Top 25 Film Directors

[Co.Down Hibee]

Never been a fan of Lynch but can appreciate his talents and why he would have a fanbase of his films, guys like Nicholas Cage are made for directors like Lynch.

[Ludo*1]

That is all.

[Jupiter Jazz]

yoda has it sussed regards David Lynch. Mulholland Drive is a maddening film and to be honest I lost all interest half way through.

Doesn't he have the pub in The Cleveland Show?

[captainkev]

I've been meaning to watch more Lynch films, the only one I've seen is Blue Velvet and I found unsettling and fascinating in equal measure.

[Albino Rover]

18. Orson Welles

Few film directors have made anywhere near as much of an impact as this man, and even fewer made their biggest and most influential masterpiece at the first time of asking. Scholar, artist and visionary, Orson Welles not only made several great films; he was an originator, who truly pointed the world of cinema in the right direction.

Son of an inventor father and a painter mother, George Welles was perhaps destined to be a pioneer of art. He showed talent very early on, and after losing his mother and father as a child, he received a small inheritance, which he used to travel to Europe. He supposedly walked into the Gate Theatre in Dublin at 15 pretending to be a Broadway star, using his middle name, Orson, and although the manager didn't believe him for a second, he gave Welles an audition and a part in their next production. When he went back to America, acting work wasn't anywhere near as available; instead he turned his hand to some things more imaginative.

By his 20th birthday he had accomplished himself in theatre and radio acting, as well as being a very skilled magician. By the end of the 1930s he had been on Broadway and national radio, and had started the Mercury Theatre and the Mercury Theatre On Air, famous to this day for its incredible “The War Of The Worlds” broadcast. Welles wrote, directed, produced and acted in many of his productions on stage and on radio, but by then his burning ambition was to get into film.

After Welles gained his fame in radio, RKO Pictures were keen to sign him up. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and after rejecting Welles' initial ideas to adapt Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and Cecil Day-Lewis' The Smiler With The Knife, they agreed on his third suggestion, an original screenplay written by Welles and Herman Mankiewicz.

At 26, Welles might have been something of a novice but with an old master, Gregg Toland, on camera, editing by a young Robert Wise and one of Bernard Herrmann’s greatest scores, he had some of the perfect personnel to make a masterpiece. Perhaps most miraculous was that Welles was given final cut of his film, a privilege unheard of for a rookie director at that time. Indeed, Citizen Kane was a cinema miracle, an against-all-odds production that changed films forever.

The film was very unusually shot: Welles and Toland took cinematography to a whole new level with a use of a range of cinematic styles, something Welles later put down to his own ignorance. But as well as that unique combination of camera styles, the film was revolutionary in its uses of contrasting lighting, the wide-angle lens and deep focus, very unusual camera angles and audacious long takes, including some of the earliest uses of crane shots. With Kane, for the first time the viewer became very aware of the camera and what the director was doing, and what was behind the frame became just as important as what was in it. But as well as its style it's just as impressive in substance. It’s a film about youth, growing up, ambition, success and failure over a lifetime in a changing world, and although, unbelievably, the mass audiences didn’t like the film at first, it was a breakthrough, a cinema milestone, and the beginning of legend.

It wasn’t until 10 or 15 years later, when it was discovered by the next generation, that Citizen Kane began to be widely considered the masterpiece it is, but Welles wasted no time waiting for his due appreciation. A year after his first film had been released, Welles added another all-time great to his name, period family drama The Magnificent Ambersons, a story that dealt with a changing American family in changing times for America. While, like Kane, not a box office hit, it was another huge critical success, and has been another priceless asset to the world of film.

He'd established himself as a great filmmaker but the box-office performances didn't win Welles much trust from the studios. He took more writing and acting jobs, as well as directing It's All True, a propaganda film made by the US government in effort to keep South America on its side during the war, and didn't direct his next feature film until the war had ended.

