Criticker's Favourite Directors

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CosmicMonkey
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Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by CosmicMonkey »

So, tonight on a whim I decided to figure which director's were the most favoured on this site. In order to determine this, I decided to average the five films with the highest average percentile, from within a director's filmography. (For example: Spielberg's 5 films with highest average percentile are Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, The Last Crusade, and Empire of the Sun. His score taken by the average percentile of those 5 films.)

With a starting list of over 150 directors, I've spent the last 6 hours systematically going through and calculated each director's average, these are the Top 50 Directors. There likely are some more obscure directors that I've missed that would have places on this list, but this list as it stands should be fairly complete. If you can think of any directors that I may have missed please let me know.

    1. Masaki Kobayashi: 79.13
    2. Akira Kurosawa: 78.14
    3. Satyajit Ray: 76.51
    4. Yasujiro Ozu: 76.38
    5. Ingmar Bergman: 76.05
    6. Billy Wilder: 74.86
    7. Mikio Naruse: 74.55
    8. Andrei Tarkovsky: 74.46
    9. Charlie Chaplin: 74.17
    10. Krzysztof Kieslowski: 73.72

    11. Kenji Mizoguchi: 73.43
    12. Fritz Lang: 72.99
    13. Francis Ford Coppola: 72.96
    14. Sergio Leone: 72.95
    15. Sidney Lumet: 72.92
    16. Luis Bunuel: 72.84
    17. Werner Herzog: 72.76
    18. Stanley Kubrick: 72.56
    =19. Alfred Hitchcock: 72.51
    =19. Buster Keaton: 72.51

    21. Wim Wenders: 72.27
    22. Carl Theodor Dreyer: 71.75
    23. Eric Rohmer: 71.56
    24. Michael Powell: 71.54
    25. Federico Fellini: 71.50
    26. Jean-Pierre Melville: 71.46
    27. John Cassavetes: 71.45
    28. Orson Welles: 71.36
    29. Ernst Lubitsch: 71.28
    30. Robert Bresson: 71.25

    31. F.W. Murnau: 71.09
    32. Michelangelo Antonioni: 71.06
    33. Theo Angelopoulos: 71.04
    34. Henri-Georges Clouzot: 70.98
    35. Jacques Rivette: 70.83
    36. Martin Scorsese: 70.81
    37. Bela Tarr: 70.64
    38. Vittorio De Sica: 70.56
    39. Emeric Pressburger: 70.48
    40. Francois Truffaut: 70.23

    41. Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 70.20
    42. Louis Malle: 69.99
    43. Hayao Miyazaki: 69.95
    44. Abbas Kiarostami: 69.90
    45. Luchino Visconti: 69.88
    46. Robert Altman: 69.58
    47. Nicholas Ray: 69.49
    48. David Lean: 69.38
    49. Costa-Gavras: 69.33
    50. Andrzej Wajda: 69.16



General Observations:

-Very International. None of the Top 10 and Only 4 Directors in the Top 20 were born in the United States. Also, we really love mid-century Japanese cinema here, don't we?
-Skews towards Classics, very few active directors on the list.
-Spielberg, Tarantino, Nolan, Lynch and the Coen Brothers all outside the Top 50.
- No Women in Top 50. Highest Rated Woman is Agnes Varda at #59
Last edited by CosmicMonkey on Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:25 am, edited 3 times in total.

td888
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by td888 »

I'm a big fan of Herzog. Interesting he made this list above the other typical directors like Spielberg and the Coen brothers.

paulofilmo
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by paulofilmo »

bet you were seeing tabs in your dreams


cheers for your efforts - i'm surprised/pleased ray is so high!

Moribunny
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by Moribunny »

I love it! Thank you for your effort.

Masaki Kobayashi topping the list is a surprise and I must say a rather pleasant one. It delights me even more that Satyajit Ray is held in such high regard here. Most of the others at the top are sort of off-the-shelf canon, so criticker isn't "special" with regards to them. I'm also happy that Lumet and Zhang made the list. Obviously there are some whom I feel are overrated, but overall it's a really solid list.

avgcrtckr
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by avgcrtckr »

It's difficult to assess the best directors.
By the way you may find this list of mine interesting:
https://www.criticker.com/films/?filter=e20288

edkrak
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by edkrak »

Interesting, thanks for the list.

Have you checked those two? If I'm not mistaken:
Kon Ichikawa: 70,34
Theodoros Angelopoulos: 71,04

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by CosmicMonkey »

edkrak wrote:Interesting, thanks for the list.

Have you checked those two? If I'm not mistaken:
Kon Ichikawa: 70,34
Theodoros Angelopoulos: 71,04



Sorry, I forgot to mention in my OP, I've only been counting films that have atleast 50 rankings. I feel like anything less than that and the average percentile begins to become fairly meaningless. Kon Ichikawa has only directed 4 films with atleast 50 rankings so I won't be including him for the time being. Angelepoulos checks out though, and I've updated the list to reflect that. It felt really good to kick Woody Allen out of the Top 50. :)

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by CosmicMonkey »

Today at work I thought of another couple dozen directors to try, and I ran the numbers and these are the ones that made the cut:

Mikio Naruse: 74.55
Eric Rohmer: 71.56
Costa-Gavras: 69.33
Andrzej Wajda: 69.16

Zhang, Polanski, Wellman and Kazan are now all out of Top 50 (Sorry Moribunny)

The OP has been updated to reflect these changes.

iconogassed
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by iconogassed »

Adam Curtis 78.22
Frank Borzage 72.43

If the limit were, say, 25 user ratings, Frederick Wiseman would be "winning" by more than 3 points (82.61).

iconogassed
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Re: Criticker's Favourite Directors

Post by iconogassed »

Don Hertzfeldt would also appear to make it.

73.27, if you include his 3-shorts-in-1 feature It's Such a Beautiful Day along with the shorts it's comprised of
72.33, using his next-highest film instead

This brings up an interesting question. Have you been counting distinct Criticker versions of the same film as two separate entries, ie. Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux each getting a place in Coppola's top five?

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