The 80 Best-Directed Films (Directors Guild of America)

In 2016, the DGA made a list of the 80 "greatest directorial achievements" in film since 1936, to celebrate its 80th anniversary. Find out which films were deemed worthy to be in this list.

The list do not include only american films.

Year of release given as hint for each movie.

The director(s)'s name(s) appear only when the title is guessed; you are only asked to guess the movies' titles. Some directors have several movies in this list.

Check out my other quiz : The 50 Best Film Scores Of The 21st Century (ThePlaylist.net)

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Last updated: September 12, 2016

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First submitted	May 9, 2016
Times taken	934
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#	Hint	Answer	Director(s)
1	1972	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola
2	1941	Citizen Kane	Orson Welles
3	1962	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean
4	1968	2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick
5	1942	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz
6	1974	The Godfather: Part II	Francis Ford Coppola
7	1979	Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola
8	1993	Schindler’s List	Steven Spielberg
9	1939	Gone With the Wind	Victor Fleming
10	1990	Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese
11	1974	Chinatown	Roman Polanski
12	1939	The Wizard of Oz	Victor Fleming
13	1980	Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese
14	1975	Jaws	Steven Spielberg
15	1946	It’s a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra
16	1964	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	Stanley Kubrick
17	1994	The Shawshank Redemption	Frank Darabont
18	1967	The Graduate	Mike Nichols
19	1977	Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope	George Lucas
20	1982	Blade Runner	Ridley Scott
21	1954	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan
22	1994	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino
23	1982	E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial	Steven Spielberg
24	1977	Annie Hall	Woody Allen
25	1998	Saving Private Ryan	Steven Spielberg
26	1954	Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa
27	1971	A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick
28	1981	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg
29	1958	Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock
30	1950	Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder
31	1962	To Kill A Mockingbird	Robert Mulligan
32	1960	Psycho	Alfred Hitchcock
33	1956	The Searchers	John Ford
34	1994	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis
35	1952	Singin’ in the Rain	Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
36	1963	8 ½	Federico Fellini
37	1949	The Third Man	Carol Reed
38	1946	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler
39	1954	Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock
40	1957	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean

#	Hint	Answer	Director(s)
41	1959	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock
42	1975	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Miloš Forman
43	1965	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise
44	1976	Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese
45	1997	Titanic	James Cameron
46	1980	The Shining	Stanley Kubrick
47	1984	Amadeus	Miloš Forman
48	1965	Doctor Zhivago	David Lean
49	1961	West Side Story	Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise
50	1959	Some Like it Hot	Billy Wilder
51	1959	Ben-Hur	William Wyler
52	1996	Fargo	Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
53	1991	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme
54	1960	The Apartment	Billy Wilder
55	2009	Avatar	James Cameron
56	2008	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow
57	1948	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston
58	2014	Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)	Alejandro G. Iñárritu
59	1950	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz
60	1978	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino
61	2007	There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson
62	1973	The Sting	George Roy Hill
63	1969	The Wild Bunch	Sam Peckinpah
64	1979	Alien	Ridley Scott
65	1976	Rocky	John G. Avildsen
66	1970	The Conformist	Bernardo Bertolucci
67	1982	Gandhi	Richard Attenborough
68	1948	The Bicycle Thief	Vittorio De Sica
69	1988	Cinema Paradiso	Giuseppe Tornatore
70	1985	Brazil	Terry Gilliam
71	1940	The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford
72	1976	All the President’s Men	Alan J. Pakula
73	1975	Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick
74	1958	Touch of Evil	Orson Welles
75	1984	Once Upon a Time in America	Sergio Leone
76	1992	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood
77	1995	The Usual Suspects	Bryan Singer
78	1976	Network	Sidney Lumet
79	1950	Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa
80	1968	Once Upon a Time in the West	Sergio Leone

Level 82

May 10, 2016

oh I was wasting a lot of time typing in directors at first because I thought you needed to guess both... I was going to comment incredulously.. wow.. no Spielberg. No Scorcese. No Ford. No Coppola. No.. Michael Bay??

