Most Influential Directors (in no particular order)

addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity.

preferred the use of suspense over the use of surprise in his films. In suspense, the director tells or shows things to the audience which the characters in the film do not know, and then artfully builds tension around what will happen when the characters finally learn the truth. Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment inescapably clear to viewers one and all, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his "respectable" audience.

A demanding perfectionist, Kubrick assumed control over most aspects of the filmmaking process, from direction and writing to editing, and took painstaking care with researching his films and staging scenes, working in close coordination with his actors and other collaborators. He often asked for several dozen retakes of the same scene in a movie, which resulted in many conflicts with his casts. Despite the resulting notoriety among actors, many of Kubrick's films broke new ground in cinematography.

Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Once a subject was chosen, he would begin to visualize in terms of specific artists. His belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the end result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations.

Huston was known to direct with the vision of an artist, having studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris in his early years. He continued to explore the visual aspects of his films throughout his career, sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. While most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, making them both more economical and cerebral, with little editing needed.

Bergman usually wrote his films' screenplays, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he viewed as somewhat tedious. Bergman's films usually deal with existential questions of mortality, loneliness, and religious faith. In addition to these cerebral topics, however, sexual desire features in the foreground of most of his films, whether the central event is a medieval plague, upper-class family activity in early twentieth century Uppsala, or contemporary alienation. His female characters are usually more in touch with their sexuality than the men, and unafraid to proclaim it.

w/ Ethan Coen

Working with his brother Ethan, screenwriter/director Joel Coen has built a reputation as one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmakers of the late 20th century. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence. The films of the Coen brothers have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking.

It was a working class outer-borough energy. Lumet's streets were just as mean as Scorsese's, but Lumet's seemed plain rather than poetic. He channeled that New York skeezy vitality with such natural force that it was easy to overlook what was truly involved in the achievement. He captured that New York vibe like no one else because he saw it, lived it, breathed it – but then he had to go out and stage it, or re-create it, almost as if he were staging a documentary, letting his actors square off like random predators, insisting on the most natural light possible, making offices look as ugly and bureaucratic as they were because he knew, beneath that, that they weren't just offices but lairs, and that there was a deeper intensity, almost a kind of beauty, to catching the coarseness of reality as it truly looked.

His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines; satirical subject matter; an aestheticization of violence; extended scenes of dialogue; ensemble casts consisting of established and lesser-known performers; references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films; soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s; and features of neo-noir film.

Scott's work is identified for its striking visuals, with heroines also a common theme. His visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been influential on a subsequent generation of filmmakers. Scott commonly uses slow pacing until the action sequences.

Much of his work is influenced by classical film noir and neo noir genres, and involve a non-linear narrative, with a number of storytelling techniques such as backstories, flashbacks, foreshadowing and narrators. Fincher's visual style also includes using monochromatic and desaturated colors of blue, green and yellow, representing the world that the characters are in. Fincher has explored themes of martyrdom, alienation and dehumanization of modern culture. In addition to the wider themes of good and evil, his characters are often troubled, discontented and flawed, unable to socialize and suffer from loneliness.

From the beginning, Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet quite distinct from it. Kurosawa was extensively involved with every aspect of film production. He was also a gifted screenwriter, and would usually work in close collaboration with his co-writers from the beginning of the development of a film to ensure a high-quality script, which he insisted was the absolute foundation of a good film. He frequently served as editor of his own films and was regarded by his production team as "the greatest editor in the world". Though it was common in the Japanese film industry of that time for established directors to assemble around them a team, or "-gumi", with people drawn from the same pool of creative technicians, crew members and actors working from film to film, Kurosawa's team, known as the "Kurosawa-gumi" (Kurosawa group)—including, for example, the cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, the production assistant Teruyo Nogami and the actor Takashi Shimura—was remarkable for its loyalty to the director and the consistent quality of its work.

Hawks was a versatile director whose career includes comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir, and Westerns. Hawks's own functional definition of what constitutes a "good movie" is characteristic of his no-nonsense style: "Three great scenes, no bad ones." Hawks also defined a good director as "someone who doesn't annoy you." In Hawks's own words, his directing style is based on being enjoyable and straightforward. His style was very actor-focused and he made it a point to take as few shots as possible, thereby preserving an inherent and natural humor for his comedic pieces.

He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infection, technology, and the intertwining of the psychological with the physical.

His Spaghetti Westerns paid tribute to traditional American western films, but significantly departed from them in storyline, plot, characterization and mood. Leone gains credit for one great breakthrough in the western genre still followed today: in traditional western films, many heroes and villains looked alike as if they had just stepped out of a fashion magazine, with clearly drawn moral opposites, even down to the hero wearing a white hat and the villain wearing a black hat (except for the most successful of the 'traditional western cowboys' – Hopalong Cassidy, who wore a black outfit upon a pale horse). Leone's characters were, in contrast, more 'realistic' and complex: usually 'lone wolves' in their behaviour; they rarely shaved, looked dirty and sweated profusely, and there was a strong suggestion of criminal behaviour. The characters were also morally ambiguous by appearing generously compassionate, or nakedly and brutally self-serving, as the situation demanded. Relationships revolved around power and retributions were emotion-driven rather than conscience-driven. Some critics have noted the irony of an Italian director who could not speak English, and had never even visited the United States, let alone the American Old West, almost single-handedly redefining the typical vision of the American cowboy.

