Top 5 Director Averages

[CCLZA]

This was an interesting experiment. I didvided the list in 2: Directors with 8 or more films watched and directors below 8:

1 Bergman 87.79 (14)
2 Wilder 88.33 (8)
3 Buñuel 87.5 (9)
4 Hitchcock 85 (13)
5 Kubrick 85.63 (8)

I thought Hitchock should be in front of Kubrick given the fact that the score is that high despite having watched 7 more films than the latter. Same goes to Bergman and Wilder. Btw, I would have never thought Wilder would be my #2!

Then there's this list. I did not consider directors with only 2 or 1 film seen:

1 Dreyer 96.67 (3)
2 Antonioni 91.25 (4)
3 Kazán 86.67 (3)
4 Fellini 86.6 (5)
5 Polanski 86.25 (4)

[PeaceAnarchy]

There certainly were a few surprises. I got a list of those I've seen at least 12 of and then those I've seen at least 7. There are some great directors I've only seen 5 or 6 from (Ray, Mizoguchi, Peckinpah, PTA come to mind) but going through them all is too much work. There are also a few who would be very high if not for a single bad film or a couple of mediocre shorts.

12+
Billy Wilder 88.83 (12)
Akira Kurosawa 87.53 (15)
Ingmar Bergman 85.56 (16)
Eric Rohmer 84.11 (18)
Luis Buñuel 83.18(17)

7+
David Fincher 88 (7)
Luchino Visconti 87.29 (7)
Yasujiro Ozu 87.14 (7)
Marcel Carné 87 (7)
Werner Herzog 86.14 (7)

[MMAlpha]

Of those directors with at least one tier 10 film and at least four films seen in total, these are the highest averages:

Akira Kurosawa 92.95 (4 films)
Stanley Kubrick 90.43 (7)
Michael Haneke 87 (4)
Ingmar Bergman 85.85 (13)
Andrei Tarkovsky 85.67 (6)
--
Billy Wilder 84.4 (5)
Lars von Trier 83.5 (4)
Francis Ford Coppola 82.8 (5)
Buster Keaton 82.8 (5)
Orson Welles 82.71 (7)
Howard Hawks 81.4 (5)
Werner Herzog 79.8 (5)
Joel & Ethan Coen 79.2 (10ish)
Alfred Hitchcock 77.85 (13)
Martin Scorsese 74.71 (7)
Jean-Luc Godard 73.27 (11)
David Lynch 61.38 (13)

Shorts have obviously had a big effect on these rankings, and there are a lot of directors waiting for me to watch a fourth film. So this is a definite '...to be continued'

[MmzHrrdb]

I've seen a minimum of four movies by each of these (favorite movie included):

David Lynch (5) 69 BLUE VELVET
Russ Meyer (8) 68.75 FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!
Douglas Sirk (5) 67 ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS
Meng Hua Ho (4) 66.25 MIGHTY PEKING MAN
Sam Peckinpah (7) 65.71 BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA
Michael Curtiz (4) 65 CASABLANCA
Stanley Kubrick (11) 65 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
Michael Powell (8) 64.38 BLACK NARCISSUS

[Moribunny]

These are my top 20 averaging directors.
I set the bar at having watched a minimum of 5 full features from each contender.
The results shocked me quite a bit, as I would never have expected Antonioni to grab 1st place, with absolute favorites of mine such as Fassbinder (20), Herzog (33), Lumet (17), Gilliam (14) and others not even making the ton ten. But this is probably because I've seen so many films by them they got weighted down. My conclusion is I definitely need to watch more films from higher scoring directors that I've seen less from, so I can know if they're really that consistently great.

