The Ten Best Directors of All Time Relay Race

For the past few months, fellow film bloggers may have been lucky enough to take part in two interactive and challenging relay blog posts, both created by the ever-excellent Nostra from My Filmviews. First up was the Ten Best Actors of All Time Relay Race. The ladies came next, and earlier today, Nostra began a relay race in which we are to rank to the 10 finest auteurs.

Tyler at Southern Vision had the first crack at it (making a very difficult but wise swap), and he’s been kind enough to pass it along to me. My inclusion will come as no surprise to some - the difficulty of this post is going to be in who to take out. But first, Nostra’s rules:

“So what’s the idea behind the relay? I’ve created a list of what I think are the ten best directors. At the end of the post I, just like in a real relay race, hand over the baton to another blogger who will write his own post. This blogger will have to remove one director (that is an obligation) and add his own choice and describe why he/she did this. At the end the blogger chooses another blogger to do the same. We will end up with a list (not ranked in order) which represents a common agreement of the best directors. If you are following the relay race it is also a great way to be introduced to new blogs!”

The progression of the list since it began on June 5:

  My Filmviews

   Southern Vision

The directors who have been selected:

Darren Aronofsky

Joel and Ethan Coen

Alfred Hitchcock

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Stanley Kubrick

Akira Kurosawa

Hayao Miyazaki

Martin Scorsese

Steven Spielberg

Quentin Tarantino

Who I’m Taking Out:

Darren Aronofsky

Damn tough call. These are 11 extremely talented men who are all more than worthy of being here. It could be argued that Joel and Ethan Coen representing one spot isn’t exactly fair, but that’s not an argument I’m going to make. The Coen brothers have had too indelible a stamp on contemporary filmmaking to be excluded due to semantics. My instinctual cut was Miyazaki, simply because animation is not my thing. But if there is one director of animated films that I admire wholeheartedly, it’s Miyazaki, so he stays. Bascially, I had to rip the Band-Aid off and take out Darren Aronofsky. Believe me, this isn’t an easy call. The Wrestler was my favorite film of 2008, likewise Black Swan in 2010, and Requiem for a Dream’s influence is evident in nearly every successful independent film made today. But someone had to go. And so it is.

Who I’m Adding:

Ingmar Bergman

Bergman. To be honest, I could replace any of the directors listed above with Ingmar Bergman and be completely at peace. Bergman is my god; the effect his films have had over my life is something I will never be able to fully articulate in any communicable form. I could write an essay, give a speech, or make a film based on the impact of this man’s films, but nothing would suffice. My life is film. I am bound to the art of filmmaking more so than anything else. And Ingmar Bergman is my favorite filmmaker. Sure, I could rattle off a few of Bergman’s films specifically that justify his inclusion to this list, but I’d probably end up listing his entire filmography.

Film, to me, is an artistic medium created to evoke emotion, and no films evoke more emotion(s) from me than that of Ingmar Bergman’s.

Okay, sorry, I’m done. When the conversation shifts to Bergman, I just can’t help myself. Time to pass this thing along, and I am really very curious as to who Steven from Surrender to the Void will chose. The mantle is yours, my friend.