The 20 Best Directors of All Time - ScreenCraft (2024)

Who are the best directors of all time? That's a harder question to answer than you might think. Is it those whose work came first and created the foundation of early cinema? Is it those who have advanced cinema most spectacularly? Or maybe it's those whose work every filmmaker and screenwriter should know?

Any such compilation is inherently subjective, betraying its author’s own sense and sensibilities, to the extent that it would almost certainly be more accurately entitled, “20 Truly Great Directors.” Nevertheless, it would be absurd to overlook the achievements of these great directors. From silent cinema to 21st-century cinema, they have produced most of the medium-defining works of cinema: the films that stand out as the consummate examples of filmmaking.

Here they are, in reverse order.

20. Robert Altman

Some would dispute Altman’s right to be on a list of the two hundred best directors of all time, let alone the top 20 because they do not like his uniquely individual and genuinely iconoclastic style, the trademarks of which included unlikely or anti-heroes, overlapping dialogue, and historical revisionism. And yet it is arguable that at the end of the 20th century no other director produced such a succession of great films that captured so much of the messiness and even monstrosity of late Western civilization.

Like Hollywood itself, Altman enjoyed two golden ages. The first was nearly a decade long, taking in almost the entire 1970s when he produced a trilogy of apparently sprawling but in reality meticulously plotted classics inM*A*S*H (1970),McCabe and Mrs. Miller(1971), andNashville(1975). Again like Hollywood, Altman’s second golden age in the early 1990s was significantly shorter than the first, really consisting ofThe Player(1992) andShort Cuts(1993). Nevertheless, this pair of late Altman classics reminded everyone of his sheer shaggy genius.

19. Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky is the James Joyce of cinema: a man who directed relatively few films (only seven features in total), just as Joyce wrote relatively few books, but, just like Joyce, every one of his works was a masterpiece.

Tarkovsky’s magnificent seven films began withIvan’s Childhood(1962), one of the greatest films ever made about both childhood and war. It continued withAndrei Rublev(1966), a biopic not of the current Russian tennis player but the 15th-century Russian painter of the same name; andSolaris(1972), the finest Soviet sci-fi film ever made.

However, it was with his next three films that Tarkovsky really sealed his reputation as one of the true cinematic greats. InMirror(1975),Stalker(1979), andNostalghia (1983), he almost became his own genre, both pioneering and perfecting a uniquely individual and idiosyncratic style of filmmaking in which images were arguably subjected to more “processing” and even warping than at any time since the Silent Era, when there were only images (and not sound as well) to manipulate.

Finally, there wasThe Sacrifice(1986), a cinematic updating of the story of Abraham in which a man tries to negotiate with God to prevent nuclear Armageddon. Made at the height of the First Cold War, when Tarkovsky himself was dying of cancer, it may be the definitive “end times” film, and as such it remains horribly relevant in the 21st century.

18. David Lean

David Lean’s star may have fallen from its high point at the end of the 1960s when he capped a trilogy of truly epic films —The Bridge On The River Kwai(1957),Lawrence of Arabia(1962), andDoctor Zhivago(1965) – withRyan’s Daughter(1970), which was so savaged by critics that Lean did not make another film for nearly 15 years (A Passage To India(1984)). However, just asRyan’s Daughteritself has now been largely critically rehabilitated, so Lean himself should be regarded as one of the master directors, and not just of epics.

Indeed, Lean’s career was so long that he almost seems to have had two or three different careers. The films with which he made his name in the 1940s, including his debutIn Which We Serve(1942) andBrief Encounter(1948), were anything but epic; instead, they were intimate but nonetheless immensely powerful stories of Britain and Britons at war. And his pair of Dickens films,Great Expectations(1946) andOliver Twist(1948), are arguably the finest-ever screen adaptations of Dickens novels.

