American cinema (not just Hollywood) has been an integral part of the development of the medium. From the revolutionary reactionary films of D.W. Griffith to the cutting-edge works of David Lynch, countless incredible American directors have formed hundreds of movements and birthed innovations we still use today.
While any list setting out to establish a top x of anything is ultimately futile, I enjoy lists that attempt to rank directors and try to weigh different factors. Does a film’s recency negatively affect it because it can’t have any influence, or does it benefit from a recency bias? This list will have plenty of glaring issues with it, but it’s my fairest attempt at reconciling fact, opinion and consensus.
Not every director on this list will necessarily be the most expected addition, some might surprise you, but some director’s absences might shock you. Ultimately, it isn’t box office appeal, acclaim or even influence which will grant you a place here; it’s more a merging of all these factors.
As we’re trying to rank directors from such disparate times, we’ll inevitably come up against curious match-ups. Does Cecil B. DeMille’s grandiose epics of the 1920s meet their match in the small quaint indie dramas of Noah Baumbach? How do you compare their outputs? A director’s era inevitably affects how we view their works.
There will be obvious biases in this list. Generally, critics lean more towards dramas than genre films, and that’s generally reflected here; this isn’t a list of my top 200, but an attempt to create a consensus one – any comment on the list is appreciated as it can still be refined.
There are diversity issues here which are obviously out-of-step with modern times, but the simple answer is that if one woman director was making films in the 1910s (Lois Weber) and 100 men were making films, and if only three directors from the 1910s come on this, the odds of it being a woman director aren’t great. The lack of opportunities wasn’t fair, but neither is artificially inflating worth. There is a natural favouring of historical directors too, which means that the number of ‘current’ directors is fewer; in the future, I believe we will see top director lists with more flavour and diversity to them as directors like Jordan Peele establish a wider catalogue.
With all that said, I’m pretty proud of the list; it’s fairly well-rounded, tries to balance biases, and reflects current consensus. Hopefully, it’ll be useful to those of you looking for new directors to watch.
- Martin Scorsese
- John Ford
- Stanley Kubrick
- Howard Hawks
- Steven Spielberg
- David Lynch
- Orson Welles
- Coen Brothers
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Woody Allen
- Quentin Tarantino
- John Cassavetes
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Buster Keaton
- Terrence Malick
- John Huston
- D.W. Griffith
- Robert Altman
- David Fincher
- Clint Eastwood
- Preston Sturges
- Nicholas Ray
- Vincente Minnelli
- Sidney Lumet
- Leo McCarey
- Richard Linklater
- Wes Anderson
- George Cukor
- Spike Lee
- Brian De Palma
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Jim Jarmusch
- Rob Reiner
- Sam Peckinpah
- Robert Wise
- John Carpenter
- Stanley Donen (& Gene Kelly)
- King Vidor
- Victor Fleming
- George Stevens
- Raoul Walsh
- Terry Gilliam
- Robert Zemeckis
- Gus Van Sant
- Michael Mann
- Darren Aronofsky
- William Friedkin
- Peter Bogdanovich
- George A. Romero
- Michael Cimino
- Todd Haynes
- Tim Burton
- Hal Ashby
- Jules Dassin
- Frank Borzage
- Anthony Mann
- Arthur Penn
- Robert Flaherty
- Mike Nichols
- George Lucas
- Spike Jonze
- Bob Fosse
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Samuel Fuller
- Robert Aldrich
- Frederick Wiseman
- John Landis
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Jonathan Demme
- Kelly Reichardt
- Mel Brooks
- Pete Docter
- Andrew Stanton
- Don Siegel
- William A. Wellman
- George Roy Hill
- Tobe Hooper
- Damien Chazelle
- Barry Jenkins
- Sydney Pollack
- Brad Bird
- John McTiernan
- Alexander Mackendrick
- Sofia Coppola
- Ron Howard
- Errol Morris
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Sam Raimi
- David Hand
- Paul Schrader
- John Frankenheimer
- Kenneth Lonergan
- Joseph Losey
- Alexander Payne
- Robert Rossen
- Frank Darabont
- Charles Burnett
- Maysles Brothers
- Joshua Oppenheimer
- Alan J. Pakula
- Stanley Kramer
- Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Lee Unkrich
- Harold Ramis
- Wachowski Siblings
- Mel Gibson
- John Sturges
- Russo Brothers
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Greta Gerwig
- Sam Wood
- Robert Eggers
- Jordan Peele
- Mark Sandrich
- Charlie Kaufman
- Ben Sharpsteen
- John Hughes
- Blake Edwards
- James Mangold
- Tod Browning
- Stan Brakhage
- W.S. Van Dyke
- Noah Baumbach
- Philip Kaufman
- Henry King
- Don Hertzfeldt
- Barbara Loden
- Barry Levinson
- Edward Zwick
- John Waters
- Norman Z. McLeod
- Steven Soderbergh
- Mike Mills
- John Lassetter
- John Sayles
- Robert Mulligan
- D. A. Pennebaker
- Safdie Brothers
- Gregory La Cava
- Sean Baker
- Richard Brooks
- Todd Phillips
- Dennis Hopper
- Irvin Kershner
- Ari Aster
- Rian Johnson
- Kenneth Anger
- Wes Craven
- James Ivory
- Tom McCarthy
- Bob Rafelson
- Richard Donner
- Steve James
- Hal Hartley
- Barbara Kopple
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Henry Selick
- Monte Hellman
- Bryan Singer
- Curtis Hanson
- John G. Avildsen
- Mitchell Leisen
- Bob Clark
- Stuart Rosenberg
- Martin Rosen
- Martin Brest
- Lloyd Bacon
- Walter Hill
- Robert Rodriguez
- Kevin Costner
- Godfrey Reggio
- Martin Ritt
- Destin Daniel Cretton
- Edward Dmytryk
- Elaine May
- James Gun
- Robert Redford
- Terry Zwigoff
- Jerry Lewis
- Jennie Livingston
- Fred M. Wilcox
- Julian Schnabel
- Sean Penn
- Ted Kotcheff
- Delmer Daves
- H. C. Potter
- Brian G. Hutton
- David O. Russell
- Fred C. Newmeyer
- Lois Weber
- Jon Watts
- M. Night Schmaylan
- Richard Lester
- Todd Solondz
- Cameron Crowe
- Kevin Smith
- Robert Benton
- Oscar Micheaux
- Mel Stuart
- Gregg Araki
Bronze Screen Dream 