Top 25 Film Directors

[Ludo*1]

Must admit had hoped Takeshi Kitano might sneak in. Loved Violent Cop, Brother and Sonatine. His adaptation of Zatoichi was amazing too.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Don't thin Tim Burton is making this particular list

A wee bit surprised he didn't get on it although he wasn't one of mine, he's just one of those directors with a definite fan base.....John Woo was another one that I wondered would perhaps make the list.

[yoda]

3. Quentin Tarantino

[captainkev]

No.2 - Costa Gavras ?

No.1 - Andrei Tarkovsky ?

I hope this post means I wasn't the only one to vote for Tarkovsky.

[Florentine_Pogen]

I hope this post means I wasn't the only one to vote for Tarkovsky.

I didn't actually submit my list for inclusion but the one I made up did have Tarkovsky at No.1.

[forehead7]

He's an ungrateful p***k!

[Co.Down Hibee]

QT has made some really good films ,Pulp Fiction and Inglorious being my own favourites, strangley enough wasn't overly keen on Reservoir Dogs, I can't understand the seethe for him being at 3 ,at the end of the day whe he brings out a movie it is a big event now and has any director made a bigger impact in the last 25 years outside of a couple of gentlemen who I'm sure will be topping this list.

[Christophe]

So given we can assume the top 2, who are your directors who haven't made the list?

Three for me: Sam Fuller, Ozu Yasujiro and Kathryn Bigelow.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Kathryn Bigelow for me as well plus Ron Howard,Micheal Mann, Mel Brooks and Oliver Stone

[Ira Gaines]

Oliver Stone is definitely a shout. Kurosawa as well is a fairly obvious shout.

And of course, John Carpenter.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Oliver Stone is definitely a shout. Kurosawa as well is a fairly obvious shout.

And of course, John Carpenter.

Your first two there I definitely agree with. Another couple from my long list are Woody Allen (although his reputation, IMHO, is greater than most of his films) and Mel Brooks, a personal favourite who I'll confess didn't make the cut as he's a wee bit "insubstantial" for the general flavour of my list. Being consistently funny, mind, deserves at least as much credit as some of those on the final list.

[Bold Rover]

Jim Sheridan is the one from my ten who appears to have missed out. I know Albino has sent his personal condolences to Jim who is distraught about his omission.

[Albino Rover]

2. Steven Spielberg

In the early 1970s, while the directors of the New Hollywood movement were inventing their own new form of American cinema, another emerging director was making his- an exciting and creative audience-based style founded on the idea of pure entertainment.

Steven Spielberg is every bit as accomplished as his contemporaries, he was a friend of many of the movie brats, but he chose to take a different creative path, with a style that took step into the extraordinary which had mass appeal beyond anything before it. That also made him popular with the studios, with his films' appeal making him a sure bet to make a profit. He's known for big-scale productions but as well as his prowess with extravagant crane shots and special effects he's just as masterful with the little touches, things like reflections, shadows, silhouettes, little implications and visual euphemisms that tell what some directors might tell in a five minute sequence. Most of the Spielberg films are based around ordinary, suburban people becoming subjects of bizarre and exciting situations. More often than not the lives of his heroes match those of his mass audience, but their encounters and experiences go beyond our wildest dreams- the kind of fantasies played out in reality which Spielberg recognised people, in their millions, would stand in line to see.

Growing up in a traditional Jewish family he spent his childhood across America, living in Ohio, New Jersey and Arizona. In his pre-teens he was an enthusiastic boy scout, but when he didn’t have a camera to participate in his photography merit he had the idea to use his father's 8mm movie camera, and earned his photography badge with his first piece of cinematography. He became fascinated by action and movement and began writing and shooting his own short films, inspired by his father’s war stories and his own imagination. He showed his films to his friends and, right from the start, listened to their opinions and took their needs on board, as well as using his films to express himself- as an orthodox Jew, for which he was bullied, and a child of parental divorce, both were issues that troubled him and would play parts in many of his films throughout his life. At 16 he spent $500 of his own money making a two-hour science fiction film called Firelight, which was shown for one evening in his local theatre with gate receipts of $501 - his first box office profit.

When he left high school he was turned down by the USC film school and instead studied English at Long Beach. Like so many in the industry at the time his route into film was as an unpaid intern, exploited by Universal, but while he worked for nothing five days a week he gained a lot of valuable experience in how a movie set works, the stages of production and even hands-on experience in editing. His application and enthusiasm also got him some contacts, and eventually earned him the chance to make a very small production on professional equipment. He made a short film called Amblin', which followed a young couple road tripping from the desert to the coast. One of Universal TV’s studio heads gave the film half an hour of his time, and he was so impressed with Spielberg’s work that he offered him a professional directing contract. As a youngster in charge of a team of experienced crew members Spielberg immediately found himself under a lot of pressure and had to learn quickly. His work in Universal's TV branch was where he learned the trade- over the following few years he was a director on a number of programmes, including the first episode of the first series of Columbo, and at 24 years old Spielberg was given the chance to direct a feature-length TV movie.

He already knew the script he wanted to work with, Duel, a plot which escalates very quickly when an unsuspecting travelling salesman attempts to overtake a heavy oil truck whose driver inexplicably starts trying to kill him. The film could be described as a feature length chase scene but Duel isn't a one-trick movie- it's also high in mystery and psychology, and more important than who has the faster wheels is the race for human survival. Rather than storyboarding the film Spielberg mapped out the journey in a way that made the shooting process as quick and efficient as possible- he shot it in under 2 weeks on a tiny budget, and although he didn't get everything he wanted Duel was a resounding success which got him far more recognition than anything he'd done before. He made two more TV movies, Something Evil and Savage, before the opportunity he'd been waiting for- his first theatrical film.

Set mostly on a Texas highway, The Sugarland Express is an eccentric runaway road movie combined with a sweet downbeat romance- it begins in prison as a young woman assists the father of her child in a breakout, and leads very quickly to their pursuit by the law. The seriousness and danger of the crime plot snowballs but is understated by constant comic relief and good-hearted hysteria as the couple go to greater and more ridiculous extremes trying to reunite with their baby, who is being put up for adoption. Although they're criminals on the run they're larger-than-life characters, and their motive makes them all the more likeable. Like in Duel long periods of the film take place on the road, which was difficult for Spielberg to pull off, but the film is cleverly and inventively directed.

Sugarland got a limited release and was a small success but for Spielberg it was only something of a test drive. He had played it relatively safe but he was ready to push himself further, and after proving himself with a small film he was able to make his second on a higher budget. He had an exciting adapted script lined up and a number of great ideas on how to film it, but no one could have predicted the scale of its impact. He horrified audiences in the Summer of ‘75 with Jaws.

The film's plot is legendary- Chief Brody is getting ready for his first Fourth of July weekend on Amity Island when the surrounding ocean is terrorised by a 26-foot great white shark. Like any great action hero Brody has an unenviable task: he finds himself having to juggle the safety of his neighbours with the political pressure from a mayor who insists Amity needs tourists on its beach. The only way to appease both is for Brody to talk to the experts and work out a way to kill the killing machine. The film, from the first shark attack to the explosive showdown, is cinema entertainment at its best.

Jaws is one of the very rare films where every scene is iconic, and every shot is composed to perfection, from the unbelievably difficult and precise underwater shots:

to the masterful camera work, like this reverse zolly shot.