That film was war thriller The Stranger, which was part of a long line of films which exploited demonisation of the Nazis, and it was a box-office hit. It allowed Welles to direct short musical Around The World, which is one of a number of his lost films, as well as continuing his radio work, and then collaborate with his second wife, Rita Hayworth on a very awkward, almost comic noiresque murder drama, The Lady From Shanghai. That was another one of Welles' great films to be unappreciated on its release. He followed it up with a low-budget but very ambitious and innovative version of Macbeth, which he made in 23 days. The film was panned, and not long after that came his second divorce. America perhaps wasn't ready for Welles' early films, but their success overseas drew him back to Europe, choosing to work as an actor for a while. He ended up staying in Europe for the next seven years, and directed his next two films there.

He saved for years to self-finance another Shakespeare film, Othello. Produced by a Moroccan film company and released in 1952, it was a huge success in Europe but American distributors didn't release the film until 1955, for a few weeks in New York and Los Angeles only.

After that success Welles spent a long time filming all over Europe for the very low-budget Mr. Arkadin, a mysterious and very atmospheric noir. Welles had more trouble with the producers with the final cut of the film- many versions of the film have since been released, and it's now more commonly known as Confidential Report.

Welles had also started work on a Don Quixote project but hardly got started, and in 1956 he returned to Hollywood, almost unrecognisably obese, and after a few acting jobs he got to work on his next film as director.

His time in radio made him a master of music and sound in his films, and it was perhaps most notable in Touch Of Evil, a spectacular, dark crime thriller with a very impressive ensemble cast, which was one of the best uses of the music soundtrack at the time, and a visual spectacle from the first frame to the last with some of Welles' most elaborate and frantic camera work yet. Universal had final cut and distributed a version Welles disliked, but like many other Welles films, years later, long after his death, a restored version was released, assembled in accordance with the director's notes, making what was already a great film a true masterpiece that could never have been.

After a few years in America he returned to Europe, where he began to recommence work on his Don Quixote project but filming was continually interrupted. His next film was the 1962 surreal drama The Trial- an incredibly strange film based on Franz Kafka's novel, with a lot of experimental work with lighting, shadows and camera movements, all setting an incredibly dark mood of fear, paranoia and confusion in a sinister and strange world of injustice. Welles went on record as saying The Trial is his favourite of the films he directed.

He went back to Shakespeare with Chimes At Midnight, a film based on his own 1939 play, Five Kings, itself heavily influenced by the Shakespeare histories and centred around the character Falstaff. He then made The Immortal Story, of which he filmed the English and French versions simultaneously. It was originally intended to be released on French T.V. only, but was eventually released in cinemas. The French version was much more successful.

After that Welles moved back to America and worked on many projects for film and T.V., almost all of which were never finished. He also made feature-length documentaries on several of his own films including Othello and The Trial. The last film he completed was art forgery essay film F For Fake, for which he also made a 9-minute "mockumentary" instead of a conventional trailer.

He liked two steaks (rare) with a pint of scotch for his dinner, and on that diet he lived until the age of 70, when he had a fatal heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His cremated remains were taken to Spain.

A completed version of Don Quixote was released in 1990, by Welles' friend Jesus Franco, who attempted to finish the film as Orson would have wanted. Franco did a large portion of the work but Orson Welles is the only person credited as the film's director.

There are dozens of unfinished works by Welles, which is a saddening thought, but we can only be grateful for the work he gave us. His masterpieces are themselves timeless, but more important than his work itself is where it has taken filmmaking. Ahead of his time, admirably ambitious and unmeasurably inspirational, Orson Welles was a director without whom the world of modern cinema would be very different from the one we see today.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Citzen Kane would be the only film on there that I've seen.....Wells reputation itself would probably be enough to merit a place on a list like this

[AberdeenBud]

Informative write up AR

Afraid to say I've never seen a Welles film, even Citizen.

Keep meaning to watch it, but then never get round to it.

