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  The 1,000 Greatest Films The Top 100 Directors  
  • The 1,000 Greatest Films Home  • The Top 300 Films  • The Full List  • The Top 100 Directors  • PDF Companion  • Links  
  The Top 300 Films: • 1-25  • 26-50   • 51-75   • 76-100  • 101-150  • 151-200  • 201-250  • 251-300  
     
     
  • Listed below are, according to our calculations, the 100 most critically acclaimed filmmakers of all-time.  
  • As per the 1,000 Greatest Films, this list has been compiled from a huge resource of best-film lists. Additionally, also factored in are some 'Best Director' polls, as per those listed at the bottom of this page  
  • Alongside each director's name is the position each director held prior to the December 2008 update, and also the number of films they have within the 1,000 Greatest.  
  • To qualify for this top-100, each director needs to have a minimum of 2 films in the 1,000 Greatest Films listing.  
  • In the December 2008 update, the 3 directors that fell out of the top 100 were: Theo Angelopoulos, Stan Brakhage and James Whale. They were replaced by Raoul Walsh, James Cameron and Chantal Akerman.  
     
 

1

Orson Welles (1) 8 films

2

Alfred Hitchcock (2) 14 films

3

Federico Fellini (3) 12 films

4

John Ford (4) 18 films (the most)

5

Stanley Kubrick (5) 11 films

6

Jean Renoir (6) 11 films

7

Akira Kurosawa (7) 11 films

8

Ingmar Bergman (8) 13 films

9

Francis Ford Coppola (11) 5 films

10

Jean-Luc Godard (9) 13 films
11

Charles Chaplin (12) 10 films 12 Billy Wilder (13) 8 films
13 Luis Buρuel (10) 15 films 14 Martin Scorsese (14) 9 films
15 Howard Hawks (15) 11 films 16 Carl Dreyer (16) 5 films
17 Sergei Eisenstein (17) 7 films 18  F.W. Murnau (18) 6 films
19 Yasujiro Ozu (19) 7 films 20 Robert Bresson (20) 8 films
21 Fritz Lang (22) 16 films 22 Andrei Tarkovsky (21) 7 films
23 Franηois Truffaut (24) 7 films 24 Kenji Mizoguchi (23) 10 films
25 David Lean (25) 6 films 26 Buster Keaton (26) 7 films
27 Michelangelo Antonioni (27) 6 films 28 Roberto Rossellini (29) 8 films
29 D.W. Griffith (28) 5 films 30 Steven Spielberg (31) 7 films
31 Max Ophόls (30) 7 films 32 Vittorio De Sica (32) 4 films
33 Luchino Visconti (34) 9 films 34 Ernst Lubitsch (36) 7 films
35 Satyajit Ray (33) 6 films 36 John Huston (37) 8 films
37 Woody Allen (35) 8 films 38 Stanley Donen Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly (41) 2 films
39 Jean Vigo (39) 2 films 40 Roman Polanski (38) 5 films
41 Robert Altman (40) 8 films 42 Michael Powell Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (42) 7 films
43 Frank Capra (43) 6 films 44 Michael Curtiz (46) 2 films
45 Alain Resnais (44) 6 films 46 Sergio Leone (45) 3 films
47 Victor Fleming (51) 2 films 48 Sam Peckinpah (47) 7 films
49 Preston Sturges (49) 5 films 50 Bernardo Bertolucci (48) 7 films
51 Carol Reed (50) 3 films 52 Ridley Scott (55) 4 films
53 John Cassavetes (52) 7 films 54 Marcel Carnι (53) 3 films
55 Erich von Stroheim (54) 4 films 56 George Cukor (58) 5 films
57 Rainer Werner Fassbinder (61) 6 films 58 Leo McCarey (62) 5 films
59 Vincente Minnelli (64) 5 films 60 Douglas Sirk (65) 6 films
61 Werner Herzog (56) 5 films 62 David Lynch (59) 7 films
63 Jacques Tati (57) 3 films 64 Josef von Sternberg (63) 8 films
65 Nicholas Ray (66) 6 films 66 Pier Paolo Pasolini (68) 5 films
67 Elia Kazan (67) 6 films 68 Joseph L. Mankiewicz (70) 4 films
69 Krzysztof Kieslowski (60) 7 films 70 William Wyler (71) 5 films
71 Abbas Kiarostami (69) 6 films 72 Terrence Malick (72) 3 films
73 King Vidor (73) 6 films 74 Jacques Tourneur (74) 4 films
75 Milos Forman (79) 4 films 76 Wim Wenders (80) 4 films
77 Jacques Rivette (78) 4 films 78 Chris Marker (75) 2 films
79 Eric Rohmer (81) 7 films 80 Wong Kar-Wai (77) 5 films
81 Quentin Tarantino (82) 2 films 82 David Cronenberg (76) 3 films
83 Joel Coen Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (84) 5 films 84 Jean Cocteau (86) 4 films
85 Hou Hsiao-Hsien (83) 4 films 86 Clint Eastwood (89) 3 films
87 Jean-Pierre Melville (92) 6 films 88 Nicolas Roeg (90) 4 films
89 Robert Flaherty (88) 4 films 90 Alexander Dovzhenko (85) 2 films
91 Sidney Lumet (91) 4 films 92 Brian De Palma (98) 3 films
93 Jacques Demy (87) 4 films 94 Raoul Walsh (--) 3 films
95 George Lucas (93) 2 films 96 James Cameron (--) 3 films
97 Andrzej Wajda (99) 3 films 98 Otto Preminger (97) 3 films
99 Chantal Akerman (--) 2 films 100 George Stevens (94) 3 films

 

 
 
 
 
         
More Director Listings
• Total Film's The Greatest Directors Ever (2007)
• Are we useful? They could be contenders. The Globe and Mail (2007).
• Telegraph's Top 21 British Directors of All Time (2007).
• Reel.com's Greatest Directors feature.
• Gerald Peary's Magnificent Seven (2006).
• The Cinematheque's ongoing Directors Poll.
• Entertainment Weekly's Top 50 Directors (1996). It comes courtesy of Jack Ferdman's The Best of Movies website and is a much better list than any one could have possibly predicted from EW.
• Film critic Jeffrey M. Anderson (San Francisco Examiner, Las Vegas Weekly) lists his "50 Greatest Directors and their 100 Greatest Films" at his website Combustible Celluloid.
• A Survey of Cinema's Top Directors: Scanning the past and looking to the future (2005 poll by The Film Journal).
• Under the Influence: MovieMaker blue-chip panel names the 25 Most Influential Directors of All Time (2002 poll). And, how about The Religious Affiliation of the 25 Most Influential Film Directors of all time!!!
• Cut and Print: The 40 best directors (2004 poll by The Guardian of the best 'active' filmmakers).
• Film Critic Fred Camper lists his Favorite Filmmakers.
• Bill Mousoulis, independent Australian filmmaker and founding editor of Senses of Cinema, offers up his list of the Top 50 directors of all-time.
• MSNBC's Top 10 American Directors.
• Strange Horizons' Ten Best Science Fiction Film Directors.
 
 
     
  • The 1,000 Greatest Films Home  • The Top 300 Films  • The Full List  • The Top 100 Directors  • PDF Companion  • Links  
  The Top 300 Films: • 1-25  • 26-50   • 51-75   • 76-100  • 101-150  • 151-200  • 201-250  • 251-300  
     

 

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Last updated: 25/12/2008 09:05 AM.  Contact Us: bill@theyshootpictures.com.
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