Greatest Directors of All Time

 Greatest Directors of All Time

48. James Whale

James Whale was Universal's go-to director in their monster movie genre in the early 1930s. Because Depression-era audiences wanted escapism, Hollywood studios offered up lavish musicals, gangster films, and the horror genre monster movie. James Whale's contribution to this genre is unparalleled and can be considered the definitive director of the genre.  

47. Jacques Tourneur

French-born Hollywood director Jacques Tourneur was able to make a name for himself in Hollywood by directing the initial B-horror films of producer Val Lewton that would be ordained as 'cult classics' for years to come. Tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of the noir elements of the 1940s, Tourneur made dark films, both visually and of substance. His horror films soon gave way to a bonafide noir classic with 1947's "Out of the Past" that helped shaped Tourneur's career as a reliable Hollywood studio director. 

46. Mervyn LeRoy

Despite being 'just' a hired studio director for Warner Brothers, Mervyn LeRoy was an essential director in early 1930s sound pictures. He made all sorts of genres, from the gangster flick, to hardboiled drama, to lavish musicals. Although not a director you could distinguish from any sort of unique visual style, his films were always solid entertainment and aimed to please (to great success). His career spanned over 40 years and over 70 films.

45. Henry King

With a career spanning almost 50 years and over 100 films to his name, Henry King has a prominent CV in American filmmaking. Often dealing with rural America, King's films offer everyday people at crossroads in their life. With films like "Tol'able David," "The Song of Bernadette," and "The Gunfighter," King's films sees individuals on the outreaches of society dealing with pushback from everyone around them. How they deal with that pushback ultimately defines them. 

44. Clarence Brown

During the silent era, Clarence Brown and his leading lady Greta Garbo created some of the most memorable Hollywood films, including "Flesh and the Devil" and "A Woman of Affairs." These films made Greta Garbo a star forever. Brown's films often dealt with romance. However, the romance in his film often was 'prohibited' romance, making it all the more desirable. The way he captured tension and lust kept people coming back to see Garbo and his other leading ladies over and over again. What they also witness when they came back for more were characters unable to be with each other. These reasons always stemmed from social taboos and pressure felt by social judgment. What his film taught us was that you can never be truly who you are or with the person you want to be with because of ridiculous social pretensions. 

43. Oscar Micheaux

Often considered the first black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux changed the landscape for filmmaking in the 1920s. After the monumental success of "The Birth of a Nation," racial violence hit an all-time high in America. To combat the misconceptions about the black community and to demonstrate the constant racism they faced in their everyday lives, Micheaux started his own film company. He produced, directed, and wrote his own films. This is a feat most filmmakers during this time didn't accomplish. With his breakout hit, "Within Our Gates," Micheaux is able to shed some light on a racist America. In doing so, he is able to capture the interwoven lives of black Americans everywhere. This aspect of our culture had not yet hit the film screen. With Micheaux, it finally was.

42. Leo McCarey

A director who was known in the 1930s for his rip-roaring comedies like "Duck Soup," "Ruggles of Red Gap," and "The Awful Truth," Leo McCarey also had a softer, sweeter, and more sentimental side with hits like "Make Way for Tomorrow" and "An Affair to Remember." His films were always great hits at the box office, crowd pleasers, and more importantly, pleasing to his studio executives. As Hollywood star and lead actor of several McCarey films once said of McCarey: "Any picture that Leo McCarey directs is its own guarantee; he can't make a bad picture." That certainly was the case in many's eys, as the McCarey guarantee went on a great run in the classic Hollywood era of the 1930s.