Most of his films explore the theme of imagination and its importance to life, express his opposition to bureaucracy and authoritarianism, and feature characters facing dark or paranoid situations. His own scripts feature black comedy and tragicomedy elements, combined with surprise endings.

Anderson is known for films set in the San Fernando Valley with realistically flawed and desperate characters. Among the themes dealt with in Anderson's films are dysfunctional familial relationships, alienation, surrogate families, regret, loneliness, destiny, the power of forgiveness, and ghosts of the past. Anderson makes frequent use of repetition to build emphasis and thematic consistency.

Lean's films reveal a consistently tragic vision of the romantic sensibility attempting to reach beyond the constraints and restrictions of everyday life, and that they tend to feature intimate stories of a closely-knit group of characters whose fates are indirectly but powerfully shaped by history-shaking events going on around them. In his work, setting is used as a presence with as much dramatic and thematic form as any character in the film.

Mann's films often feature male protagonists, usually highly gifted and independent-minded professionals who struggle to reconcile their mental lives with the demands, both benign and malign, of the exterior world. Importantly, his films often involve a tragic rather than a happy ending. Mann's films contain fast-paced, artful scenes that strongly depend on powerful music, where often two opposing sides intermix, such as undercover policework and undercover drug trafficking, so that it is hard to distinguish between the two. Also, Mann's work often involves landscapes and modes where the heroic protagonists occupy a somewhat secret world, away from ordinary concerns (law, life and death, money, daily-life survival duties, family duties, and so on), where the secret world may or may not coincide with ordinary reality. Protagonists often find impassioned romantic interests which are severed under tragic situations near the end of the film. Overall, Mann's films mix artistry (via music, stylishness and emotional intensity) with strong violence and noir-like stoicism.

He is often considered the most radical French filmmaker of the 1960s and 1970s; his approach in film conventions, politics and philosophies made him arguably the most influential director of the French New Wave. Along with showing knowledge of film history through homages and references, several of his films expressed his political views; he was an avid reader of existential and Marxist philosophy. Since the New Wave, his politics have been much less radical and his recent films are about representation and human conflict from a humanist, and a Marxist perspective.

His style of filmmaking was unique among directors, in that his subjects covered most genres, but with a "subversive" twist that typically relies on satire and humor to express his personal vision. Altman developed a reputation for being "anti-Hollywood" and non-conformist in both his themes and directing style. However, actors especially enjoyed working under his direction because he encouraged them to improvise, thereby inspiring their own creativity.

Lee's films have examined race relations, colorism in the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues.

Aside from presenting difficult characters whose inner desires were not easily understood, Cassavetes paid little attention to the "impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making" that are fashionable in Hollywood and art films. Instead, he chose to shoot mostly hand held with general lighting or documentary style to accommodate the spontaneity of his actors.

Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and storylines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop, but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed. Initial preparation is in private with the director and then the actors are introduced to each other in the order that their characters would have met in their lives. Intimate moments are explored that will not even be referred to in the final film to build insight and understanding of history, character and personal motivation. When an improvisation needs to be stopped, he says to the actors: 'Come out of character,' before they discuss what's happened or what might have happened in a situation.

Jarmusch has been characterized as a minimalist filmmaker whose idiosyncratic films are unhurried. His films often eschew traditional narrative structure, lacking clear plot progression and focus more on mood and character development.

Rohmer's films concentrate on intelligent, articulate protagonists who frequently fail to own up to their desires. The contrast between what they say and what they do fuels much of the drama in his films. Gerard Legrand once said that "he is one of the rare filmmakers who is constantly inviting you to be intelligent, indeed, more intelligent than his (likable) characters." Rohmer considered filmmaking to be "closer to the novel — to a certain classical style of novel which the cinema is now taking over — than the other forms of entertainment, like the theater."

He was among the first directors to insist on using authentic locations and for mixing stars with civilians to give his films more realism. Within the film industry, he was considered a maverick for taking risks and thereby creating unique films, with many of his stories being dramas about lone and principled individuals tested by tragic events. According to one historian, Zinnemann's style demonstrated his sense of "psychological realism and his apparent determination to make worthwhile pictures that are nevertheless highly entertaining."

Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film.

The importance of creative collaboration in Resnais's films has been noted by many commentators. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he always refused to write his own screenplays and attached great importance to the contribution of his chosen writer, whose status in the shared "authorship" of the film he fully acknowledged. He was also known to treat the completed screenplay with great fidelity, to the extent that some of his screenwriters remarked on how closely the finished film realised their intentions.

Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals, as well as the corruption and violence in human society. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable, but are forced to compromise in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality. He was given the nickname "Bloody Sam" owing to the violence in his films.