The 80 Best-Directed Films -

Directors Guild of America

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Spring 2016

The 80 Best-Directed Films

The Godfather (Photo: MPTVImages.com)

As the DGA celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, we decided to poll our members to see what they consider the 80 greatest directorial achievements in feature films since the Guild’s founding in 1936. (Features directed by nonmembers were eligible.) Many organizations and critics groups have compiled similar lists, but this was an opportunity for the people who actually do the job to focus specifically on the work of the director and his or her team. Members participating totaled 2,189 (13.7 percent of all Guild members). As in any poll of this nature, there are bound to be choices you disagree with, and other films you would have included—that’s part of the fun. But we think you’ll find this list thought-provoking and a fitting tribute to the timeless work of our great directors.

	Title	Director	Year
1.	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola	1972
2.	Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941
3.	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	1962
4.	2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick	1968
5.	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz	1942
6.	The Godfather: Part II	Francis Ford Coppola	1974
7.	Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola	1979
8.	Schindler’s List	Steven Spielberg	1993
9.	Gone With the Wind	Victor Fleming	1939
10.	Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese	1990
11.	Chinatown	Roman Polanski	1974
12.	The Wizard of Oz	Victor Fleming	1939
13.	Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese	1980
14.	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	1975
15.	It’s a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra	1946
16.	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	Stanley Kubrick	1964
17.	The Shawshank Redemption	Frank Darabont	1994
18.	The Graduate	Mike Nichols	1967
19.	Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope	George Lucas	1977
20.	Blade Runner	Ridley Scott	1982

#8. Schindler’s List (Photo: Photofest)

21.	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan	1954
22.	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino	1994
23.	E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial	Steven Spielberg	1982
24.	Annie Hall	Woody Allen	1977
25.	Saving Private Ryan	Steven Spielberg	1998
26.	Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa	1954
27.	A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick	1971
28.	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	1981
29.	Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock	1958
30.	Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder	1950

#13. Raging Bull (Photo: Photofest)

31.	To Kill A Mockingbird	Robert Mulligan	1962
32.	Psycho	Alfred Hitchcock	1960
33.	The Searchers	John Ford	1956
34.	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis	1994
35.	Singin’ in the Rain	Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly	1952
36.	8 ½	Federico Fellini	1963
37.	The Third Man	Carol Reed	1949
38.	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler	1946
39.	Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock	1954
40.	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean	1957

#43. The Sound of Music (Photo: Photofest)

41.	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	1959
42.	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Miloš Forman	1975
43.	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise	1965
44.	Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese	1976
45.	Titanic	James Cameron	1997
46.	The Shining	Stanley Kubrick	1980
47.	Amadeus	Miloš Forman	1984
48.	Doctor Zhivago	David Lean	1965
49.	West Side Story	Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise	1961
50.	Some Like it Hot	Billy Wilder	1959

#56. The Hurt Locker (Photo: Everett)

51.	Ben-Hur	William Wyler	1959
52.	Fargo	Ethan Coen, Joel Coen	1996
53.	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme	1991
54.	The Apartment	Billy Wilder	1960
55.	Avatar	James Cameron	2009
56.	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow	2008
57.	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston	1948
58.	Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	2014
59.	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	1950
60.	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino	1978

#59. All About Eve (Photo: Photofest)

61.	There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson	2007
62.	The Sting	George Roy Hill	1973
63.	The Wild Bunch	Sam Peckinpah	1969
64.	Alien	Ridley Scott	1979
65.	Rocky	John G. Avildsen	1976
66.	The Conformist	Bernardo Bertolucci	1970
67.	Gandhi	Richard Attenborough	1982
68.	The Bicycle Thief	Vittorio De Sica	1948
69.	Cinema Paradiso	Giuseppe Tornatore	1988
70.	Brazil	Terry Gilliam	1985

#71. The Grapes of Wrath (Photo: AMPAS)

71.	The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford	1940
72.	All the President’s Men	Alan J. Pakula	1976
73.	Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick	1975
74.	Touch of Evil	Orson Welles	1958
75.	Once Upon a Time in America	Sergio Leone	1984
76.	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood	1992
77.	The Usual Suspects	Bryan Singer	1995
78.	Network	Sidney Lumet	1976
79.	Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa	1950
80.	Once Upon a Time in the West	Sergio Leone	1968

History

A look and some of the major events and accomplishments in DGA history and the members who made them.