The results were extraordinary but for Steven Spielberg much of the filming was a horrible, hugely stressful experience. Early in production his robotic shark sank to the bottom of the sea and it proved nigh on impossible to get any effect out of improvising with a dead piece of rubber. Even in scenes without the shark he struggled tirelessly in the subaquatic shooting, going through weeks of hell with lighting, camera control and oxygen supply to get the shots he wanted. For decades after the film's release audiences didn’t dare go into the sea, and neither did Spielberg: he's performed all sorts of magic with cameras in his career, but he didn't put one back underwater for over twenty years.

Fifteen years after his first one-night screening made him $1 profit, Jaws made a profit of over $450,000,000. It was an unprecedented, resounding success, the first ever Summer blockbuster. Universal couldn't have been happier and the 28-year-old Steven Spielberg was instantly a multi-millionaire, and the shining future of film industry, but his proudest achievement with Jaws was proving his ability to manipulate the movie-goer. He was able to make them both laugh and scream in a matter of seconds, and he was so pleased with the effect that he would even go into theatres and sit at the back, waiting for the jump-scares, and watch his work take its course on the people who matter most.

After Jaws he had almost all the trust and financial backing he needed for his third feature film. Spielberg chose to write his own screenplay for his first professional attempt at science fiction with Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Witnessing all kinds of weird events, signs, signals and strange behaviours, drawing parallels with the scientific theories of relativity and the space-time continuum, there seems to be no back story or explanation for it but the protagonist appears to have been chosen to meet a group of aliens who have landed on Earth. He’s not the only one- there are people across the world under the same supernatural compulsion, abandoning their families and friends to meet the mothership and find the answers:

With huge, ground-breaking visuals and a great futuristic beauty, Close Encounters considers everything we've ever wondered about life beyond Earth, most fundamentally the need for communication, which it handles through simple shapes and sounds, but as well as the obsession and curiosity of what's going on outside of Earth, it contrasts it with a sense of perspective, of the confusions we have in our own everyday lives- family relationships, language barriers and the danger of taking life too seriously.

The Hollywood result was another massive success for Spielberg and a second nine-figure profit that took his reputation among fans and peers to a God-like status, but it would be fair to say that after two colossal hits in a row, as a young director Spielberg was in danger of overextending his ego. He had the world at his feet and the freedom to direct anything he wanted. He chose to make 1941, a farcical war comedy and a huge-budget production, whose comic set pieces were noisy, messy, too big and too frequent, with much destruction and slapstick all the way through. Spielberg wanted it to be a non-stop comedy to end them all, but ultimately the excessive action was pure overkill, and the joke was over long before the end.

To audiences 1941 was a major disappointment but its poor reception brought the confident young Spielberg back down to Earth and stopped him getting carried away with himself. He had made the mistake of failing to put his audience first, and so he worked tirelessly to repair the damage, entering the 1980s with his most-prepared production yet. He was meticulous in designing his next film; everything was ordered and storyboarded to precision, and he finished on budget and way ahead of schedule.

For years he had tried to direct a James Bond film and early in his career he had been repeatedly turned down. Instead, with the help of his movie brat friend George Lucas, he discovered a new hero, complete with fedora and whip, who behind the adventure is an ordinary professional, a handsome and popular history professor whose low-key profile is a mask for his Summer job, travelling across the globe on missions of mystery, drama, romance and action. Indiana Jones is the source of some of the most iconic and memorable moments in Spielberg's career, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark was the film that got the ball rolling.

Indiana Jones is the complete hero- he's handsome, intelligent, witty and brave, but for realism and comic effect he's also a clumsy romantic and has a snake phobia. The entertainment value of the situations he got into were on a new level of escapist adventure, and Spielberg handled the action with the style and creative genius that came out of a combination of tireless dedication and nervous desperation to please. After returning to success with the masses Spielberg next decided to reach out to a new audience, an audience of children.

In a way E.T. was a continuation of what could have happened after Close Encounters, together with a very personal expression of Spielberg’s own childhood. The story is of an alien who gets left behind on Earth and, like a foreign exchange student, lives with a family (behind the mother's back) learning the ways of the Earthlings while the children learn from him. The toddler girl and teenager are dumbstruck by his arrival but the child who really needs E.T. is Elliott. A child of divorce with no father figure and no friends, he's alienated on his own planet, and he needs E.T. in order to find excitement and inspiration in his life. Similarly, E.T. needs Elliott: he doesn't have a friend on Earth either, but his problem is diagnosable- he's homesick. The friendship is short-lasting but hugely profound. With E.T. Spielberg gave children a fantastic new perspective on the world they lived in, inspired their imagination and confided in them that grown-ups don’t always know best.

Almost all of the story is told from the points of view of Elliott and E.T.- to the adults that might be a chance to reminisce and look through a child's eyes, but Spielberg also shows a very close understanding of the relationship between children and adults and the impacts of each on the other. As well as a masterpiece it was another major money-maker. E.T. grossed over three quarters of a billion dollars, and with that Spielberg broke the world record that he had set with Jaws. With his popularity at an all-time high, for his next film he chose a follow-up to his film that, unlike Jaws, was crying out for a second instalment.

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom was a prequel even bigger and more exciting than its predecessor. While much of Raiders took place in the Middle East, Temple Of Doom took a slightly younger Indy into the far East, with some of the biggest and most elaborate designs and special effects of the time, not least a lengthy rail chase through an old mine, but on a much darker level, with themes of torture, human sacrifice and child labour. One of the amazing things about Spielberg, which is as prominent in Temple Of Doom as any other of his films, is that through time he has constantly tested the technical limits of filmmaking. In camera work, sound, editing, music and special effects Temple Of Doom was one of the most impressive films of the 1980s. Needless to say, it too was a financial smash.

Around this time Spielberg started producing films for other directors, with which he kept indulging his fun side, but after a decade of big-budget fantasy and excitement he began to feel the desire to make films with more significant purpose. His next two films covered much more serious matters in completely new styles for their director. He considers The Color Purple to be his first mature film- it follows a poor, uneducated black woman in the early 20th century who has her freedom, and her sister, taken from her and her confidence beaten out of her by an insecure husband. Amongst more subtle themes of political racism and cultural ignorance, The Color Purple focuses on a woman's loss of inner strength and self-respect, and a lifetime of unhappiness it brought. Celie had hers taken from her and it took a miraculous twist of fate to bring it back.

In the late 1980s, as China was entering the capitalist market, Spielberg became the first American director in over 40 years to make a film on Chinese soil. The film had originally been intended for one of Spielberg's idols, but although he was interested David Lean passed the baton over to the next generation by recommending Spielberg for the job. Based on J.G. Ballard's novel, Empire Of The Sun is the story of a child’s spirit that carries him through the toughest of circumstances.

The film takes place in the midst of Japan's two wars in the 1940s. Jamie is a privileged and sheltered English boy living in Shanghai who idolises flying, and knows everything about aeroplanes. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth but after the Japanese invade China, and his parents' house is seized by the Empire, he loses everything, including his family, and becomes a prisoner of war. War takes over his life and Jamie becomes Jim, but as he struggles through the War he discovers how to survive on his own, and learns who he really is. Empire Of The Sun was Spielberg's interpretation of growing up and taking strength from whatever unpleasant ordeals we go through. With the story he was able to reach new levels of serious historical drama, child acting and extraordinary imagery.

His forays into serious direction were critical successes but for the last Summer of the decade he went back to his established area of expertise with the conclusion of the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Last Crusade, which as well as impossible stunts and set pieces in the search for a Holy Grail provided some of the Jones back story, even introducing us to his father and revealing his real name. The 1980s was arguably Spielberg's most important decade. It was certainly one of his busiest, unarguably the part of his career associated with pure entertainment, and by the end of it he was the movie-goer's favourite across the world. He completed the decade with the fantasy romantic comedy Always, which warmed a lot of hearts and made a modest profit.

