200 of Great Directors/Writers/Film makers of all time(top movies ranked)

1. Georges Méliès

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, ...

-----Gods of Cinema (The Missionary Generation; Born 1860-1882)-----

1 - Le voyage dans la lune (1902) 2 - Le voyage à travers l'impossible (1904) 3 - Les quatre cents farces du diable (1906) 4 - À la conquête du pôle (1912) 5 - Le manoir du diable (1896) 6 - Un homme de têtes (1898) 7 - Les cartes vivantes (1905) 8 - Une partie de cartes (1896) 9 - Le château hanté (1897) 10 - L'homme à la tête en caoutchouc (1901)

2. 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 ...

3. Edwin S. Porter

Director | The White Pearl

In the late 1890s Porter worked as both a projectionist and mechanic, eventually becoming director and cameraman for the Edison Manufacturing Company. Influenced by both the "Brighton school" and the story films of Georges Méliès, Porter went on to make important shorts such as Life of an American ...

4. Louis Feuillade

Director | Les vampires

A prolific director--over 700 films, most of them short- or medium-length--Louis Feuillade began his career with Gaumont where, as well as directing his own features, he was appointed artistic director in charge of production in 1907. His work was largely comprised of film series; his first series,...

5. Alice Guy

Director | The Woman of Mystery

The world's first female filmmaker, French-born Alice Guy entered the film business in 1896 as a secretary at Gaumont, a manufacturer of movie cameras and projectors who had purchased a "cinématographer" from its inventors, the Lumiere brothers. The next year Gaumont became the world's first motion...

6. 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 ...

7. Wladyslaw Starewicz

Director | Zhitel nyeobitayemovo ostrova

Although his name nowadays means very little except to animation buffs (and even they have to be pretty well informed), Wladyslaw Starewicz ranks alongside Walt Disney, as one of the great animation pioneers, and his career started nearly a decade before Disney's. He became an animator by accident ...

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8. Max Linder

Actor | Seven Years Bad Luck

Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic ...

-----Angels, Kings & Emperors of Cinema (The Lost Generation; Born 1883-1899)-----

9. Michael Curtiz

Director | Casablanca

Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner...

10. Raoul Walsh

Editor | The Birth of a Nation

Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona ...

11. 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 ...

12. Victor Fleming

Director | Gone with the Wind

Victor Fleming entered the film business as a stuntman in 1910, mainly doing stunt driving - which came easy to him, as he had been a mechanic and professional race-car driver. He became interested in working on the other side of the camera, and eventually got a job as a cameraman on many of the ...

13. 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 ...

1 - The Great Dictator (1940) - 9 2 - Modern Times (1936) - 9 3 - The Kid (1921) - 9 4 - City Lights (1931) - 8 5 - The Gold Rush (1925) - 8 6 - Shoulder Arms (1918) - 8 7 - The Circus (1928) - 7 8 - The Pawnshop (1916) - 7 9 - A Dog's Life (1918) - 7 10 - The Immigrant (1917) -7 11 - The Count (1916) - 7 12 - The Cure (1917) - 7 13 - The Rink (1916) - 7 14 - Behind the Screen (1916) - 7 15 - Police (1916) - 7 16 - One A.M. (1916) - 7 17 - The Pilgrim (1923) - 7 18 - Easy Street (1917) - 7 19 - A Burlesque on Carmen (1915) - 7 20 - Pay Day (1922) - 7 21 - The Adventurer (I) (1917) - 7 22 - The Idle Class (1921) - 7 23 - The Fireman (1916) - 7 24 - The Floorwalker (1916) - 7 25 - Limelight (1952) 26 - Monsieur Verdoux (1947) 27 - A King in New York (1957)

14. Stan Laurel

Actor | Saps at Sea

Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles ...

15. 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. ...

16. Hal Roach

Producer | One Million B.C.

Hal Roach was born in 1892 in Elmira, New York. After working as a mule skinner, wrangler and gold prospector, among other things, he wound up in Hollywood and began picking up jobs as an extra in comedies, where he met comedian Harold Lloyd in 1913 in San Diego. By all accounts, including his own,...

17. Ernst Lubitsch

Director | To Be or Not to Be

From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at ...

18. 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, ...