41. Raoul Walsh

One of Hollywood's first studio directors, Raoul Walsh, came from the school of D.W. Griffith. His simple, efficient directing made room for whatever subject matter he was dealing with. Whether it was a fantastical epic like "The Thief of Bagdad," a boots-on-the-ground war film like "What Price Glory," a sprawling western epic like "The Big Trail," or his more played-with genre, the gangster film, it was clear Walsh never outshined his material. In a typical Walsh film, his characters are rowdy, most often anti-hero types. Thieves, rapscallions, and gangsters; none of his characters changed by the end of the film. Rather, his films determined whether the characteristics of these protagonists were long for the world in which they found themselves. Walsh, eyepatch and all, seemed somewhat of a rapscallion himself. Perhaps his films showed us the true nature of man. And perhaps, they show us the true nature of ourselves, too.

40. Frank Borzage

Winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Director, Frank Borzage blurred the line between a critical and commercial hit. His films were very popular due to their melodramatic flourishes. A Frank Borzage picture always deals with a central romance, specifically a romance that is tested by the trials and tribulations of the outside world. Whether these trials are the Great Depression, World War I, the rise of Nazism, or the sinking of a ship, these romances must endure through it all. It seems that the point Borzage tries to make with his films is that despite all the hardships of life, love seems to be the reason for living. Without love to prove life's point, suffering rules.

39. Vsevolod Pudovkin

When most people think of Soviet montage, they think of Sergei Eisenstein. An additional name they should also think of should be Vsevolod Pudovkin. Using the Soviet montage method, Pudovkin crafted what many call the "Revolution Trilogy." This trilogy contains the films "Mother," "The End of St. Petersberg," and "Storm Over Asia." The purpose of these films was to provide an emotional response from Soviet viewers regarding their recent history. Since the culture of Soviet Russia was relatively new since the toppling of Tsarist power by the Bolsheviks at the end of the 1910s, many Soviet filmmakers like Pudovkin were put in charge of visualizing this grand beginning.

38. Michael Curtiz

If you were to take a poll for the greatest all time directors of the studio system in the classic Hollywood era, you would have to figure out a way to get the director of one of the most memorable classic Hollywood films, "Casablanca," on the list. That director would be Michael Curtiz, and his resume is far more impressive than just the 1942 hit. With adventure films like "The Adventures of Robin Hood," gangster films like "Angels with Dirty Faces," musicals like "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and hard-boiled noir-esque dramas like "Mildred Pierce," Michael Curtiz was one of the most admired and reliable directors in the classic age of Hollywood.

37. Preston Sturges

With a string of prolific comedies during the war years from 1940 to 1944, Preston Sturges' run at Paramount was unmatched. Sturges wrote his own films, which was very uncommon in the Hollywood studio system at the time. The typical Sturges film was notorious for having fast-paced, sharp dialogue drenched in biting comedy and style. His characters typically found themselves in compromising situations that forced them to confront their very moral position in their own beliefs and circumstances. Although the early 1940s was considered the tail end of the screwball comedy era of Hollywood, Sturges' quick dialogue and satirical characters sent this era with a final bang. 

36. Rene Clement

In post-war France, there was a wave of directors that made their mark on the pre-New Wave artistic film scene. One of those directors, Rene Clement, created films with touchy and discomforting subject matters. Whether it was the final bow for Nazis at the end of the war, young children having to deal with the fallout of the war and the death of their parents, or young men killing and stealing the identities of the wealthy in order to live a life of luxury, Clement's films always embarked on touchy subjects with jagged edges. Although he is not as familiar as some of the bigger names in France at the time, his films were still celebrated and an integral part to the post-War French cinematic front.

35. Sadao Yamanaka

Sadao Yamanaka's life was extremely brief, his career as a filmmaker even briefer, and his filmography possibly the briefest. However, the 3 feature length films he did made all exemplify the prowess of a director who understood individual character, society, and social dynamics. All his films tackled the communal experience of a modern Japan and the frustrations felt in the lower classes. His films all feature characters in search for something and are typically unable to find what they are looking for. They are all intimate tales set in a local community and play with the dynamics of that community's class, status, and power. Through these machinations of power structures held within a small community, Yamanka is able to demonstrate the large-scale ideas of social functionality and how it becomes oppressive the more separated our community becomes. His characters are rich in depth, but poor in actuality. His worlds take place in small environments, but reveal larger complexes at play. And his filmography, likewise, is small and yet, reveals so much as well. 

