Top 250 Directors

1. Federico Fellini

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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The White Sheik (1951), I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), Il Bidone (1955), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Spirits of the Dead (1968) [co-directed by Louis Malle & Roger Vadim], Fellini Satyricon (1969), The Clowns (1971), Fellini's Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), Fellini's Casanova (1976), City of Women (1980), And the Ship Sails On... (1983), Ginger and Fred (1986), Fellini's Intervista (1987), The Voice of the Moon (1990)

2. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Killer's Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

3. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), Rashômon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963), Red Beard (1965), Dodes'ka-den (1970), Derzu Uzala (1975), Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985)

4. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Othello (1952), Mr. Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), The Fountain of Youth (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1966), F for Fake (1973)

5. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Parson's Widow (1920), Michael (1924), Master of the House (1925), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Two People (1945), Ordet (1955), Gertrud (1964)

6. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Breathless (1959), Une Femme est une femme (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), A Married Woman (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le fou (1965), Masculin Feminin (1966), Made in U.S.A. (1966), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1966), La Chinoise (1967), Week-End (1967), Sympathy for the Devil (1968), Le Gai Savoir (1968), Tout va bien (1972) [co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin], Numéro deux (1975), Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), Passion (1982), Hail Mary (1985), Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993), Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998), In Praise of Love (2001), Notre musique (2004), Film socialisme (2010)

7. 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...

Recommended Viewing: The Steamroller and the Violin (1961), Ivan's Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), The Sacrifice (1986)

8. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: I Was Born, But... (1932), The Only Son (1936), There Was a Father (1942), Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (1952), Tokyo Story (1953), Early Spring (1956), Tokyo Twilight (1957), Equinox Flower (1958), Good Morning (1959), Floating Weeds (1959), Late Autumn (1960), The End of Summer (1961), An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926), Sunrise (1927), City Girl (1929), Tabu (1931)

10. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Un Chien andalou (1928), L'Âge d'or (1930), Land Without Bread (1932), Los Olvidados (1950), El (1952), The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), Death in the Garden (1956), Nazarín (1958), The Young One (1960), Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Simon of the Desert (1965), Belle de Jour (1967), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

11. 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 (...

Recommended Viewing: Summer with Monika (1952), Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1967), Shame (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), Autumn Sonata (1978), Fanny and Alexander (1982), Saraband (2003)

12. 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. ...

Recommended Viewing: Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), Die Niebelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), Spione (1928), M (1931), The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Western Union (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), Secret Beyond the Door (1948), House by the River (1950), Rancho Notorious (1952), Clash by Night (1952), The Blue Gardenia (1953), The Big Heat (1953), Human Desire (1954), Moonfleet (1955), While the City Sleeps (1956), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), The Tiger of Eschnapur (1958), The Indian Tomb (1958)

13. John Cassavetes

Actor | Rosemary's Baby

John Cassavetes was a Greek-American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He is considered a pioneer of American independent film, as he often financed his own films.

Cassavetes was born in New York City in 1929 to Nicholas John Cassavetes (1893-1979) and his wife, Katherine Demetre (1906-1983). ...

Recommended Viewing: Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), Love Streams (1984)

14. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Lodger (1926), Blackmail (1929), Rich and Strange (1932), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Frenzy (1972), Family Plot (1976)

15. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Easy Street (1917), The Immigrant (1917), Shoulder Arms (1918), The Kid (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952)

16. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Charleston Parade (1927), La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Toni (1935), Partie de campagne (1936), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), La Grande illusion (1937), La Bête humaine (1938), The Rules of the Game (1939), This Land is Mine (1943), The Southerner (1945), The Woman on the Beach (1947), The River (1951), The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1954), The Testament of Dr. Cordelier (1959), The Elusive Corporal (1962)

17. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), Diary of a Country Priest (1951), A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959), The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Mouchette (1966), Une Femme douce (1969), Four Nights of a Dreamer (1972), Lancelot du Lac (1974), The Devil, Probably (1977), L'Argent (1983)

18. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Oyster Princess (1919), The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Broken Lullaby (1932), One Hour with You (1932), Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), The Merry Widow (1934), Angel (1937), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943)

19. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Story of a Love Affair (1950), The Lady Without Camelias (1953), Le Amiche (1955), Il Grido (1957), L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962), Red Desert (1964), Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), The Passenger (1975), Identification of a Woman (1982)

20. 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, ...