Still, it is the epics for which Lean will be remembered, and deservedly so. InBridge,Lawrence,Zhivago, and, yes, evenRyan’s Daughter, he depicted troubled individuals against the largest backdrops imaginable: a lone British officer standing up to his Japanese captors; an eccentric Englishman leading the Arab revolution against their Turkish overlords; a Russian doctor (and nurse) trying to survive the Russian revolution; and a mismatched Irish couple being caught up in both World War OneandIreland’s struggle for independence. Indeed, if you had to choose just one director to capture the majesty and turbulence of the 20th century, it would surely be David Lean.

17. Michael Powell

It is almost perverse to type the words “Michael Powell” without immediately adding “Emeric Pressburger” because the Briton and the Hungarian-born Briton were arguably the greatest directing-screenwriting partnership in history. Nonetheless, Powell was a great director in his own right.

Powell and Pressburger took a while to get going, making several fairly un-astonishing films before entering their imperial phase in the mid-1940s when they produced arguably the greatest-ever series of films about England, the English and Englishness:The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp(1943), a classic love triangle played out against the backdrop of two World Wars;A Canterbury Tale(1944), which was less an updating of Chaucer than an explosion of Chaucer and so many other English archetypes in film and literature;I Know Where I'm Going!(1945), in which an ambitious young woman has to make the ultimate choice between happiness and wealth;A Matter of Life and Death (1946), in which a seemingly doomed British airman struggles to stay alive so he can meet the American radio operator trying to guide him home;Black Narcissus(1947), which is to cinema whatRevolverorPet Soundsare to pop music, namely the finest ever studio creation; andThe Red Shoes(1948), the ultimate cinematic (and psychedelic) dance film.

16. Buster Keaton

It would of course be possible to produce a list of the 20 Best Directors of the Silent Era, the formative phase of cinema that is so often forgotten now. Chaplin, Griffith, Murnau, Von Stroheim, and many others would merit inclusion on that list, but arguably the greatest silent filmmaker of them all and the one whose work most resonates with audiences a century later is Buster Keaton.

The greatest Keaton films areSherlock Jr.(1924), in which Keaton’s movie projectionist becomes an amateur sleuth to try and win the hand of the girl he loves;The General(1926), in which Keaton steals a succession of locomotives, including the titular train, during the American Civil War; andSteamboat Bill, Jr.(1928), in which Keaton plays the captain of a steam paddle-boat trying to resist the onslaught of new technology.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. was virtually Keaton’s own cinematic epitaph, as he too would become a victim of technological change when the arrival of sound finally ended the Silent Age that he had been the (stone) face of. Nevertheless, his trademark stoicism in the face of disaster and above all his absolute commitment and ingenuity as a filmmaker, as perfected in the still remarkable house collapse inSteamboat Bill, Jr.(which he survives by dint of an open upstairs window), ensure that Keaton will always be a cinematic immortal.

15. Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks was one of the greatest Hollywood directors ever, mastering many different genres and eliciting career-best performances even from superstars such as Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. In a career lasting nearly fifty years – so, from the Silent Era to the start of the 1970s and the second golden age of Hollywood – he produced at least half a dozen classic films that rank among the finest films that Hollywood has ever produced.

The first of Hawks’ classics was the original Paul Muni-staringScarface(1932), one of the original gangster pictures. However, he soon proved that he was equally adept at comedy, particularly the screwball comedy that was arguably Hollywood’s finest genre in the 1930s, with rapid wisecracking by both men and women as the emancipation of Western women after World War One led to a seemingly unending “Battle of the Sexes”. Among Hawks’ finest screwball comedies wereBringing Up Baby(1938) andHis Girl Friday(1940), both of which are absolute stone-cold classics of the genre.

Hawks then mastered noir withTo Have and Have Not(1944) andThe Big Sleep(1946), in the process introducing Bogart to Bacall and generating arguably the most sizzling screen chemistry of all time. And for his final act, near the end of his career, he produced one of the last great Westerns inRio Bravo (1959), in which John Wayne, Dean Martin, and then-teen sensation Ricky Nelson hole up in a sheriff’s cell against a veritable army of bad guys.