He opened the 1990s with another kids' fantasy film, in which a boring professional discovers he has abandoned his identity as Peter Pan. Hook turns characters from real life into heroes and villains within a classic fantasy legend- it's a film very definitely aimed at children but very distinctly about adults finding their inner child.

Hook got Spielberg mixed reviews but his 1993 double is among the best ever personal achievements by one filmmaker in a single year, starting in the Summer with a fantastical, imaginative and technically triumphant monster movie that shook the world. Spielberg had always wanted to make a dinosaur film set in the modern world but he had no idea how it could be possible. When he read Michael Crighton’s book and saw his DNA theory he phoned him personally to tell him he was a genius.

Once he got to grips with the idea, the time came to making the dinosaurs. This would be the first film to have characters of any species invented entirely using CGI. It's very quickly become something we take for granted but twenty years ago to create life with a computer was an absolute revolution. That alone is possibly one of Spielberg's greatest and most visionary contributions to cinema, but with brilliant human characters, endless action and technical brilliance with the movie camera added to the technological achievement and the excitement of the dinosaur plot, Jurassic Park was a gigantic cinema smash. Even outside of its technical assets the style of the film is classic Spielberg, literally smoke and mirrors stuff, and just as brilliant are those implications and suggestions that Spielberg always makes, like this single shot which, in context, he uses to create great tension out of a simple image.

On initial release it made $900,000,000 (which has since risen to over a billion,) making it the third Spielberg film to break the box-office record, but more interesting than the big numbers is why it made so much money- its pure universal appeal. For men, women and children all over the world Jurassic Park was a true extravaganza, a definitive blockbuster that flowed effortlessly with tension, humour, scares and thrills, and an adventure no director had taken an audience on before.

Immediately after Jurassic Park's release Spielberg began his preparations to film something much more important, a project that he had been at work on for several years, which became one of the most important and inspirational films of all time: a haunting, harrowing but ultimately heroic monument to the Holocaust.

Schindler's List shares a miracle performed by a German businessman: as World War II broke out Oskar Schindler came to Poland to exploit the Jews for cheap labour, profit from the War and assist in production for the German war effort. As he grew closer to his workers and his Jewish accountant he also began to realise the horrors of what was happening around him; the liquidation of the ghettos, massacres in the streets and concentration camps. Under no obligation he chose to use his profits and contacts as a force of pure good, bribing Nazi officers in order to improve conditions for his workers and, as Germany began to lose the war and sped up the Jewish executions, giving everything he owned to buy back over a thousand lives.

With this film Spielberg stripped bare his directing style and portrayed the events as honestly and realistically as possible, but as well as the story of the Schindler Jews much of the film is a heartfelt testament to those who didn't survive. Most of the Jews on screen are those humiliated, enslaved and killed in their masses, dramatised and filmed in a manner as distressing and authentic as documentary footage. Nothing, film or otherwise, has remembered the Holocaust as effectively or in a manner as emotionally powerful as Schindler’s List. Spielberg didn't take a fee for the film.

After Schindler's List he went on a long hiatus from directing, spending the next year with his young family, and setting up the Shoah Foundation, which has since conducted and archived thousands of interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. Late in 1994 he took his first step back into the show business, helping in setting up Dreamworks Studios, and took a major stake in the company, which he still holds.

Two and a half years later Spielberg was tempted back by a return to the abandoned island of dinosaurs with The Lost World. The ending of Jurassic Park allowed this story to unfold itself naturally, and Spielberg pulled out all the stops in the direction of the film, but although it was an exciting, entertaining and money-making sequel it didn't really compare to the original. After The Lost World, whose rights were owned by Universal, Spielberg produced and distributed all of his next eight films through Dreamworks. The first of those was released later in 1997- it was another serious and important historical drama about a lost story from another Holocaust, this time the persecution of the African slave.

Amistad begins in the early 19th century, at sea on a Spanish slave ship bound for the west, and the ensuing Supreme Courtroom drama concerns a group of kidnapped slaves who are disputed property, with international legal and political complications and, like many Spielberg films, a breakdown in communication between characters through the language barrier. More important, though, is the universal theme of slavery and the horrors that these helpless Africans were subjected to before they even hit land. Even a century before the Geneva convention, the group of Sierra Leoneans on screen were being denied their most basic rights, for which only a few were willing to fight.

Spielberg followed the drama of Amistad with perhaps his most personal and authentic war film, Saving Private Ryan. Over the course of the film an old man remembers his service in World War II and considers the men who got him out of the war zone. Beginning with one of Spielberg's best-directed sequences, the bloody, unforgiving war zone of Omaha beach on D-Day, the film goes back in time to introduce us to Captain Miller and his men, who were assigned the special rescue mission.

From the shocking imagery in the extended battle scenes to the powerful emotional impact on the veteran as he returns to Normandy forty years on, Saving Private Ryan is a film that redefined the cinematic interpretation of the battlefields of history, not only remembering and honouring a generation but contextualising the war and its impacts in a way that had never been done before. Rather than describing the mission as a matter of pure heroism Saving Private Ryan discusses it in a way that questions the ethics and sense behind risking the lives of an entire squad to save one man, but ultimately that point isn't important- the true heart of the film lies in the identities of the men who gave their lives, and the impact the war had on the survivors even decades later.

Throughout the first half of his career Spielberg was a pupil and friend of Stanley Kubrick. After Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick had planned to direct A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but after his death his old friend was chosen to take over. One of Spielberg's most visually miraculous and morally thought-provoking films, it tells a modernisation of the Pinocchio story like an Orwellian allegory, and considers the differences between human behaviour and artificial creatures who look and behave exactly like us.

Spielberg's next film was another interesting futuristic fantasy focused on intelligent technology, this time its use by the authorities. Minority Report takes us 50 years into the future, into a world where murders can be foreseen before they happen by the police’s Pre-crime Department. The system appears to be perfect but when the Chief of the unit sees a premonition of himself shooting a man he's never met before he suspects either a glitch or a set-up. The film’s mystery is paralleled by the political and moral implications of a government that sees our actions before they happen and can apprehend us for things we haven't done. It shares a vivid vision of the future and invites us into its world where precognition is the most powerful intelligence tool with a sense of warning as well as wonder. Spielberg's visuals, particularly the seamless blend between CGI and live action, aid that vision spectacularly.

AI and Minority Report handle a very interesting dilemma for the future of technology, by which Spielberg was fascinated. Setting his films not too far into the future, where life can be made of silicon and as humans we could lose our jobs and even our identities, he considered that we may have created intelligence too great to handle. The films don’t draw lines; rather they ask us to consider what could soon become a very important question: how far can we push artificial intelligence while keeping control over it?

In the same year as Minority Report he went into a completely new zone to direct Catch Me If You Can, the true story of America’s greatest ever fraudster, a teenager who, after his parents' decision to get a divorce, ran away from home and made his fortune faking cheques. Before his nineteenth birthday Frank Abagnale Jr. stole millions of dollars, living under several aliases as a teacher, a doctor, a prosecution lawyer and an airline pilot. The cop on his tail is Carl Hanratty, an FBI agent from the other side of a divorce, who hasn't seen his daughter in years. As well as the cop-criminal antagonism, through phonecalls and, later, conversations in custody, Frank and Carl develop a friendship and a real understanding with each other. Carl works to lock people like Frank in jail but he desperately wants to help him. Frank, who spends his life cashing cheques and running away, would feel the same way if he would only stop to think. More than most of his films, with a notable exception of E.T., Spielberg drew upon his own life in the characters, and the result is a film that isn't always mentioned among his best but is without doubt one of his deepest and most emotionally engaging.

It was around this time that Spielberg kept making films that didn't seem to suit his usual trends. His next film was The Terminal, an out-and-out comedy, which he chose for the chance to work once more with one of his favourite actors, Tom Hanks, as an interesting and completely original character. It's arguably the furthest out his comfort zone Hanks has ever been, playing Viktor, an Eastern European tourist whose country enters a state of civil war while he's in the air, trapping him in a legal grey area. Denied entry to the United States and unable to return to Krakozhia, he lives a bizarre life in the airport terminal, making friends with the security staff, cleaners, caterers and a flight attendant who passes from time to time. The comedy is patient and naturalistic, almost like Mr. Bean: Viktor's good-naturedness and simplistic persona (and another Spielberg language barrier) get him into elaborate comic situations, exactly what the airport's head customs official, in the running for a big promotion, doesn't need. The terminal is arguably a microcosm of America as a pillar of capitalism and an ethnic melting pot, but most importantly it's a source of comedy.

By this point in his career Spielberg had made detestable villains out of truck drivers, sharks, pirates, dinosaurs, Nazis, slavers and airport security staff, but (with a borderline exception of Firelight) he had always treated aliens as our friends. That made his next film, an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel all about interplanetary conflict, seem like a strange choice. Spielberg's War Of The Worlds considers the destruction of the Earth from the point of view of a divorced father whose survival of the alien decimation is inspired by pure paternal instinct, and in the midst of the huge-scale destruction and massive special effects that strong emotional story fuels the whole film. To many War Of The Worlds was a source of great disappointment, to others it was one of his most exciting films in years. It was another admirable risk taken by Spielberg but later that year he came out with a second piece of work that was more serious and altogether much more admirable.

Munich shows the actions and attitudes of an assassination squad hired to avenge the Palestinian murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games. Throughout the serious subject matter, right from the start Spielberg has complete control over the viewer, but as well as a first class exercise in suspense and drama Munich was an important and topical statement, telling its story from both sides and in doing so provoking thought not only on the subject matter in the plot (which it does, rather controversially,) but also commenting on the nature of political revenge, and the consequences of challenging and responding to terrorism in certain ways.

He took another few years out of directing but late in 2007 he was tempted back to a series he'd seemed to have finished 19 years earlier. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, although a revisitation to a completed trilogy, was full of the same degree of excitement and over-the-top action for a new generation to enjoy, this time following an older Indy during the Cold War. Like its predecessors it was a serious money-maker, but unlike them it received some bad press, not least for infiltrating Dr. Jones' world with science fiction and flying saucers.

Late in the 2000s, when the latest incarnation of 3D was being perfected, Spielberg planned a trilogy of 3D motion capture Hergé adaptations, along with fellow directors Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright. In 2009 he directed the first instalment, Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn - with Peter Jackson as producer and Edgar Wright co-writing the screenplay. The scale of the live-action animation was unprecedented and took years to complete. It wasn't released until Summer 2011, but the product was a technologically groundbreaking achievement, and an adventure film among the smartest, funniest and best-written family films of this century.

His second film of 2011 told a story of conflict, this time going almost 100 years back in time and recounting the World War I through the deep brown eyes of a thoroughbred stallion. War Horse follows Joey from being bought cheaply and trained by Albert, a farmer's son, to being seized for the war effort and subjected to several gruelling ordeals of war, fighting on both sides and even finding temporary solace in the peaceful ownership of another farmer across the Channel. The horse has its own survival instincts but it also has a seemingly unbreakable bond with and loyalty to its owner, tested years after Joey has been sent away when Albert comes of age and goes to war himself.

Spielberg directed the film across the countryside of Devon bringing out its true natural beauty and bearing very strong visual resemblances to two of his greatest influences, Ford and Lean. As well as an emotional story about an important war rarely used in modern mainstream films, War Horse is possibly Spielberg's cinematic tribute to the serious but acutely upbeat war films with universal appeal which stemmed from what he considers to be the Golden Age.

With his most recent film, Lincoln, he pursued a different brand of historical drama. Beginning during the American Civil War the film portrays Abraham Lincoln in his last few years in office, focusing on his interactions with his cabinet and congress in the debate over abolishing slavery. Spielberg paints a picture of a gentlemanly old Lincoln who told long stories, respected his colleagues and rivals alike but stood up for his own beliefs as staunchly and strongly as possible, and wasn't above buying and begging for votes when it came to a policy he truly believed in.

Rumours of Spielberg's possible next directorial works fly around constantly but although there has been "official gossip" of an adaptation of Dahl's The BFG and a fifth Indiana Jones film, it's been confirmed that his next work as director is to be his fourth collaboration with Tom Hanks, a Cold War thriller, currently in pre-production. At 67 he's still a genius behind the camera, and as fanatical about film as he was as a kid, showing no signs of deterioration in passion or talent. When we remember that nowadays there are great directors making films well into their eighties, and that Spielberg's mother and father are out there pushing 100, it's highly likely that he has at least another decade in him.

Already, though, he has an array of so many films of such great range which have proven themselves to be timeless that no other director can even compare. For almost 40 years Jaws has entertained and influenced each generation as much as the last, and there are two dozen more like it, many of which have been of great historical, cultural and political importance, both on release and for generations to come. He's had an extraordinary career which may well continue to produce another handful of classics.

He's a master of creative imagery, craft and narrative, but another of the key aspects to his storytelling is personalisation. As well as pleasing mass audiences and applying his genius to the visuals Spielberg lends his personality to every aspect of each film. Through his films the viewer can understand his sense of humour, his passions, interests, inspirations, the things he finds emotional and the things he finds beautiful. A-list movie stars are practically always actors and actresses, there are very few exceptions, but right from the start Steven Spielberg's vision, dedication and magic have made him one of the world’s biggest and most iconic personalities in movie history.

[Its only me]

Fantastic write up once again. Really enjoyed reading this thread. Wonder who the no.1 will be.....

[Bold Rover]

Wonderful recap of Spielberg's oeuvre, Albino. Actually, I have to admit leaving him out of my ten and am feeling ashamed of myself. His versatility, longevity and volume of work is awesome.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Spielberg was my number 1 and to be honest it was by quite a distance, don't think anyone has a catalogue of work to touch his, some may question his more recent work but personally I loved the film War Horse .

[fifergaz]

You still alive,AR??been a month since no.2 was revealed.looking forward to your final write up.

[Florentine_Pogen]

You still alive,AR??been a month since no.2 was revealed.looking forward to your final write up.

Yeah, I gave up waiting and just looked up Scorsese on Wikipaedia.............

[Albino Rover]

[Albino Rover]

1. Martin Scorsese

The film above is a 1967 short by Martin Scorsese called The Big Shave. It was an early indicator of his vivid stylishness in photography and editing, artistic metaphor and strange humour, synchronised perfectly with music. Like much of his work it's also a film about a specific time- it was originally intended as a statement on America's involvement in Vietnam but the alternative title, Viet '67, is easily missed and instead, to some, the film was confusing. At some screenings it even got big laughs, but importantly the film is interesting, paints a strong picture, and evokes a strong reaction.

He recently said that "Cinema isn't life, it's the invocation of life; it's an ongoing dialogue with life." For forty-seven years since The Big Shave, Scorsese has been a vital part of that dialogue, initially through his own stories from the tough neighbourhood he grew up in, then going on to direct events from all over history, filming in Europe, Africa and Asia as well as America, keeping all his films true to their settings and always finding new references, cinematic and otherwise, from across the world, which he can combine with his own genius and bring to the screen. Perhaps the aspect of his stories to which he's truest are the characters: all his films are character-motivated, and from everyday behaviour and conversation, even sitting watching television or eating and drinking, all the way through to intimate romance and gruesome violence, he includes it in his films, and more than any other director uses the camera as a way to emphasise feelings, and makes time to get into the head space of his characters, sometimes achieved without them saying a word.