Recommended Viewing: 3 Bad Men (1926), The Informer (1935), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Stagecoach (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Long Voyage Home (1940), Tobacco Road (1941), How Green Was My Valley (1941), They Were Expendable (1945), My Darling Clementine (1946), The Fugitive (1947), Fort Apache (1948), 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950), Wagon Master (1950), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Searchers (1956), The Wings of Eagles (1957), The Last Hurrah (1958), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

21. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Scarface (1932), Ceiling Zero (1935), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Ball of Fire (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), The Thing from Another World (1951) [co-directed by Christian Nyby], Monkey Business (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rio Bravo (1959)

22. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), The Last Waltz (1978), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), My Voyage to Italy (1999), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), The Aviator (2004), A Letter to Elia (2010), Silence (2016)

23. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The 400 Blows (1959), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules et Jim (1961), The Soft Skin (1964), The Bride Wore Black (1968), Stolen Kisses (1968), The Wild Child (1969), Bed & Board (1970), Two English Girls (1971), Day for Night (1973), The Woman Next Door (1981), Confidentially Yours (1983)

24. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: One Week (1920) [co-directed by Eddie Cline], Neighbors (1920) [co-directed by Eddie Cline], The Boat (1921) [co-directed by Eddie Cline], Cops (1922) [co-directed by Eddie Cline], Our Hospitality (1923) [co-directed by John Blystone], Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924) [co-directed by Donald Crisp], Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926) [co-directed by Clyde Bruckman], Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) [co-directed by Charles Reisner], The Cameraman (1928) [co-directed by Edward Sedgwick], Spite Marriage (1929) [co-directed by Edward Sedgwick]

25. 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 ...

and Emeric Pressburger, "The Archers"

Recommended Viewing: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), The Small Back Room (1949), Gone to Earth (1950), The Tales of Hoffman (1951)

26. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: They Live by Night (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), Born to Be Bad (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1951), The Lusty Men (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954), Run for Cover (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Bigger Than Life (1956), Bitter Victory (1957), Party Girl (1958)

27. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Osaka Elegy (1936), Sisters of the Gion (1936), The Straits of Love and Hate (1937), The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), The 47 Ronin (1941), Utamaro and His Five Women (1946), Miss Oyu (1951), The Life of Oharu (1952), Gion Bayashi (1953), Ugetsu monogatari (1953), Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Uwasa no onna (1954), Chikamatsu monogatari (1954), Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955), Street of Shame (1956)

28. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: À propos de Nice (1929), Taris (1931), Zero for Conduct (1933), L'Atalante (1934)

29. Douglas Sirk

Director | Schlußakkord

Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director would make movies in German, ...

Recommended Viewing: Sleep, My Love (1948), Shockproof (1949), Thunder on the Hill (1951), Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952), All I Desire (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), There's Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), Interlude (1957), The Tarnished Angels (1957), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), Imitation of Life (1959)

30. Max Ophüls

Director | La ronde

Director Max Ophüls was born Max Oppenheimer in Saarbrücken, Germany. He began his career as a stage actor and director in the golden twenties. He worked in cities such as Stuttgart, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Vienna, Frankfurt, Breslau and Berlin. In 1929 his son Marcel Ophüls was born in Frankfurt, ...