[Albino Rover]

17. David Lean

One of Britain's greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, he's one of the greatest storytellers in film history, but there's so much more to this man's films than first meets the eye: he was a believer in interpreting human psychology, both male and female, and making his characters, their charms and their flaws both familiar to the viewer and completely central to what happens in the film. His mastery is in creating an unbreakable empathy and understanding with his characters early on and also, as a visual master of scenic photography, personalising and characterising the setting, from Victorian London to Africa and Asia of the World Wars.

David Lean was brought up a strict Quaker and as a child was not allowed to see films or attend the theatre, but the forbidden mystery of film as a child made made his first experience of it, as a teenager in a silent movie theatre, a very special moment. He got the bug straight away, and started working in films when the talkie era was just beginning; he was originally a tea boy, at 19, but he soon got his first major film work, as an editor, in 1930.

Lean became a master of film editing and after doing it for a decade he got his first job as director, In Which We Serve, which he was chosen to co-direct with its writer and star, Noel Coward. The film tells the story of a WWII destroyer ship and very proudly and blatantly portrays the bravery of Britain’s marines. It was released during the War as part of the propaganda effort, to boost morale and national pride, and remains one of the classic patriotic British films of the 1940s. Noel Coward loved his co-director's work and Lean's first three films as the only director were all adaptations of Coward's plays: between-the-wars drama This Happy Breed, haunted house comedy Blithe Spirit and what's now one of the all-time classic romance films, Brief Encounter. These films, particularly that last one, very quickly established Lean's visual mastery, as well as that ability to introduce and develop complex characters and make the film about their thoughts, fears and temptations rather than using those things as vehicles for plot, something that hadn't been done to that extent before.

Throughout his career Lean called Alec Guinness his “good luck charm”. He first saw Guinness as Herbert Pocket in a stage production of Great Expectations and years later, in 1946, gave him his film debut in the same role. He also gave Guinness the role of Fagin in his second Dickens adaptation, Oliver Twist, two years later. The films have been highly regarded from their release up till the present day and, along with Brief Encounter, were probably the pinnacles of Lean's early career making small films, but he never really stopped for breath.

Lean closed his intense work of the 1940s with another adaptation, of H.G. Wells’ novel The Passionate Friends. It wasn't as complex or original as his previous films, in fact it was something of a crowd-pleaser, but it was very successful. He opened the 1950s with drama Madeleine, starring his third wife, Ann Todd, and by then was one of Britain's most respected film directors.

Next came another spectacle, The Sound Barrier, a fictional wartime love story based around attempts to achieve supersonic flight. It was a big success and gave Lean his first glimmer of success in America (where it was released as Breaking The Sound Barrier). He followed it up with what would be his last low-budget, black-and-white film, delightful Mancunian comedy Hobson’s Choice, and with his consistent and successful record, the American studios began offering to finance Lean's films, starting with holiday romance Summertime (also released as Summer Madness), which was his breakthrough in becoming an international filmmaker.

The increasing success of his films meant more interest from the big studios and bigger budgets, allowing Lean to go further and do more. Nowadays David Lean is undoubtedly best known and regarded for his epics, the first of which was The Bridge On The River Kwai. It reunited Lean with Alec Guinness, in his most formidable performance, as British army Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, a soldier imprisoned with hundreds of others in Burma but blindly empowered and driven by national pride. The film is both a suspenseful adventure and a complicated depiction of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps that's both inspiring and disturbing, but like all the Lean films it's centred around and fuelled by its very interesting and conflicting characters and the dread of that doomed pride that's really the only thing that keeps Nicholson and his men going. It's a masterpiece, but Lean took it to a new level in every way possible with his next film.

In Lawrence Of Arabia he gave us one of the most exotic and beautiful war films; a study of a fascinating and very complicated lead character assigned a simple mission which becomes an obsessive, almost spiritual adventure. The film took 18 months (in about 40 locations across 5 countries) just to shoot, but the reward was a film like no other- one of the greatest of all time, a majestic epic and a real spectacle, romanticised by Lean's meticulous, breathtaking scenic photography:

and his specialist editing:

all within an incredible story of a man searching and testing himself, his insecurities, guilt and, again, pride as he commits himself to and falls in love with the desert, its people and its culture. With Alec Guinness as an Arab prince.

