GOAT Directors
by jeremyglick | created - 05 Jan 2011 | updated - 13 Feb 2015 | PublicAn empirical ranking of the Greatest of All Time
1. Ingmar Bergman
Writer | Smultronstället
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (...
Bergman Résumé: • 12 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 9 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 9 Oscar nominations • Lifetime Achievement Awards include Honorary Oscar, BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Luchino Visconti Award, Palm of the Palms, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, European Film Award, National Board of Review, and a Career Golden Lion • Served as writer and director on 4 films that won the Guldbagge for Best Picture • 5 Best Foreign Film awards (3 Oscars, 1 César, 1 Donatello) • At different times named the world’s greatest living filmmaker by Time magazine, Richard Corliss, and Roger Ebert. • “He was a friend and certainly the greatest film artist of my lifetime.” – Woody Allen • “I have always admired him, and I wish I could be an equally good filmmaker as he is, but it will never happen.” – Steven Spielberg
2. Akira Kurosawa
Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin
After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater...
Kurosawa Résumé: • 10 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 12 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ (tied for most by a single director) • Lifetime Achievement Awards include Honorary Oscar, French Legion of Honor, Kyoto Prize, Award of the Japanese Academy, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, and a Career Golden Lion • In addition to granting him an award, the San Francisco Film Society named its Lifetime Achievement Award after him • Fellini once called him “the greatest living example of all that an author of the cinema should be” • Imitators and admirers included Bergman, Spielberg, Satyajit Ray, Altman, Scorcese, John Woo, Lucas, Polanski, Bertolucci, Coppola, and Lumet • Numerous awards include 3 Donatellos for Best Director and 13 from the Mainichi Film Concours • Best Film awards from five different countries, including 2 Oscars • AsianWeek magazine named him “Asian of the Century” in Arts, Literature, & Culture
3. Luis Buñuel
Writer | Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the ...
Buñuel Résumé: • 15 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 8 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • Lifetime Achievement Awards include FIPRESCI Prize, Moscow International Film Festival, Sant Jordi, and a Career Golden Lion • Called the best director ever by Alfred Hitchcock. • Owner of 7 Ariels, 1 BAFTA award, and 4 Cannes awards • 3 Best Film awards, including an Oscar
4. Woody Allen
Writer | Annie Hall
Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen ...
Allen Résumé: • 8 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 3 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 21 Oscar nominations including 3 wins and the most screenwriting nominations in history • 21 BAFTA nominations including 9 wins • 19 Writers Guild nominations including 4 wins • 9 César nominations for Best Foreign Film including 2 wins • 5 Donatellos, 3 for screenplays • Lifetime Achievement Awards include American Comedy Award, BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Silver Berlin Bear, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, the Prince of Asturias Award, Palm of the Palms, Writers Guild Laurel Award, and a Career Golden Lion • 7 Best Film awards from England, Sweden, France, & Italy
5. Martin Scorsese
Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...
Scorcese Résumé: • 9 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 12 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ (tied for most by single director) • 12 Oscar nominations including 1 win • 15 BAFTA nominations including 3 wins • 11 Directors Guild of America nominations including 2 wins • 2 Cannes, 2 Golden Globes, 1 Grammy • Lifetime Achievement Awards include American Film Institute, Fellow of the British Film Institute, American Cinematheque Award, Board of the Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, Honorary César, Special David, Golden Medal of the Italian Minister of Tourism, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, French Legion of Honor, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, Lincoln Center Gala Tribute, Kennedy Center Honor, Cecil B. DeMille Award, Gotham Award, Hollywood Film Award, London Critics Circle, Billy Wilder Award of the National Board of Review, Evelyn Burkey Award of the Writers Guild of America, and a Career Golden Lion • 18 different times has directed actors to Oscar nominations, including 5 wins • Honorary president of the Vienna Film Museum
6. Alfred Hitchcock
Director | Psycho
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and ...
Hitchcock Résumé: • 12 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 12 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ (tied for most by a single director) • 5 Oscar nominations • Lifetime Achievement Awards include Honorary Oscar, BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Lincoln Center Gala Tribute, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, American Film Institute, Cecil B. DeMille Award, a Jussi, and an Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire • Voted the greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, the most influential of all time by MovieMaker magazine, and “unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands” by Britain’s Daily Telegraph. • 1940’s Rebecca won an Oscar for Best Picture • 6 films in the National Film Registry
7. Stanley Kubrick
Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...
Kubrick Résumé: • 11 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 9 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 13 Oscar nominations, including 1 win • 7 BAFTA nominations, including 1 win • Lifetime Achievement Awards include BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Luchino Visconti Award, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, Directors Guild of Great Britain • 3 Donatellos, and 3 Silver Ribbons from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists • According to Steven Spielberg, “nobody could shoot a film better in history” • 3 Hugo Awards
8. Federico Fellini
Writer | Le notti di Cabiria
The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the ...