Recommended Viewing: Liebelei (1932), La Signora di Tutti (1934), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Caught (1949), The Reckless Moment (1949), La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1951), Madame de... (1953), Lola Montès (1955)

31. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Love is Colder Than Death (1969), Katzelmacher (1969), Gods of the Plague (1969), Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) [co-directed by Michael Fengler], The American Soldier (1970), The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), World on a Wire (1973), Martha (1973), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Fox and His Friends (1975), Fear of Fear (1975), I Only Want You to Love Me (1976), In a Year with 13 Moons (1978), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), Despair (1979), Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Lola (1981), Veronika Voss (1982)

32. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983)

33. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Accatone (1961), Mamma Roma (1962), La Rabbia (1963) [co-directed by Giovanni Guareschi], The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966), Oedipus Rex (1967), Teorema (1968), Medea (1969), The Decameron (1970), The Canterbury Tales (1971), Arabian Nights (1974), Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

34. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1927) [co-directed by Grigori Aleksandrov], The General Line (1929), Que viva Mexico! (1932), Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1944), Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1946)

35. 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,...

Recommended Viewing: The Maltese Falcon (1941), In This Our Life (1942), Let There Be Light (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Beat the Devil (1953), The Misfits (1961), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Wise Blood (1979), The Dead (1987)

36. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Ossessione (1943), La Terra trema (1947), Bellissima (1951), Senso (1954), Le Notti bianche (1957), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963), Of a Thousand Delights (1965), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Ludwig (1972)

37. David Lynch

Writer | Twin Peaks

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...

Recommended Viewing: The Grandmother (1970), Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999), Mulholland Dr. (2001), Inland Empire (2006)

38. 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 (...

Recommended Viewing: Camera Buff (1979), No End (1985), Blind Chance (1987), A Short Film About Killing (1988), A Short Film About Love (1988), Dekalog (1988), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), Three Colors: Blue (1993), Three Colors: White (1993), Three Colors: Red (1994)

39. 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...

Recommended Viewing: M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974), California Split (1974), Nashville (1975), 3 Women (1977), Tanner '88 (1988), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), Cookie's Fortune (1998), Gosford Park (2001)

40. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Major and the Minor (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), A Foreign Affair (1948), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like it Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), [One, Two, Three (1961), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Avanti! (1972)

41. Jean-Pierre Melville

Writer | Le Samouraï

The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its ...

Recommended Viewing: Le Silence de la mer (1949), Les Enfants terribles (1949), Bob le flambeur (1955), Le Doulos (1962), Second Breath (1966), Le Samouraï (1967), Army of Shadows (1969), The Red Circle (1970), Dirty Money (1972)

42. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Drole de drame (1937), Port of Shadows (1938), Hotel du Nord (1938), Le Jour se lève (1939), The Devil's Envoys (1942), Les Enfants du paradis (1945)

43. Hal Ashby

Editor | In the Heat of the Night

Hal Ashby was born the fourth and youngest child in a Mormon household, in Ogden, Utah, to Eileen Ireta (Hetzler) and James Thomas Ashby, on September 2, 1929. His father was a dairy farmer. After a rough childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his dropping out of ...

Recommended Viewing: Harold and Maude (1970), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Being There (1979)

44. 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, ...

Recommended Viewing: The Sign of Leo (1959), Suzanne's Career (1963), La Collectionneuse (1966), My Night at Maud's (1969), Claire's Knee (1970), Chloe in the Afternoon (1972), The Marquis of O (1976), The Aviator's Wife (1981), Pauline at the Beach (1983), Full Moon in Paris (1984), The Green Ray (1986), Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987), A Summer's Tale (1996), An Autumn Tale (1998)

45. 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.

* co-directed by Ágnes Hranitzky

Recommended Viewing: Family Nest (1979), The Prefab People (1982), Almanac of Fall (1984), Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)*, The Man from London (2007)*, The Turin Horse (2011)*

46. Roberto Rossellini

Writer | Roma città aperta

The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American ...

Recommended Viewing: Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), Germany, Year Zero (1947), Stromboli (1949), The Flowers of St. Francis (1950), Europa '51 (1952), Voyage in Italy (1953), General Della Rovere (1959), The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966), Il Messia (1975), Beaubourg (1977)

47. Satyajit Ray

Writer | Pather Panchali

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta on May 2, 1921. His father, Late Sukumar Ray was an eminent poet and writer in the history of Bengali literature. In 1940, after receiving his degree in science and economics from Calcutta University, he attended Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University. His first movie ...