A film like Lawrence is a tough act for anyone to follow but Lean almost made haste in making another epic, Dr. Zhivago, which told the story of a love affair during the Russian Revolution, exploring his sympathetic title character with a helpless vice and again characterising the setting, this time in a negative light, using the greyness and snow to reflect the coldness and harshness of socialist Russia. The film was a massive hit worldwide, although banned in Russia until 1994, and was David Lean's biggest commercial success. With Alec Guinness as a Russian army Lieutenant General.

Lean decided to spend a longer time working on his next film, another World War I era story, a (200-minute-long) small-town romance set in Ireland, Ryan’s Daughter. Alec Guinness turned down the role of Father Collins, which was written specifically for him, and that was possibly the first bad omen. When the film was released it did well at the box office but it was a critical failure- Roger Ebert probably put it best, saying "Lean's characters, well written and well acted, are finally dwarfed by his excessive scale." Its poor reception knocked Lean's confidence and desire to make films, and he didn't work again for fourteen years.

The film world was in doubt whether David Lean would ever work again, but he came back in 1984 with A Passage To India, an epic period drama set in British Empire-era India, covering many different themes, including romance, friendship, cultural intolerance and racial tensions. Alec Guinness appears as an Indian professor. David Lean adapted (from E.M. Forster's novel), directed and, for the first time in 40 years, edited the film himself. It was a hit, and the same year as the film was released, he received his knighthood. He died in 1991, just weeks before he was scheduled to start shooting his next film, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo.

The legacy he left was huge, it still is, and he lived through much of it: from the young British directors he inspired in the 1940s to the filmmakers worldwide who grew up with his epics, many directors claim they got into filmmaking purely because of David Lean's films. He's of course one of the most influential directors of all time, but you just have to look at Lawrence Of Arabia to see he was also a cinematic miracle worker.

[yoda]

Excellent write-up. I cut him at the last moment from my top 10, placing him at number 11/12. Lawrence Of Arabia is a true masterpiece but it speaks volumes of his skill to then go and make another one soon after in Doctor Zhivago.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Superb write up once again,

breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan was interviewed recently and said that the reason tv is so popular now is that televisions are so big and you can fill them with epic great scenes , the reason I mention this is due to the fact that the first time I watched Lawrence of Arabia was on a 16 inch tv in my mums old house and remember how the film blew me away with the scale and vastness of much of that film, the desert was made to look so impressive and that was very much down to the skill of the director.

[Albino Rover]

16. John Ford

If Orson Welles was the father of modern American cinema, John Ford was undoubtedly one of the grandfathers. Almost from the beginning of the age of the moving image he mastered his art, experimented with it, changed it and kept it going throughout the 1910s, ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

Director of over 100 feature films, he was an incredibly important and inherently American filmmaker, who made some of the most iconic American films and has been massively influential on every generation of American filmmakers since. Ford came to prominence well into the talkie era but his story goes back much further than that: he was introduced to movie-making by his brother in 1915, and had his first jobs as an extra, including appearing on horseback as a Klansman in D.W. Griffith's milestone epic The Birth Of A Nation.

Ford first got the chance to direct a movie in 1917, on the qualification of being able to shout loudly. That film was The Tornado, and after that he never stopped; in the silent era he made 5-10 films a year, usually credited as Jack Ford. He ended up directing over 50 films in the next ten years, countless of which are now lost. Only about a dozen of his silent films have survived, of which some were only found recently, including one of his last silent films, Upstream, which had been assumed to be lost forever but was discovered by chance in an archive in New Zealand in 2009, restored, and re-released in 2010.

In 1928 Ford directed Fox's first full talkie, Napoleon's Barber, as well as its first recorded movie song in Mother Machree, a film which would also become significant because it was the first of Ford's 21 films featuring John Wayne. (Wayne was an uncredited extra, aged 21.) Those milestone films were just two of the five Ford made in 1928.

