Greatest Non-Living Directors

[havocSchultz]

ok - now i don't mean the directors who have come back from the grave to direct film - like a film-maker version of keith richards - but we have a thread on the greatest living directors - how bout the ones that are no longer with us...
for example -
Hitchcock, Kubrick, Leone, and Peckinpah would probably be 4 of my favorite directors - living or dead... what're some of your favorites that have passed on - but left us a legacy of greatness...
oh yeah - and you can't use those 4 i listed - those are mine - be creative and come up with your own...








j/k - i'm being a douche.. of course you can use those....
you copy-cats...

[HollywoodBabylon]

F W Murnau
Orson Welles
Carl Dreyer

Jean Renoir
Robert Bresson
Samuel Fuller
Victor Sjostrom
Charlie Chaplin

Sergo Paradjanov
Andrei Tarkovsky
Howard Hawks
Jean Vigo
Rainier Werner Fassbinder
Billy Wilder
Federico Fellini
Buster Keaton
Kenji Mizoguchi
Krzyztof Kieslowski

So many to choose from, but these are the first that entered my head....

[ZombieZoneSolutions]

Kubrick and Kurosawa... two of my all time faves...

[Bob Samonkey]

Akira Kurosawa

Edit: (Always happens to me. Same time I post, someone of the same mind does too.)

[HollywoodBabylon]

God, I forgot Nicholas Ray.........sacrilege. And Kazan.

[TonyWilson]

Oh come on guys, where's the Luis Bunuel love?

[HollywoodBabylon]

Oh come on guys, where's the Luis Bunuel love?

And Cocteau as well. THE two great surrealists of the screen.

[nodforlife]

Sam Peckinpah

Why did he have to die before he worked with Arnold or Stallone? Sam Peckinpah's COBRA anyone????

[Cabiria]

Ditto to all of the above, especially Fellini!

Let me add:
Yasujiro Ozu (so precise! Swoon!)
Satyajit Ray (The World of Apu with the "morning after" scene with the hair pin- it doesn't get much better than that.)
Francois Truffaut
Robert Wise
Vincente Minnelli (So innovative with the musical genre)

I know I'm missing someone else... grr...

[minstrel]

Stanley Kubrick. 2001, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange ... this man had visionary genius in SPADES.

Sergio Leone. Father of the extreme close-up. And, oh yeah, some of the greatest Westerns ever.

Cecil B. DeMille. Sure, he was pompous and lowbrow and ridiculous. But nobody, and I mean nobody, ever put spectacle on the screen like he did.

Alfred Hitchcock. The master of everything DeMille couldn't fathom. Pacing, tension, the art of making big drama out of small people. I'm not a film student, but if I was, his films would be my textbook.

I haven't seen anything by Bunuel, Cocteau, Fassbinder, or any of the other guys everybody says are great. But I'm sure I'll come up with more for my list.

[ZombieZoneSolutions]

Oh come on guys, where's the Luis Bunuel love?

Bunel is a hack! Anyone could slice an eyeball!

[/kidding]

[minstrel]

I forgot David Lean. He's in there, too.

[John-Locke]

Obviously I will go for

Kubrick
Leone
Hitchcock
Peckinpah
David Lean
and many others who I'm too young to remember now who were either geniuses or responsible for the evolution of cinema for which they deserve a tip of the hat.

But I want to throw some love out there for a man taken way before his time just a few years ago in 2002, a man who was showing trememdous promise as a Director.

Ted Demme

He died of an accidental cocaine induced thrombotic heart attack.

And he Directed Blow, don't do hard drugs and if you must... please don't do them to excess.

[minstrel]

Obviously I will go for

Kubrick
Leone
Hitchcock
Peckinpah
David Lean
and many others who I'm too young to remember now who were either geniuses or responsible for the evolution of cinema for which they deserve a tip of the hat.

But I want to throw some love out there for a man taken way before his time just a few years ago in 2002, a man who was showing trememdous promise as a Director.

Ted Demme

He died of an accidental cocaine induced thrombotic heart attack.

And he Directed Blow, don't do hard drugs and if you must... please don't do them to excess.

Amen. Waaaaay too many talented people destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol. Stay away from excess!

As Mr. Spock says, "Live long, and prosper".

[Seppuku]

Raoul Walsh has probably made some of my favourite movies. He doesn't get anywhere near enough credit these days. Him and, you guessed it, that Kurosawa fella.

[cinephile2000]

Kurasawa
Hitchcock
Leone
Some of my fav movies come out of those three

[StarWarsRedux]

Fritz Lang
One of the contenders not for first of the best, but also best of the best. Sad that he's so overlooked these days...

Kubrick
Obviously.

Kurosawa
Also obviously, thanks to Lucas touting his memory.

Fellini
Sadly, not so obviously nowadays.

Truffaut
At least people might know him as Lacombe...

Tarkovsky
I'm still on the fence about whether Soderbergh helped or hindered his memory with the remake of Solaris.

Renoir
If it weren't for Criterion, nobody in my generation would know about him.