1 - The Man who shot Liberty Valance 2 - The Searchers 3 - She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 4 - Rio Grande

19. King Vidor

Director | War and Peace

King Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter of Hungarian descent. He was born in Galveston, Texas to lumberman Charles Shelton Vidor and his wife Kate Wallis. King's paternal grandfather Károly (Charles) Vidor had fled Hungary as a refugee following the failed ...

20. Ben Hecht

Writer | Notorious

Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's and Broadway's greatest writers, won an Oscar for best original story for Underworld (1927) at the first Academy Awards in 1929 and had a hand in the writing of many classic films. He was nominated five more times for the best writing Oscar, winning (along with writing...

21. Clyde Bruckman

Writer | The General

Had been out of work and was pretty much broke when he killed himself. He borrowed Buster Keaton's gun and after eating a meal that he could not pay for, shot himself. There are two stories; One says it was in the restroom of the cafe on Santa Monica Blvd, and the other story states he did it in ...

22. 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 ...

23. 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 ...

1 - The General 2 - The Cameraman 3 - The Navigator 4 - Steamboat Bill Jr. 5 - Sherlock Jr. 6 - Our Hospitality 7 - Seven Chances 8 - Three Ages

24. Frank Capra

Director | It's a Wonderful Life

One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you ...

25. 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 ...

26. Kenji Mizoguchi

Director | Ugetsu monogatari

Coming from a lower class family Mizoguchi entered the production company Nikkatsu as an actor specialized in female roles. Later he became an assistant director and made his first film in 1922. Although he filmed almost 90 movies in the silent era, only his last 12 productions are really known ...

1 - Ugetsu 2 - Sansho the Bailiff 3 - The Crucified Lovers

27. George Cukor

Director | My Fair Lady

George Cukor was an American film director of Hungarian-Jewish descent, better known for directing comedies and literary adaptations. He once won the Academy Award for Best Director, and was nominated other four times for the same Award.

In 1899, George Dewey Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of...

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28. 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 ...

-----Godfathers & Godmothers of Cinema (The G.I. Generation; Born 1899-1924)-----

1 - Psycho (1960) - 10 2 - North by Northwest (1959) - 9 3 - Rear Window (1954) - 9 4 - Rebecca (1940) - 9 5 - Notorious (1946) - 8 6 - The Birds (1963) - 8 7 - Vertigo (1958) - 8 8 - Dial M for Murder (1954) - 8 9 - The Lady Vanishes (1938) - 8 10 - Rope (1948) - 7 11 - Strangers on a Train (1951) - 7 12 - The 39 Steps (1935) - 7 13 - Frenzy (1972) - 7 14 - To Catch a Thief (1955) - 7 15 - Foreign Correspondent (1940) - 7 16 - Shadow of a Doubt (1943) - 7 17 - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - 7 18 - Spellbound (1945) - 7

29. 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 ...

30. 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 ...

31. Walt Disney

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of ...

32. 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...

33. Vincente Minnelli

Director | An American in Paris

Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago on February 28 1903, his father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Wanting to pursue an artistic career, Minelli worked in the costume department of the Chicago Theater, then on Broadway during the depression as a set ...

34. 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 ...

1 - Tokyo Story 2 - An Autumn Afternoon 3 - Equinox Flower 4 - Early Summer 5 - Late Autumn 6 - Late Spring 7 - The End of Summer 8 - Good Morning 9 - The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice 10 - The Only Son 11 - Tokyo Twilight 12 - Floating Weeds

35. George Stevens

Director | Giant

George Stevens, a filmmaker known as a meticulous craftsman with a brilliant eye for composition and a sensitive touch with actors, is one of the great American filmmakers, ranking with John Ford, William Wyler and Howard Hawks as a creator of classic Hollywood cinema, bringing to the screen ...

36. Mikio Naruse

Director | Ukigumo

Considered a major figure of Japan's 'golden age of cinema', Mikio Naruse was a filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer who directed 89 films in the period 1930 to 1967. Although Naruse's work is lesser known in the twenty-first century than those of his contemporaries Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi...

37. Michael Powell

Director | Peeping Tom

The son of Thomas William Powell and Mabel (nee Corbett). Michael Powell was always a self-confessed movie addict. He was brought up partly in Canterbury ("The Garden of England") and partly in the south of France (where his parents ran a hotel). Educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Dulwich ...