He was remarkably efficient and really defined the movie industry, producing a seemingly endless number of films which were almost all impressively shot, entertaining and commercially successful, and although many of them are predictable and perhaps clichéd, they never seem formulaic or lazily made. He made an average of three films a year, including masterpieces like the IRA drama The Informer, through the 1930s right up till America's involvement in the second World War. In the space of 1939-1941, as well as three other films, Ford made the monumental western Stagecoach; semi-biopic drama Young Mr. Lincoln; his brilliant version of Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath and the poetic and visually supreme How Green Was My Valley, all of which are deep, inspiring and timeless masterpieces and gained Ford his reputation as one of the greatest directors of the time.

After How Green Was My Valley, Commander John Ford left to serve in the US Navy, and as head of the Photographic Unit of the Office of Strategic Services to make propaganda documentaries while out fighting. Among other battles, he fought in Japan in the Battle of Midway and on Omaha beach on D-Day, and sustained injuries filming both, including a bullet wound in his arm. Very little of his D-Day documentary was seen by the public; it was heavily edited, understandably, but reportedly still exists in colour, as a classified document in storage in Washington, DC.

After the war he paid tribute to the marines with whom he served, particularly during America's battle defeats in the Philippines, with realist drama They Were Expendable. After the fanfare and celebration of victory and glamorisation of war by the West in 1945, this was one of the earliest and most important films made not only to inspire national pride but to remember the inhumanity and the horror. The director's credit is John Ford Captain U.S.N.R.

Ford was something of a national hero by 1946, when he made his second western with sound, shoot-out drama My Darling Clementine. The film is one of Ford's great spectacles, and was one of his most successful films, but it marked the end of his long association with producers 20th Century Fox. In 1947 he started making films independently, setting up Argosy Pictures.

Argosy's first film was The Fugitive, an adaptation of Graham Greene's The Power And The Glory, shot in Mexico. Greene, and Ford's long-term screenwriter Dudley Nichols, didn't like the film, in fact it was enough to make Nichols fall out with Ford and quit working with him. The film's box office receipts weren't encouraging either, but it was reportedly Ford's favourite of his films. He had much more success with his next film, Fort Apache, which featured an ensemble cast of Ford's favourite and most frequently-cast actors, and was the debut film for his new scribe, former New York Times critic Frank Nugent. Ford kept making films, including She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, at a rate averaging about two films every year, up until 1951, when he turned his focus to a new war documentary, This Is Korea!

Ford had been trying for decades to get backing for his project, The Quiet Man, a light-hearted drama which was very personal to him, set in Ireland, the original land of his ancestry. All the studios were cautious about the film but Republic Pictures finally took the risk, and the result was a peaceful, colourful and comedic romance, released in 1952, which was not only one of Ford's proudest achievements but also his biggest financial success.

The 1950s was perhaps Ford's most illustrious decade, during which he made many successful films, including another ensemble piece, comedy Mister Roberts, on which during filming Ford had a disagreement with his long-time collaborator Henry Fonda, a disagreement which resulted in Ford punching Fonda in the face and being fired from the production; and Mogambo, a romantic drama which reignited Clark Gable's acting career, but John Ford's stand-out work of the decade was undoubtedly The Searchers, a miraculous, iconic western, shot in Utah's stunning Monument Valley:

In addition to being one of the most beautifully-shot westerns ever, The Searchers is a profound film about tragic heroism, conflicting motives and racial bias. Of John Ford’s masterpieces this one is widely considered his greatest: with awe-inspiring photography and intense action, it's masterful even at face value, but it also captures things like the heat and aridity of the setting, the fear of the Native American terrorists, post-Civil War tension and countless other things too difficult to put into words that authenticate the old West. But, crucially, as fluently as the years pass on screen, the film reveals itself to be deeper that it first seemed, and the audience begins to question the assumptions they have made. For the first time, American audiences were shocked not only at the Natives but at the bigoted white man too.

