Great Directors: The Shape of World Cinema

Fritz Lang's silent epic Metropolis (1927) and his first sound film M (1931) made him one of the defining directors of Weimar Germany's film industry, work admired enough that propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels summoned him after banning The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in 1933. Lang later settled in Hollywood, became a United States citizen in 1939, and directed The Big Heat and other films now counted among the founding works of film noir.

Yasujiro Ozu built a body of quiet, restrained family dramas culminating in Tokyo Story, widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, using a signature low, near-ground tatami-mat camera position and static shots that gave his work an internationally influential stillness.

Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona and Fanny and Alexander, built on stark black and white cinematography by longtime collaborator Sven Nykvist and searching close-ups on actors including Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow, made him one of world cinema's most consistent explorers of faith, mortality and the psyche across a career spanning more than five decades.

Federico Fellini moved from the social realism of Italian neorealism toward the dreamlike, autobiographical style of La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2 and Amarcord, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film four times and an honorary Oscar in 1993 for his lifetime contribution to cinema, work so distinctive it gave the language the adjective Felliniesque.

Stanley Kubrick, an American director based in England for most of his career, exercised unusually tight control over cinematography, set design and production across Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, with his final film Eyes Wide Shut released shortly after his death in 1999.

Jean-Luc Godard wrote film criticism for Cahiers du Cinema alongside Francois Truffaut before directing Breathless in 1960, a debut whose unconventional jump-cut editing and loose, improvisational style made it a landmark of the French New Wave, the movement he helped lead in breaking sharply from conventional studio filmmaking.

Francis Ford Coppola founded the independent production company American Zoetrope in 1969 to work outside the traditional studio system, then directed The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, which won him multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, and the famously troubled Vietnam War production Apocalypse Now.

Martin Scorsese emerged from the New Hollywood movement with Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, then built a long collaboration with Robert De Niro on Raging Bull and Goodfellas before The Departed, made with Leonardo DiCaprio, won him the Academy Award for Best Director. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation to restore and protect endangered motion pictures.

Steven Spielberg's television film Duel in 1971 and theatrical blockbuster Jaws in 1975 helped establish the modern Hollywood summer blockbuster, a commercial run he balanced with historical dramas Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, both of which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, while he co-founded the studio DreamWorks Pictures in 1994.