The 50 Greatest Directors of All Time
AMC Movie List

The 50 Greatest Directors of All Time

Filmsite.org's Tim Dirks spotlights the top 50 directors in Hollywood history. Which one is your favorite?

rank title points votes your vote
1 Alfred Hitchcock
A master of suspense and gallows humor, he turned out classic after classic, including Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds. 2018 6414
2 Stanley Kubrick
He made science trippy in 2001, Cold War politics slapstick in Dr. Strangelove, and Roman slaves au courant in Spartacus. 1968 7358
3 Martin Scorsese
You talkin' to him? No one captures alienated men on the edge the way he's done in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Departed. 1965 6377
4 Steven Spielberg
He reworked the genre crowd-pleasers of his youth into the modern blockbusters Jaws, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark. 1576 6696
5 Quentin Tarantino
A brilliant pop-culture collagist, he thrilled movie lovers with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and the Kill Bill series. 1477 6307
6 Francis Ford Coppola
Part of the first generation of film-school directors, he went from Dementia 13 to epics (The Godfather) and small gems (Rumble Fish). 1225 4397
7 Orson Welles
Larger than life, he debuted with the dazzling Citizen Kane, then he saw studios hack up The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil. 972 3766
8 Joel Coen
Joel and Ethan Coen are smart alecks with heart, combining dark humor, violence, and potent themes in movies like Fargo and True Grit. 829 3823
9 John Ford
The quintessential Westerner, he made icons of Monument Valley and John Wayne in the classics Stagecoach and The Searchers. 714 2776
10 Billy Wilder
His wit and unflinching eye for hypocrisy produced Sunset Blvd. and Ace in the Hole along with the gender-bending Some Like It Hot. 709 2587
11 Charlie Chaplin
He was a genius of silent comedy and one of its first stars. The Tramp and Modern Times are still comic icons. 704 3466
12 Ridley Scott
A TV-commercial star turned stylish auteur, he made the cool, slick Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma & Louise. 683 3349
13 Woody Allen
In Sleeper, Annie Hall, and Manhattan, he invited moviegoers to laugh at urban neurotics, then got serious in Interiors. 573 3779
14 Frank Capra
Sentimental but not sappy, his best movies (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life) wrap dark themes in happy endings. 558 2398
15 Clint Eastwood
The TV actor turned spaghetti-Western star became an A-list director with Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby. 557 4409
16 David Lean
From Lawrence of Arabia to Doctor Zhivago, his movies proved that no desert is as deep or wide as the landscape of the human heart. 502 2322
17 John Huston
Artistic, macho, and intellectual, Huston had a career spanning four decades, from The Maltese Falcon to Prizzi's Honor. 467 2137
18 Elia Kazan
In A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, this controversial director made gritty psychological dramas with resonance. 394 2110
19 Howard Hawks
Funny, tough, and funny-tough, he went from Scarface to His Girl Friday and from To Have and Have Not to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. 384 1894
20 David Lynch
His nightmarish Eraserhead paved the way for increasingly surreal movies in mainstream-thriller guises, from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Dr. 377 3077
21 William Wyler
His elegant storytelling made dramas (The Best Years of Our Lives), romances (Roman Holiday), and epics (Ben-Hur) sparkle. 337 1833
22 Roman Polanski
In Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, this international moviemaker probed dark passions and destructive desires. 325 2981
23 Fritz Lang
Metropolis still defines the future, and thrillers like The Woman in the Window and The Big Heat probed America's past. 311 1985
24 Peter Jackson
This New Zealand-born movie buff started small with the low-budget Bad Taste and worked his way up to the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. 292 3480
25 Michael Powell
The U.K. screenwriter-director team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made popular art movies like Black Narcissus and Peeping Tom. 189 1781
26 Robert Altman
Countercultural attitudes, intersecting stories, and overlapping dialogue distinguish his movies, notably MASH and Nashville. 187 1877
27 James Cameron
He escaped the low-budget likes of Piranha Part Two to make the sci-fi spectacles Terminator, Aliens, and Avatar. 185 4337
28 Tim Burton
Inspired by Halloween and Johnny Depp, this visual stylist made Beetle Juice, Batman, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. 176 3626
29 Michael Curtiz
He made Casablanca and Elvis Presley's King Creole, along with dozens of movies in every genre, from action to horror to melodrama. 173 1497
30 Terrence Malick
Malick's brooding, intellectual anti-Hollywood masterpieces include Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. 154 2282
31 Otto Preminger
After the film noir Laura, he challenged movie censors with drug abuse, in The Man With the Golden Arm, and rape, in Anatomy of a Murder. 153 1475
32 George Cukor
Wit and class distinguish his sophisticated pictures, which star Katharine and Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. 140 1448
33 Ernst Lubitsch
Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be have a unique Continental style that defies remaking. 128 1432
34 Mel Brooks
Never sacrificing a laugh to good taste, Brooks made the sublimely rude Blazing Saddles, Producers, and Young Frankenstein. 123 2579
35 Mike Nichols
Trained in improv theater, he specializes in character-driven comedies and dramas -- The Graduate, Silkwood, and Closer. 106 1542
36 Robert Zemeckis
He used new technologies to seamlessly combine reality and fantasy in movies like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. 106 2238
37 George Lucas
Not only did he create the Star Wars mythos, but he drove the development of widely used sound and special-effects technology. 100 3362
38 Oliver Stone
Provocative, bombastic, and politically contrarian, he's courted controversy in Midnight Express, Natural Born Killers, and JFK. 99 2591
39 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
From the weepie A Letter to Three Wives to the bitch-fest All About Eve, his movies are articulate and wickedly entertaining. 82 1368
40 Preston Sturges
His witty, sophisticated comedies -- The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story -- are still sharply funny, six decades later. 80 1428
41 Brian De Palma
A seventies film-school prodigy, he made Carrie and Scarface but specialized in Hitchcockian thrillers like Dressed to Kill and Body Double. 65 2107
42 Cecil B. DeMille
He was the first master of big-budget event movies, with two Ten Commandments films and The Greatest Show on Earth. -36 1716
43 Vincente Minnelli
He dissected show business in both musicals (An American in Paris) and melodramas (The Bad and the Beautiful). -39 1423
44 Arthur Penn
After the Freudian Western The Left Handed Gun, he made New Hollywood classics Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man, and Night Moves. -40 1324
45 Douglas Sirk
He brought a European darkness to the American melodramas Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, and Imitation of Life. -71 1435
46 Sam Peckinpah
He upped onscreen violence in his controversial Westerns and dramas, including The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. -96 1660
47 D.W. Griffith
The father of modern moviemaking, he pioneered film language in such milestones as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. -108 1670
48 John Cassavetes
An actor turned pioneering moviemaker, he paved the way for cinema verite with Shadows and A Woman Under the Influence. -161 1489
49 Sam Raimi
The cult-movie king from Michigan gave us the Evil Dead trilogy (and Bruce Campbell), A Simple Plan, and the blockbuster Spider-Man movies. -242 2038
50 Spike Lee
This African-American filmmaker provoked discussion via Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, and Summer of Sam. -379 2919