Fellini Résumé: • 10 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 5 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 12 Oscar nominations, not including 4 wins for Best Foreign Film • 2 BAFTA nominations for Best Film • Owner of 5 Donatellos (not including 3 wins for Best Film), 1 BAFTA award, and 4 Cannes awards • 11 Silver Ribbons from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists • Lifetime Achievement Awards include an Honorary Oscar, BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Golden Medal of the City of Rome, Cannes Award, Directors Guild of America Golden Jubilee Award, Luchino Visconti Award, Lincoln Center Gala Tribute, European Film Award, and a Career Golden Lion • Has an international airport named after him • Kubrick named I Vitelloni his favorite film
9. Billy Wilder
Writer | The Apartment
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many ...
Wilder Résumé: • 7 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 8 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 6 Oscars (2 for Best Director, 3 for Best Screenplay, 1 for Best Picture), not including Thalberg Award • 8 Directors Guild of America nominations, including 1 win • 15 Writers Guild of America nominations, including 5 wins • Cannes Grand Prize, 1 Donatello, 3 Golden Globes • Lifetime Achievement Awards include American Film Institute, BAFTA Academy Fellowship, Golden Berlin Bear, European Film Award, Lincoln Center Gala Tribute, National Medal of Arts, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, Directors Guild of America Preston Sturges Award, German Film Award, Producers Guild Award, two Writers Guild Laurel Awards, and a Career Golden Lion • Awarded Austria’s Golden Order, 1st Class for Meritorious Services • Directed 14 different actors to Oscar nominations, including 3 wins
10. John Ford
Director | The Quiet Man
John Ford came to Hollywood following one of his brothers, an actor. Asked what brought him to Hollywood, he replied "the train". He became one of the most respected directors in the business, in spite of being known for his westerns, which were not considered "serious" film. He won six Oscars, ...
Ford Résumé: • 15 films in They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 • 4 films with an IMDB rating of 8+ • 4 Best Director Oscars (most), not including 2 Best Documentary Oscars • 5 Directors Guild of America nominations including 1 win • Lifetime Achievement Awards include American Film Institute, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Western Heritage Trustees Award, Directors Guild of America D.W. Griffith Award, Golden Globe, and a Career Golden Lion • Was on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and became a Rear Admiral in the US Navy Reserve • Bergman called him “the best director in the world” • Kurosawa said “I pay close attention to his productions, and I think I am influenced by him.” • Capra called him the “king of directors”
11. Steven Spielberg
Producer | Schindler's List
One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, ...
12. Clint Eastwood
Actor | Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...
13. Jean-Luc Godard
Director | Bande à part
Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of ...
With a total of 16, Godard has more films in the They Shoot Pictures Don’t They (TSPDT) top 1000 than anyone.
14. Yasujirô Ozu
Writer | Tôkyô monogatari
Tokyo-born Yasujiro Ozu was a movie buff from childhood, often playing hooky from school in order to see Hollywood movies in his local theatre. In 1923 he landed a job as a camera assistant at Shochiku Studios in Tokyo. Three years later, he was made an assistant director and directed his first ...
15. David Lean
Director | Lawrence of Arabia
An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding ...
16. Roman Polanski
Director | Chinatown
Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.
His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years ...
17. Joel Coen
Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...
and Ethan Coen
18. Howard Hawks
Director | Rio Bravo
What do the classic films Scarface (1932), Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959) have in...
19. Pedro Almodóvar
Writer | Hable con ella
The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study ...
20. Charles Chaplin
Writer | The Great Dictator
Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...
21. Satyajit Ray
Writer | Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Late Sukumar Ray was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie ...
22. Fritz Lang
Actor | Le mépris
Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. ...
23. Ang Lee
Director | Xi yan
Born in 1954 in Pingtung, Taiwan, Ang Lee has become one of today's greatest contemporary filmmakers. Ang graduated from the National Taiwan College of Arts in 1975 and then came to the U.S. to receive a B.F.A. Degree in Theatre/Theater Direction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ...
24. Jean Renoir
Writer | La règle du jeu
Son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste, he had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. After the end of World War I, where he won the Croix de Guerre, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married Catherine Hessling, for whom he ...
25. John Huston
Director | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
An eccentric rebel of epic proportions, this Hollywood titan reigned supreme as director, screenwriter and character actor in a career that endured over five decades. The ten-time Oscar-nominated legend was born John Marcellus Huston in Nevada, Missouri, on August 5, 1906. His ancestry was English,...
26. Buster Keaton
Actor | The General
Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...
27. Quentin Tarantino
Writer | Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of...
28. Andrei Tarkovsky
Writer | Offret
The most famous Soviet film-maker since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky (the son of noted poet Arseniy Tarkovsky) studied music and Arabic in Moscow before enrolling in the Soviet film school VGIK. He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), which won the...
29. Luchino Visconti
Writer | Il gattopardo
Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally ...
30. William Wyler
Director | The Best Years of Our Lives
William Wyler was an American filmmaker who, at the time of his death in 1981, was considered by his peers as second only to John Ford as a master craftsman of cinema. The winner of three Best Director Academy Awards, second again only to Ford's four, Wyler's reputation has unfairly suffered as the...
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