His value of authenticity and desire to continue to learn and create have always kept his standard refreshingly original as well as technically impeccable, and his philosophy of constantly reinventing cinema has kept his style moving with time. Martin Scorsese's life has been a gift to the art with which his name is synonymous, and from a lifetime of undying passion, endless hard work and unparalleled giftedness he has become one of the most important artists alive today.

His relationship with film began as a child when, sick with asthma, he often wasn't allowed to play with the kids in his neighbourhood. His nickname was "Marty Pills". Too poor to go to the theatre, his parents took him to the movies because it was the only place he could go. From an early age the magic time created in film had a massive effect on him: the movie theatre was his favourite place to go, and before long his hobby became an obsession. He was constantly watching American and Italian movies on television, and when he began having ideas of his own, unable to film or photograph his visions, he drew them as storyboards.

As well as movies his childhood was heavily influenced by Catholicism- for much of his early life his view of the world was out of his bedroom window, and the first people to suggest life outside of New York to Martin were his priests. Their worldly knowledge was something he wanted to emulate- from an early age he was an altar boy and he went on to attend the seminary as a teenager, only to fail his exams. That made his career choice easy- after high school he got into the NYU film school, where he spent most of his time in the early 1960s, one of the most exciting times to study filmmaking. After graduating he got jobs in some small crews and production teams, as well as teaching filmmaking and directing a few amateur films of his own, including The Big Shave, but all the while working on his first long film, Who's That Knocking On My Door, which he wrote while at film school and directed over the course of two years, limited to when his small crew of friends and young actors, including Harvey Keitel, were available and hadn't completely fallen out with him.

Who's That Knocking is a New York street film about a young unemployed Catholic, played by Keitel, who puts his religion before anything else in life, even a blossoming romance. Although he seems to be more mature than his juvenile friends from the neighbourhood, JR spends his days hanging around with them, drinking and fighting, until he meets an attractive young woman and charms her as they chat about movies. When they fall in love his devout Catholicism leads to mutual sexual frustration, and the resulting conflict reaches a pinnacle after an argument when the girl drops a bombshell, the couple's opposite reactions to which defines their religious differences. The 25-year-old Scorsese held nothing back in portraying the confusion, frustration and guilt of his religious lifestyle, even if some of the symbolism and self-references are a little obvious. After one screening, a few years after the initial filming had begun, the film got a small financial backing but the money men insisted on more sex, so Scorsese and a noticeably-older Keitel flew to Amsterdam and filmed a guilt-ridden fantasy scene with a group of prostitutes.

When he eventually completed the final cut of the film it got some limited distribution, mostly at the small festivals, not much but enough to get him some positive reviews and recognition by some reputable people in the industry. On the back of Who's That Knocking he got himself a number of senior crew jobs, most notably as an assistant, and later an editor, on one of the landmark American music documentaries, Woodstock, his work on which made a Hollywood producer take a chance on him. Roger Corman phoned Martin, explained "I won't screw you too bad," and invited him to Los Angeles to direct his exploitation film Boxcar Bertha, which, with gratuitous crime, violence and nudity, tells a runaway love story in the South during the Depression. The film wasn't anything original and wasn't a hit. After seeing his work one of Scorsese's heroes and mentors, John Cassavetes, put an arm around him and said "You just spent a year of your life making shit."

Boxcar was never likely to be successful but importantly it taught Scorsese how to make a feature film with a schedule and a budget, and after that there was no stopping him. A year later he completed his second film as writer-director, Mean Streets, which captures the lives of a group of small-time gangsters just like the ones Scorsese grew up around, set in his own neighbourhood of Little Italy. Like in Who's That Knocking, for most of Mean Streets the camera follows Harvey Keitel, this time as Charlie, a collector for a family mafia in a tough New York neighbourhood, and emphasises his point of view, in scenes of seriousness, romance, religious guilt, and even in blurry dazes of drunkenness. He spends the whole film juggling his allegiance to Catholicism, his mafia career ambitions and his obligation to look after his girlfriend's little cousin, an over-enthusiastic criminal who owes debt to everybody in the neighbourhood.

Ultimately Mean Streets, even more honestly than Who's That Knocking, is Scorsese's own representation of life in the streets, finding life among the low life and recognising the struggles and sacrifices a good man must make for religion and family. At the time it was a breakthrough, the gritty yin to The Godfather's romantic yang: the unprecedented levels of uncensored violence and language are streetwise, not just for show, none of the characters have predictable fates and it's all told in a style more original and exciting than anything else at the time. As such, it established Martin Scorsese as one of the hottest young directors around. After seeing Mean Streets Ellen Burstyn met Scorsese and asked "What do you know about women?"

She showed him the script for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a film about a widow in search of a new life, and the errors of judgement she makes on the way. When Scorsese came on board he liked the main character but, working with someone else's script he had to use a different kind of genius to try to avoid the cliché and keep out of soap opera territory. Coming on the set each day with all sorts of new ideas, encouraging improvisation and character building with his cast, and using the camera to do the same, he created something that was non-ideological and non-feminist but instead compelling contemporary drama. Alice was praised by critics across the board. It was also Scorsese's first major box-office hit, which boosted his reputation with the producers and sealed him as a "bankable" director.

During his rise to fame Scorsese stopped to make what he considers one of his best films, Italianamerican, a documentary starring Luciano and Catherine Scorsese, "Charlie and Katie", in their apartment on Elizabeth Street. He wrote the notes for an interview-based documentary but after a slow start in front of the camera his parents completely took over, telling him all about their ancestry, childhoods, careers, pastimes and recipes.

More than 20 years later, while talking about the film, he explained, "The most extraordinary thing you can have in a frame is a human being, and sometimes all the camera has to do is record them. There's a place in movies for tracking shots through the Copa, but maybe this is what real cinema is."

It's also, of course, an immortalisation of his parents and of the Little Italy in which he grew up, both of which are now gone. Looking it forty years on it's a very touching image.

After building his reputation, with his next scripted film, written by Paul Schrader, Scorsese took his work to a new level, possibly the highest level, with an explosive depiction of a man on the edge, whose personal frustration and sickened view of the streets of New York drive him insane until he can't take it any more. He lifts weights, buys guns and, after an encounter with a 12-year-old prostitute, becomes an avenging angel.

Travis Bickle is an average nobody longing to make something of himself but inhibited by his depressive nature and lack of understanding of others, which condemns him to a life of loneliness. With that brutal honesty, social commentary and eventually huge bursts of graphic violence, Taxi Driver shook American and world cinema. Shot in the streets of New York, the film brings out the sleaze and neon of the city with a strange kind of seductive grace, reviled by the eyes of Robert De Niro. It's also arguably the Scorsese film with the best case of the camera reflecting the feelings of the main character, going out of its way not to show Travis in his most emotionally distressing moment, and later going as far as changing speed to slow motion to show him at his most violent.

Since its release Taxi Driver has been considered one of the most compelling and hard-hitting American masterpieces of all time. It got Scorsese all kinds of offers in Hollywood but he chose to stick to the unconventional, setting his next film in post-war era New York but rather than shooting on location reconstructing the version of the city created in old Hollywood, with indoor sets which weren't quite lit properly, where the pavements were too wide and the people a little too well-dressed. New York, New York makes fun of that but embraces it too, while telling a love story between two jazz musicians, a singer and a saxophonist, whose only chemistry is on stage. Scorsese said that it can't be considered a musical "because all the music is in the right places", but the songs and sets are every bit as big and elaborate as they are in a full production, and the drama even stops for a big ten-minute number, taking influence from the musicals from the '40s and '50s, especially the work of Vincente Minnelli, whose daughter played the lead.

New York, New York is one of Scorsese's all-time most ambitious films, and at the time it was his most expensive. The film has aged well but at the time its financial performance was disappointing- it didn't even make its budget back. Music played a bigger part in his next film, his first music documentary as director, The Last Waltz, which covered one of the greatest ever American concerts, The Band's last gig at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, with backstage interviews and songs by a dozen A-list guest support acts, captured by not one but seven 35mm cameras (something unheard of at the time), each painstakingly orchestrated to each song by Scorsese. The Last Waltz was also the beginning of a long relationship with Robbie Robertson, who has worked in Scorsese's music department on a number of films since. Straight after that he directed an independent documentary entitled American Boy: A Profile Of Steven Prince. Steven Prince was Scorsese's former roommate, an eccentric ex-drug addict, actor, roadie and gifted storyteller. He played the gun salesman in Taxi Driver and the record producer in New York, New York. Like "Italianamerican", American Boy is another interview taken over by its subject- the larger- and weirder-than-life character of Price is captivating, as are his stories and the passion with which he tells them. One of them inspired a scene in Pulp Fiction.

This was a dark time in Scorsese's life. As well as New York, New York making a loss, and getting bad reviews, he was going through his second divorce and with the invention of the blockbuster and changing politics with studios and producers, he knew American cinema would never be the same again. You can see the influence of cocaine in American Boy and The Last Waltz. After those two documentaries he didn't go outside. He fell into a deep depression and became a recluse, and a drug addict. At death's door and on the brink of insanity, he was saved by the new Paul Schrader script, which he received from his favourite actor, and got one last film made with one of the most prolific studios of the era, United Artists, allowing him free rein.

The first and last monochrome shots of Raging Bull are of Jake La Motta punching thin air, fighting alone. Raging Bull is the portrait of a life of loneliness, insecurity and jealous obsession, and a man unable to control those emotions, whose only form of communication, even to his loved ones, is through violence.

The domestic scenes are shot very naturally- to show the characters at home the camera hardly moves, with low-lit black and white reminiscent of the Italian cinema of the time the film considers. These are the scenes that tell the story, and Scorsese holds back to allow us to witness the conversations, confrontations, petty arguments and domestic abuse.

For the fight scenes the camera takes on an explosive new persona, playing with perception with changing ring sizes and depths of field, lighting, quick cutting and sound effects contrasted with slow motion and silence.

As his boxing career goes on, Jake's obsession over his weight and jealousy about his wife take over him, and some of the sound effects and camera movement of the ring scenes make their way into the home as his professional violence extends more and more into his own life. Even when he retires from boxing and he's free to spend time with his family, nothing changes, except that he no longer has to worry about his weight. His tragic life is the result of his own nature, and only when it's all too late, when Jake winds up a fat has-been on the stand-up comedy circuit, does he finally seek forgiveness.

Like Taxi Driver, over time Raging Bull has been accepted as one of the all-time great American masterpieces, but cinema wasn't the same after 1980, and for Scorsese it was like learning to make movies all over again. He took two years to make his next film. In one way or another all his movies have had varying degrees humour throughout them, but it wasn't until this point in his career that he made something that can be considered a comedy, his showbiz satire The King Of Comedy, a character film about Rupert Pupkin, an inexperienced but dedicated stand-up comedian obsessed with fame and celebrity who, along with an equally-crazy female accomplice, goes to the ultimate extremes to get a spot on a late night chat show.

Pupkin is one of the classic Scorsese characters- in fact, he might be the most desperate and neurotic of them all- a man who spends entire days in waiting rooms just to catch a glimpse of his favourite celebrity, and puts his and others' lives on the line for a 5-minute comedy routine, but his tragedy is buoyed by big laughs. It's an interesting film visually- it was produced by a brand new studio, Embassy, who gave Scorsese a bigger budget and allowed him to stick to something resembling his style of the seventies, which made it stick out a little among the new-look films of the time.

While he may have clung to the past a little bit with King Of Comedy, he completely reinvented himself with After Hours, another weird comic film, this time about a young man who goes out late in SoHo and experiences a night of misadventure and increasing hard luck as he tries to make his way home. After Hours was a small-budget production, bearing similarities to the '80s cult films being released around it but of a superior quality, and yielding a bigger profit, which allowed Scorsese to scale up for his next film. As well as directing a landmark music video, for Michael Jackson's Bad, he couldn't resist the opportunity to direct a follow-up to one of his favourite films of the 1960s, which follows the original Hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, as a hardened, old, experienced pool shark, who finds a new young protégé in Vincent Lauria. The Color Of Money was a mainstream hit- at the time it was Scorsese's best-selling film, and it finally earned him the backing to make a project he had worked on for long periods in the '70s and the early '80s, arguably his most important film, The Last Temptation Of Christ.

Filmed entirely outdoors in Morocco, in a unique style and at times in a slightly streetwise tone, much of the film portrays Christ's life as it is depicted in the Bible, but somewhere in the film it takes an original and unholy twist which brings out the flesh and blood in its divine protagonist: misunderstood by others, he struggles with his own personal guilt, faces tests and temptations, and questions which truly is the right way in life, leading to his ultimate challenge: give up in order to live while Jerusalem burns, or be a martyr for the sake of the Earth.

Although there was much controversy stirred up by Christian groups, this is possibly the most thought-provoking film ever made about Christianity. This film, like the Nikos Kazantzakis book, looks at Christ the man, the possibility that his path through life wasn't easy and that, in the story believed by Christians, he made all the right choices, even in the many faces of the devil. The theological debate seems to have masked the fact that Last Temptation is also a beautiful film visually, in both landscape photography and religious imagery.

After Last Temptation he returned home to direct a segment in a trilogy of short films entitled New York Stories, the other two pieces directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen. With his next feature film he returned to a genre that's defined much of his career with more realism than ever before: after touching on the low/mid-level mob in some of his previous work, he opened the 1990s with an introduction to a true story of a life of professional crime.

From his childhood Henry Hill was seduced into the gangster lifestyle, and Goodfellas covers it all: the jokes, japes, card games and meals, right alongside the scams, robberies and murders, in a brand new style for Scorsese. The film's pace comes from the pure excitement of the lifestyle it depicts, beginning at a key point in the story, rewinding to Henry's beginnings in organised crime, told at high speed in first-person narrative and stopping for breath only at freeze-frames. As Henry's life goes deeper into the criminal underworld, and he gets involved with dead bodies and narcotics, there is a seamless shift in style from casual walk-through into paranoid chase, and only during a particularly busy day on the job do we realise that we're no longer being guided through Henry's life, but breathlessly running along with him, with the cops on our tail.

Based on Nicholas Pileggi's chronicle of the real Henry Hill, Goodfellas is possibly the most accurate portrayal of the professional wiseguy ever filmed. It explains the peaks and troughs of the career in great depth but importantly it gets the people right too: the gangsters have charm and character, they're witty, wise-cracking storytellers, sharp dressers and connoisseurs of fine food, even in prison. With a very confident cinematic style Scorsese takes us through the glamour and leisure of mafia life, and later the tension and paranoia when the good times come to an inevitable end, but what becomes more and more noticeable as the film unfolds is the complete lack of regret with which the story seems to be told. The ultimate insult comes when Henry should be grateful to be alive with his wife and kids, and instead complains about marinara sauce.

