Cinema History
by Bifrost_NOR | created - 15 Nov 2015 | updated - 15 May 2016 | Public
1. Louis Lumière
Producer | La Mi-Carême, Char et batailles de confettis
Louis Lumière was a French engineer and industrialist who played a key role in the development of photography and cinema. His parents were Antoine Lumière, a photographer and painter, and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small ...
The Lumière brothers arguably invented cinema
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895)
L'arroseur arrosé (1895)
L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896)
Worked from:
1892-1900
2. Georges Méliès
Director | À la conquête du pôle
Georges Méliès was a French illusionist and film director famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.
Méliès was an especially prolific innovator in the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, ...
Inventor of Stop-Motion and first to use techniques such as fade-in's
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
Le voyage à travers l'impossible (1904)
Les quatre cents farces du diable (1906)
Worked from:
1896-1913
3. D.W. Griffith
Director | The Birth of a Nation
David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 ...
Believed that all movies should have a message
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
Way Down East (1920)
Worked from:
1908-1931
4. Victor Sjöström
Actor | Smultronstället
Victor Sjöström was born on September 20, 1879, and is the undisputed father of Swedish film, ranking as one of the masters of world cinema. His influence lives on in the work of Ingmar Bergman and all those directors, both Swedish and international, influenced by his work and the works of ...
Made Psychological, personal and symbolic films
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Terje Vigen (1917)
Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (1918)
Körkarlen (1921)
Worked from:
1912-1937
5. Robert Wiene
Director | Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene was born on April 24, 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Das wandernde Licht (1916) and The Knight of the Rose (1925). He died on July 17, 1938 in Paris, France.
One of the most important figures of German expressionism in film
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)
Raskolnikow (1923)
Der Rosenkavalier (1925)
Worked from:
1913-1938
6. 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 ...
Made cinema a lot bigger and more popular
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
The Tramp (1915)
The Kid (1921)
Gold Rush (1925)
Worked from:
1914-1967
7. 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 ...
Cinemas stuntman, performing impressive and funny stunts
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
The Navigator (1924)
The General (1926)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
Worked from:
1917-1951
8. Dziga Vertov
Director | Chelovek s kino-apparatom
Dziga Vertov was born on January 2, 1896 in Bialystok, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire [now Podlaskie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Three Songs About Lenin (1934) and The Sixth Part of the World (1926). He was married to Elizaveta Svilova. He ...
Creator of Cinema Pravda, made documentaries because he did not want all of cinema to just be stage-play's
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Shestaya chast mira (1926)
Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929)
Zemlya (1930)
Worked from:
1918-1954
9. F.W. Murnau
Director | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
F.W. Murnau was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air ...
One of the earliest "artist" in cinema history, making both expressionist films and "art" films.
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
Der letzte Mann (1924)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Worked from:
1919-1931
10. Erich von Stroheim
Actor | Sunset Blvd.
Erich von Stroheim was born Erich Oswald Stroheim in 1885, in Vienna, Austria, to Johanna (Bondy), from Prague, and Benno Stroheim, a hatter from Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). His family was Jewish.
After spending some time working in his father's hat factory, he emigrated to America ...
A director who exceeded all limits, both budget and length of the films were of epic margin
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Blind Husbands (1919)
Foolish Wives (1922)
Greed (1924)
Worked from:
1919-1934
11. 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. ...
Both important for German expressionism and Film Noir, Lang is one of the many directors that emigrated from Europe during/before WW2 who later started making Film Noir
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Metropolis (1927)
M (1931)
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)
Worked from:
1919-1960
12. Carl Theodor Dreyer
Writer | Gertrud
The illegitimate son of a Danish farmer and his Swedish housekeeper, Carl Theodor Dreyer was born in Copenhagen on the 3th of February, 1889. He spent his early years in various foster homes before being adopted by the Dreyers at the age of two. Contrary to popular belief (perhaps nourished by the ...
Slow, Psychological films often centered around religious themes, Dreyer has also influenced Close-up's a great deal with Jeanne d'arc.
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Du skal ære din hustru (1925)
La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)
Ordet (1955)
Worked from:
1919-1964
13. Vsevolod Pudovkin
Director | Admiral Nakhimov
Vsevolod Pudovkin was born on February 28, 1893 in Penza, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a director and actor, known for Admiral Nakhimov (1947), Zhukovsky (1950) and Minin i Pozharskiy (1939). He was married to Anna Zemtsova. He died on June 30, 1953 in Jurmala, Latvian SSR, USSR [now Latvia].
