All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready For My Close-Up ... It's The ILXOR's Top 101 Director Poll Results Thread

And here's the spreadsheet!

@flappy, this is the set

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alfred-Hitchcock-The-Masterpiece-Collection-Blu-ray/45102/

Theresa Wright's character & her performance... oh my god, I could go on and on. I love the way she's introduced with the same framing as Joe Cotten, in profile lying down in her bed. and that first conversation about her family... "we're stuck in a rut, we need something to shake us all up... it's been on my mind for months." and "how can you talk about money when I'm talking about souls?" and the conversation with the old woman at the telegram office... "Do you believe in telepathy, Mrs. Henderson? Mental telepathy!" hard stare... "I don't know what you'e talking about, I only send telegrams the normal way." then when she walks out grinning ear to ear: "he heard me, he heard me..."

Wow that's a great box, Simon. wasn't the one I was thinking of. yeah, that's just a phenomenal group of films. and I still haven't seen 3 of them- Torn Curtain, Topaz, Family Plot...

I have a huge Cary Grant problem.

at least you know it's a problem

― difficult listening hour, Friday, January 19, 2018 7:41 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha ha ha well i have to keep trying, i have no choice, dude was in so many great movies and worked with so many great filmmakers...

one more thing about Shadow of a Doubt- the shots of ballroom dancing that roll under the credits... and recur in superimposition at the end of the film... left me completely speechless

also i am disappointed in my Multiplex Gang for allowing such a NERDY top 10 to happen

<3

tho i’m sure Morbs is still miserable because well, Morbs

the shots of ballroom dancing that roll under the credits... and recur in superimposition at the end of the film... left me completely speechless

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FriendlyVillainousHomalocephale-max-1mb.gif

^ that is my favorite opening to a movie ever

Great poll -- salut!

https://flixchatter.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/purplenoon_still4.jpg?w=640

yet I have a huge Shadow of a Doubt problem, so flappy bird and I are even

Brakhage was 1,5 points from being in the list :(

-- Very surprised I was the only #1 Tarkovsky vote
-- Wish I'd voted Seijun Suzuki higher -- however high it would have taken to get him in the 100

Just watched El by Bunuel after perusing this thread. Looks like Hitchcock did the same before making Vertigo.

OK, even if I'd voted him #1 Seijun wouldn't have made the cut. Sorry Seijun. Kanpai!

http://cinedivergente.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1963-Detective-Bureau-2-3-Go-to-Hell-Bastards-Seijun-Suzuki.jpg

I'm sure Hitch would love to have directed a film in which a protagonist dreams of sewing a vagina shut.

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j/k

it's what the protag of El is about to do

Wouldn't put it past Jimmy Stewart tbh

YOU WERE A VERY APT PUPIL

The gentleman certainly knows what he wants

judy, it can't matter to you.

shout to the (1) other person who voted for claude chabrol

One of those juicy steaks from Ernie's.

Why? Women can be auteurs. (Akerman, Denis.)

Not in the English-speaking commercial cinema they can't be, pretty much. (Let's not go to Nora Ephron et al.)

Lynch's presence in the top 10 is, of course, ridiculous. Geeks.