Recommended Viewing: Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), The Music Room (1958), The World of Apu (1959), Kanchenjungha (1962), The Big City (1963), Charulata (1964), Days and Nights in the Forest (1969), Distant Thunder (1973), The Chess Players (1977), Pikoor Diary (1981)

48. 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, ...

Recommended Viewing: Night and Fog (1955), Toute la mémoire du monde (1956), Le Chant du Styrène (1959), Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Muriel (1963), Providence (1977), Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980)

49. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Camille (1936), Holiday (1938), The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), A Woman's Face (1941), Gaslight (1944), Adam's Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), The Actress (1953), It Should Happen to You (1954), A Star is Born (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), My Fair Lady (1964)

50. Kar-Wai Wong

Director | Yi dai zong shi

Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1956) is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Ah fei zing zyun (1990), Dung che sai duk (1994), Chung Hing sam lam (1994), Do lok tin si (1995), Chun gwong ...

Recommended Viewing: Days of Being Wild (1990), Chungking Express (1994), Ashes of Time (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004), The Grandmaster (2013)

51. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: I Shot Jesse James (1949), The Steel Helmet (1951), Pickup on South Street (1953), House of Bamboo (1955), Forty Guns (1957), The Crimson Kimono (1959), Underworld, U.S.A. (1961), Shock Corridor (1963), The Naked Kiss (1964), The Big Red One (1980), White Dog (1982)

52. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), Show People (1928), Hallelujah! (1929), Our Daily Bread (1934), Stella Dallas (1937), The Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Fountainhead (1949), Beyond the Forest (1949), Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), Ruby Gentry (1952), Man Without a Star (1955)

53. Frank Borzage

Director | Bad Girl

Frank Borzage was born on April 23, 1894 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Bad Girl (1931), 7th Heaven (1927) and No Greater Glory (1934). He was married to Juanita Scott, Edna Skelton and Rena Rogers. He died on June 19, 1962 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, ...

Recommended Viewing: Seventh Heaven (1927), Lucky Star (1929), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Man's Castle (1933), Little Man, What Now? (1934), Desire (1936), Mannequin (1937), History is Made at Night (1937), Three Comrades (1938), The Shining Hour (1938), Strange Cargo (1940), Moonrise (1948)

54. Anthony Mann

Director | El Cid

Anthony Mann was born on June 30, 1906 in San Diego, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for El Cid (1961), Men in War (1957) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954). He was married to Anna, Sara Montiel and Mildred Mann. He died on April 29, 1967 in London, England.

Recommended Viewing: Strange Impersonation (1946), Desperate (1947), Railroaded! (1947), T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), Reign of Terror (1949), Border Incident (1949), Side Street (1950), Winchester '73 (1950), The Furies (1950), Devil's Doorway (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), Thunder Bay (1953), The Man from Laramie (1955), The Far Country (1955), Men in War (1957), Man of the West (1958), El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

55. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Clock (1945), Undercurrent (1946), The Pirate (1948), Father of the Bride (1950), An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), The Cobweb (1955), Tea and Sympathy (1956), Gigi (1958), Some Came Running (1958), Home from the Hill (1960), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

56. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: In Which We Serve (1942) [co-directed by Noel Coward], This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945), Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), The Passionate Friends (1949), Madeleine (1949), Hobson's Choice (1954), Summertime (1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965)

57. Sam Peckinpah

Writer | The Wild Bunch

"If they move", commands stern-eyed William Holden, "kill 'em". So begins The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle", observed critic Pauline Kael. That ...

Recommended Viewing: Ride the High Country (1962), The Wild Bunch (1969), Straw Dogs (1971), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

58. Michael Haneke

Writer | Caché

A true master of his craft, Michael Haneke is one of the greatest film artists working today and one who challenges his viewers each year and work goes by, with films that reflect real portions of life in realistic, disturbing and unforgettable ways. One of the most genuine filmmakers of the world ...