14. Francis Ford Coppola

Almost all the directors on this list enjoyed imperial phases of some kind or other when almost everything they touched turned to greatness, but arguably the most imperial phase of them all was enjoyed by Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970s. In that decade, Hollywood’s second golden age, Coppola wrote and directedThe Godfather (Parts I&II)(1972 and 1974),The Conversation(1974), andApocalypse Now(1979), as well as writing two other great screenplays for films that he did not direct,Patton(1970) andThe Great Gatsby(1975). In short, Coppola could set his 1970s against any other equivalent period in a great filmmaker’s career and be confident of coming out on top.

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2022 was the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the originalGodfatherand age has not wearied it. It still remains, as Stanley Kubrick (another great director on this list) said at the time, perhaps the greatest film ever made. And yet if anything,Godfather IIbettered it, not least in its radical structure, whereby it served as both prequel and sequel to the first film.

13. Carl Theodor Dreyer

Dreyer was Bergman before Bergman, bringing a singularly Scandinavian sensibility to filmmaking, contrasting a cold, austere, almost Arctic darkness of subject matter with spectacular and beautiful Aurora Borealis (or Northern Lights)-like displays of emotion.

Dreyer’s greatest film isLa Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc)(1928), which was one of the last great silent films. However, unlike so many other luminaries of the Silent Era, such as Buster Keaton, Dreyer successfully made the transition to sound filmmaking and continued to make masterpieces for nearly half a century afterJoan. Among them areVampyr(1932), one of the most realistic and therefore one of the most terrifying of all vampire movies;Ordet (The Word)(1955), one of the great cinematic explorations of faith and faithlessness; andGertrud(1964), his last, slowest (one take lasts over 10 minutes) and perhaps most breathtakingly beautiful film.

12. Martin Scorsese

If people had had to bet at the end of the 1970s on which of the “Movie Brats turned Movie Moguls” – i.e. Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese – would have the longer and more stellar career, most money would have been on Coppola after his own spectacular 1970s. Yet in the end, it was no contest, as Scorsese built on his own superb 1970s (notablyMean Streets(1973) andTaxi Driver(1976)) to continue making great films right up to the present day, whereas Coppola, having dominated the 70s, effectively ended up being stuck in them.

Raging Bull(1980) showed spectacularly that, unlike Coppola, Scorsese could thrive in a new decade and, again unlike Coppola, he also showed that he could master comedy inThe King of Comedy(1982). Then, at the end of the decade, came Scorsese’s own equivalent of Coppola’sTheGodfather,Goodfellas(1990), which together withThe Godfatherand TV’sThe Sopranosconstitutes The Truly Unholy Trinity of great screen stories about gangsters.

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Perhaps most impressively of all, Scorsese showed that he could thrive not only in a new decade but in a whole new millennium, as he has experienced a late, great phase in which he has produced works comparable to his very best films of three or four decades earlier. In particular,The Aviator(2004), his biopic of Howard Hughes that was fittingly both bizarre and meticulous, andThe Wolf of Wall Street(2013), have shown that his is one of the greatest and most enduring careers of any director.

11. Yasujirō Ozu

Like several other entrants on this list, Yasujirō Ozu enjoyed a long apprenticeship as a filmmaker, directing his first film when he was only 24 and making many more films for another quarter-century before finally finding his perfect subject matter and style. However, it was ultimately worth the wait, as Ozu’s late masterpieces, particularlyTokyo Story(1953), which is arguably the greatest film ever made about family, are among the most haunting and hauntingly beautiful films ever made.

Tokyo Storymay be the simplest truly great film ever made, at least in plot terms, as an elderly Japanese couple visits their children (and daughter-in-law, who is now a widow) in Tokyo. And yet like Chaucer’sCanterbury Tales, all human life appears to be here in this Tokyo tale, as the inevitable clashes between the generations are perfectly played out and photographed.

Tokyo Storyis Ozu’s absolute masterpiece, but his reputation does not rely on it alone, as other late, great works by him includeEarly Spring(1956), in which a bored office worker attempts to restart his stalled life by having an affair with a co-worker, andAn Autumn Afternoon(1962), his last film, in which an old man attempts to find a husband for his daughter before he dies.