34. Victor Fleming

Despite having 50 film productions to his name, Victor Fleming is really only known for 2 major, monolithic films that changed the course of Hollywood and cinema forever. They both even came out in the same year, 1939. Those two films are "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" and they are probably the most widely known classic Hollywood films in history. Their use of crisp technicolor vibrancy was an utter technical achievement. Not that technicolor hadn't been used before, but the scale at which Fleming employed it was unlike anything ever seen before. Even though his career before and after 1939 is nothing to write home about, what he was able to achieve with these two films is nothing short of remarkable.

33. Rene Clair

Rene Clair is perhaps the most famous French director during the French film industry's transition into sound. With the introduction of sounds, Clair constructed quasi-musicals that really took full advantage of the new sound technology and helped pave the way for French film artists. Not only this, he helped usher in the new era of the 'mise-en-scene'-based poetic realism that took over French cinema in the 1930s. Clair's films also focus on the downtrodden and disparaged, especially the economically destitute. In this way, his films reflected the general anxieties felt in France after the global economic collapse in 1929. His quaint, musical, and poetic cinema remains an important piece in French film history. 

32. Tod Browning

From the ages of 16 to 29, Tod Browning was a worker and performer in a traveling circus. He took this lifestyle with him when he became a director many years later. He often focuses on the abnormal, grotesque, and weird elements of human life. His films were not exploitative, however. On the contrary, his films were sympathetic to all aspects of humanity, including the outcasts, and disregarded. His unflinching viewpoint of the irregular often left audience uncomfortable, which perhaps was the point. Maybe the problem doesn't lie with his characters, but with those in the audience who lash out with judgment, disdain, and rejection.

31. Teinosuke Kinugasa

Despite not having a consistent body of work, Teinosuke Kinugasa has managed to carve out a place for himself in cinema history. With his avant-garde films of the 1920s, like "A Page of Madness" and "Crossroads," he pulled from the German Expressionist works of filmmakers like Fritz Lang, as well as Soviet Montage artists like Sergei Eisenstein. These films told non-traditional stories in non-traditional manners. His spotlight never shone as brightly, however, in 1953 with "Gate of Hell," which won him the Grand Prix at Cannes as well as the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. With his films, he subverts naturalism in place for a more poetic visual style, using abstract imagery and even distortion of the visual image. His films all deal with individuals teetering on the brink of collapse. His characters lose everything, whether it is their family, their well-being, or their social nobility. Through this, Kinugasa demonstrates how we are all on the brink of madness, as the external consequences of life around us continue to collapse our hopes, desires, and sanity.

30. William A. Wellman

Often called "Wild Bill," William A. Wellman brought his air force mentality to sets with him, much to the chagrin of his more laid-back cast and crew. However, because of his specialties, he was able to perfect the technicalities of filmmaking. His 19276 film "Wings" won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture, because of its technical mastery of aerial fighting. Not only did he perfect the World War I epic, but the gangster film "The Public Enemy," the Hollywood glamor film "A Star is Born," and the quasi-Western philosophic thinkpiece with "The Ox-Bow Incident." His range was wide, his direction was flawless, and his films are iconic.

29. Abel Gance

Abel Gance was France's answer to D.W. Griffith. While Griffith was formulating the film language in America, Abel Gance was experimenting with the medium in France. His notable films are few and far between, but his reach is giant. Using techniques of superimposition, rapid editing, and visual themes, Gance set a new precedent for intellectual cinema. His 1927 masterpiece "Napoleon" is still a sacred treasure for film historians everywhere.