Recommended Viewing: The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1995), Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001), Time of the Wolf (2003), Caché (2005), The White Ribbon (2009), Amour (2012)

59. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Where is the Friend's Home? (1987), Homework (1989), Close-Up (1989), And Life Goes On... (1992), Through the Olive Trees (1994), A Taste of Cherry (1997), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Ten (2002), Certified Copy (2010), Like Someone in Love (2012)

60. Stan Brakhage

Director | The Loom

Stan Brakhage was born on January 14, 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was a director and cinematographer, known for The Loom (1986), The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him (2000) and Visions in Meditation (1990). He was married to Marilyn Jull and Jane Wodening. He died on March 9, 2003 in ...

Recommended Viewing: Desistfilm (1954), Window Water Baby Moving (1962), Mothlight (1963), Dog Star Man (1964), The Art of Vision (1965), Scenes from Under Childhood (1967-1970), The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971), Text of Light (1974), The Stars Are Beautiful (1974), Murder Psalm (1980), Arabic Series (1980-1982), The Dante Quartet (1987), Passage Through: A Ritual (1990), For Marilyn (1992), Persian Series (1999-2001)

61. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), The Tenant (1976), Tess (1979), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate (1999), The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005)

62. Carol Reed

Director | The Third Man

Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Art Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of Tree's six illegitimate children with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. ...

Recommended Viewing: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), Oliver! (1968)

63. Jacques Rivette

Director | La Belle Noiseuse

Although François Truffaut has written that the New Wave began "thanks to Rivette," the films of this masterful French director are not well known. Rivette, like his "Cahiers du Cinéma" colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, did graduate to filmmaking but, like Rohmer...

Recommended Viewing: L'Amour fou (1968), Out 1: noli me tangere (1971), Out 1: Spectre (1972), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), La Belle noiseuse (1991), Haut bas fragile (1995), Va savoir (2001), The Duchess of Langeais (2007)

64. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

65. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Signs of Life (1968), Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970), Fata Morgana (1971), Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Lessons of Darkness (1992), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009), Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) [co-directed by Dmitry Vasyukov], Into the Abyss (2011)

66. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

67. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: L'École des facteurs (1947), Jour de Féte (1948), Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967), Traffic (1971)

68. Nicolas Roeg

Director | Don't Look Now

When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's ...

Recommended Viewing: Performance (1970) [co-directed by Donald Cammell], Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Bad Timing (1980), Insignificance (1985), The Witches (1990)

69. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Dragonwyck (1946), Somewhere in the Night (1946), The Late George Apley (1947), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), House of Strangers (1949), No Way Out (1950), All About Eve (1950), People Will Talk (1951), Five Fingers (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Sleuth (1972)

70. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) [co-directed by William Keighley], Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), The Sea Wolf (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Unsuspected (1947), My Dream is Yours (1949), Young Man with a Horn (1950), The Breaking Point (1950), King Creole (1958)

71. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Children Are Watching Us (1944), Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), Miracle in Milan (1951), Umberto D. (1952), Two Women (1960), After the Fox (1966)

72. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015)

73. 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 (...

Recommended Viewing: The Conformist (1969), The Spider's Stratagem (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1973), 1900 (1976), The Last Emperor (1987)

74. Tod Browning

Director | Dracula

Belonging to a well-situated family, Charles Browning fell in love at the age of 16 with a dancer of a circus. Following her began his itinerary of being clown, jockey and director of a variety theater which ended when he met D.W. Griffith and became an actor. He made his debut in Intolerance (1916)...

Recommended Viewing: The Unholy Three (1925), The Unknown (1927), West of Zanzibar (1928), Dracula (1931), Freaks (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935), The Devil-Doll (1936)

75. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), True Heart Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1922), Isn't Life Wonderful (1924)

76. Henri-Georges Clouzot

Writer | Le salaire de la peur

Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film The Raven (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. He shot to ...

Recommended Viewing: The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942), Le Corbeau (1943), Quai des Orfèvres (1947), The Wages of Fear (1953), Les Diaboliques (1955), The Mystery of Picasso (1956)

77. Jacques Tourneur

Director | Cat People

Born in Paris in 1904, Tourneur went to Hollywood with his father, director Maurice Tourneur around 1913. He started out as a script clerk and editor for his father, then graduated to such jobs as directing shorts (often with the pseudonym Jack Turner), both in France and America. He was hired to ...