The Searchers is arguably the greatest Western of all time, but Ford almost took it in his stride and, like he so often did, never really took any time to reward himself. By then he was in his sixties, but he just kept making films, including election drama The Last Hurrah, Civil War adventure The Horse Soldiers and one of the all-time great westerns, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, at a rate of more than one a year right up until 1966 when he made his last feature film, 7 Women.

Ford directed a final military documentary, Chesty: Tribute To A Legend, in honour of the US Navy's most decorated marine narrated by John Wayne, in 1970, but he never saw it released. His health deteriorated quickly and when it became known that he was terminally ill, he was honoured nationwide, including being promoted to full Admiral and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the USA's highest civilian award of merit, before his death.

This generation might take John Ford for granted as one of the industrialists of film, who simply churned them out as much and as often as he could, and while that might have been true for parts of his early career, as cinema and its possibilities progressed he grew into a masterful, consistent and diverse filmmaker over a career of 50 years. His beautiful black-and-white films were a massive influence on the first generation of directors of what we call modern cinema, of whom Ford was a contemporary as well as a predecessor. He took it further himself with his continuing original work in lighting, long takes and location shooting, in a style that’s still accessible today. You'd be reading all day if I mentioned all of his films, but his huge quantity of work never had an effect on the quality of the masterpieces of an essential and, in his era at least, peerless American director.

[Albino Rover]

15. Sergio Leone

By the end of the 1960s the image of the Western was very different from when the decade began. This was primarily down to two changes: the addition of one word- Spaghetti, and the introduction of one man- Sergio Leone.

Leone was practically born into being a director. His father, Roberto Roberti, was one of the earliest Italian film directors, and his mother was a successful film actress. He was introduced to films at an early age and got his first jobs in film after the second World War, which was a very exciting time for Italian cinema: oppression and fascism was gone, and experience and qualifications weren’t requirements to make films. At 19 he was an assistant director on one of the great Italian films of that great Neorealist period, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, and after that dream start to his career he went on to work on many of the big productions filmed in Italy, all the way up to the 1959 epic Ben-Hur, for which he directed a lot of second unit shooting, and which got him his first glimmer of recognition from the American studios.

He finally got to direct his first film, The Colossus Of Rhodes, in 1961. It was an Italian production, a rather standard historical swords-and-sandals film, made with a low-budget, but Leone managed to make to appear as big and grand as the Hollywood epics. It was one of the later films of that genre as it went out of fashion; it was also one of the most unusual historical epics because it was set in ancient Greece but in a time after the fall of Greek Empire, and before the rise of the Roman Empire.

Leone’s first film was a success but it belonged to a dying genre. He turned his attention to a genre of film which was something current, and a style which was altogether much more ambitious. He had been fascinated by the Old West from childhood, and was eager to make his own mark on the Western genre.

In fact, he completely shook it up with 1964’s A Fistful Of Dollars, an exciting, violent Western, flavoured with the styles of the Asian cinema that inspired the story (namely Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), and themes from the Italian Neorealist movement Leone grew up with. In this Western, the hero isn’t the clean-shaven, white-toothed cavalier, or even necessarily just a force of good who comes to save the day, but an ordinary man of the time with his own agenda, in it for his own personal gain. Leone authenticated the Western but at the same time he also modernised it; as well as the film's realism and accuracy to the time, the biggest change Leone made to the typical Western was the style. He took the classical American genre and turned it on its head with electric guitars, whip-pans, jump cuts and extreme close-ups, not to mention his spectacular photography from the deserts of Andalucia, and giving Clint Eastwood his big acting break in the process.

Fistful was a relatively short film about a silent protector saving a village, but with 1965’s For A Few Dollars More Leone took a step closer to what he really wanted to make, a bounty hunting adventure which was technically much more ambitious, visually much more of a spectacle, and saw Lee Van Cleef join forces with Clint Eastwood to catch a gang of bank robbers, all leading to a conclusion as hair-raising as could be expected.