28. Cecil B. DeMille

Often regarded as the founder of Hollywood (as he was the one who first set up a studio in the city), Cecil B. DeMille really does represent the idea of 'Hollywood.' His films are big and epic, covering spans of centuries with often thousands of extras. His films contain enormous set pieces, from the pyramids of Egypt to the city of Rome at the height of its empire. His films always contain spectacle, through his action sequences or his special effects. His films also contain themes of spiritual confliction, as most of his characters must choose between lust/greed/materialism/power and faith/resolution/value. Sounds like a Hollywood director if you ask me.  

27. Erich von Stroheim

His unrelenting attention to detail required production to be as accurate and specific as possible, including sets and costumes. This caused production costs to skyrocket, making Erich von Stroheim an enemy of the studio. Because of this, the studio hollowed out and ruined every picture he touched. Despite this, he still managed to crank out pictures that are still remembered today. His lavish sets held either wealthy or indulgent characters who spent their lives chasing after sex, love, money, or power. His sole masterpiece, "Greed" stands as one of the best films ever made, and was one of the first films to show characters riddled with flaws and despicable nature. His filmography is short, as is his time spent as a director, but his film legacy is as long as they come.

26. Victor Sjostrom

Victor Sjostrom (pictured left [obviously]) is often referred to as the 'father of Swedish cinema.' His style of direction was revolutionary in the 1910s. Sjostrom utilized exterior locations far grander than anyone had previously. His films always felt expansive due to the naturalistic landscapes of Sweden. His stories often incorporated nature, usually as a backdrop or intimidating force to the characters. His films were far slower-paced than most at the time, as his actors were incorporated into the 'Swedish school of acting.' Most silent acting at the time was far more animated, to compensate for the lack of noise. However, Sjostrom instilled in his actors a greater stillness, forcing the viewer to either dig deeper or project. The internal acting, the incorporation of external landscapes, and his focus on the scope of human experience as a product of nature allowed him to become one of the most renowned directors of early cinema.

25. Howard Hawks

With a career spanning from the silent films of the 1920s to the technicolor modernist pieces of the 1970s, Howard Hawks was always a director of American conventionality. Hawks shaped his career around the burgeoning film tropes, film styles, and genres that American cinema took part in for most of the 20th century. Whether it was contributing to the gangster films of the new sound era with "Scarface," screwball comedies of the 1930s like "Bringing Up Baby," war propaganda films of the early 1940s like "Sergeant York," cynical film noirs of post-war America like "The Big Sleep," or the new western genre landscape like "Red River," a Howard Hawks film always managed to iterate the mood, style, and attitude of American cinema regardless of the era or decade. 

24. Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton at the start of his career set out to make what he called, "Comedy Epics." Well, he succeeded. His films are full of slapstick and action comedies enveloped around epic setpieces, epic stakes, and epic stunts. Most of his films take the form of a determined man trying to make it through extraordinary circumstances. The key to making it through is perseverance. All his characters persevere in their epic endeavors and make it out on top, proving themselves as love interests, sons, and professionals.

23. Julien Duvivier

One of the most prominent figures of the French poetic realism movement of the 1930s was Julien Duvivier. A Duvivier film always seems to center on a character caught in a corner, unable to escape. Perhaps a bit bleak of a filmmaker, these characters always had to accept their unchanging and worsening circumstances. Whether that was a small boy being abused by his mother, an immigrant criminal trying bring economic justice, a wanted con man unable to evade police capture, a woman at the end of her romantic life, or even an innocent man accused of murder. Duvivier filmed these unrelenting circumstances through a poetic lens, always capturing the melancholy and tragedy of his characters. His films from the 1930s remain some of the most important films in France at the time, as his career will forever be associated with the burgeoning poetic realist movement and its eventual conclusion.