38. Otto Preminger

Actor | Stalag 17

Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. His father was a prosecutor, and Otto originally intended to follow his father into a law career; however, he fell in love with the theater in his 20's and became one of the most imaginative stage producers and directors. He was ...

39. 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 ...

1 - Sunset Blvd. (1950) - 9 2 - Witness for the Prosecution (1957) - 8 3 - The Apartment (1960) - 8 4 - Double Indemnity (1944) - 8 5 - Some Like It Hot (1959) - 8 6 - Ace in the Hole (1951) - 8 7 - The Lost Weekend (1945) - 7 8 - Stalag 17 (1953) - 7

40. 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,...

41. 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 ...

42. 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 ...

43. 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 ...

1 - The Bridge on the River Kwai 2 - Lawrence of Arabia 3 - Doctor Zhivago 4 - Ryan's Daughter 5 - Brief Encounter

44. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Writer | All About Eve

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount ...

45. Elia Kazan

Director | On the Waterfront

Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He ...

46. 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...

1 - High and Low 2 - Seven Samuraï 3 - Throne of Blood 4 - Dersou Ouzala 5 - The Bad Sleep Well 6 - Rashomon 7 - Stray Dog 8 - Ran 9 - The Hidden Fortress 10 - Red Beard 11 - Kagemusha 12 - Yojimbo 13 - Sanjuro 14 - Dodeskaden 15 - Dreams 16 - The Idiot 17 - To Live 18 - Drunken Angel 19 - Scandal 20 - The Lower Depths 21 - The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail 22 - Judo Saga 23 - I Live in Fear

47. Nicholas Ray

Director | Rebel Without a Cause

Nicholas Ray was born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle in 1911, in small-town Galesville, Wisconsin, to Lena (Toppen) and Raymond Joseph Kienzle, a contractor and builder. He was of German and Norwegian descent. Ray's early experience with film came with some radio broadcasting in high school. He left the ...

48. Samuel Fuller

Writer | Shock Corridor

At age 17, Samuel Fuller was the youngest reporter ever to be in charge of the events section of the New York Journal. After having participated in the European battle theater in World War II, he directed some minor action productions for which he mostly wrote the scripts himself and which he also ...

49. 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 ...

50. Robert Wise

Director | West Side Story

Robert Earl Wise was born on September 10, 1914 in Winchester, Indiana, the youngest of three sons of Olive R. (Longenecker) and Earl Waldo Wise, a meat packer. His parents were both of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. At age nineteen, the avid moviegoer came into the film business through an ...

51. 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 ...

52. Kon Ichikawa

Director | Inugami-ke no ichizoku

Kon Ichikawa has been influenced by artists as diverse as Walt Disney and Jean Renoir, and his films cover a wide spectrum of moods, from the comic to the overwhelmingly ironic and even the perverse. Ichikawa began his career as a cartoonist, and this influence is apparent in his skillful use of ...

53. Masaki Kobayashi

Director | Seppuku

Masaki Kobayashi was born on February 14, 1916 in Hokkaido, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Harakiri (1962), Samurai Rebellion (1967) and The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961). He died on October 4, 1996 in Tokyo, Japan.

1 - Harakiri 2 - Kwaïdan 3 - Samurai Rebellion

54. 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 (...

1 - Persona 2 - The Virgin Spring 3 - Winter Light 4 - The Seventh Seal 5 - The Silence 6 - Scenes from a Marriage 7 - Wild Strawberries 8 - Fanny and Alexander 9 - Autumn Sonata 10 - Saraband 11 - Through a Glass Darkly 12 - Shame 13 - The Passion of Anna 14 - Hour of the Wolf 15 - Cries & Whispers

55. 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 ...

1 - 8 1/² 2 - La Dolce Vita 3 - La Strada 4 - Amarcord 5 - I Vitelloni 6 - Nights of Cabiria 7 - The Ship Sails On

56. 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, ...

57. 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 ...

58. Stanley Donen

Director | Charade

Inspired by Fred Astaire's dancing in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Stanley Donen (pronounced 'Dawn-en') attended dance classes from the age of ten. He later recalled that the only thing he wanted to be was a tap dancer.

He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Helen Pauline (Cohen) and Mordecai ...

59. Sidney Lumet

Director | 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although ...

