The DGA's 80 Best-Directed Films
The DGA released a list of what their members believe to be the eighty best-directed films since 1936, when the guild was founded.
"...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)."
1. The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola
2. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
3. Lawrence of Arabia - David Lean
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
5. Casablanca - Michael Curtiz
6. The Godfather: Part II - Francis Ford Coppola
7. Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
8. Schindler’s List - Steven Spielberg
9. Gone With the Wind - Victor Fleming
10. Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese
11. Chinatown - Roman Polanski
12. The Wizard of Oz - Victor Fleming
13. Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese
14. Jaws - Steven Spielberg
15. It’s a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra
16. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick
17. The Shawshank Redemption - Frank Darabont
18. The Graduate - Mike Nichols
19. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - George Lucas
20. Blade Runner - Ridley Scott
21. On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan
22. Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino
23. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - Steven Spielberg
24. Annie Hall - Woody Allen
25. Saving Private Ryan - Steven Spielberg
26. Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa
27. A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick
28. Raiders of the Lost Ark - Steven Spielberg
29. Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
30. Sunset Boulevard - Billy Wilder
31. To Kill A Mockingbird - Robert Mulligan
32. Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock
33. The Searchers - John Ford
34. Forrest Gump - Robert Zemeckis
35. Singin’ in the Rain - Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
36. 8 ½ - Federico Fellini
37. The Third Man - Carol Reed
38. The Best Years of Our Lives - William Wyler
39. Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock
40. The Bridge on the River Kwai - David Lean
41. North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock
42. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Miloš Forman
43. The Sound of Music - Robert Wise
44. Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese
45. Titanic - James Cameron
46. The Shining - Stanley Kubrick
47. Amadeus - Miloš Forman
48. Doctor Zhivago - David Lean
49. West Side Story - Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
50. Some Like it Hot - Billy Wilder
51. Ben-Hur - William Wyler
52. Fargo - Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
53. The Silence of the Lambs - Jonathan Demme
54. The Apartment - Billy Wilder
55. Avatar - James Cameron
56. The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow
57. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - John Huston
58. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) - Alejandro G. Iñárritu
59. All About Eve - Joseph L. Mankiewicz
60. The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino
61. There Will Be Blood - Paul Thomas Anderson
62. The Sting - George Roy Hill
63. The Wild Bunch - Sam Peckinpah
64. Alien - Ridley Scott
65. Rocky - John G. Avildsen
66. The Conformist - Bernardo Bertolucci
67. Gandhi - Richard Attenborough
68. The Bicycle Thief - Vittorio De Sica
69. Cinema Paradiso - Giuseppe Tornatore
70. Brazil - Terry Gilliam
71. The Grapes of Wrath - John Ford
72. All the President’s Men - Alan J. Pakula
73. Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
74. Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
75. Once Upon a Time in America - Sergio Leone
76. Unforgiven - Clint Eastwood
77. The Usual Suspects - Bryan Singer
78. Network - Sidney Lumet
79. Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa
80. Once Upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone