The Great Directors, 2018 Update

I think it's time for a proper update on the the state of the "Great Directors" feature, profiling various major directors through posts on my favorite films that they've made. I'm up to over sixty entries now, and despite a few long hiatuses, it's still going strong. Every time I think that I'm running out of directors to profile, another name or three turns up. Way back in 2015, during the longest hiatus, I posted a list of eleven directors I wanted to profile. There are still three directors, Sergei Eisenstein, John Cassavetes, and Elia Kazan, who I haven't gotten around to yet. And it may still be a while. More on that below.

First, a little housekeeping. I mentioned before that I'd already written about a couple of films outside of this series of posts that I wanted to retroactively incorporate into "Great Directors." So I went ahead and added the posts on Martin Scorsese's "King of Comedy," David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," and Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game" to the official directory. I didn't alter the original posts except to add the little "What I've Seen" footer at the end of each one. Another post I'm considering for this is the one for Alain Resnais's "Providence," though I want to see a few more things from his filmography first.

Picking specific directors is still a lot of fun. After avoiding them for ages, I've worked my way through a good sampling of the most famous French directors like Godard, Truffaut, Demy, Rohmer, and even the dreaded Robert Bresson. My recent bingeing of '70s films spurred posts on Ashby, De Palma, and Peckinpah. And being mindful of the domination of the profession by old white men, I was finally able to feature Spike Lee and Agnes Varda over the past two years. Looking ahead, however, it's still a struggle to make sure I'm featuring a representative sampling of important filmmakers.

There should be a documentarian in the mix by now, for instance, but the only director whose output I've seen enough of is Robert Flaherty, and he's kind of a bore. A huge cache of Frederick Wiseman's films were recently made available, so he's a possibility. And I never managed to solve the problem of how to feature directors whose work is primarily in shorts, so Stan Brakhage is still MIA. I also struggle with filmmakers from the silent era, like Eisenstein, Melies, and D.W. Griffith, who are sorely underrepresented. And then you have experimental filmmakers, underground filmmakers, and other non-commercial types.

I've been considering changing one of the criteria for eligibility for directors, which currently require that I've seen ten films from their filmography, or simply half of their output if they're deceased. There are a couple of cases where a director who hasn't been very prolific hasn't passed away yet, but is unlikely to be making very many more films. Alejandro Jodorowsky, for instance, is 89 years old and has made eight films. I've seen six of them and have been itching to write up a post for "The Holy Mountain." I don't think he's got another five films in him, though the promised "El Topo" sequel seems likely. On the other hand, it's conceivable that he might pull a Terence Malick on us.

For most of the directors I've hit roadblocks with, however, the issue is the availability of the films. It's become a recurring problem that there are so many interesting directors whose more obscure films are very difficult to get ahold of. Vittorio De Sica, for instance, has made thirty-four films, only a fraction of which are available anywhere. I've only managed to see six of his films to date. Criterion and Filmstruck have been invaluable, but the streaming revolution hasn't been the boon to classic film fans that many were hoping for. In some ways it's harder to find certain titles than it used to be.

Anyway, you can expect more "Great Directors" posts soon, even if the rate of them is going to be slowing down for a while. In addition to the aforementioned directors, Ridley Scott, Louis Malle, and Joseph von Sternberg are other names that could be featured in the next few months.

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