Leone made it 3 films in 3 years and completed his “Dollars Trilogy” in 1966 with The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, by far the most ambitious, iconic and influential of the three films. Van Cleef and Eastwood were joined by Eli Wallach, and this time they weren't working together: the bounty hunters became treasure hunters in a three-horse race, as well as a test of wits and morals to get to the fortune, set amongst the bloodshed of the Civil War as well as the stifling heat of a truly wild West, in a real epic that comes to one of the most memorable conclusions in film history.

Since then Leone’s brand of the Western has become legendary, and he sealed that crown with a suspenseful masterpiece, Once Upon A Time In The West. It went in a different direction from the Dollars films; instead of gun-slinging action, this was as intense and dramatic as it was thrilling, layered with hidden legend, myth and mystery, all of which is revealed as the film goes on, as well as deeper and more relatable characters, and a love story. It's longer and slower-paced but every moment really is to be savoured and, predictably or not, it builds up to a massive, climactic pay-off even more spectacular than those of the Dollars films.

His impact on the Western with those four films made him one of the most valuable directors around, and after agreeing to produce Mexican Revolution “Zapata Western” Duck, You Sucker! in 1971, he ended up directing it too. The studio later renamed it A Fistful Of Dynamite in order to sell it as a Leone film, rather than one of the many imitations of his work, and get it more attention. It was another resounding success, being particularly impressive visually, with the use of special effects to which Leone hadn't previously had access.

In the early 1970s Leone was Paramount’s first choice to direct the adaptation of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather but he passed up the opportunity, having already started work on his own organised crime story about the formation and development of one of the Jewish syndicates, who were just as prominent as the Italian mafia in early 20th century America. Leone was in an advantageous position where he didn't have to rush himself, and worked on his film very thoroughly and patiently. Ten years passed, and after all those years of rewriting, planning and design, as well as waiting to get the financial backing, Leone finally got to make the film. He filmed a four-hour epic about an old man’s reminiscence of the friendships, romances, adventures and misdemeanours of his childhood and adulthood, partly personal (to both Leone and ex-gangster novelist Harry Grey) and partly fiction, but overall an honest and patriotic dedication to the country that adopted and embraced Leone and made him a film legend.

Unfortunately, indeed tragically, Warner Bros. interfered. They thought the run time would put American customers off going to the film and cut Once Upon A Time In America down to a 2-hour film told in chronological order with no flashbacks, and as well as being a critical failure it broke Leone’s heart. Thankfully, the full director’s cut was released across the Atlantic, the European audiences loved it, and because of its success in Leone's home continent the full version was released on home video in the US. Before long it was finally applauded, and has since been enshrined and hailed as the masterpiece it is, and often referred to as one of the best films ever made. Unlike any other American crime film it coupled the excitement, action and drama of gang culture with the nostalgia of old age and the complex psychology of childhood, against some of the most iconic New York location shooting which embodies the film as Leone’s tribute to the country that gave him his career. What the studio did was unforgivable, their intrusion almost destroyed something too precious to be messed around with; a master-work that cost one of the old masters of cinema 10 years of his life, but thankfully the version of the film available in the mainstream is as it was intended to be seen, and 30 years on Leone's genius can still be appreciated.

This is a thread about great directors but Leone couldn't be mentioned without his lifelong friend, Ennio Morricone, whose work with Leone provided us with some of the most iconic movie music ever. Leone's films are as memorable on the ears as on the eyes, and generally the music was written before filming even began. Leone liked to play the music on set to get the actors in the right mood and mind set for the scenes, so the rhythm and pacing of the film was often set to the score rather than the other way around, and from those heart-racing, foot-stomping soundtracks of the Dollars movies to the meditative theme of Once Upon A Time In America, Morricone set the mood as well with the music as Leone did with the camera. They fit each other like lock and key (which is a metaphor, and in no way a comment on the nature of their relationship), and were close friends from school right up till Leone's death in 1989.