Said "Editing is the foundation of the film art"
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Mat (1926)
Konets Sankt-Peterburga (1927)
Potomok Chingis-Khana (1928)
Worked from:
1921-1953
14. Sergei Eisenstein
Director | Ivan Groznyy
The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and ...
Director that made the theory of "montage of attractions" a sequence of pictures whose total emotion effect is greater than the sum of its parts
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Bronenosets Potemkin (1925)
Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938)
Ivan Groznyy (1945)
Worked from:
1923-1958
15. 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 ...
An early auteur, not scared of having controversial subplots in his films
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Les bas-fonds (1936)
La grande illusion (1937)
La règle du jeu (1938)
Worked from:
1924-1970
16. 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 ...
The master of suspense
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho (1960)
Worked from:
1925-1976
17. 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...
Created many Hollywood classics, one of the leading directors in "perfecting" cinema
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Scarface (1932)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Worked from:
1926-1970
18. 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 ...
The master of surrealism
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Un chien andalou (1929)
L'âge d'or (1930)
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
Worked from:
1929-1977
19. Marcel Carné
Director | Le quai des brumes
Marcel Carné, the son of a cabinet maker, entered the movies as the assistant of Jacques Feyder. At the age of 25 he directed his first movie Jenny (1936). Colaborating with the writer Jacques Prévert, the decorator Alexandre Trauner, the musician and composer Maurice Jaubert and the actor Jean ...
Important anti-nazi regime director and for poetic realism
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Le quai des brumes (1938)
Les enfants du paradis (1945)
Thérèse Raquin (1953)
Worked from:
1929-1977
20. Jean Vigo
Writer | Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège
Jean Vigo had bad health since he was a child. Son of anarchist militant Miguel Almareyda, he also never really recovered from his father's mysterious death in jail when he was 12. Abandoned by his mother, he passed from boarding school to boarding school. Aged 23, through meetings with people ...
Probably the most important figure in poetic realism
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
À propos de Nice (1930)
Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège (1933)
L'Atalante (1934)
Worked from:
1930-1934
21. 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 ...
Important both for Film Noir and for comedies
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Double Indemnity (1944)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Worked from:
1934-1981
22. Robert Bresson
Writer | Au hasard Balthazar
Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The ...
Removing all acting from the screen, all we had left was real humans on the screen
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956)
Pickpocket (1959)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Worked from:
1934-1983
23. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
He did direct, produce, write and act in Citizen Kane all at an age of 25, he also made independent films before it was a term
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Worked from:
1934-1985
24. Alain Resnais
Director | Hiroshima mon amour
Alain Resnais was born on June 3, 1922 in Vannes, Morbihan, France. He was a director and editor, known for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Same Old Song (1997) and My American Uncle (1980). He was married to Sabine Azéma and Florence Malraux. He died on March 1, 2014 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, ...
Made extremely difficult films that was very hard to understand, he once said "I make difficult films. But not on purpose."
Nuit et brouillard (Night and fog) (1955)
Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last year in Marienbad) (1961)
Worked from:
1936-2014
25. Vittorio De Sica
Director | Ladri di biciclette
Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee ...
Probably the most influential director of Italian Neorealism
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Sciuscià (Shoeshine) (1946)
Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle thieves) (1948)
Umberto D. (1952)
Worked from:
1940-1974
26. 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,...
Made the first Film Noir
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Worked from:
1941-1987
27. 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 ...
Important for neorealism, he made highly detailed films
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Le notti bianche (1957)
Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960)
Il gattopardo (1963)
Worked from:
1943-1976
28. 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...
Defining action and how it should be shot
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Rashômon (1950)
Ikiru (1952)
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Worked from:
1943-1993
29. 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 (...
Making very psycological and characterdriven films, he became the most important Swedish director of all time
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Det sjunde inseglet (1957)
Smultronstället (1957)
Persona (1966)
Worked from:
1946-2007
30. Jacques Tati
Writer | Playtime
The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. His grandfather, Count Dimitri, had been a general in the Imperial Army and had served as military attaché to the Russian Embassy in Paris. His father, Emmanuel Taticheff, was a well-to-do picture framer who ...
Reinventing slap-stick and observational humour, depending on where you sit in the cinema you will get a different experience since there are many different little stories and jokes going on, on the screen at once
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953)
Mon oncle (1958)
Playtime (1967)
Worked from:
1947-1974
31. Michelangelo Antonioni
Writer | Blow-Up
Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the ...