Recommended Viewing: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Out of the Past (1947), Berlin Express (1948), The Flame and the Arrow (1950), Wichita (1955), Great Day in the Morning (1956), Nightfall (1956), Night of the Demon (1957)

78. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), Forever Amber (1947), Daisy Kenyon (1947), Whirlpool (1949), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), Angel Face (1953), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Advice and Consent (1962), The Cardinal (1963)

79. Jean Cocteau

Writer | La Belle et la Bête

Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei...

Recommended Viewing: The Blood of a Poet (1930), La Belle et la bête (1946), Les Parents terribles (1948), Orpheus (1950), Les Enfants terribles (1950), Testament of Orpheus (1959)

80. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Phantom Carriage (1921), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Wind (1928)

81. Josef von Sternberg

Director | The Devil Is a Woman

Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. His father, a former soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, could not support his family in either city; Sternberg remembered him only as "an enormously strong man who often used his strength on me." Forced by poverty to drop ...

Recommended Viewing: Underworld (1927), The Docks of New York (1928), The Last Command (1928), The Blue Angel (1930), Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Devil is a Woman (1935), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Macao (1952), Anatahan (1953)

82. 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.

Recommended Viewing: Le Beau Serge (1958), Les Cousins (1959), A double tour (1959), Les Bonnes femmes (1960), The Third Lover (1962), Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), This Man Must Die (1969), Le Boucher (1970), Just Before Nightfall (1971), Wedding in Blood (1973), Pleasure Party (1975), L'Enfer (1993), La Cérémonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000), A Comedy of Power (2005)

83. Erich von Stroheim

Actor | Sunset Boulevard

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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Foolish Wives (1922), Greed (1924), The Merry Widow (1925), The Wedding March (1928), Queen Kelly (1929)

84. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: Love and Death (1975), Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Husbands and Wives (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Sweet and Lowdown (1999), Small Time Crooks (2000), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Match Point (2005)

85. Andrzej Wajda

Director | Katyn

Andrzej Wajda is an Academy Award-winning director. He is the most prominent filmmaker in Poland known for The Promised Land (1975), Man of Iron (1981), and Katyn (2007).

He was Born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. His mother, Aniela Wajda, was a teacher at a Ukrainian school. His father, ...

Recommended Viewing: A Generation (1955), Kanal (1957), Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Innocent Sorcerers (1960), Everything for Sale (1969), The Promised Land (1974), Man of Marble (1977), Katyn (2007)

86. 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...

Recommended Viewing: The Brood (1979), Videodrome (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Naked Lunch (1991), Crash (1996), Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), Cosmopolis (2012)

87. 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 ...

Recommended Viewing: The Edge of the World (1937), The Thief of Bagdad (1940) [co-directed by Ludwig Berger & Tim Whelan], 49th Parallel (1941), Peeping Tom (1960), They're a Weird Mob (1966)

88. Leo McCarey

Director | An Affair to Remember

Leo McCarey was born on October 3, 1896 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for An Affair to Remember (1957), Going My Way (1944) and Love Affair (1939). He was married to Virginia Stella Martin. He died on July 5, 1969 in Santa Monica, California, USA.

Recommended Viewing: Big Business (1929) [co-directed by James W. Horne], Duck Soup (1933), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939), An Affair to Remember (1957)

89. Chris Marker

Writer | Twelve Monkeys

Chris Marker was born on July 29, 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a writer and director, known for 12 Monkeys (1995), Sans Soleil (1983) and Third Side of the Coin (1960). He died on July 29, 2012 in Paris, France.