1. Alfred Hitchcock (2399.5 points; 28 votes; 2 first-place votes)
2. Orson Welles (1957 points; 24 votes)
3. Stanley Kubrick (1920 points; 21 votes; 4 first-place votes)
4. Andrei Tarkovsky (1881.5 points; 22 votes; 1 first-place vote)
5. David Lynch (1838 points; 21 votes; 1 first-place vote)
6. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (1826 points; 23 votes; 1 first-place vote)
7. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1812.5 points; 22 votes)
8. Ingmar Bergman (1666 points; 20 votes)
9. Luis Buñuel (1662 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
10. Kurosawa Akira (1661 points; 21 votes; 1 first-place vote)
11. Jean-Luc Godard (1647.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
12. Robert Altman (1546 points; 19 votes)
13. Martin Scorsese (1533.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
14. Ozu Yasujirō (1453.5 points; 17 votes)
15. Jean Renoir (1447.5 points; 17 votes; 1 first-place vote)
16. Fritz Lang (1438 points; 18 votes)
17. Michelangelo Antonioni (1426.5 points; 19 votes)
18. Billy Wilder (1392 points; 18 votes)
19. F.W. Murnau (1352 points; 17 votes)
20. Robert Bresson (1298 points; 15 votes; 2 first-place votes)
21. Chantal Akerman (1289.5 points; 16 votes; 1 first-place vote)
22. David Cronenberg (1277.5 points; 17 votes)
23. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1232.5 points; 16 votes)
24. Abbas Kiarostami (1224 points; 15 votes; 1 first-place vote)
25. Agnès Varda (1218 points; 16 votes)
26. Joel & Ethan Coen (1211.5 points; 15 votes)
27. Werner Herzog (1113 points; 14 votes; 3 first-place votes)
28. Howard Hawks (1071.5 points; 13 votes)
29. Alain Resnais (1052 points; 15 votes)
30. Paul Thomas Anderson (998.5 points; 13 votes)
31. Federico Fellini (957.5 points; 12 votes)
32. Nicholas Ray (952.5 points; 13 votes)
33. Roman Polanski (902.5 points; 12 votes)
34. Terrence Malick (872 points; 11 votes)
35. Satyajit Ray (834.5 points; 11 votes)
36. Francis Ford Coppola (830 points; 11 votes)
37. Mike Leigh (827 points; 11 votes)
38. Steven Spielberg (824.5 points; 11 votes)
39. Eric Rohmer (808 points; 10 votes)
40. Wong Kar-wai (799 points; 11 votes)
41. Nicholas Roeg (783.5 points; 10 votes)
42. Chris Marker (775 points; 10 votes; 1 first-place vote)
43. Jacques Tati (771.5 points; 10 votes)
44. Mizoguchi Kenji (747.5 points; 10 votes)
45. Michael Haneke (726 points; 10 votes)
46. Preston Sturges (724.5 points; 9 votes)
47. John Ford (704 points; 9 votes)
48. Quentin Tarantino (633 points; 9 votes)
49. Miyazaki Hayao (631 points; 8 votes)
50. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (629.5 points; 9 votes)
51. George A. Romero (628 points; 9 votes)
52. Zhangke Jia (627.5 points; 8 votes)
53. Carol Reed (607.5 points; 8 votes)
54. Max Ophüls (600 points; 8 votes)
55. Maya Deren (598.5 points; 8 votes)
56. Béla Tarr (594.5 points; 8 votes)
57. Edward Yang (589.5 points; 8 votes; 1 first-place vote)
58. Otto Preminger (584 points; 8 votes)
59. Dario Argento (577.5 points; 7 votes)
60. John Carpenter (570.5 points; 8 votes)
61. (tie) Pier Paolo Pasolini (555 points; 7 votes)
61. (tie) Roberto Rossellini (555 points; 7 votes)
63. (tie) Hou Hsiao-hsien (554 points; 7 votes)
63. (tie) Buster Keaton (554 points; 7 votes)
65. Douglas Sirk (553.5 points; 7 votes)
66. Ernst Lubitsch (539 points; 6 votes)
67. François Truffaut (526.5 points; 7 votes)
68. John Waters (514 points; 7 votes)
69. Frederick Wiseman (513.5 points; 6 votes; 1 first-place vote)
70. Jacques Rivette (504 points; 6 votes)
71. Charles Chaplin (502.5 points; 7 votes)
72. Alejandro Jodorowsky (500 points; 7 votes)
73. Richard Linklater (495.5 points; 7 votes)
74. Sergei Eisenstein (489 points; 7 votes)
75. Krzysztof Kieślowski (487.5 points; 7 votes)
76. Aki Kaurismäki (480 points; 7 votes)
77. Sidney Lumet (479.5 points; 6 votes)
78. John Cassavetes (477.5 points; 6 votes)
79. Jan Švankmajer (466.5 points; 7 votes)
80. Spike Lee (466 points; 6 votes)
81. Jean-Pierre Melville (459.5 points; 7 votes)
82. Sergio Leone (453 points; 6 votes)
83. Kelly Reichart (446 points; 6 votes)
84. Peter Watkins (441.5 points; 6 votes)
85. Brian De Palma (440 points; 5 votes)
86. Ousmane Sembène (435.5 points; 6 votes)
87. Frank Capra (431.5 points; 6 votes)
88. Jean Cocteau (421 points; 6 votes)
89. Chuck Jones (416 points; 6 votes)
90. Jean Vigo (414 points; 6 votes)
91. Paul Verhoeven (403 points; 6 votes)
92. (tie) Pedro Almodóvar (401 points; 5 votes)
92. (tie) G.W. Pabst (401 points; 5 votes)
94. Olivier Assayas (400.5 points; 6 votes)
95. Jim Jarmusch (394 points; 6 votes)
96. Sergei Parajanov (385 points; 5 votes)
97. Woody Allen (375.5 points; 5 votes)
98. Robert Aldrich (370 points; 5 votes)
99. Claire Denis (367.5 points; 5 votes)
100. Jonathan Demme (366 points; 5 votes)
101. D.W. Griffith (365.5 points; 5 votes)