22. Jean Cocteau

From being a poet, playwright, novelist, designer, visual artist, critic, and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau is probably the closest you can get to finding a true "Renaissance Man" in the 20th century. Although he would only make 7 films in his 60 year career, each film of his defies characterization. From his "Orphic Trilogy" that dives into the subconscious mind of an artist to the classic tale of "Beauty and the Beast" brought to life for the screen, Cocteau's films were magical, surreal, and most of all, unique. There is no possible way to confuse Cocteau's signature direction and written word with that of any other director. His films often deal with the meaning of romance, the meaning of life, and the meaning of art. As a true artist, Cocteau broke the rules of conventionality and dove directly into surreal and imaginative experiences, allowing for viewers to escape reality into dreamlike states of euphoria and confusion.

21. Jean Gremillon

Throughout the poetic realism movement that took over France in the 1930s, there were plenty of filmmakers that made a name for themselves, like Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, and Jean Vigo. However, Jean Gremillon is usually never in this conversation. Gremillon not only excelled during this period, but even elevated his craft during the Nazi occupation in the early 1940s at a time when making a socially relevant film was almost impossible. Gremillon's wartime films, thereby, were incredibly subversive and had enriched social context that pulsated throughout. His films often dealt with characters behaving erratically, caught between various passions and pursuits, and often caught by other characters wanting to attain their own passions as well. His films centered squarely on French culture and the people inhabiting this culture. Although he is not often discussed, he is one of the most artistic and prominent French filmmakers of his time.

20. Jean Vigo

Because of his untimely death at the age of 29, Jean Vigo only made 3 films. However, these three films would become some of the most remarkable achievements in the history of French cinema. They also showcase the potential artistic boundary-pushing Vigo could have given the world had his life been prolonged. "A Propos de Nice," "Zero for Conduct," and "L'Atalante" are all unique in their own way, and demonstrate how far the film medium could stretch. Each film offers such different themes from each other that Vigo's approach to each one was vastly different than the next. "A Propos de Nice" demonstrated the kind of thematic elements a documentary picture could have, "Zero for Conduct" reveled in its own rebellious and childlike nature, and the poetic realism of "L'Atalante" demonstrated that we can find beauty anywhere we look.

19. G.W. Pabst

G.W. Pabst was a director that liked to buck the system. During the 1920s, Expressionist films were all the rage in Germany. Pabst had felt that because of their lauded artistic standard, many expressionist films were starting to become detached from the downcast that they originally represented. To fix this, he ushered in an era of "new objectivity" - which focused more on the bleak realities of realism. Not only this, he experimented with all types of filmmaking compositions. His films often explored the complexities of Germany's social structures and how the individual's control over the self-played into that greater structure. His films often championed free expression and collaboration across gender, nationality, sexual preference, and race.

18. F.W. Murnau

Expressionist filmmaking is the art of conveying subjective experience through visual experimentation. F.W. Murnau took this experimentation to heightened levels with experimental films like "The Last Laugh" and "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." Murnau wanted to use title cards as sparingly as possible, which opened the door to telling completely visual stories. Talk about expressionism. Sadly, we will never truly know how he would have taken this visual expression into the talking era, as he tragically died in a car accident in 1931. However, his silent films stand the test of time. "Nosferatu" is still in the pop culture zeitgeist one hundred years later. F.W. Murnau will forever be remembered for changing the landscape of cinema with his passion for telling visual stories.

17. D.W. Griffith

Often referred to as the 'Father of Film,' D.W. Griffith is steeped in controversy. Most notably, the controversy stems from his white supremacist propaganda film, "The Birth of a Nation." With his innovative techniques used in the film, he established the visual syntax for all films that would follow. However, the birth of film is also the birth of film as a weapon. His ingenious techniques created a progression of images that fit a cohesive visual story, allowing these images to encompass the viewer's subconscious experience. Film would never be the same again. Throughout his career, his films would usually be about the intolerance of humanity as the root cause of strife and societal collapse. The irony of his own intolerance must have escaped him. With Griffith came the birth of cinema, and the birth of the danger it wields.

