Foster on Film

Normally my lists of the Best Films of the Great Directors will be top 10 lists, but for Hitchcock, I decided something more comprehensive was in order. He has plenty of masterpieces on his resume, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t a few misfires—quite a few actually. And a few real stinkers: Frenzy…Wow…Just…Wow. So in

Cukor was known as “the woman’s director” as he had a reputation for getting good performances from actresses, but he could have earned the title because of his focus on films targeting women: romances and melodramas. His pictures heavily featured the social elite and often compared life with a performance. He’s a fine director, but

Hawks has the most masculine style of any of the great directors. His films were about men and for men. The relationships that matter were between men, and the only way a woman could have power in a Hawks film was by taking on masculine traits and becoming one of the boys. Thus was born

The greatest director of the studio age and by my account, the greatest director of all time, Curtiz was a master of the craft, and exercised his skills across genres. He helmed melodramas, adventure films, Noirs, comedies, romances, musicals, mysteries, horror pictures, histories, war films, literary movies, westerns, and whatever else there is. This put

Sometimes greatness comes from complicated technique, superior skill, and slow, methodical work. Sometimes it’s knowing when to get out of the way and just get things done. Van Dyke was in the second category. Nicknamed “One-take Woody,” Van Dyke was know for his quick work and keeping under budget. The studio loved him for his

His background was in set design, but he learned directing quickly and had his own style that elevated him above the other directors of the time. He looked at the world as a gothic playground, filled with the strange and wonderful and terrible. Even when the material was less then brilliant (silly melodramas were the

Wilder started as a writer, first in Berlin, then in the US where he worked on the masterpiece Ninotchka before he added directing to his resume. He is probably the finest writer/director of all time. The thing that people sometime miss with Wilder is that he always made comedies, just sometimes those comedies pretended to

No one burst into cinema like Huston. His first film was a masterpiece, his greatest, and the best first film of any director. He arose as the perfect director, and for ten years he defined genius behind the camera. Far more of a rebel than Welles, he squeezed art out of Hollywood against its will.

Sandrich didn’t have the time to create a great number of master works as he died at 44 from a heart attack generally attributed to overwork. And he was stuck with the likes of the unfunny vaudeville-like team of Wheeler and Woolsey for several films. But in his brief career, Sandrich made his mark. His

Lubitsch was one of the most important directors of early Hollywood, but he’s mostly known now for those he inspired, particularly Billy Wilder, who coined the term “The Lubitsch touch” to describe the perfect solution to any cinematic problem. Lubitsch started as a silent director in Germany, then moved to the US where he directed

This is different from my normal Director’s Lists as Jones is not known for features, but for animated shorts. But then he’s also the greatest director of shorts, and arguably of animations of any length, so definitely a man who needs to be included. A majority of his career was spent at Warner Bros., working

My bio for Michael Powell is a bit longer then usual as people who don’t breath cinema don’t seem to know him. Powell has been called the greatest British director by those more knowledgeable than I, and I wouldn’t argue the point. His films wrap me into other realities. More than any other director on