Just realize I hadn't done that.

I ain't opening no spreadsheet, just tell me how many perceptive souls voted for Visconti.

hi!

I did too

Enjoyed the poll--some great images. Not that it matters, but I definitely didn't vote for Argento (I've seen all of one film). Probably someone else's vote got assigned to me.

Haneke placing but not von Trier makes me a bit sad

Shocked that Powell & Pressburger placed so high

Did not vote, should have. Bergman would have been my #1. 1953 to 1978, about one film per year and only 2 or 3 of them less than great. Hitchcock and Welles cannot claim anything close to that.

Quantity and consistency of both Hitchcock & Bergman were why I put them at #1 and #2 respectively. What someone said upthread about Hitchcock making "one career-long film" made me think immediately of Bergman. In my mind they have roughly the same number of great movies, a lot more than all other directors on my list.

decided to expand my horizons & watch The Red Shoes for the first time. thanks for the inspiration, folks!

Saw "Red Shoes" a coupla years ago and loved it, VG :D (and stole a bit of footage via phone for a silly little music video I made)

Enjoyable poll, this...Thanks Eric!

:D

Was sure I'd voted for Hitch, but checking my ballot I must have left him off by mistake. Not that it would make any difference to overall tally.

Great work, Eric.

great poll and thread, looking forward to checking out films by the many directors whose work I haven't seen.

i didn't get to join in bc my phone is so shitty it won't let me post and i have been nowhere near my laptop so in tldr form:

1. Alfred Hitchcock (2399.5 points; 28 votes; 2 first-place votes)
Somewhere in my top ten. The first half of Psycho is one of my favourite films ever, I lose interest a little once she shows up at the motel, all a little too gothic for me. I like the headlit luridness of the office scenes where vivian leigh is being ogled by the oilman and the weird shot that flies over phoenix and right through the venetian blinds. I do think laura mulvey has it right that all his films are about ogling (im paraphrasing). the cruel, obsessive way the camera carves up people. He has many terrible films. that awful one with shirley mclaine where people keep finding the same dead body, often his films seem really bored.

2. Orson Welles (1957 points; 24 votes)
kane is as good as its supposed to be. i wish somebody would find the rest of ambersons. lady from shanghai is fabulous. i think the standard narrative about failed promise is about right, so many of his films seem crumpled under some half-forgotten ambition.

3. Stanley Kubrick (1920 points; 21 votes; 4 first-place votes)
I like the shining. everything else i've seen is pompous and dull. he should have made more horror films.

7. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1812.5 points; 22 votes)
one of my favourite things in fassbinders films, of which i've seen most i think, is the loud sound of rustling costumes. this is especially a feature of bitter tears of petra von kant and women in new york. in women in new york, all the sets are built on the same theatre stage, so even though the scene changes there is a creaky floorboard in the same place which you hear in every shot. margit carstensen is my favourite of his leading ladies, and martha is his funniest film.

9. Luis Buñuel (1662 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
Bunuel's films sort of baffle me. I took a friend to see his version of wuthering heights and he has never forgiven me.

11. Jean-Luc Godard (1647.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
coulnd't be arsed with all that nouvelle vague bollocks, but from weekend on his films are inconsistently interesting. i love the one where isabelle huppert is a really bored prostitute/agricultural worker

12. Robert Altman (1546 points; 19 votes)
come back to the five and dime and nasheville

13. Martin Scorsese (1533.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
blonde ladies wearing white. he persisted with this for so long i can't believe he never found it embarrassing. have never even heard of most of the films he's made this century.