1 - 12 Angry Men (1957) - 9 2 - Dog Day Afternoon (1975) - 9 3 - Serpico (1973) - 8 4 - The Verdict (1982) - 8 5 - Network (1976) - 8 6 - Murder on the Orient Express (1974) - 7 7 - The Hill (1965) - 7 8 - The Pawnbroker (1964) - 7 9 - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) - 7 . . . . .

60. Robert Altman

Director | Gosford Park

Robert Altman was born on February 20th, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri, to B.C. (an insurance salesman) and Helen Altman. He entered St. Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started...

-----Grand Fathers & Mothers of Cinema (The Silent Generation; Born 1925-1945)-----

1 - The Player (1992) - 9 2 - McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - 8 3 - The Long Goodbye (1973) - 8 4 - Short Cuts (1993) - 8 5 - Nashville (1975) - 7 6 - 3 Women (1977) - 7 7 - MASH (1970) - 7 8 - Thieves Like Us (1974) - 7

61. Shôhei Imamura

Director | Kuroi ame

Shohei Imamura's films dig beneath the surface of Japanese society to reveal a wellspring of sensual, often irrational, energy that lies beneath. Along with his colleagues Nagisa Ôshima and Masahiro Shinoda, Imamura began his serious directorial career as a member of the New Wave movement in Japan....

62. Agnès Varda

Director | Cléo de 5 à 7

Agnès Varda was born on May 30, 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and Faces Places (2017). She was married to Jacques Demy. She died on March 29, 2019 in Paris, France.

63. 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 ...

1 - 2001 : a Space Odyssey (1968) - 10 2 - Barry Lyndon (1975) - 10 3 - The Shining (1980) - 10 4 - Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - 9 5 - Paths of Glory (1957) - 9 6 - A Clockwork Orange (1971) - 9 7 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) - 9 8 - Full Metal Jacket (1987) - 9 9 - The Killing (1956) - 8 10 - Lolita (1962) - 7 11 - Spartacus (1960) - 7

64. Lina Wertmüller

Writer | Pasqualino Settebellezze

During the 1970s, Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name into the pantheon of Italian cinema with a series of intensely polemical, deeply controversial and wonderfully entertaining films. Among the most politically outspoken and iconoclastic members of the second generation of postwar directors - the ...

65. Sergio Leone

Writer | Once Upon a Time in America

Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in ...

1 - Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) - 10 2 - Once Upon a Time in America (1984) - 10 3 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - 9 4 - For a Few Dollars More (1965) - 8 5 - A Fistful of Dollars (1964) - 8 6 - A Fistful of Dynamite (1971) - 7

66. Richard Donner

Director | Superman

Richard Donner was born on April 24, 1930 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Superman (1978), Ladyhawke (1985) and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1980). He was married to Lauren Shuler Donner. He died on July 5, 2021 in Los Angeles, ...

67. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clinton Eastwood Jr. 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 Margaret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took ...

1 - Unforgiven 2 - Honkytonk Man 3 - The Bridges of the Madison County 4 - Mystic River 5 - Million Dollar Baby 6 - Gran Torino 7 - High Plains Drifter 8 - Pale Rider 9 - A Perfect World 10 - The Outlaw Josey Wales 11 - White Hunter Black Heart 12 - The Gauntlet 13 - The Eiger Sanction 14 - Bronco Billy 15 - Heartbreak Ridge 16 - Breezy 17 - Play Misty for Me 18 - American Sniper 19 - Changeling 20 - Flag of Our Fathers 21 - Letters From Iwo Jima 22 - True Crime 23 - Bird 24 - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 25 - The Mule

68. Claude Chabrol

Director | Le beau Serge

Claude Chabrol was born on June 24, 1930 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Le Beau Serge (1958), La Cérémonie (1995) and Story of Women (1988). He was married to Aurore Chabrol, Stéphane Audran and Agnès Goute. He died on September 12, 2010 in Paris, France.

69. 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 ...

70. François Truffaut

Writer | La nuit américaine

French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the ...

71. Milos Forman

Director | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in ...

72. Nagisa Ôshima

Director | Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Nagisa Oshima's career extends from the initiation of the "Nuberu bagu" (New Wave) movement in Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to the contemporary use of cinema and television to express paradoxes in modern society. After an early involvement with the student protest movement in ...

73. 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...