10. Orson Welles

If any one film were enough to merit its director’s inclusion on this list, it would beCitizen Kane(1941), which revolutionized screen storytelling with its complex, oblique, shaken-up-snow-globe approach to biodrama. However, contrary to Hollywood mythology, it was far from the only great film that Welles made, even if none of his other masterpieces ever achieved the artistic and commercial success thatKanedid.

The Magnificent Ambersons(1942), the film that Welles made directly afterKanebut famously lost control of to the studio (RKO), is frustratingly wonderful: an inter-generational love story that could have beenKane’sequal if Welles had not lost control of and interest in it. But his two great Shakespeare adaptations,Othello(1950) andChimes at Midnight(1966), are among the finest films of Shakespeare's plays. And inTouch of Evil(1958), he made arguably the last great noir of the original era of noir.

9. Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is “The Man Who Made Hollywood”, as so many of his greatest Japanese films were remade in English and became classics in their own right:Seven Samurai(1954) becameThe Magnificent Seven;The Hidden Fortress(1958) was one of the major inspirations forStar Wars;Yojimbo(1961) was remade asA Fistful of Dollars. Even today, he is a seemingly unending source of inspiration for filmmakers, asLiving(2022), the Bill Nighy-starring bureaucrat-faces-death story is a remake ofIkuru(1952). However, Kurosawa’s originals remain unsurpassed, as his samurai films created an alternative cinematic world, an “Uncontrollable East” to the “Wild West” that Hollywood had traditionally been interested in.

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Nevertheless, there was so much more to Kurosawa than just the samurai films that made his name. For one thing, there wasRashom*on(1950), which may nominally be a samurai movie but in reality, is a dissection of memory and identity. And like Welles, Kurosawa filmed Shakespeare brilliantly, even if he abandoned Shakespeare’s verse for roving camerawork and the creation of truly eery atmospheres.Throne of Blood(1957) was virtually Shakespeare as Noh theatre (or rather Noh cinema), capturing the essence ofMacbethwithout actually quoting it, andRan(1985) was even better, an adaptation of King Lear that captured the madness of the original play and enhanced it with some of the greatest scenes of early modern warfare (with swords pitted against cannons) ever captured on screen.

8. Alfred Hitchco*ck

It’s ironic that Alfred Hitchco*ck was universally known as “Hitch” because in the early 21st century there are various “hitches” (or problems) attached to any adoration of Hitchco*ck. The voyeurism (on and off screen), the obsession with his leading ladies (which led the leading-est of them, Grace Kelly, to decamp to Europe), and even those appalling, almost amateurish backdrops to moving cars that make many 21st-century viewers cringe, if not laugh outright.

And yet there is still no doubt that Hitchco*ck is one of the greatest film directors ever and in several different eras of cinema. His breakthrough was a silent classic,The Lodger(1927), which was a brilliantly malevolent riff on Jack The Ripper; he made early sound classics inThe 39 Steps(1935) andThe Lady Vanishes(1938), which virtually established the template for every thriller or “action movie” that followed; and afterRebecca(1940) attracted the attention of Hollywood, he became one of the greatest foreign film directors to work in America.

Hitchco*ck virtuallywasthe 1950s in America, as his succession of “suspense” classics, fromRear Window(1954) toVertigo(1958) andNorth by Northwest(1959), were the finest cinematic expression of the existential fear that gripped humanity in the decade after Hiroshima. And inPsycho(1960), he effectively eschewed suspense and created the horror genre.

7. Billy Wilder

With all due respect to Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls and even Billy Wilder’s own filmmaking hero Ernst Lubitsch, Austria’s Billy Wilder is the only foreign-born director who can rival and even exceed England’s Alfred Hitchco*ck as the greatest “alien” chronicler of America. And although Wilder made fewer masterpieces than Hitch and indeed many other directors on this list, his finest five films are a rival for any other director’s finest handful of classics.

