A New Way of Looking at the Greatest Directors of All Time

Francis Ford Coppola is considered by many people to be among the greatest directors in film history. Certainly, parts I and II of The Godfather  are two of the greatest films ever made. Some would say that they are the two best. At a minimum, they are both top-10 films. Additionally, Apocalypse Now is possibly the best war movie ever made and could arguably be placed among the 20 best movies ever.

But beyond that, what has Coppola done? The Godfather: Part III was a good stand-alone film, but probably should never have been made in the context of the previous two films in the series. The Conversation is now highly regarded among film critics and historians, but is not widely appreciated. He wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay to Patton, but that’s not directing. Dracula was nonsense.

Rather than dispute Coppola’s inclusion into the pantheon of great directors, I am going to assume, for the purposes of this post, that this standard is an accurate representation of the greatest directors of all-time: one can reasonably argue that 3 of their film are among the 20 greatest ever made. The following directors, by my judgment, make the list. They are listed with their arguably top-20 films.

Francis Ford Coppola: see above

 

Steven Spielberg

–          Jaws

–          Raiders of the Lost Ark

–          E.T.

–          Schindler’s List

–          Saving Private Ryan

 

 

Alfred Hitchcock

–          Rear Window

–          Vertigo

–          North by Northwest

–          Psycho

 

 

Stanley Kubrick

–          Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

–          2001: A Space Odyssey

–          A Clockwork Orange

–          The Shining

 

 

Peter Jackson

–          The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

–          The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

–          The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

 

 

Charlie Chaplin

–          City Lights

–          Modern Times

–          The Great Dictator

 

 

Akira Kurosawa

–          Rashomon

–          Yojimbo

–          Seven Samurai

 

Here are other notable directors who don’t make the list by this standard. The films I list are ones that I believe could be reasonably argued to be among the top 20. If I list none, I don’t believe that any film the director has made could reasonably be considered one of the top-20 greatest, notwithstanding any high regard I might have for the director and his films.

John Ford — Stagecoach, The Searchers

Frank Capra — Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life

Quentin Tarantino — Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction

Martin Scorsese — Raging Bull, Goodfellas

Christopher Nolan — The Dark Knight

George Lucas — Star Wars: A New Hope

David Lean — The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia

Orson Welles — Citizen Kane

James Cameron — Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Billy Wilder — Sunset Blvd.

William Wyler — Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur

Michael Curtiz — Casablanca

Clint Eastwood — Unforgiven

Sergio Leone — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Frank Darabount — The Shawshank Redemption

Elia Kazan — On the Waterfront (A Streetcar Named Desire is a famous film, but is it that good?)

Joseph Mankiewicz —  All About Eve (Cleopatra basically ruined Hollywood epics.)

Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator are all great movies — but top-20 ever?)

What do all of you think? Did I miss one? Include someone who shouldn’t be on here? Is this method just dumb?