Total Film's 100 Greatest Directors Ever: 1. Alfred Hitchcock

I didn't really think of The Rainmaker as a true thriller. I think Coppola presented it more as a sort of throwback to a less complicated and more lackadaisical type of film. Almost an homage to Stanley Kramer's films (although not something like Judgment at Nuremberg, obviously). The plot itself I can hardly remember because it seemed like a moot point. The characters were all very strong and superbly cast, and the below-the-line elements were impeccable. As soon as Bernstein's score comes in at the start the possibility that this was going to be a real hum-dinger of a thriller went right out the window. The Outsiders is the same kind of deal, although he's looking to Bob Wise and Nicholas Ray there (and to a considerably less successful degree).

But then I liked Rumble Fish too, so maybe I'm off my rocker.

 

Coppola five? Kubrick better be at least number two.

 

The book is telegraphed and predictable with regards to the outcome, and I say that as a huge fan of it. What makes it worthwhile is how the story is told and the characters in it.

 

Kubrick, in a huge travesty, was only like 8 or some such garbage.

 

4 Howard Hawks

The all-rounder

"This one-time car racer made silents in the ?20s but really flew in the talky ?30s. His motto was modest: ?Make a few good scenes, don?t annoy the audience.? But he was actually magnificently complex, being a crowd-pleaser who made genre (screwball comedy, westerns, film noir, science-fiction, musicals) pieces his own, a writer of ?realistic? dialogue who made non-realist entertainments and a man?s man who directed legendary female performances. He was also a genius talent-spotter, pairing Bogey?n?Bacall ? first in classy war romance To Have And Have Not and then in labyrinthine noir The Big Sleep. As ?50s French critics recognised, he was the studio helmer as auteur, the populist as artist. Bringing Up Baby, Red River, Rio Bravo? who can match him now?

Picture perfect Screwy newspaper rom-com His Girl Friday."

Oh, yes, a great director, and he could direct just about anything successfully; and had a highly sustained career--he directed films in 5 decades. He even managed a highly entertaining biblical spectacular: "Land of the Pharaohs". Great comedies: "Bringing Up Baby" and "His Girl Friday"; great Westerns: "Red River" and "Rio Bravo"; great noirs: "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep", great adventure films: "Only Angels Have Wings" and "Hatari!"; great scifi "The Thing"; great musical: "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"; great war film: "Sgt. York", etc., etc.

There were some fairly constant elements: aggressive, competent women; tough, equally competent men, which means he hasn't dated a whole lot.

 

Wyler's my favourite all-rounder, but Hawks is right up there. His Girl Friday is certainly his masterpiece.

I dunno why, but I'm not so big on The Big Sleep. Vastly preferred To Have and Have Not.

 

Have you seen "Come and Get It"? Directed by Hawkes *and* Wyler. The trick is to see where the style changes.

 

First director to jump around in genres and still keep his own style, definetly desrves to be at the top of the list.

 

In going through the list, I see we have Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola and John Carpenter who are of course without peer and who's work will live forever. They aren't bad filmmakers of course, but on the list of the all time 100 greats???

Uh, but we seem to be missing a fellow named Victor Fleming whose career spanned silent films to sound to color, and genre-jumped like no other. Over 40 films in the Hollywood studio golden era and he made a couple of little movies a few people may have heard of called The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, back to back, with no prep. The reason he was handed the reins of those massive, expensive productions was because of his track record of commercial success and his reputation as the most capable film craftsman around. He's not on the list, but we got Wes Anderson and John Carpenter? Alexander Payne's on the list for Sideways, and no Victor Fleming?

When Fleming directed actors, they tended to get nominated for Academy Awards (nine) and they won too, such as Spencer Tracy for Captains Courageous, and Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind.

By the way, Howard Hawks learned an awful lot about how to make a movie at Victor Fleming's side. He worked as Fleming's assistant director and production manager on a number of movies, including Lord Jim. (1925)

Victor Fleming Biography

Fleming didn't make this list but he's the only director to have TWO of his films in the Top Ten of the American Film Institute's List of the 100 Greatest American movies. I think that alone puts him on a level with John Carpenter!

I can't believe Kurosawa wasn't in the top ten!