 

16. Frank Capra

Frank Capra created some of the most hopeful, uplifting, sentimental, and celebrated films of Classic Hollywood. With entries like It's a Wonderful Life and You Can't Take It with You, Capra's films are like a rallying cry for humanity. His films allow for a sort of meticulous sit-in with the characters, especially in quieter moments. Those quieter moments eventually lead to a glorious uproar, in which the protagonists must deliver grand speeches or reach life-changing conclusions. Those quieter moments we spend with the characters pay off when the characters reach their breaking point, and we can understand their outbursts fully. The ending of Capra's films makes you want to stand up in your seat and ring out glorious declarations of your values and where you stand. 

15. Carl Theodor Dreyer

Famously known for his masterpiece, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," Carl Theodor Dreyer is a filmmaker whose career lasted over 40 years, yet only making a little over a dozen films. His style is incredibly recognizable: slow takes and frequent close-ups. His direction allowed viewers to really sit with the characters and spend time with them. His films often dealt with themes of identity, death, and the uncertainty of life. His films often divided, as many could not attend to the long takes and frequent silences. However, since his career ended, his body of work has been lauded by many as being one of the greatest. His films are now considered precious works of art. 

14. Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg created some of early Hollywood's most romantic and sexually driven films. With his reputation for being a control freak, frames were constructed and actors were in places and positions just to his say so. Another element of control he had over his images was the immaculate lighting. Sternberg's mastery over lighting techniques created visual lushnesses that told a story of light and darkness, for the characters fell in and out of. His films, most of them starring Marlene Dietrich, told stories of characters trying and failing to control their natural urges. Trapped in exotic landscapes, these characters cannot help but give in to their base desires, sometimes leading to their downfall.

13. King Vidor

King Vidor was a director of authentic human experience. To capture this authenticity, Vidor made epics his mainstay genre. With the epic, Vidor created characters inhabiting large worlds. He used the largeness of the world or the largeness of events to expand the intimacy of human experience to greater levels, making them far more palpable. Whether it be characters caught up in war, couples trying to build their own utopia or even the mundanity of everyday life, Vidor took smaller, more intimate emotionality and enlarged it with the epic-ness of the surrounding story or events. With this, these largescale events feel that much more intimate and lived in through the congruency with the smaller scope of the characters' lives. 

12. Ernst Lubitsch

What exactly is the Lubitsch touch? It's hard to describe but you know it when you see it. Lubitsch characters have a lot of quirk to them and are always laugh-out-loud funny. His protagonists are always placed between two diverging roads. This most often takes the form of two love interests, each representing a differing direction in life. Characters must decide who they are and what to compromise. Another element of a Lubitsch film is an extreme use of the 'show, don't tell' method. Rather than providing audiences with context for the story situation, he withholds the information. Rather than provide the viewer with the number 5, he provides the numbers 2 and 3 and expects you to add them together. This allows the viewer to discover information on their own, making them as much of a part of the story.

11. Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder has made some of the most popular films of all time - Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution, and Some Like it Hot (just to name a few). The reason for this is his impeccable writing, characters, and stories so rich that viewers see themselves in them. As a director, he kept it simple - providing his characters a backdrop with which to explore themselves and who they really are. Characters are often a product of what's around them. In order to find out who they really are, they must break free of their environmental structures or else be overcome by them.

10. Henri-Georges Clouzot

Whether it was examining the oppressive presence of the occupying Nazis in "Le Corbeau," the dramatic state of economic disparity in "Quai des Ofrevres," the post-war dependence on American imperialism in "The Wages of Fear," the darkness that lies at the heart of a selfish and corrupt humanity in "Diabolique," or the patriarchal oppression and pushback against a new feminine liberation in "La Verite," Henri-Georges Clouzot always examined the social tensions of modernity with every film he made. A member of what Francois Truffaut affectionately called the "traditional of quality," Clouzot was a consistent and adept French filmmaker who always lived and breathed sophisticated framing, complicated lighting, and sleek photography. His films weren't manufactured or quickly produced. A Clouzot film took time and effort and almost always culminated into something spectacular and more often than not, provocative. He is considered one of the best to ever do it in French cinema and his films, to this day, stand the test of time.