Redifined cinematic language
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
L'eclisse (1962)
Il deserto rosso (1964)
Blowup (1966)
Worked from:
1947-2004
32. 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 ...
Became an icon and a stereotype of an "artist" and his films are very important to Neorealism and also for art films
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
I vitelloni (1953)
Le notti di Cabiria (1957)
8½ (1963)
Worked from:
1950-1990
33. Éric Rohmer
Director | Ma nuit chez Maud
Admirers have always had difficulty explaining Éric Rohmer's "Je ne sais quoi." Part of the challenge stems from the fact that, despite his place in French Nouvelle Vague (i.e., New Wave), his work is unlike that of his colleagues. While this may be due to the auteur's unwillingness to conform, ...
Mabye the most faithful to the french new wave movement's ideeas
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Ma nuit chez Maud (1969)
Le genou de Claire (1970)
L'amour l'après-midi (1972)
Worked from:
1950-2007
34. Sergei Parajanov
Director | Tini zabutykh predkiv
One of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema Sergei Parajanov was born in Georgia to Armenian parents and it was always unlikely that his work would conform to the strict socialist realism that Soviet authorities preferred. After studying film and music, Parajanov became an assistant ...
Nobody has ever spoken the language of Parajanov and told stories only by using colours and abstract images/scenes
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of forgotten ancestors) (1965)
Sayat Nova (1969)
Ashug-Karibi (1988)
Worked from:
1951-1990
35. 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 ...
He mastered every genre, inspiering and influencing almost all genres.
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Worked from:
1951-1999
36. 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 ...
Breaking all the rules of cinema at the time he became the most influencal director of the french new wave
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
À bout de souffle (1960)
Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962)
Weekend (1967)
Worked from:
1955-Today
37. 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...
His poetic and spiritual films are of a extremely high quality and artistic value
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Andrey Rublyov (1966)
Zerkalo (1975)
Stalker (1979)
Worked from:
1956-1986
38. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer | Il Decameron
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...
Probably one of the most controversial directors of all time
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Accattone (1961)
Porcile (1969)
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)
Worked from:
1961-1975
39. Theodoros Angelopoulos
Director | Mia aioniotita kai mia mera
Theo Angelopoulos began to study law in Athens but broke up his studies to go to the Sorbonne in Paris in order to study literature. When he had finished his studies, he wanted to attend the School of Cinema at Paris but decided instead to go back to Greece. There he worked as a journalist and ...
His use of costumes, locations, humour and long scenes creates political drama/comedies like no one else
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Meres tou '36 (Days of '36) (1972)
O thiasos (The travelling players) (1975)
Topio stin omichli (Landscape in the mist) (1988)
Worked from:
1965-2012
40. Krzysztof Kieslowski
Writer | Trois couleurs: Bleu
Krzysztof Kieslowski graduated from Lódz Film School in 1969, and became a documentary, TV and feature film director and scriptwriter. Before making his first film for TV, Przejscie podziemne (1974) (The Underground Passage), he made a number of short documentaries. His next TV title, Personnel (...
Both content wise and also aesthetically some of the best to have come out of Poland
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Krótki film o zabijaniu (A little film about murder) (1988)
La double vie de Véronique (The double life of Veronique) (1991)
Trois couleurs: Bleu (Three colors: Blue) (1993)
Worked from:
1966-1994
41. Lars von Trier
Writer | Dancer in the Dark
Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly ...
One of the founders of dogma95 manifesto
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Breaking the Waves (1996)
Idioterne (1998)
Antichrist (2009)
Worked from:
1967-Today
42. Abbas Kiarostami
Writer | Copie conforme
Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career ...
A minimalist that has made some very human and deeply touching depictions of life
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Nema-ye Nazdik (Close-up) (1990)
Ta'm e guilass (Taste of cherry) (1997)
Bad ma ra khahad bord (The wind will carry us) (1999)
Worked from:
1970-Today
43. Béla Tarr
Producer | Werckmeister harmóniák
Béla Tarr was born on July 21, 1955 in Pécs, Hungary. He is a producer and director, known for Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Turin Horse (2011) and Satantango (1994). He is married to Ágnes Hranitzky.
Reviving Hungarian cinema, at a time when all Hungarian filmmakers went to Hollywood
MOST IMPORTANT WORK:
Kárhozat (1988)
Sátántangó (1994)
Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)
Worked from:
1978-2012
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