The Directors
by carljessieson | created - 24 Mar 2015 | updated - 09 Apr 2015 | PublicEvery director of every movie I've seen thus far on my Watchlist, in order by whose work I enjoyed the most, and other factors. Constantly being updated.
1. 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 ...
1. 4/1/15 - Citizen Kane - 10/10
2. 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 ...
1. 4/3/15 - The Wizard of Oz - 10/10 [with King Vidor, Norman Taurog, Mervyn LeRoy, and George Cukor]
3. 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. ...
1. 3/28/15 - Metropolis - 9/10
4. 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 ...
1. 3/31/15 - La Grande Illusion - 9/10
5. 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 ...
1. 3/24/15 - The Blue Angel - 8/10
6. Robert Wiene
Director | Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene was born on April 24, 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Das wandernde Licht (1916) and The Knight of the Rose (1925). He died on July 17, 1938 in Paris, France.
1. 3/20/15 - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - 8/10
7. James Whale
Director | Bride of Frankenstein
James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his four classic horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He also directed films in other genres, including what is ...
1. 3/24/15 - Frankenstein - 8/10 2. 3/24/15 - The Bride of Frankenstein - 8/10
8. 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. 4/5/15 - Modern Times - 8/10
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 ...
1. 3/21/15 - Nosferatu - 7/10
10. Giovanni Pastrone
Director | Cabiria
Giovanni Pastrone was born on September 13, 1883 in Montechiaro d'Asti, Piedmont, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Cabiria (1914), Julius Caesar (1909) and Il fuoco (la favilla - la vampa - la cenere) (1916). He died on June 27, 1959 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy.
1. 3/20/15 - Cabiria - 7/10
11. 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 ...
1. 4/3/15 - The Wizard of Oz - 10/10 [with Victor Fleming, Norman Taurog, Mervyn LeRoy, and George Cukor]
12. Norman Taurog
Director | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A successful child actor (on stage from 1907) and rather less successful romantic lead, baby-faced Norman Taurog found being behind the camera a more rewarding experience. Before becoming a director, he paid his dues as a prop man and editor. By 1919, he was put in charge of two-reel comedies, ...
1. 4/3/15 - The Wizard of Oz - 10/10 [with Victor Fleming, King Vidor, Mervyn LeRoy, and George Cukor]
13. Mervyn LeRoy
Producer | The Wizard of Oz
The great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 was a tragedy for Mervyn LeRoy. While he and his father managed to survive, they lost everything they had. To make money, LeRoy sold newspapers and entered talent contests as a singer. When he entered vaudeville, his act was "LeRoy and Cooper--Two...
1. 4/3/15 - The Wizard of Oz - 10/10 [with Victor Fleming, King Vidor, Norman Taurog, and George Cukor]
14. 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...
1. 4/3/15 - The Wizard of Oz - 10/10 [with Victor Fleming, King Vidor, Norman Taurog, and Mervyn LeRoy]
15. 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 ...
1. 4/5/15 - Rebel Without a Cause - 5/10
16. Ernest B. Schoedsack
Director | Dr. Cyclops
Ernest B. Schoedsack was born on June 8, 1893 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and Rango (1931). He was married to Ruth Rose. He died on December 23, 1979 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.
1. 3/29/15 - King Kong - 6/10 [with Merian C. Cooper]
17. Merian C. Cooper
Writer | King Kong
In 1920, Merian C. Cooper was a member of volunteer of the American Kosciuszko Squadron that supported the Polish army in the war with Soviet Russia, where he met best friend and producing partner Ernest B. Schoedsack. On 26 July 1920, his plane was shot down, and he spent nearly nine months in the...
1. 3/29/15 - King Kong - 6/10 [with Ernest B. Schoedsack]
18. 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 ...
1. 3/22/15 - Battleship Potemkin - 6/10
19. Edmund Goulding
Director | Grand Hotel
London-born Edmund Goulding was an actor/playwright/director on the London stage, and entered the British army when WWI broke out. Mustered out of the service because of wounds suffered in battle, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1921. He obtained assignments as a screenwriter in Hollywood, wrote a ...
1. 3/29/15 - Grand Hotel - 5/10
20. 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 ...
1. 4/3/15 - It Happened One Night - 4/10
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