The 80 Best-Directed Films According to the Directors Guild of America

May 9, 2016

To celebrate their 80th anniversary, the DGA decided to come up with a list of the 80 "greatest directorial achievements" in film — and boy is it good — and kind of bad.

They did this by polling their members, asking them which they thought were the 80 best-directed films to be released since the DGA was founded in 1936. And like with any "top whatever" or "best of" list, there are bound to be a handful that you completely and violently disagree with — I saw two right off the bat. 

At any rate, here it is, the DGA's list of the 80 Best-Directed Films:

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)

    

    'The Graduate' (1967)

19. Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)
20. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
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)
31. To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962)
32. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
33. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

    

    'The Searchers' (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)
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)

    

    'Amadeus' (1984)

48. Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965)
49. West Side Story (Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise, 1961) 
50. Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
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)
61. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
62. The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)

    

    'The Sting' (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 (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)

    

    'Rashomon' (1950)

There's a lot to take away from this list, some good things, some not so good. I know I was at first excited, but then quickly disappointed to see only one film directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker — and to have that film put directly beneath Avatar was kind of an ironic salt rubbing, since, you know, The Hurt Locker beat out Avatar for Best Picture and Best Director in 2010.

But we have to remember that the list isn't necessarily ranked from best to worst — I mean, does anyone want to live in a world where Rashomon is at the bottom of a list like this? Rankings aside, one issue I saw was the fact that these films are very American. Maybe that's expected since "America" is in the title of the DGA, but it would've been nice, and more representative of what are considered to be the "greatest directorial achievements" in film, to see more works from non-American directors.