Filmmaking / Directing : 5 Best Filmmakers of all time by Amanda Toney

Undoubtedly I agree the list has best legendary artists but feel Federico Fellini, Roman Polanski, John Boorman and Quentin Tarantino made equally intriguing films.

I might change the order of that list, Amanda Toney, but I agree, those are the top five filmmakers.

Kurosawa should be the list IMO.

Not so sure about Coppola, he had a good run in the seventies but then the quality dropped. I would put Robert Altman in there or maybe Sergio Leone.

The list is "essentially" American directors. Remove AH and there you have it.

Obviously the list left off very popular, successful, influential directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Sergei Eisenstein, and Akira Kurosawa (mentioned above by David Horton).

I do not agree at all with that list for multiple reasons.

First of all, it's subjective: we are all attracted to different stories and, furthermore, to certain ways of telling a story. Just to make an example, one might like John Ford's western movies and not Sergio Leone's, or viceversa.

Second of all, the article doesn't specify what makes them "the best": the most influential in terms of artistic inspiration? In terms of "cult" popularity? In terms of economic success? Or what?

Third of all, it's a list way too "Anglosaxon-centric". I'm not saying they are not among the best ones (cause they are), but it's simply wrong not to consider the HUGE importance, influence and success that directors such as Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa had (and still have)! Without Kurosawa Lucas would've never come up with the idea for Star Wars, and without Italian cinema Scorsese would've become a priest (his own words, not mine). Let's also not forget other directors such as Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Andreij Tarkovskij, and Yasujiro Ozu. To pick five of them over the others is objectively impossible.

Aside from that, my personal list has 1) Stanley Kubrick, 2) Yasujiro Ozu (whose "Tokyo Story" was voted the best film of all time, by the way) and then lots of others.

This is a question similar to 'who's the best actor/actress'; it all boils down to individual taste. While I question anyone who says, oh, 'Hitchcock was a hack'...I understand that maybe that person is not a fan of that style or genre. There are some highly regarded directors with whom I have a real problem. I won't name this particular director, but there was a scene where the main character was smoking a cigarette, staring off into space. It went on for literally two minutes until every last wisp of smoke was gone. Some would crow that it was a beautiful artistic moment while I would simply call it, well, crap. Yeah, as Luca says, "it's subjective".

Shohei Imamura, Kim Ki-Duk, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joo-ho - the list goes on and on.

It's the list that I would expect to see from a "Top 5 Directors" list because they're certainly the most mainstream popular directors of all time. But it's definitely subjective and that's what makes claims like this so difficult. How do we decide the greatest artists when art can mean so many different things to so many different people?