Recommended Viewing: La Jetée (1962), The Base of the Air is Red (1977), Sans Soleil (1983), The Last Bolshevik (1993)

90. 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 ...

and Gene Kelly

Recommended Viewing: On the Town (1949), Singin' in the Rain (1952), It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

91. Seijun Suzuki

Director | Tsigoineruwaizen

Seijun Suzuki was born in Nihonbashi, Tôkyô, on May 24, 1923. In 1943, he entered the army to fight at the front. In 1946, he enrolled in the film department of the Kamakura Academy and passed the assistant director's exam. For the next few years, he worked as an assistant director at several ...

Recommended Viewing: Underworld Beauty (1958), Youth of the Beast (1963), Kanto Wanderer (1963), The Flowers and the Angry Waves (1964), Gate of Flesh (1964), Story of a Prostitute (1965), Tattooed Life (1965), Fighting Elegy (1966), Tokyo Drifter (1966), Branded to Kill (1967), Zigeunerweisen (1980), Pistol Opera (2001)

92. Jacques Becker

Writer | Le trou

His interest in films was stimulated by a meeting with King Vidor, who offered him employment in the US as actor and assistant director. However, he remained in France and became assistant to Jean Renoir, a friend of the family, during that director's peak period (1932-39). In 1934 he ventured ...

Recommended Viewing: Antoine et Antoinette (1947), Rendezvous in July (1949), Édouard et Caroline (1950), Casque d'or (1952), Touchez pas au Grisbi (1953), Le Trou (1960)

93. Jacques Demy

Soundtrack | Les parapluies de Cherbourg

Jacques Demy was born on June 5, 1931 in Pontchâteau, Loire-Atlantique, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and A Room in Town (1982). He was married to Agnès Varda. He died on October 27, 1990 in Paris, France.

Recommended Viewing: Lola (1961), Bay of Angels (1963), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

94. Wim Wenders

Director | Der Himmel über Berlin

Wim Wenders is an Oscar-nominated German filmmaker who was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until ...

Recommended Viewing: Alice in the Cities (1974), Kings of the Road (1976), The American Friend (1977), Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987)

95. Georges Franju

Director | Les yeux sans visage

Georges Franju is a figure of immense importance in the history of French cinema, not primarily for his films (exceptional though many of these are) but for being the co-founder, with Henri Langlois, of the Cinematheque Française in 1937--France's most famous and important film archive.

He worked ...

Recommended Viewing: Le Sang des bêtes (1949), Hôtel des Invalides (1952), Head Against the Wall (1959), Eyes Without a Face (1959), Judex (1963)

96. 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...

Recommended Viewing: Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Jezebel (1938), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Westerner (1940), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Heiress (1949), Detective Story (1951), Roman Holiday (1953), The Desperate Hours (1955)

97. Preston Sturges

Writer | Sullivan's Travels

Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U.S....

Recommended Viewing: Christmas in July (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), The Great Moment (1944), Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

98. Edward Yang

Writer | Yi yi

Born on November 6, 1947 in Shanghai, China, Edward Yang has become one of the most talented international filmmakers of his generation. Along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-Liang, Yang ranks among the leading artists of the Taiwanese New Wave, and one of the world's most brilliant auteurs. ...

Recommended Viewing: Taipei Story (1985), The Terrorizers (1986), A Brighter Summer Day (1991), A Confucian Confusion (1994), Yi yi (2000)

99. Kenneth Anger

Director | Fireworks

Kenneth Anger grew up in Hollywood and started out as a child actor, but his interest in filmmaking was evident at an early age: he made his first film, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941) , at age 14.

Anger developed into one of the pioneers of the American underground film movement. His ...

Recommended Viewing: Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit's Moon (1950), Eaux d'artifice (1953), Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970), Lucifer Rising (1972)

100. Chantal Akerman

Director | Les rendez-vous d'Anna

Chantal Akerman was born on June 6, 1950 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for The Meetings of Anna (1978), I, You, He, She (1974) and A Couch in New York (1996). She was married to Sonia Wieder-Atherton. She died on October 5, 2015 in Paris, France.

Recommended Viewing: Le Chambre (1972), Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974), Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1976), A Whole Night (1982), Les Annees 80 (1983), D'est (1993), Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960's in Brussels (1994), La Captive (2000)