Wilder enjoyed two great phases as a director, divided by about a decade. The first came in the 1940s and early 1950s, when he made one of the greatest noirs,Double Indemnity(1945), the greatest film about Hollywood,Sunset Boulevard(1950), and the greatest film about news reporting,Ace In The Hole(1951).

However, it was the “double bill” that Wilder made at the end of the 1950s that secured his reputation as a master of cinema.Some Like It Hot(1959) may not have been made in the 1930s but it is still the greatest screwball comedy ever made, whileThe Apartment(1960) is arguably the finest comedy-drama ever made. Certainly, no other director has ever made two such completely different masterpieces back to back and within a single year.

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6. Robert Bresson

Jean-Luc Godard (who, unsurprisingly, appears in this list himself) famously wrote of Bresson: “He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.” And yet Bresson is often the forgotten man of French cinema, sandwiched as he is between the wonders of Renoir in the 1930s and the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) of Godard, Truffaut, and others in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Bresson’s films themselves are, once seen, rarely if ever forgotten.

In many ways, Bresson was to cinema what composers like John Adams and La Monte Young were to music: a master of minimalism. It was as if after the obscene, almost world-ending excess of World War Two, Bresson wanted to strip everything else away to get back to the basics of storytelling on screen. And he did so spectacularly in several masterpieces, includingUn condamné à mort s'est échappé (A Man Escaped)(1956), which depicted the attempt by a member of the French resistance to escape from the Nazi prison in which he was being held;Pickpocket(1959), which was almost a Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) film before the term existed; andAu Hasard Balthazar(1966), which, remarkably, is a film about a donkey, whose cruel treatment by his owners elicits more pity than most films about humans.

5. Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick has been called “The Shakespeare of Cinema” and if anyone is deserving of such a tribute it is the American-turned-Briton, because just as Shakespeare mastered what were considered the three genres of Elizabethan theatre (comedy, history, and tragedy), so Kubrick proved himself a master of almost all cinematic genres, from noir to sci-fi to period drama.

Indeed, most of Kubrick’s films are either the best or among the best in their particular genre:The Killing(1956) is one of the greatest and darkest film noirs;Paths of Glory(1957) is one of the greatest ever war films and certainly the greatest film about World War One;Spartacus(1960) may have been disowned by Kubrick, but it remains probably the greatest epic (or “swords and sandals”) movie;Barry Lyndon(1975) is one of the finest period dramas ever filmed;The Shining(1980) is a great horror film, and certainly the greatest horror film ever made by a great director.

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However, it is for his “Madness Trilogy” -Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) (1964),2001: A Space Odyssey(1968), andA Clockwork Orange(1971) – that Kubrick will forever be celebrated. Each film examined a particular aspect of man’s inherent madness: the MAD (mutually assured destruction)-ness of atomic warfare (inStrangelove); the madness of humanity’s predisposition for violence and trust of machines (in2001); and the madness of state-sanctioned violence being used to try and control individual violence (inOrange). And the centerpiece, of course, is2001: A Space Odyssey, which is not just the greatest sci-fi film ever made but a contender for the title of the greatest film ever made in any genre.

4. Federico Fellini

And so we come to the twin inspirations for Woody Allen and so many other filmmakers in the late 20th century, namely the two poles (south and north) of post-war European cinema: Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. Both men were virtually one-man film industries who produced a succession of classics that not only garnered critical acclaim and commercial success but altered the parameters of what was possible in cinema.

Fellini first emerged from the Italian neorealism that immediately followed World War Two. However, he emerged fully formed in the 1950s withI Vitelloni(The Layabouts) (1953), which was Kubrick’s favorite film and a huge inspiration in his decision to become a filmmaker, andLa Strada (The Road)(1954), which depicted one of the strangest love stories in all of cinema, between a circus strongman and the small female clown he bullies.

But Fellini was just beginning, as he continued to document the new world emerging in Italy (and the rest of the Western world) after the devastation of World War Two. InLe notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)(1957), he broke cinema audiences’ hearts again with his story of a prostitute trying to escape her miserable existence; inLa Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life)(1960), he introduced the world to the Paparazzi and the press intrusion they brought with them; and inOtto e mezzo(8 ½)he made what remains probably the greatest film ever made about filmmaking itself.