1 - Stalker 2 - Sacrifice 3 - Solaris 4 - The Mirror 5 - Ivan's Chilhood 6 - Nostalgia 7 - Andrei Rublev

74. Louis Malle

Director | Au revoir les enfants

Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies ...

75. 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 ...

1 - Chinatown (1974) - 10 2 - Repulsion (1965) - 9 3 - The Pianist (2002) - 9 4 - Rosemary's Baby (1968) - 9 5 - The Tenant (1976) - 9 6 - Frantic (1988) - 8 7 - Bitter Moon (1992) - 8 8 - The Ninth Gate (1999) - 8 9 - Tess (1979) - 7 10 - Macbeth (1971) - 7 11 - The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7 12 - Carnage (2011) - 7

76. Isao Takahata

Director | Hotaru no haka

Isao Takahata was born on October 29, 1935 in Ise, Japan. He was a director and writer, known for Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Pom Poko (1994) and The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013). He died on April 5, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan.

77. 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 ...

1 - Match Point 2 - Cassandra's Dream 3 - Vicky Cristina Barcelona 4 - Manhattan Murder Mystery 5 - Annie Hall 6 - Manhattan 7 - Bullets over Broadway 8 - Sweet and Lowdown 9 - Midnight in Paris 10 - Hollywood Ending 11 - The Curse of the Jade Scorpion 12 - Shadows and Fog 13 - Mighty Aphrodite 14 - Blue Jasmine 15 - Deconstructing Harry

78. Ridley Scott

Producer | The Martian

Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom ...

1 - Blade Runner 2 - Alien 3 - The Duellists 4 - The Martian 5 - Prometheus 6 - Black Hawk Down 7 - The Last Duel 8 - Thelma & Louise 9 - Alien : Covenant 10 - Hannibal 11 - Gladiator 12 - House of Gucci 13 - American Gangster 14 - Matchstick Men 15 - Robin Hood 16 - All the Money in the World 17 - Kingdom of Heaven 18 - Body of Lies 19 - 1492: Conquest of Paradise 20 - Black Rain 21 - Someone to Watch Over Me 22 - White Squall 23 - Exodus: Gods and Kings 24 - The Counselor 25 - A Good Year

79. Francis Ford Coppola

Producer | Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...

1 - The Godfather (1972) - 10 2 - The Godfather: Part II (1974) - 10 3 - Apocalypse Now (1979) - 10 4 - The Conversation (1974) - 9 5 - Rumble Fish (1983) - 9 6 - Dracula (1992) - 9 7 - The Godfather: Part III (1990) - 8 8 - The Outsiders (1983) - 7

80. Dariush Mehrjui

Director | Gaav

Dariush Mehrjui was born to a middle-class family in Tehran. He showed interest in painting miniatures, music, and playing santoor and piano. He spent a lot of time going to the movies, particularly American films which were un-dubbed and inter-spliced with explanatory title cards that explained ...

81. 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 ...

1 - Taste of Cherry 2 - Where Is the Friend's House? 3 - And Life Goes on... 4 - The Wind Will Carry Us 5 - Through the Olive Trees 6 - Close-Up 7 - Certified Copy 8 - Ten

82. Brian De Palma

Director | Body Double

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers. Born on September 11, 1940, De Palma was born in Newark, New Jersey in an Italian-American ...

1 - Scarface (1983) - 2 - The Untouchables (1987) - 3 - Carlito's Way (1993) - 4 - Blow Out (1981) - 5 - Carrie (1976) - 6 - Dressed to Kill (1980) - 7 - Femme Fatale (2002) - 8 - Body Double (1984) - 9 - Mission: Impossible (1996) - 10 - Casualties of War (1989) - 11 - Sisters (1972) - 12 - Obsession (1976) -

83. Terry Gilliam

Writer | Brazil

Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...

1 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) - 10 2 - Twelve Monkeys (1995) - 9 3 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - 9 4 - Brazil (1985) - 8

84. Masud Kimiai

Director | Dandan-e-mar

Massoud Kimiaei was born in Tehran in 1941. He became well known when in 1969 he directed his second film, Gheisar (1969), which was considered a turning point in the Iranian cinema; he depicted the ethics and morals of the romanticized poor working class of the Croesus' Treasure (1965) genre ...

85. Hayao Miyazaki

Writer | Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi

Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's greatest animation directors. The entertaining plots, compelling characters, and breathtaking visuals in his films have earned him international renown from critics as well as public recognition within Japan.