15. Jean Renoir (1447.5 points; 17 votes; 1 first-place vote)
i've only seen a couple of films by him but hated both.

16. Fritz Lang (1438 points; 18 votes)
classic if only for gloria grahame throwing coffee in someone's face.

19. F.W. Murnau (1352 points; 17 votes)
My favourites are the american films, city girl in particular has incredible vignettes that are formal, german, expressionistic whilst being american naturalistic and pastoral. there is a brief shot of waitresses laughing, a low table lamp turned to spotlight a character appearing out of darkness.

21. Chantal Akerman (1289.5 points; 16 votes; 1 first-place vote)
my highest vote to place (my #2). About as good a filmmaker as I can imagine. My favourite is a tv documentary, basically a south bank show episode, she made about pina bausch that is so disillusioned and bleak about its subject. the last few seconds are hilarious. I don't think Jeanne Dielmann towers above her other films, although it is hard to imagine a film that could so successful bring together so many of the themes of 2nd wave feminism in such a sharpened way. Also love la Captive, I saw it at the London gay and lesbian film festival and it bored the audience to laughter. I saw her speak once and she was very very funny.

24. Abbas Kiarostami (1224 points; 15 votes; 1 first-place vote)
I haven't seen enough films by him, but ten and close-up are two of my favourite films of all time. ten is a film that is also about mania akbari's great love of cake. me and my boyfriend call her mania for cakes. as beautiful and dreyer's joan of arc.

26. Joel & Ethan Coen (1211.5 points; 15 votes)
horrible dull and cruel films

29. Alain Resnais (1052 points; 15 votes)
His first three films obviously. Muriel most of all, very funny, incredibly sad. the french streets and squares named after the dead.

32. Nicholas Ray (952.5 points; 13 votes)
Johnny guitar is my favourite. I love the flat in born to be bad which is meant to be a fabulous apartment owned by a wealthy couple but just seems like a cramped duplex. In a lonely place, on dangerous ground, a woman's secret. rebel without a cause makes my eyes hurt from rolling though.

34. Terrence Malick (872 points; 11 votes)
badlands is a perfect film, but would have been terrible without sissy spacek I think. tree of life is so awful I can't believe anyone was fooled by it.

35. Satyajit Ray (834.5 points; 11 votes)
i saw some bad documentaries by ray once, including one about a traditional indian dancer which was so unbearable I had to leave the cinema. I feel like his films are about the same vague grandeur as john ford's. it leaves me completely cold.

37. Mike Leigh (827 points; 11 votes)
always thought i'd hate his films, but their actorliness and the depth of character he aspires to lifts them. i think his shrieking harpy characters are misogynistic, and his best comedies (nuts in may, abigail's party) seem to really hate women. On the other hand topsy turvy and vera drake are completely original, and vera drake in particular manages to handle the many layers of social hypocricy around abortion in an amazingly fine grained way. Its sort of uniquely a film about public health.

38. Steven Spielberg (824.5 points; 11 votes)
no

40. Wong Kar-wai (799 points; 11 votes)
I mean, i really like these films but they are just somebody's instagram account

41. Nicholas Roeg (783.5 points; 10 votes)
terrible awful films. with the exception of don't look now.

42. Chris Marker (775 points; 10 votes; 1 first-place vote)
marker was a real gateway drug for me, definitely a big source of many of the filmmakers i got interested in later, but his very french complacent bourgeois radicalism and epicurianism starts to seem a little silly eventually.

45. Michael Haneke (726 points; 10 votes)
for the french films. especially code unknown.

46. Preston Sturges (724.5 points; 9 votes)
i love love love mary astor in the palm beach story and i really made a go at sturges a couple of years ago but they're just not as good as you want them to be. lots of charmless male leads also.

53. Carol Reed (607.5 points; 8 votes)
I love the third man, but odd man out is so clueless about belfast that it makes me very sceptical of vienna. the one with the butler is p tedious.

55. Maya Deren (598.5 points; 8 votes)
my bf likes to watch meshes of an afternoon every year for his birthday. the best film ever made about the suburbs.

69. Frederick Wiseman (513.5 points; 6 votes; 1 first-place vote)
the best living director I think. My favourites are state legistlature and high school ii. I think the '90s were his best decade.