3. Ingmar Bergman

Bergman was so often linked with Fellini, not just by Woody Allen but by almost any serious scholar of post-war cinema, precisely because they appeared so different: Fellini the warm-hearted, sensual Italian cineaste appearing in opposition to the austere, almost cold-hearted analysis of Bergman and his films. And yet just as there was a logical, analytical mind at work in so many of Fellini’s films, so there was humor, passion, and even laughter in many of Bergman’s works.

Like Fellini, Bergman broke through, after a number of earlier unsuccessful films, in the mid-1950s, withSommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night)(1955), a romantic comedy that came to stand in stark contrast with so much of his later and darker output. And exactly like Fellini, once he had broken through to national and then international recognition, there was no stopping him.Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal)(1957),Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)(also 1957),The Virgin Spring(1960), andThrough A Glass Darkly(1961) were all magnificent, melancholy masterpieces that virtually invented “Scandi-Noir” forty years beforeForbrydelsen (The Killing)andThe Bridge.

2. Jean-Luc Godard

The recent death of Jean-Luc Godard reminded cinema and especially 21st-century filmgoers of his central, indeed seminal, importance to cinema. Martin Scorsese famously calledÀ bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960) “the axis of film history”, literally the hinge on which cinema turned, from the old studio-bound filmmaking of the past to the infinitely faster and more daring street filmmaking that followed it.

Breathlessis the greatest debut in film history (a cinematic equivalent of the equally radicalThe Velvet Underground and Nicoin pop music), but so many of the films that followed it were also wonderfully inventive and always utterly cinematic, in that they could only be films and not plays or books or anything else.Le Mepris (Contempt)(1963) was almost a French version of8 ½;Bande à part(Band of Outsiders)(1964) was an extension of or sequel toBreathless;Alphaville(1964) was sci-fi set in the present and all the stranger for it;Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot The Fool)(1965) reunited Godard with Jean-Paul Belmondo fromBreathless, only this time Belmondo was the pursuer of a criminal rather than the pursued; andWeek-End(1967) was an apocalyptic road movie or, rather more accurately, an apocalyptic traffic jam.

1. Jean Renoir

It was the great British film critic David Thomson who really helped to raise Renoir’s profile in the English-speaking world in the 1990s when he declared him to be the greatest film director ever. If Renoir’s reputation had always been high, especially in his native France, Thomson helped to introduce him to a younger generation (myself included), who invariably ended up agreeing with his assessment of the French master.

Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning)(1932),The Crime of Monsieur Lange(1936),Partie de campagne (A Day in the Country) (1936), andLa Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) (1938) are all superb, but ultimately even these fine works pale in comparison with the two uber-masterpieces (to coin a phrase) that collectively constitute the finest pair of films ever made by a single filmmaker:La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion)(1937); andLa règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game)(1939).

Effectively, these two films look back to World War One (La Grande Illusion) and project forward to World War Two (La règle du jeu), right on the eve of it. InGrand Illusion, the old mores and manners of the Victorian world are exposed as redundant in the new age of technological warfare, while inLa règle du jeuthe stultifying class consciousness of the French and wider European aristocracy is exposed as the last, dying laughter of a class about to be swept away forever by Nazism. In both, Renoir perfected cinema as surely as his illustrious father, Auguste, had perfected painting.

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It would be foolish not to acknowledge some other very important caveats. All the directors on this list are men; the overwhelming majority of them are white; and they all worked in some of the world’s biggest film industries, mostly Hollywood but also the established national film industries of Europe and Japan. Consequently, they had access to resources that for most of the 20th century were denied to their female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ contemporaries.

As a society, we have taken larger strides toward inclusion and diversity in the film industry, and many great female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ directors working today are becoming household names and changing the medium as we know it. Cinema would've been completely different (and better) if they were given the same opportunities during the most formative years of early cinema up to now.

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