 

We still have 3 directors left to go.

 

I'll eat a raw turnip if he's in the top 3.

Fleming was an almost invisible filmmaker. A workman, but perhaps one the best of his era. Visually, his films are magnificent. But he wasn't really an auteur, like a lot of the other entrants on the list (yes, even Hawks). Rail all you want against Anderson and Carpenter, but they are auteurs (I'm not totally sold on Carpenter, but I love Anderson. And Fleming. How bout that.)

I agree, though, that Fleming just doesn't get enough respect. I bought the fandoogly edition of The Wizard of Oz purely for the Fleming doc. Still haven't watched it, though.

 

Well, tastes change, and a good many of the people who voted probably haven't seen a Fleming film, with the possible exceptions of "Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" both of which were completed by other directors.

But his films do have vitality...try Jack Conway or Robert Z. Leonard as anonymous workmen, not him.

Another early director fascinated by flying.

I once read an account of him and Clara Bow working on "Mantrap" that had me rolling on the floor laughing. An accurate title, if ever there was one.

And yeah, Alexander Payne? I hated "Election". A mean-spirited movie if ever there was one. As for Wes Anderson, I realize a lot of people like him, but boy, is he ever smugly delighted by his own cleverness. Not unlike Payne, if not so mean.

 

I don't mean to say that Fleming's work lacks vitality (like your Leonards or your what-have-yous), but I group him with folks like Curtiz et al - some stylistic tics but no real through-line to his work. A gun for hire, essentially.

 

He wasn't at a good studio for auteurism...MGM was a directors studio, mostly, which is why its films have dated the most of all.

 

I once read an account of him and Clara Bow working on "Mantrap" that had me rolling on the floor laughing. An accurate title, if ever there was one.

Now you've got me really curous!

I guess I'm on a kick about Fleming at the moment because (as I've brought up a few times recently on these boards) I recently read the biography about him by Michael Sragow.

It's a thick book with a lot of detail and sort of sent me on this recent kick to get people to
pay more attention to him. Part of the reason he faded from people's attention is that he died in 1949 at the relatively young age of 59. The other reason is that the producers of his two biggest films aggressively promoted themselves as the real force behind the films, but in neither case would the films have turned out as they did without Fleming's strong guiding hand. Selznick's sons produced a documentary which was basically two hours of promoting their Dad as Mr. Gone with the Wind, though they did at least acknowledge that Margaret Mitchell wrote the novel.

In fact, even though Fleming didn't direct all of Gone with the Wind (5 other directors have varying amounts of footage in the film, Cukor's portion is less than 3%), he was still ultimately the director Selznick respected the most. When Fleming left the picture for ten days due to exhaustion, when he returned Selznick had him review everything the other directors had shot, and if Fleming didn't like something, it was re-shot. So he even had final say on what the other directors filmed.

In one case Fleming told Selznick that Sam Wood had filmed the attack in Shanty Town too quickly and sloppily and that the footage wouldn't cut together and Selznick agreed and ordered it re-done. One thing that Sragow's book showed me was that Selznick thought Fleming was a world-class director years before GWTW and often tried to get him direct films for him when Selznick was a studio executive.

The more I learned about Fleming from the book, the more I realized how extraordinarily capable he was at making films. He was one of MGM's highest paid directors and to the extent that a director could have freedom in that old studio system, he had as much as you could get. One of the reasons he was able to handle Oz and GWTW so capably with so little preparation was his vast amount of experience.

People mention his vitality. In the Selznick documentary, his secretary mentions that once Cukor was fired and Fleming arrived, everything on the production changed. It was ENERGIZED. It had focus. More got done, and the pace and vitality of the footage being shot was obvious. This was a take charge director who could handle anything thrown at him, no matter how big.

Fleming and Hawks remained good friends and friendly rivals after Hawks began his own directing career and they frequently discussed their projects with each other.

Anyway, I'll probably be in my "let's give some credit to Victor Fleming" phase for a few more months until I move on to some other "enthusiasm de jour". I do a lot of that.