Level 40

May 10, 2016

Yeah, that's misleading. I did not want to put different colors everywhere, but the description in not enough to make it clear. I'm gonna fill this column with grey.

Level 82

May 11, 2016

good call. that's helpful. My mistake for not reading the directions.

Level 82

May 10, 2016

Will say that there were some egregious omissions, though. Nolan and Lasseter got robbed. To a lesser extent so did Burton, Hooper, Anderson (Wes), Miyazaki, Jonze, Fincher, and quite a few others.

Level 40

May 10, 2016

I had the same thought about Nolan, Laceter to a lesser extent; at least it's a shame there is no animated movie (I won't count Avatar as one, I wouldn't count it at all actually but I know you kinda praise the movie). Good list of yours in my opinion, I'd add Antonioni and maybe Joe Dante (but it would be a guilty pleasure). On a side note, the list is more american-centric than similar other american lists.

Level 82

May 11, 2016

I thought Avatar was great but I'm not sure it's the best example of Cameron's directorial abilities. I would vote for Titanic, which might be his best work, Terminator 2, still the best action movie ever put to film, or possibly The Abyss.

Level 82

May 10, 2016

And Lucas does not deserve a spot on this list at all. He is a visionary, sure. A pioneer. A creative guy. A risky ballsy maverick who put it all on the line and won big time. He is the author of our dreams and sculptor of our reality insomuch as he has had an immeasurable impact on pop culture and contemporary mythology. But.... he's a piss poor director. Star Wars was a good movie, but not because of George's direction. The only film in the franchise that has been well directed was Empire Strikes Back, and that one wasn't directed by George.

Level 40

May 10, 2016

My first thought about that was "why not Empire Strikes Back instead of A New Hope?" Then I remembered something that got me even more puzzled : Lucas left the Guild because of A New Hope (the DGA considering opening credits as non-negotiable in its films and Lucas considering his opening sequence as non-negotiable as well). Maybe the answer is in the proper list's title : is "greatest directional achievments" just about "best directed"? So that Lucas would be more deemed to be on the list than a guy like Kershner, in the way that Lucas introduced the whole Star wars franchise and technical revolution with A New Hope. But then, why no New Wave movie for exemple?

Level 82

May 11, 2016

Fair points to consider. My guess: most of the people who voted on this list didn't think about it as hard as we were, and voted mostly for good (or landmark) movies instead of well-directed ones.

Level 82

May 10, 2016

bon quiz

Level 40

May 10, 2016

Thx :)

Level 82

May 11, 2016

by the way... did a little bit of research.. some suggestions for your Cowardly Frenchmen quiz:

Joan of Arc

William the Conquerer

Roland

Charlemagne

Clovis

Charles Martel

Brennus

Postumus

Odo

Baldwin II of Jerusalem

Balian of Ibelin

Philip II

Chevalier Bayard

D'Artagnan the Musketeer

Turenne

Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme

Prince Eugene of Savoy

Comte de Grasse

Comte de Rochambeau

Lafayette

Jean Baptiste Kléber

Napoleon Bonaparte

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

Michel Ney

Davout

Jean Danjou

Ferdinand Foch

Charles de Gaulle

Jean Moulin

Maréchal Leclerc

That's the best I could come up with. Though the average JetPunk user I'm guessing has only heard of 10-12 of these at best. I know you weren't making a serious proposal. Still could be a good quiz. I'll leave it up to you.

Level 40

May 11, 2016

Nice list, but I still wouldn't call it this way ;) Anyway, I'd add Richard I of England, to be a minimum sassy.

Level 82

May 11, 2016

haha... I'd probably do the same.

Level 50

Sep 12, 2016

David Lean directed The Bridge on the River Kwai, obviously not Hitchcock

Level 40

Sep 12, 2016

Oops! Thanks, I did not see that..

Level 40

Sep 12, 2016

Fixed! :)

Level 70

Jul 26, 2017

I would say that 2001 should work for 2001: A Space Odyssey

Level 67

Sep 5, 2019

Yeah, I stopped after typing "2001" when that wasn't accepted, but then I thought "No way. It has to be on here," so I typed the whole thing, but I was surprised that just "2001" didn't work. That's what everyone calls it.

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