It was around this time that, as well as making films of his own, Scorsese was becoming serious about the preservation of old films. He has always been thankful for those who have spent their careers restoring old films, and after two decades as a director he began to feel his own sense of duty in other areas of the industry. He started The Film Foundation, the biggest and most important film archiving organisation of our time, which has since conducted full-scale restorations on many great films whose original negatives needed serious attention, and has an archive of thousands of old films, some of which are very rare, in all formats imaginable. It also seriously endorses film education and has written a curriculum, "The Story Of Movies", which it makes available for free to any teacher worldwide who wants to use it.

Still, Scorsese has found the time to continue making films of his own at the same rate as before, beginning with a project to which Steven Spielberg had been attached, but had to leave in order to make Schindler's List. One of the conditions of Universal backing Last Temptation was that Scorsese direct a more commercial film for them, and so he replaced Spielberg on a story about a convicted rapist who spends his fourteen years in jail reading up on law, in order to add tact and knowledge to his physical superiority as he plots revenge on the attorney whose poor defence landed him into prison.

Scorsese chose Cape Fear because it was based on another of his favourite films of the 1960s, and because it was an opportunity to recreate his style, with a new cinematographer, some amazing visuals and more tension and excitement than ever before, like his own blend of the styles of Spielberg and Hitchcock, with his own brutal reality in some scenes that call for it. Halfway through the film there is a long, intense scene of fear and danger mixed with strange sexuality, which brings the pace of the film to a standstill, but mounts the tension to its greatest height. With limited script notes, Scorsese encouraged his actors to improvise, shot two cameras, and filmed the entire scene, as we see it, in one take. It is the embodiment of all that's great about Cape Fear - its intimacy, twisted psychology and pure originality - and the embodiment of Scorsese as a master of directing his cast with trust, freedom, encouragement and minimal interference.

After Cape Fear Scorsese took a look at a section of New York history as far from his comfort zone as he could have gone within the island of Manhattan. His film The Age Of Innocence is set in the high society of the 19th century where social tensions were as high as they are today, but because of expectations and the importance of appearance and reputation people masked their feelings, sometimes even from themselves. In that setting we meet Newland Archer, a wealthy man hungry for an exciting life, and his fiancée, May Welland, content to be forever an idle socialite. Early in the story there is an insinuation of a forbidden romance, which Newland and May are forced to handle tactfully to sustain their marriage. There is no crime or violence in the film- in this age all the characters are so polite and repressed that every facial expression we see, every sentence phrased a certain way, becomes a clue to their unspoken emotions. Our only other guides are the third person narrator and Martin Scorsese's camera.

With wonderful authenticity to the time in the set and costume designs, made even more graceful by the elaborate lighting and camera work, there is as much of The Age Of Innocence to savour in its visuals as in its story and characters. The camera romanticises everything, but especially Newland's affection for his unattainable love interest:

Like so many of the Scorsese films The Age Of Innocence deals with the ideas of temptation, guilt and sacrifice, and the great importance of doing the right thing, as well as capturing the anguish and romantic pain of the hero, and the stresses and frustrations of social etiquette in a simpler-looking but equally complicated time.

In 1995 Scorsese wrote, directed and narrated the four-hour documentary A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, which covers his encyclopaedic knowledge of Hollywood from the silent era to the beginning of his own career, remembering the greats, as well as many forgotten filmmakers, and discussing their impact while providing a history on the evolution of American cinema, and the changing role of the director. In the same year, for his next feature film Scorsese revisited the genre he's most famous for, working again with Nick Pileggi but taking his flair for the gangster film out of New York and into the desert of Nevada: with a lot of ideas to play with and glitzy photo-opportunities the casino movie has become almost a genre of its own- many films have explored the casino set-up, and how secure, cautious and tough they are, but none more thoroughly, or with more remorseless honesty, than Scorsese's film.

In the 1970s, a successful bookmaker Sam "Ace" Rothstein is hired by the mob from "back home" to come to Las Vegas and watch over proceedings in the Tangiers Casino, along with his trouble-making enforcer Nicky Santoro. While Nicky is short-fused and relentless, Ace is meticulous and careful in everything he does. The only gamble he takes is with Ginger, his greedy, spoiled love interest, and one of the all-time movie bitches, who exploits Ace's weaknesses, and ruins everything.

It came under criticism as being "too much like Goodfellas", but Casino takes place in an entirely different setting, with different characters operating on a different level where the bosses make a hundred times more money, and therefore much more is at stake for the characters we follow, which makes their doomed fate all the more devastating. It's also even more ambitious technically than anything Scorsese had tried previously. In making Casino, Scorsese scaled up with everything: shot fluidly and assembled with one of his most extensive music soundtracks, he went all-out to show the monsters who run the city, who do their official business in the glamorous interior of the casino:

and do their dirty work in the desert.

In crime, religion, work, romance and friendship most of the Scorsese films are about a moral code among human beings, a topic to which there is no cultural or geographical limit. He considers another religious path in Kundun, the story of the fourteenth Dalai Lama in his youth and, from his viewpoint, Tibet's struggles with Chinese oppression.

With visionary technical achievement and outstanding cinematography, in Kundun Scorsese managed something even authentic Asian cinema struggles to achieve- bringing out the transcendental beauty of the people and the setting, set to the spiritual rhythm of Buddhism and Tibetan culture.

Kundun is a beautiful and authentic masterpiece, weighed down by showbusiness politics: it was distributed by Disney, at the time when the company was breaking into the Chinese market, and as a result this Tibet-sympathetic film wasn't mass-advertised. After pouring his soul into this film for over a year, Scorsese had to do almost all of the promotion himself, and couldn't save it from becoming a financial failure.

For his last film of the 20th century he returned to New York, and to contemporary life, modernising his style with Bringing Out The Dead, a strange film following an ambulance driver on an unlucky streak, with plenty of social satire and dark paramedic humour but also a strange noir feel, especially with the monotonous voice-over from a dead-eyed man in a dead-end job, and an even stranger man-woman relationship throughout, as well as some weird religious overtones as the protagonist begins to see God in himself as he considers that his patients' lives are in his hands.

The style of the film is also something completely original for Scorsese, with a '90s-rock-and-roll look not dissimilar to the young underground directors of the time, like Fincher or Boyle, and a skewed view of New York, reminiscent of Taxi Driver, through the ambulance windscreen.

In the same year he also wrote and directed his second four-hour documentary, Il Mio Viaggio In Italia, or "My Voyage To Italy", a journey through the Italian cinema which most inspired him, largely the Neorealist period, which gave birth to many of his heroes. After his documentary he stayed in Italy, namely Cinecitta studios, to shoot his next film, an epic which examines the root of American organised crime, and its prominence through the ages.

Gangs Of New York begins with a bloody gang fight on Five Points and evolves into an epic tale of vengeance against a wave of racism and sectarianism led by William Cutting, "Bill the Butcher", gang lord of the white "Natives". An Irish boy named Amsterdam, who witnessed his father's death at the hands of the Butcher, returns to Five Points as an adult, and on his return we're introduced to a community of criminals, and honest men, who pay up to Bill. From inside the crime syndicate Amsterdam learns of the Natives' influence on the city, all the way up to political office at Tammany Hall, and plots his revenge.

The most amazing thing about the film is its ability to take us to a place in time: with astonishing set design and cinematography, on a scale beyond anything he had done before, Gangs is possibly Scorsese's most ambitious gangster film, and one of the definitive films in his technical exploration and constantly-evolving style. Gangs was also the first of Scorsese's four feature films in a row starring Leonardo Di Caprio. The second was another period film which, through action, romance, business drama, courtroom drama, glamour and tragedy, tells the story of one of the most interesting millionaires of the 20th century, Howard Hughes.