The two most prominent films of that era that have remained hugely popular are both Victor Fleming's even though they are completely different genres with very different tone and subject matter. One is a children's film set in a dream with lots of musical numbers. The other is a Civil War movie about adults, a tumultuous marriage, a big spectacle, and a brutal story of survival.

The only common element to these enduring productions? Fleming. That's versatility!

In Sragow's book, the first chapter is called "The Real Clark Gable." Fleming was the guy that
all the male stars wanted to be and all the female stars wanted to bed.

Fleming was amazingly influential behind the scenes in helping create the onscreen personas of Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. His influence on American movies in that era was huge, not just in his own films but on many actors and directors around him.

By the way, I love Rio Bravo and Hatari. Those are my two favorite Hawks films.

 

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Here's Fleming and Bow on the set of "Man Trap". They're having an affair. He's grinning and she's flirting with whomever is taking the picture.

And no, though Fleming is a good director, he's not top five.

 

I wouldn't even put him in the top 20.

 

Well...probably not top twenty, either.

 

Great picture.

I agree with both of you, I wouldn't expect Fleming to be in the top 20. But I would expect him to be somewhere in the top 100.

 

Well, I certainly agree top 100, with two iconic pictures on his resume.

 

Hawks is just undeniable. He could do anything and do it well.

 

3 Steven Spielberg

The universal entertainer

?I always like to think of the audience while I?m directing. Because I am the audience.? From movie brat to movie mogul, Steven Spielberg has never lost the common touch. The first thing he ever saw at the flicks was The Greatest Show On Earth (1952); a couple of decades of home-moviemaking, film school and TV apprenticeship later (Duel was grand enough to go big-screen outside the US), he was the new Cecil B DeMille. And exactly 30 summers after the epochal Jaws, he was still packing in the popcorn-eaters with War Of The Worlds.

But being the most successful director on earth comes with a price: ever since ET (?maybe the best Disney film Disney never made? ? Variety), Spielberg has been stereotyped as a sentimentalist, more at home with reassurance than risk. Truth is, he?s rarely rested on those billion-dollar laurels, always looking to evolve his craft despite the constants that recur across his work (absent dads, kids in jeopardy, scores by John Williams).

In fact, finally bagging Oscars for Schindler?s List spurred Spielberg into beginning a drive for complexity rather than complacency, making films like Saving Private Ryan, AI and Minority Report. A trailblazer who works at a phenomenally fast rate ? who else could make WOTW and Munich in the same year? ? he?s too much of a craftsman to cut corners. ?Spielberg has always maintained obsessive quality control,? says critic Roger Ebert, ?and when his films work, they work on every level.?

Picture perfect ET The Extra-Terrestrial. Aliens and alienation."

Actually, the film of his that I really enjoyed (as opposed to admired) was "Can Me If You Can"

Yes, he is limited in that relationships between men and women don't interest him. (His movies seldom feature women in large roles, and "The Colour Purple" showed that this is probably a good thing.) The major relationship is the parental one; and there is no point in complaining about this. It's what interests him, and perhaps obsesses him. As long as he can ring the changes on it, I'll be watching.

Very good technically; only the occasional misfire: "1941" and "Always" are generally due to material (though in "1941" execution was also off). Likes to encourage talent, which is admirable. Maintained a really consistent career in an era in which this was harder and harder due to director megalomania and drugs. Still going strong.

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark is his best. It's a laser-guided precision bomb of an action/adventure film. Simply perfect.

 

His best work is Jaws, the greatest escapist film ever made.

 

I think this is probably the real thing that elevates him. He and Scorsese are about the only two directors who survived the seventies and continue to make serious films that are just as good as those they made in the seventies.

Spielberg is a master and when you get started listing the great movies he's done, you suddenly wonder if you're ever going to be able to stop: Schindler's List, Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Munich, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Catch Me If You Can, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, Saving Private Ryan, Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, Minority Report, War of the Worlds. I mean these are some of the most amazing films ever made and, as Ebert says, on every level: technical, emotional, artistic. And then you think . . . wait, this guy's been turning them out for how long?

Spielberg is an American filmmaker that can stand alongside the greatest filmmakers from around the world. He is a modern filmmaker that can stand beside the lions of the past. And he is the final proof that entertainment and art do not have to be mortal enemies. Round of applause.