# Director - Avg (films seen) - Fav.film

1 Michelangelo Antonioni - 82 (6) - The Night
2 Carl Theodor Dreyer - 81.4 (10) - Gertrud
3 Lina Wertmuller - 81.2 (5) - Swept Away
4 Alan Clarke - 80.5 (6) - The Firm
5 Emir Kusturica - 80.2 (10) - Time of the Gypsies
6 Luchino Visconti - 79.88 (8) - Bellissima
7 Nicolas Roeg - 79.2 (5) - Don't Look Now
8 Satyajit Ray - 78 (9) - Charulata
9 Sam Peckinpah - 77.44 (9) - Straw Dogs
10 Federico Fellini - 77.44 (9) - La Strada

11 Costa-Gavras - 76.56 (9) - Z
12 Terry Gilliam - 76.43 (14) - Brazil
13 Rob Reiner - 76.2 (5) - This Is Spinal Tap
14 William Friedkin - 75.8 (5) - The French Connection
15 Martin Ritt - 75.6 (5) - The Front
16 R. W. Fassbinder - 75.02 (20) - In a Year of 13 Moons
17 Sidney Lumet - 74 (17) - 12 Angry Men
18 Ernst Lubitsch - 74 (8) - To Be or Not to Be
19 Ingmar Bergman - 73.94 (16) - Autumn Sonata
20 Claude Chabrol - 73.75 (12) - The Girl Cut in Two

If I set the bar at a minimum of 10 (including shorts), I'd get:
1. Dreyer, 2. Kusturica, 3. Gilliam, 4. Fassbinder, 5. Lumet, 6. Bergman, 7. Chabrol, 8. Cassavetes, 9. Sirk, 10. Herzog.

[miss jesus]

Here's my top whatever. Apparently Haas only directed 5 films and one isn't available in region 1, so I don't feel so bad knowing that the other two are in my Netflix queue. Some of these others here I have no excuse for. I'm working on it.

Also, I did this by going through my top rankings and looking at each director that I thought might end up here, regardless of what I thought I of their work generally. I'm surprised at pretty much all these results.
This list makes me sad because it fails to depict my deep and abiding love for things like robots, gunfire, and humor. (I almost typed funfire, whoops!)

Philip Haas (2)...................................93.5
Jane Campion (4)..............................92.25
Fritz Lang (3)....................................90.67
John Cassavetes (7)...........................88.83
Hal Ashby (3), John Sayles (3) .............88.67
Elia Kazan (5).....................................86.4
Stanley Kubrick (12)...........................84.92
Hiyao Miyazaki (7)...............................82.57
Akira Kurosawa (10)............................81.8
David Cronenberg (11).........................81.55
Billy Wilder (10)..................................78.4

Interestingly (to me at least) I've been rating things here by how good I think they really are, and rating things on Netflix by how much I enjoyed watching them, and according to Netflix my favorite directors are Kubrick, Lumet (13 and 4 stars), the Coens (14 and maybe 3.75), Wilder, Cronenberg, Kurosawa, and Sam Raimi (everything but the baseball movie and 3.75), which sounds slightly more like me.

[omgfridge]

Making the cut off 5 films.

So two of my favorites won't make it.

Buster Keaton (4) - 96.5 Still finding more of his films. 3 are already in the top of my favorites.
Terrence Malick (4) - 95 Has only made 4 films thus far with a fifth on the way.

Sergio Leone (5) - 94.6
Stanley Kubrick (11) - 92.64
Alfred Hitchcock (6) - 91
Quentin Tarantino (9) - 89.67 Though that include both Grindhouse/Death Proof and Sin City
Werner Herzog (14) - 89.43
Martin Scorsese (11) - 85.55
David Lynch (7) - 84
James Cameron (6) - 83.17
Coen Brothers (10) - 80.7
Peter Jackson (8) - 80.63
Charles Chaplin (5) - 80.2
Woody Allen (8) - 79.13
Terry Gilliam (8) - 78.13
Sam Raimi (9) - 77.33
Steven Spielberg (19) - 77
David Fincher (6) - 76.83
Michael Mann (7) - 73.14
Ridley Scott (12) - 71.75
Rob Reiner (5) - 60.6
Robert Rodriguez (12) - 57 His 5 family movies have wrecked his average
Michael Bay (7) - 21.43

Sort of interesting. Definitely need to see more movies by some. Still need to see more Tarkovsky and Bergman.

Herzog, Kubrick, Malick and Keaton are my actual favorites.