9. Alfred Hitchcock

Dubbed the 'Master of Suspense,' Alfred Hitchcock's career spans over 55 years with 57 films under his belt. It is arguably one of the most prolific careers in all of Hollywood and all of filmmaking in general. Despite being a studio director, he was still able to make studio films that flirted with the edge of conventionality and appropriate subject matter. He was able to do this by becoming his own producer and being in control of his own production. His films often had very dark subject matters, were incredibly thrilling, or dug into the audience's tickling fears. He had many tropes, but the one he kept coming back to often was the 'innocent man accused of something he didn't do' plot device. Perhaps this had to do with Hitchcock's greatest fear - the police. All throughout his life, Hitchcock was incredibly afraid of being accused of a crime by the police or by the hands of justice. Perhaps this was a fear of the public, as well, as many flocked to his films to sit in the discomfort of a tangled web of injustice. He was also a master at making audiences sit at the edge of their seat. His suspense style of filmmaking created some of the tensest films ever put to screen. His filmography is vast and speaks for itself. Go watch any Hitchcock film and you'll understand why he's so revered as a technical master of the film craft.

8. Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin's career started in the silent age and ended in the Golden Age of Hollywood. His mastery of psychical comedy created the perfect visual necessity of the silent age pictures. His films about his little tramp were about social, political, and economic issues, which surrounded the impoverished world inhabited by the Tramp. His style is simplistic but effective. He firmly establishes a tonal balance of light and dark, that is, light comedy mixed in with dark subject matter. His films were the perfect antidote in a Depression-era America trying to reconcile the economic landscape. His films still hold up to this day.

7. John Ford

John Ford is the director known for pioneering the Western genre. With the Western genre, Ford was able to place characters on a tabula rasa (blank slate) - with the wide open spaces of the American West, characters were provided an opportunity to construct their own values, free from the constraints of societal expectations. However, is this total freedom a good thing or does the structure of society have a place in individualist pursuit? John Ford never answers this questions but uses his films as a stage for asking. His beautiful vistas present an environment for the characters to brace and overcome, finding out who they really are.

6. Orson Welles

Popping onto the scene in 1941 with Citizen Kane, it was safe to call Orson Welles a 'wunderkind.' He revolutionized framing, placing cameras at low angles, creating dimensional tracking shots, using background action congruent with forward action, used camera focus to enhance visual distance, among many other things. His films always seemed to focus on huge, flawed characters, usually in positions of immense power - whether that be a magazine tycoon, Macbeth, Othello, a millionaire Nazi, a corrupt police captain, or even an aging film director trying to make something different. All of these characters were obviously Orson himself, as he splayed himself on the screen for the world to see - conveying all his giant hopes, his existential fears, and his fallible flaws. His art was a reflection of himself - and this with, generations of auteurs followed.

5. Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein is a revolutionary of the film medium. Starting out as an editor, Eisenstein would take popular films, like DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and would cut them into pieces and rearrange the images to try to create a new context. With this exploration of editing (along with his philosophies of collectivism), he devised the 'montage.' Using montage, he planted separate non-contextual images together to create a contextual abstract idea. With this new technique, he revolutionized cinema and what it could be. The meshing together of images creates an abstract concept from which the viewer could derive meaning. Even after the sound era, he constructed films no one had ever seen before, utilizing techniques like using the speed of frames to convey delirium or visual movements to convey allegorical ideas. Eisenstein was an outside-the-box thinker and cinema is forever what it is because of him.