Miyazaki started his career in 1963 as an animator at the ...

86. Bernardo Bertolucci

Writer | Il conformista

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (...

1 - The Spider's Stratagem 2 - The Conformist 3 - The Last Emperor 4 - 1900 5 - Little Buddha 6 - The Dreamers

87. Nora Ephron

Writer | Julie & Julia

Nora Ephron was educated at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. She was an acclaimed essayist (Crazy Salad 1975), novelist (Heartburn 1983), and had written screenplays for several popular films, all featuring strong female characters, such as anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood (Silkwood (1983), ...

88. 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 (...

1 - The Double Life of Véronique 2 - Dekalog 3 - Trois Couleurs : Rouge 4 - Trois Couleurs : Bleu 5 - Trois couleurs : Blanc 6 - A Short Film About Love

89. Werner Herzog

Director | Fitzcarraldo

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has...

90. 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 ...

1 - Taxi Driver (1976) - 10 2 - Goodfellas (1990) - 10 3 - Mean Streets (1973) - 9 4 - Raging Bull (1980) - 9 5 - Casino (1995) - 9 6 - The Departed (2006) - 8 7 - The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - 8 8 - The Irishman (2019) - 8 9 - The King of Comedy (1982) - 8 10 - Shutter Island (2010) - 8 11 - After Hours (1985) - 8 12 - Cape Fear (1991) - 8 13 - The Aviator (2004) - 7 14 - Hugo (2011) - 7 15 - Gangs of New York (2002) - 7 16 - Silence (2016) - 7 17 - The Color of Money (1986) - 7 18 - The Age of Innocence (1993) - 7

91. Michael Mann

Producer | The Insider

As a director, screenwriter, and producer, four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann has established himself as one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in American cinema. After writing and directing the Primetime Emmy Award-winning television movie The Jericho Mile (1979), Mann ...

1 - Heat (1995) - 10 2 - The Insider (1999) - 9 3 - The Last of the Mohicans (1992) - 9 4 - Manhunter (1986) - 8 5 - Collateral (2004) - 8 6 - Thief (1981) - 7

92. David Cronenberg

Actor | The Fly

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...

93. Martin Campbell

Director | Casino Royale

Martin Campbell knows how to entertain an audience when he steps behind the camera. When he directed The Mask of Zorro (1998), the movie earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations and launched the international careers of Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Next, when he helmed ...

94. Terrence Malick

Writer | Days of Heaven

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen ...

1 - The Thin Red Line (1998) - 9 2 - Badlands (1973) - 9 3 - The New World (2005) - 9 4 - Days of Heaven (1978) - 8 5 - The Tree of Life (2011) - 8 6 - A Hidden Life 7 - Voyage of Time: Life's Journey

95. Jonathan Demme

Director | The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme was born on February 22, 1944 in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Philadelphia (1993). He was married to Joanne Howard and Evelyn Purcell. He died on April 26, 2017 in ...

96. George Lucas

Writer | Star Wars

George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar ...

1 - Star Wars original trilogy 2 - THX 1138 3 - Star Wars : Episode III - Revenge of the Sith 4 - American Graffiti 5 - Star Wars : Episode II - Attack of the Clones 6 - Star Wars : Episode I - The Phantom Menace

97. Tony Scott

Producer | Domino

Tony Scott was a British-born film director and producer. He was the youngest of three brothers, one of whom is fellow film director Ridley Scott. He was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England to parents Jean and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. As a result of his father's career in the British...

98. Ali Hatami

Director | Hezardastan

Abbas Ali Hatami was born in Tehran, Iran in 1944. He graduated from the College of Dramatic Arts and began his professional career as a writer of short TV screenplays and also as a playwright. Among his plays are: The Demon and the Bald Hassan, Adam and Eve, The Fisherman's Story, City of Oranges,...

99. George Miller

Producer | Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller is an Australian film director, screenwriter, producer, and former medical doctor. He is best known for his Mad Max franchise, with Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) being hailed as amongst the greatest action films of all time. Aside from the Mad Max ...

1 - Mad Max : Fury Road 2 - Mad Max 3 - Mad Max 2 4 - Three Thousand Years of Longing 5 - Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

100. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer | Faustrecht der Freiheit

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and...

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