There have been hundreds of Spaghetti Westerns since Leone's revolution, making him one of the most-mimicked directors of all time, but those who tried to emulate his genius never matched his success. Nobody ever came close to matching his passion, ambition, dedication and boundless vision, and no one else could have made a violent crime film as graceful, tasteful and genuine as Leone's last.

He was a massive influence in bringing aspects of European cinema to America- not just the realism but the visual poetry, humour and effortless coolness he weaved into his films, in equal measure, that made him initially a cult hero and eventually (particularly with the releases of the "director's cut" versions of his films) popular to an ever-growing audience of enlightened cinephiles which includes this generation. Perhaps still the most popular non-English speaking director among English-speaking audiences, Sergio Leone is now officially the most popular on P&B.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Great write-up on Leone, who really was an amazing talent. To basically invent the modern Western through his Spaghetti films (Giving Clint a pretty major boost along the way), and then give us what some have called "The movie the Godfather could have been" is the mark of a true legend.

[Ludo*1]

I was never a John Wayne fan. Cowboy films were too squeaky clean for me and then I discovered Sergio. That says it all.

[The OP]

Great write-up on Leone, who really was an amazing talent. To basically invent the modern Western through his Spaghetti films (Giving Clint a pretty major boost along the way), and then give us what some have called "The movie the Godfather could have been" is the mark of a true legend.

I'm a big fan of Sergio Leone's Westerns, so much so that I had him at no. 3 on my list, however if Once Upon a Time in America is "The movie the Godfather could have been" then all we have established is that the Godfather could've been a film which is nowhere near as good as The Godfather.

[Ludo*1]

I'm a big fan of Sergio Leone's Westerns, so much so that I had him at no. 3 on my list, however if Once Upon a Time in America is "The movie the Godfather could have been" then all we have established is that the Godfather could've been a film which is nowhere near as good as The Godfather.

Agreed. Whilst I do like Once Upon a Time, I can understand why many people are bored to tears by it. Whereas if someone told me that they found the godfather boring, they'd definitely receive some raised eyebrows.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

I'm a big fan of Sergio Leone's Westerns, so much so that I had him at no. 3 on my list, however if Once Upon a Time in America is "The movie the Godfather could have been" then all we have established is that the Godfather could've been a film which is nowhere near as good as The Godfather.

Agreed. Whilst I do like Once Upon a Time, I can understand why many people are bored to tears by it. Whereas if someone told me that they found the godfather boring, they'd definitely receive some raised eyebrows.

Each to their own - and that's why we don't know who's going to be the next half dozen or so choices. Obviously we're all fans of Film in general, though, which is why I reckon most of us could have a reasonable guess at the top three...

I love both Once Upon A Time and the Godfather - the difference being you really do have to invest some time in the former - not that the Corleone story is a short movie, but nigh on four and a half hours for the extended version of Once Upon A Time is a big block of time to reserve. Hence why I haven't watched it since the kids came along. Although, they're taking Mrs WRK out for a Spa Day today, so.....

[The OP]

My issue wasn't really with the requirement to invest in Once Upon a Time - although it was pretty glacial, melodramatic and self-indulgent - my main issue was with the implausible plot and the weak characterization.

The part of the film focusing on the childhood era was definitely the highlight (although the acting was hammy at times) but it went seriously downhill after that for me.

[Co.Down Hibee]

I thought OUATIA was boring as hell to be honest, not really sure why it gets the acclaim it does.

[Jupiter Jazz]

My issue wasn't really with the requirement to invest in Once Upon a Time - although it was pretty glacial, melodramatic and self-indulgent - my main issue was with the implausible plot and the weak characterization.

The part of the film focusing on the childhood era was definitely the highlight (although the acting was hammy at times) but it went seriously downhill after that for me.

Completely agree, a bloated mess of a film.

Who said it was "the film The Godfather could have been"? Pure nonsense.