wong Kar-Wai (5), Preston Sturges (5), Polanski (5), Pasolini (5), Herzog (5), Minnelli (5), Jacques Tourneur (4). He doesn’t have that many great films does he, aren’t most about average at best?

William Wyler, with 13 best director and 12 best picture nominations only has 5 in the top 1000, and his greatest (Best Years of Our Lives) is only #122. This should be an all-time top 10 film, perhaps the finest anti-war film ever made.

Billy Wilder, with such original classics as Sunset Boulevard (photo right), Stalag 17, Double Indemnity, and The Apartment, has his light gender-bending comedy Some Like It Hot at #22 just outplace Boulevard (#29) as his highest ranked film; for me it’s about 4th of his.

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner at #46. Not bad SciFi but ahead of E.T., Close Encounters, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, even another and better Philip K. Dick story in Minority Report? It has about 5 minutes of actual futuristic footage, then reverts into a typical detective action film: let’s hunt down and kill the androids/killers one at a time. Well done but hardly a top 50 all-time.

Woody Allen’s admittedly good Manhattan (photo left) outranking best picture winner Annie Hall, and the more complex and rewarding Hannah and Her Sisters. Together, a formidable trilogy, but the seamless weaving together of multiple family stories in Hannah directly inspired Ron Howard’s Parenthood, and a host of copycats.

Where are Coppola’s Tucker: A Man and His Dream and Peggie Sue Got Married? To include Godfather III over these takes an offer someone couldn’t refuse, or perhaps listing the Godfathers together as a trilogy.

Elia Kazan’s top film, On the Waterfront, is only 104th, when imitator Sergio Leone has one higher (73rd, the overblown Once Upon a Time in the West)? ..what are people looking at?

Surrealist Luis Bunuel has 15 in the top 1000, but 7 (and most) in the top 200? He admits to not shooting with a script, and just letting the cameras capture the film that he creates later with editing. Gee, how could you ever tell, as many of his films seem entertaining but pointless overall, especially Un Chien Andelou, perhaps ranked due to Dali’s participation? (it must be art if the guy who once set a stuffed giraffe on fire in a museum was involved.)


My Favorite Ten:
1-Kubrick, 2-Coppola, 3-Wilder, 4-Wyler, 5-Spielberg, 6-Scorsese, 7-Yimou, 8-Lean, 9-Kazan, 10-Bertolucci, John Huston(tie)
Just out: Coen Bros., John Ford, Woody Allen, Herzog, Lang, Antonioni, Tornatore, Wong Kar-Wai, Carol Reed, Weir, Welles, Wertmuller
Stanley Kubrick for sheer number of top 20 caliber films, same as Coppola, who had more mistakes having done more films. Wilder and Wyler are perhaps the most consistant. Doing just 10 is tough. For me, Welles didn't do enough great films, just a couple, Kane and Ambersons. Same with Ford - Informer and Mister Roberts are my faves. [*Subject to change at a moment's notice]