35 must-see movie directors
Jun. 5, 2024The ultimate collection of legends who ever sat behind a camera
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Making movies is an art form built on collaboration. A single movie takes armies of talented artisans to turn cinematic dreams into reality. But when it comes down to it, it’s the one who says “Action!” who quite literally gets the cameras rolling. But with so many directors to have lived and died in the history of movies, which filmmakers are actually deserving of “must-see” status?
Believe it or not, the history of directors hasn’t always been so clear-cut. In a nutshell, the job of a director was figured out several years into the birth of the industry, when filmmakers recognized there had to besomeonecoordinating between the actors, designers, and technicians. By the 1920s, the emerging class of film criticism saw directors as the single “author” of a movie, with early reviews attributing the success or failure of movies to the one whose name came after the words “Directed by.”
Some of the most prominent directors in the first years of the movie industry include Georges Méliès, D.W. Griffith, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and Sergei Eisenstein. But who else since them are directors of mandatory recognition? These are just 35 must-see directors you need to know about.
35. Antoine Fuqua
An actor before he became a pioneer in American independent cinema, John Cassavettes is remembered for his string of acclaimed movies that altogether rejected Hollywood standards and formalization. Starting with Shadows in 1959, Cassavettes' cemented his place in the art and culture of movies with dramas and comedies like Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Gloria (1980) and more.
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A titan of horror cinema, John Carpenter is one of the few filmmakers to direct and score his movies; his synthesizer soundtracks are foundational to the retrowave genre. After his first two features - Dark Star (1974) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) - Carpenter changed horror pop culture with 1978’s Halloween, the first in the hit franchise. His other movies, like Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Christine (1984), Big Trouble in Little China (1987), and They Live (1988) are considered classics of ’80s horror cinema.
Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of global cinema, Akira Kurosawa’s 30 films across five decades have played a huge influence over other directors like George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, andZack Snyder. While he is best known for period samurai epics like Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961), Kurosawa’s main concern was Japan itself, and how its postwar environment was rapidly transforming society.
Few directors, living or dead, harnessed the messiness of youth like John Hughes. Originating as a writer for National Lampoon, John Hughes went on to direct seminal teen movies like Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). Towards the late ’80s, Hughes began moving away from teen movies - like with the ‘87 comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - and wrote other classics like Pretty in Pink and Home Alone. By the mid ’90s, Hughes had totally withdrawn from public life. He died in 2009.
Posthumously described by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema,” Agnes Varda first studied and worked as a photographer before transitioning to movies. Though her career began before the French New Wave, her artistic sensibilities align with the movement’s principles and aesthetics. Her debut was the film Le Pointe Courte, released in 1955. Her other movies include Le Bonheur (1965), Lions Love (1969), Mur Murs (1981), and Kung Fu Master (1988).
A leading figure of the New Hollywood movement of the ’60s and ’70s, Francis Ford Coppola earned immortality with his 1972 epic The Godfather. He spent the rest of the 1970s making more unimpeachable classics like The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, the latter of which remains infamous for its troubled production. In the 1980s, Coppola diversified his output to focus on youth-oriented dramas like The Outsiders and romantic comedy Peggy Sue Got Married. While Coppola slowed down considerably in the 21st century, his ambitious science fiction epic Megalopolis drew divisive reviews out of the Cannes Film Festival.
A towering Hollywood artist whose films wholly define American cinema, Steven Spielberg spans as many genres as he does decades. Starting with his theatrical film debut The Sugarland Express in 1974, Spielberg catapulted to immortality with his 1975 summer horror Jaws. While many of his movies of this era concerned genres like sci-fi and pulp adventure, including the influential Indiana Jones series, Spielberg eventually found his way to grounded human stories with features like The Color Purple (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), and Schindler’s List (1993). With even more revered pictures across the late 20th and 21st century, Spielberg, there is simply no one deserving of proper recognition as one of the greatest movie artists who ever lived than the one who taught us that movies are an invitation to adventure.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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