4. Fritz Lang

Considered the 'Master of Darkness,' Fritz Lang made films that were as black as they come. Even though German Expressionism had already taken off in the early 1920s, Lang's contribution to the artform was unparalleled. His Expressionist works demonstrated the freedom art could go - location, time, and dimension were not considered barriers to Lang. As he moved away from Expressionism, he began to construct a more realistic Germany, often depicting the chaos and confusion of the Weimar Republic. Most of his films, particularly the ones that came out in the 1930s, often demonstrated the dangers of group hysteria, something that had taken hold of Germany at the time. As he perfected his craft, he began to showcase the moral complexity of individual and group perception. His protagonists were often mistreated or pressured to the point of action, and the viewer's sympathies with the protagonists pointed to our parallel perception. Once the protagonist dips too low morally, we begin to see the fallacy of our own virtuousness. Lang demonstrates how pitch black the human soul is and how easily corrupted and manipulated it can become, while also illustrating the delusions of our own moral superiority. 

3. Akira Kurosawa

Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Akira Kurosawa created some of the greatest and most memorable films in human history. What he was a master of was the physicality in every frame. Movement, blocking, and visual action all came together to create a language for his vision. His characters are fiercely independent, as he demonstrates with the uniqueness of their visual movements. However, these unique individual character merge into a collective through Kurosawa's framing and direction. With it, he creates societies. All of his films seem to deal with the notion of chaos, and what we do about chaos. Perhaps this was due to the horrors of World War II that Japan was involved with or perhaps this was a personal interest with Kurosawa. Either way, his films always seem to find a way to deal with that chaos. And the answer always usually involves being selfless and looking out for your community. Despite the fierceness with which we perceive ourselves to be individuals, the beauty of life lies in the donation of that individuality for the collective good. Kurosawa was able to make incredibly powerful films off these simple ideas. On top of this, future filmmakers have used his films as templates for decades to come.

2. Luis Bunuel

Luis Bunuel: The Surrealist. Actually, many would call him the Surrealist's Surrealist. And for good reason. His first film in 1929, "Un Chien Andalou," would be considered by many to be the first surrealist piece of cinema, as well as the standard of all surrealist cinema to come. Bunuel described surrealism as like taking a gun and shooting people on the street at random. The notion of surrealism stems from this very idea - that once you point out that the established order actually contains no sense of order at all, you begin to awaken to the idea that the entire reality you exist in makes no sense. This form of artistic radicalism, which called attention to the hypocrisy of social, ideological, religious, and political constructs, was inherently antagonistic both to powerful social governances as well as the viewers themselves. Because of this, Bunuel's films caused outrage. Many of them were banned for decades. All of them created enormous controversy. This is exactly how Bunuel liked it. His films called attention to our irrational human conditioning and how those impulses, urges, and emotions that exist inside of us directly contradicted order itself - thereby making any form of 'order' inherently unnatural. He was a radical and his works reflected that. His films are far reaching and ever-changing. No Bunuel film can be seen the same way twice. They continue to morph and grow and are forever alive, unrestrained by convention, rationality, or any other sense of established order.

1. Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir shows us a magic trick right in front of our eyes - he presents to us an illusion. The illusion is that of our own perceptions and world. The veil becomes lifted using Renoir's invisible hand. His characters are unaware of the reality they are stuck in - a reality they have created for themselves. They are trapped by their own delusions, believing their reality to be a solid objective experience. His characters are completely unaware of the fragility of their rules, customs, and way of life. Rather, their way of life becomes actively antagonistic, as the thin layer with which they have rested their entire perspective becomes so thin and fragile that the audience can see right through it. The viewer begins to witness societal structures becoming transparent, which allows them to see characters trapped in a world of rules made up by themselves. Renoir was a master of poetic realism, as he painted subjects in a vista that the viewers themselves inhabit. In recognizing the veil of the unreal perception of the characters, the camera becomes a reflection of the viewer's world, thus presenting the magic trick. The trick is Renoir showing you the thin and made-up reality you inhabit, which is constantly on the verge of collapse. The Babylon you've created in your mind is doomed to fall due to the fragile foundation of perception you've created for yourself. Renoir was able to cast light onto thin layers of film in a way that demonstrated the beauty of our physical and emotional world, and the delusional tragic-ness with which we choose to trap ourselves in.