Brakkagh
If it weren't for Criterion, nobody in my generation would care, and I still don't care enough to check my spelling, there.

[Cbabbitt]

Otto Preminger. Ernst Lubitsch.

[Dark Knight]

Walt Disney

I know he only directed cartoon shorts but he was a creative force to be reckoned with.

[John-Locke]

Otto Preminger. Ernst Lubitsch.

Cbabbitt

Now there's a blast from the past

Where in the hell have you been????

[LeFlambeur]

On the whole, the greatest director ever would have to be Kurosawa. He has more great films than most directors, his influence runs deeper, he has contributed more to the language of cinema than most directors. On the whole, I'd say Kurosawa has everyone beat.

[Leckomaniac]

The Musicbox Theatre in Chicago is playing a different Renoir movie every weekend as a matinee...I love that theatre and I love seeing his movies up on the big screen.

[JabberJaw]

Billy Wilder
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
Frank Capra <<<< great director
John Ford
Cecil B Demille

[Brocktune]

Kubrick and Kurosawa... two of my all time faves...

fuck, are there even any others? i have a long list of much loved and respected directors myself, but those two werent even human. they were fucking gods.


... i dont mean they were copulating with deities, but rather that they were divine themselves.

[MisterCynic]

ford and hawks, gigantic filmographies filled with great films.

hitchcock, kubrick, kurosawa are the really easy answers.

[Flumm]

Charles Laughton, for Night f The Hunter.

Only one movie, but what a movie, eh? Not many directors can boast 100% strike rate.

[Brocktune]

Charles Laughton, for Night f The Hunter.

Only one movie, but what a movie, eh? Not many directors can boast 100% strike rate.

that movie fucking rules
did you know, that night of the hunter was recieved so poorly, (critically speaking) that laughton swore he would never make another film? and he didnt. fucking stupid ass critics. that flick is a goddamned masterpiece. oh well, what're you gonna do? upon its release, one american critic called kurosawa's throne of blood "laughable".
rot in hell, sir.
rot in hell.

[Flumm]

Yeah, seemed like he quite a sensitive, even neurotic guy. But at least he managed to leave a beautifull legacy behind for the people who care, right?

You know what suprised me actually, is that when Shelly Winters passed away a little while back, I saw 2 mentions of Night of the Hunter out of dozens of articlse and news items. And of them was indirect, just a "worked with people such as Robert Mitchum..." kind of thing.. . Scoundrels.

[Brocktune]

bastards

[buster00]

Walt Disney

I know he only directed cartoon shorts but he was a creative force to be reckoned with.

ONLY cartoon shorts? Hey, man, I'll back ya up: Tex Avery. Chuck Jones. Friz Freling. Bob Clampett. Walter Lantz. We could keep going here. Animated films are just as valid and Oscar-worthy as any other.

[TheButcher]

From io9:
Watch Mars and Beyond, Disney’s trippy 1950s vision of space exploration and extraterrestrial life

Four years before the Soviet Union's Luna 2 reached the surface of the Moon, and fourteen years ahead of the crewed Apollo 11 mission, Walt Disney introduced audiences to deep space exploration with a trio of fantastic space-themed featurettes.

Disney's motive for producing these "science factual" programs was two-fold. The first was to promote Tomorrowland — one of the four major sections of the Disneyland theme park in California. The second was to use the novel medium of television to illustrate "how high man might fly on the strength of technology and the spirit of human imagination." The objective, Disney said, was to combine "the tools of our trade with the knowledge of the scientists to give a factual picture of the latest plans for man's newest adventure."

The first program in the series, Man In Space, aired in March of 1955. Later that year, Man and the Moon was televised to homes all around the United States. Featured up top is Mars and Beyond, the third installment, which aired two years later in December, 1957.

All three are definitely worth watching, but Mars and Beyond really stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of raw futuristic content. The 52-minute segment explores ideas from science fiction giants like H.G. Wells, discusses the feasibility of humans inhabiting planets throughout the solar system, and even considers the possibility of alien life on Mars — all with animations unlike any Disney film you've ever seen.

Read more about Disney's retrofuturistic visions of the future and their influence on space exploration over at NASA.

"The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration"
by
Mike Wright
Marshall Space Flight Center Historian

[SilentBobX]

Howard Hawks. No director today can fearlessly leap from war movies to comedy to western to scifi. And to not be pigeonholed as a director of just one genre of film.

My personal favorites:

Hatari

The thing from another world

El Dorado

Rio Bravo(yeah, they're basically the same movie)

Sgt York

Bringing up baby

Red River


There are many I've yet to see, I need to get TCM back.


Mahalo

[BuckyO'harre]

Along the same line- William Wyler.
Some of his biggies:

Ben-Hur
Roman Holiday
The Big Country
How to Steal a Million
The Best Years of Our Lives
Detective Story
Dodsworth
Jezebel
Wuthering Heights
The Heiress


So what if he didn't have a signature shooting style? Nothing wrong with dabbling.

[Seppuku]

^ Not to mention transitioning from Ye Olde Hollywood to Ye Fucked Up Hollywood better than most with The Collector.