73. Richard Linklater (495.5 points; 7 votes)
parker posey was very funny in dazed and confused but I don't think that merits #73

99. Claire Denis (367.5 points; 5 votes)
Beau travail is the sexiest postcolonial film studies dept movie of all time.

101. D.W. Griffith (365.5 points; 5 votes)
I mean I know, racism, but that bit out on the ice floes.

15. Jean Renoir (1447.5 points; 17 votes; 1 first-place vote)
i've only seen a couple of films by him but hated both.

okay what

which films?

41. Nicholas Roeg (783.5 points; 10 votes)
terrible awful films. with the exception of don't look now.

Walkabout awful? Its tragic as a story...as Don't look now..

Really good run down though plax(ico) thanks. I also saw Akerman speak (the only filmaker I saw speak, and it was at a screening of that Pina Bausch film) and she was funny, interesting and fascinating - generous and tough, she got me to think harder. I very much miss the fact she is not around anymore.

plax, did you fix your friend's car brakes after h/she admitted to not liking Bunuel?

My Ballot:

Akerman, Chantal
Resnais, Alain
Ōshima, Nagisa
Ghatak, Ritwik
Kiarostami, Abbas
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner
Watkins, Peter
Marker, Chris
Varda, Agnes
Eustache, Jean
Rossellini, Roberto
Duras, Marguerite
Godard, Jean-Luc
Snow, Michael
Bunuel, Luis
Parajanov, Sergei
Dreyer, Carl Theodor
Straub, Jean-Marie & Daniele Huillet
Kubelka, Peter
Haneke, Michael
Mambéty, Djibril Diop
Oliveira, Manoel de
Panahi, Jafar
Pasolini, Pier Paolo
Powell, Michael & Emeric Pressburger
Pialat, Maurice
Rivette, Jacques
Kitano Takeshi
Rocha, Glauber
Sembene, Ousmene
Malick, Terrence
Wong Kar-wai
Angelopoulos, Theo
Antonioni, Michelangelo
Bergman, Ingmar
Tarkovsky, Andrei
Losey, Joseph
Kieslowski, Krzysztof
Makhmalbaf, Mohsen
Pontecorvo, Gillo
Yang, Edward
Naruse Mikio
Hansen-Love, Mia
Kore-eda Hirokazu
Petzold, Christian
De Sica, Vittorio
Diaz, Lav
Dumont, Bruno
Costa, Pedro
Warhol, Andy

Worst: Spielberg, Steven

I should've found space for Makavejev, that's the one I regret the most. Renoir, Ray, Kurosawa are top 50 but I didn't place and don't specifically regret as they placed well anyway. Mizoguchi and Ozu were the pair I really forgot, and I really did need to place. As for US directors the one I regret not placing is Todd Haynes (LOL why did I put Andy Warhol in there sheesh).

The one director I will try to see more from is Preston Sturges.

I like the shining. everything else i've seen is pompous and dull. he should have made more horror films.

My ballot:

William A. Wellman
Max Ophuls
Alexander Korda
Louis Feuillade
Rouben Mamoulian
Maurice Tourneur
Frank Capra
Robert Bresson
King Vidor
G.W. Pabst
Jean Renoir
Buster Keaton
René Clair
Fritz Lang
Mervyn LeRoy
Julian Duvivier
Jean Grémillon
Roy & John Boulting
Jacques Tati
Josef von Sternberg
Gregory La Cava
Tay Garnett
Ernst Lubitsch
Tod Browning
Jacques Feyder
František Vláčil
Max Linder
Frank Borzage
John Ford
Marcel Carné
Joseph Losey
Pierre Étaix
Roscoe Arbuckle
Alice Guy Blache
Mark Sandrich
W.S. Van Dyke
Cecil B. DeMille
D.W. Griffith
Lois Weber
Benjamin Christensen
Andrea Arnold
Jem Cohen
Chris Marker
Sam Taylor
Leo McCarey
Jacques Becker
Lewis Milestone
Fred Niblo
James Cruze
Alfred E. Green

Worst Director: Oscar Micheaux

I said upthread I compiled my ballot based on my Letterboxd watchlist, and it's clear I watch a lot of silent and early sound film. I've ordered the Murnau/Borzage box set, and from there I plan to systematically go through Ford's work at Fox.

Quite a lot of name in there I don't know so I'll investigate.