Filmmakers : The TSPDY Top 200 Directors

[manonwire]

There's also many younger directors missing but that's not much of a surprise.

The list of top 50 directors of the 21st century has more younger faces on it, although there's still a lot of older people.

what a stupid list, I refuse to recognize some of them as directors!

[kyle.loomis]

lmao at people not understanding how tspdt works. (edit: ok pretty much just shogunrua)

its not created by any marketing force like AFI or the academy awards. it basically compiles, quite literally, thousands of top lists by film makers, critics, experts, and historians (and yes i do see them as separate.)

objectivity in art is a silly thing, but this is the closest we can ever hope to get.

[freqflyer]

Personally, I'd like to see Lynch rated a lot higher than he is -- I mean, #54?? The guy who made "Eraserhead"??? Fer cryin' out loud, he's gotta be one of the weirdest and yet the most original directors in the history of film -- I think he's definitely better than Peckinpah. I agree with Kubrick, Bergman, Hitchcock, and Coppola being in the top ten.

Out of the Lynch movies I have seen, I would have to say that the most haunting and traumatic one was 'Eraserhead.' To see where Lynch's head was at right at the beginning of his career, you should check out this short (Alphabet, a short film from 1968) on youtube, and see if you don't get freaked out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqNt5PPrpSc

What are some lynch movies you've seen that you 'don't get'; maybe i can give you my take on those in particular...


btw, seeing a film from each director, that's quite a goal! good luck on that, bro...

[PeaceAnarchy]

I was bored and decided to make a collection with the highest ranked film on the TSPDT list from each of those directors.
http://www.criticker.com/?fl&filter=e12267

Looking through the list that way I've seen 191 of the films and there are a lot I don't think are the director's best work, many are their most famous work though.

Since I've seen films from nearly all (197 of 200) of these directors I'd actually be interested in seeing people list some of what they consider to be omissions from the list, maybe with a couple of their big films, so I can explore a bit beyond the canon. I think it'd be best to limit it to directors who had at least two films before 1995, to have a little perspective.

Here's what I've got so far from this thread plus a bunch of others I thought of:

Lindsey Anderson (If... , O Lucky Man, This Sporting Life)
Costa Gravas (Z, Missing, State of Siege)
Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine, Dolls, Hana-bi)
Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens)
Georges Méliès (Voyage a L'impossible, A Trip to the moon, Le Diable noir)
Lina Wertmüller (Love and Anarchy, Seven Beauties)
Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another)
Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Fires on The Plain, Revenge of the Kabuki Actor)
Mikhail Kalatozov (The Cranes are Flying, Soy Cuba, The Letter Never Sent)
Bruce Conner (A Movie, Cosmic Ray, Crossroads)
Robert Rossen (The Hustler, All The King's Men, Body and Soul)
Budd Boetticher (Seven Men from Now , The Tall T, Ride Lonesome)
Anthony Asquith (Pygmalion, The Browning Version)
Claude Autant-Lara (Douce, Le Diable Au Corps)
Tex Avery (Dumb-Hounded, King Size Canary)
Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on The Western Front, Of Mice and Men)
Boris Barnet (Okraina, The Chess Players)
Claude Berri (Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, The Two of Us)
Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains, My Sweet Little Village)
Santiago Álvarez (Now, LBJ)
René Clément (Forbidden Games, Plain Soleil, Gervaise)
Rouben Mamoulian (Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, The Mark of Zorro)
Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth, Farewell My Concubine, King of The Children)
Ken Russell (The Devils, The Boy Friend, Altered States)
Maurice Pialat (Van Gogh, L'enfance Nue)
Volker Schlöndorff (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Tin Drum, Young Torless)
Alexander Kluge (Yesterday Girl, Part-Time Work of a Female Slave)
Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Cronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, Not Reconciled, Class Relations)
Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Bay of Blood)
Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross, People on Sunday)
Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter, Youth of the Beast)
Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven, The Fog of War)
Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri, Kwaidan, The Human Condition)
Dusan Makavejev (W.R. - Mysteries Of The Organism, Sweet Movie)
Peter Greenaway (The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers, The Draughtsman's Contract)
Mervyn LeRoy (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Gold Diggers of 1933, Little Caesar)
Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)
W. S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man, White Shadows in the South Seas)
Jules Dassin (Night and the City, Rififi)
William Dieterle (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Portrait of Jennie)
Edward Dmytryk (Mutiny on The Bounty, Murder, My Sweet, Crossfire)
Henry Hathaway (Kiss of Death, Peter Ibbetson, True Grit)
Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, High School)
Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, El Topo)
Mitchell Leisen (Midnight, Easy Living, No Man of Her Own)
Peter Watkins (Punishment Park, The War Game)
Frank Tashlin (Artists and Models, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
Jan Svankmajer (Dimensions of Dialogue, Alice)
Raoul Ruiz (Colloque de chiens, Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting)
Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Tunes of Glory)
Jean Rouch (Chronicle of a Summer, Mad Masters, Moi un noir)

Also feel free to recommend other films from these directors, I'm not familiar with some of them and just picked the most recognizable films to me.

[ShogunRua]

Again, I would add George Roy Hill, director of The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Slapshot. He has several other highly regarded films, but just from those three alone, he deserves placement on the list.

An oddly overlooked/forgotten director nowadays.

[PeaceAnarchy]

Again, I would add George Roy Hill, director of The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Slapshot. He has several other highly regarded films, but just from those three alone, he deserves placement on the list.

An oddly overlooked/forgotten director nowadays.

George Roy Hill is actually on the original TSPDT 200 list, although really far down. I've only seen The Sting and Butch Cassidy but I agree they're both great films.

[ShogunRua]

Again, I would add George Roy Hill, director of The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Slapshot. He has several other highly regarded films, but just from those three alone, he deserves placement on the list.

An oddly overlooked/forgotten director nowadays.

George Roy Hill is actually on the original TSPDT 200 list, although really far down. I've only seen The Sting and Butch Cassidy but I agree they're both great films.

Damn my blind eyes! And actually, I thought Slapshot is the best out of all his work. I never would have imagined that it was possible to squeeze so much out of a freaking sports film.

[Hopscotch]

Just watched my first Bresson today. I'm sad now .

[Neonman]

Ehhh, this list is based off numbers, so nothing to get cross about. Except Gaspar Noe being completely absent, same with Michael Haneke. But I guess some folk just think they're films are complete trash because they have, the horror, confronting material.