The Aviator takes us through Hughes' adult life, beginning with his film career, with Hell's Angels, which after years in the making became the most expensive movie of the time. The production of that film instantly takes us into Hughes' mind: his desire for pristine perfection, which we know as obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his passion for aeroplanes. He was also hard of hearing, socially awkward, made many powerful enemies and went bankrupt a number of times, but through it all he's been remembered as the world's richest man, a successful and influential innovator. The Aviator shows Hughes in a sympathetic light but shies away from nothing: as well as his achievements and thrilling adventures in aviation it shows Hughes at his lowest and most vulnerable points, his business failures, federal court hearings and failed romances with Faith Domergue, Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn.

Around this time Scorsese was producing more and more music films, including the seven-part documentary The Blues, of which he directed one part, and the Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, a study on Dylan's life, work and his impact, focusing mostly on his work in the 1960s, and his transition from acoustic singer-songwriter to electric band leader. His next feature film was the second remake of his career, an American version of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs which he jokingly called his first film with a plot.

While that comment was slightly tongue-in-cheek, The Departed may be the Scorsese film to which the plot is most crucial. It starts with Boston gangster Frank Costello, who hand-picks the smartest of his teenage recruits, Colin Sullivan, to join the Massachusetts State Police and spy for him while working as a high-flying detective. Meanwhile Staties academy graduate Billy Costigan is sent to work for Costello to pass information from the inside and help build a case against him. Billy and Colin are forced to live paranoid, covert lives- without crossing paths both share regular contact with Costello, as well as their superior, Captain Queenan and a police psychiatrist who, in separate ways, becomes their only emotional outlet. The tension reaches its peak after one too many coincidences, when Costello smells a rat, and the police discover the possibility of an informer in their rank, after which the two moles are sent to find each other.

As well as one of the best thrillers and the best-written screenplays of the last ten years The Departed is one of the most stylish films in that time. Cleanly shot, with a combination of slick camera movement and a modern twist on old fashioned techniques, as well as something that's hard to achieve, the inference of the passing of time needed to tell a story that takes place over several years, Scorsese's direction of this film is superlative. As in all of his films there are about a hundred different themes woven into the subtext of the film, from criminal psychology, guilt and jealousy to race, family and religion, and like Cape Fear this film also pays tribute to the story it retells, with all sorts of touches and references to Asian cinema and culture, all leading up to one of the great Scorsese endings.

The Departed was also the third Scorsese soundtrack to include the song "Gimme Shelter". Outside of cinema The Rolling Stones have always been one of Scorsese's biggest influences and, along with a crew of ten of the best cinematographers in the world, he captured the essence of the band in his next music film, Shine A Light, which covered the Stones in concert in New York, turning music footage into the finest of arts, designed even more thoroughly than his previous music films, edited in time with the music and shot masterfully and adoringly, capturing every piece of action on stage, right down to the performers' reactions to and exchanges with each other, and their audience.

For his next feature film, after some dark elements to some of his previous films Scorsese took a step closer to horror with Shutter Island. The film follows a police detective, Teddy Daniels, and his partner, Chuck, shipped to a maximum security insane asylum from which a patient has gone missing. The case, along with Teddy's post-traumatic stress, tests his wits and state of mind until we're unsure of our hero's own sanity, and as a result our perception of the film becomes more and more skewed. Shutter Island has no reliable narrator, and as we discover this we also realise that we're no longer aware what's real and what's in the character's mind, and the already-dark mystery transforms into an unsettling psychological thriller. Scorsese used the setting and the nature of the story, as well as a very strong influence from Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo, to create that dark vision, combining the danger of the asylum with low lighting, darkness, even complete blackness to drown the plot in tension and atmosphere, and the result is possibly his greatest exercise in suspense.

Later in the same year he did some work in television, directing the first episode of Boardwalk Empire and his most recent rockumentary, George Harrison: Living In The Material World, both for HBO. As film restoration and conservation continues to be of growing importance to Scorsese, old filmmaking has become a more integral part of his creative career, which peaked in 2011 with his next film, a spellbinding Parisian fantasy.

Hugo takes place in the Gare du Nord in the 1930s, where everything seems to run like clockwork. Winding the cogs are orphan Hugo and toyshop keeper Monsieur Georges, both insecure, misunderstood men, at different ends of the cycle of life. Living inside the station clock, Hugo owns a broken automaton which he longs to fix, and while Georges appears to hold the key to the mysteries of the automaton, Hugo realises that he might be the vital part in bringing the broken old man back to life by uncovering his successful past. The events of the fictional film are based on the life of a real visionary genius from a hundred years ago, and as the film's secrets are uncovered its message, Scorsese's message, becomes clearer and more meaningful.

This was Scorsese's first film made in digital, combined with possibly the best use of 3D cinematography there has been, and the technical achievement in making the film reflects the tribute at its heart: all the way through Hugo old movies and equipment are seen, many of which are now gone forever, and the film serves as an unpatronising reminder of the need to preserve the films we have left, and of the great work we've lost, some of which was melted into the stiletto shoes that walked on the station floor. In a way this has become Martin Scorsese's life goal. In the last 25 years he has played a vital part in preserving thousands of old films, and restoring a great number of masterpieces, but as well as doing what he finds most important, thankfully he's kept doing what he does best.

That continued with something new with his latest movie, a part-film-part-digital comedy epic, The Wolf Of Wall Street, portrait of a multi-millionaire scumbag, and a lifestyle of decadence more vulgar than can be imagined. After a hard day's illegal stockbroking Jordan Belfort loved nothing more than a night of drink, drugs and hookers before flying his helicopter back to his wife and kids in his Long Island mansion. When he found out he had the FBI on his trail, after a few sneaky tricks with his associates in Switzerland he beat them in court, and went back to do it all over again. Wolf treats that lifestyle like the joke it is, following Jordan from pond scum to king fish, with comedy acting and set-pieces masking all the sleaze and corruption, allowing little time to think about the evil until later when, eventually, the laughs, and the life of luxury, are over.

Maybe that continuing theme in Scorsese's films come from his Catholic upbringing: you can't put off suffering for an eternity, and those who try to burn the candle at both ends, like Henry Hill, Jake La Motta and Jordan Belfort, ultimately suffer longest. In work and leisure, comedy and tragedy, his life stories have told the naked truth about the people they've covered, and his next film, a documentary on one of the most influential politicians of this generation, Bill Clinton, promises to do the same. His long-awaited projects Silence and Sinatra have been written, designed and most probably cast- they will most likely be his next movies. Rumour continues about a ninth collaboration with Robert De Niro, in a geriatric method role.

Through time all his films have been exercises in the highest standard of cinematic excellence, but they've also always been subject to evolution and modernisation, sometimes with radical stylistic changes, something he deems necessary. For his entire career that has been the Scorsese philosophy: always being bold and ambitious, moving with the time and reinventing himself with every film, never stubborn or nostalgic but embracing of the changing trends and technology in cinema, and eager to apply his own ideas through them.

But as I've touched upon, Scorsese's movies are just the beginning of his legacy: his tireless work in conservation and excellent film criticism are equally important and valuable contributions in helping us understand and appreciate work that could otherwise have been lost and forgotten forever, and, for decades now, he has had a profound influence on the new generations of filmmakers all over the world.

While many great directors have made major contributions, in the modern era Martin Scorsese stands out as the great champion of film: not only cinema's most popular director but the most learned scholar and preserver of its history, the greatest ambassador for its present and the biggest inspiration for its future.