[Pickpocket]

My top 5 from what I can gather is:

Robert Altman (5 films) - 91.75 average
Terrence Malick (4 films) - 91 average
Sidney Lumet (5 films) - 88 average
Joel & Ethan Coen (12 films) - 83.25 average
Francois Truffaut (11 films) - 82.91 average
I agree with the last 1, just haven't seen enough from the top 3 to weed them out (or keep them).

Others:

Paul Thomas Anderson (10 films) - 78.5 average
Jim Jarmusch (9 films) - 78.33 average
Wes Anderson (8 films) - 76.63 average
Martin Scorsese (19 films) - 75.26 average
Quentin Tarantino (10 films) - 74.7 average
Francis Ford Coppola (12 films) - 72.58 average
Woody Allen (42 films) - 70.76 average
David Lean (11 films) - 70.36 average
Jean-Luc Godard (14 films) - 69.86 average

Sad that we are still waiting for this feature 2+ years after the OP though

[astrakhan]

This turned up several names I wouldn't normally have named. Can't argue with the stats though.

B. Keaton 94.5
de Heer 88
Lasseter 87.5
Boorman 87
Lumet 86.5
Nick Park 86.29
Minghella 86
J. Cameron 85.29
Kieslowski 84.75
Tarkovsky 84.5


Funnily, all the directors I consider most interesting turned up at the bottom end of my survey, mainly due to me discovering the crappy side of their repertoires (Moodysson & Lynch could have been top 10 if I'd had a bit more discretion/sense):

Chabrol 71.25
Moodysson 71.17
Bunuel 70.5
Herzog 70.33
Lynch 65.9

[Dourado1412]

I will post some averages, then I get 5 of them to the TOP.
Stanley Kubrick - 79.29 [7 movies]
Ingmar Bergman - 88.57 [7 movies]
Jean-Luc Godard - 81.65 [Hail Mary got the averages down.] [3 movies]
Billy Wilder - 86.67 [6 movies]
Kon Ichikawa - 90 [2 movies]
Nicholas Ray - 87.65 [2 movies]
David Lynch - 81.25 [4 movies]
Howard Hawks - 85 [2 movies]
Orson Welles - 90 [2 movies]
Alfred Hitchcock - 79.23 [13 movies]
Milos Forman - 80 [3 movies]
Paul Thomas Anderson - 80 [4 movies]
David Lean - 90 [2 movies]
Lars Von Trier - 80 [I removed from the count Nocturne, because it's a short one] [5 movies]
Dario Argento - 79 [5 movies]
Charles Chaplin - 79.25 [7 movies]
Sam Peckinpah - 87.25 [2 movies]
Akira Kurosawa - 85 [5 movies]

I put above all the directors who had at least one movie above 90 [a masterpiece] AND that I saw at least 2 movies.
Another directors that have good averages [75-100]:
Mario Bava - 82.5 [2 movies]
Michale Haneke - 81.25 [4 movies]
Samuel Fuller - 78.33 [3 movies]
Buster Keaton - 81.25 [4 movies]
F. F. Coppola - 83.33 [3 movies]
Sergio Leone - 76.25 [4 movies]
John Ford - 82.5 [2 movies]
Woody Allen - 76.88 [8 movies]
Alain Resnais - 81.25 [4 movies]
So, my TOP Average Directors, counting only the directors which I saw 3 movies or more, are:
1 – Ingmar Bergman
2 – Billy Wilder
3 – Akira Kurosawa
4 – Francis Ford Coppola
5 – Jean-Luc Godard
6 – Resnais, Keaton, Lynch and Haneke
7 – Lars Von Trier and Milos Forman
8 – Stanley Kubrick
9 – Charles Chaplin
10 – Alfred Hitchcock

My TOP Directors are:
1 – Ingmar Bergman
2 – Billy Wilder
3 – Akira Kurosawa
4 – Alfred Hitchcock
5 – Stanley Kubrick
6 – Dario Argento
7 – Jean-Luc Godard
8 – Michael Haneke
9 – David Lynch
10 – Charles Chaplin

I'm surpirised with Coppola, that appeared in fourth on the first list, bur I don't like him so mcuh.