The most influential director in cinema history, according to science
One of the most highly debated topics within any group of cinephiles is the legacy and impact of any director, with film lovers engaging in heated arguments over which director is the most influential. Some would insist that Steven Spielberg forged the strongest career due to the sheer scale of his projects and the pioneering of commercial filmmaking, whereas some would relentlessly defend Stanley Kubrick, and I will continue to put my life on the line for Kelly Reichardt and Eric Rohmér. However, through the merging of science and art, a recent survey has attempted to quantify this struggle and definitively put an end to this endless debate, whether we agree with it or not.
The word ‘influential’ feels ambiguous within a study like this, but to begin with, but in order to measure the influence of a director, the conductors of this research have narrowed this lens to determine influence by how it affected other movies after its release, from both a creative and financial point of view. To include the entirety of global cinema would be a slightly intimidating task, so the researchers only attempted to analyse Western media by looking at data from IMDb and trends and patterns in the film industry.
Ranking at number five on the list is Steven Spielberg, and given the genre of cinema that spawned from his monumental work on Jaws and Jurassic Park, his inclusion is nearly guaranteed. Due to the cultural and financial impact of his work, with cinema affecting not only our creative landscape but the general financial market, his films are irreplaceable in their technical achievement, box office sales and creation of specific aesthetic trends in cinema. Some might be surprised that Spielberg’s work isn’t higher, but given the time at which his career exploded, there were earlier directors whose work was more influential within the canon of filmmaking.
Mervin LeRoy came in at number four, with Alfred Hitchcock coming in at number three. Many will be surprised by the inclusion of LeRoy, a slightly lesser-known figure than the other directors on the list with projects under his belt, such as The Bad Seed, Little Caesar and Waterloo Bridge. However, he was crucial in the development of Warner Brothers with his partner Michael Curtiz, creating a more streamlined approach to directing that changed the future of the studio. He was also responsible for many of the later filmmaking practices that defined a new era of Hollywood, despite having a filmography that is less immediately aw-inducing than the others on this list.
Hitchcock, meanwhile, is a no-brainer, and with a slate of other 50 feature films that were groundbreaking in their technical innovation and techniques that are still being used and referenced today, the impact of his voice cannot be understated.
In second place on the list is Victor Fleming, the infamous director behind The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, which are two of the most influential films of all time. From the revolutionary Technicolor and immersive production design of The Wizard of Oz that swept at the Academy Awards and the commercial success of Gone With the Wind that made it the highest-earning film of all time when released, these films had an unprecedented knock-on effect on future directors and broke the boundaries of what was expected from film.
Lastly, the study concluded that the most influential director of all time was George Cukor, who was known for My Fair Lady, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, and The Women.
Cukor was a regular collaborator of David O Selznick, the studio head at RKO Pictures, and was assigned to direct many of their most successful films. Due to the popularity of these films and the scale of his work at the studio during the most informative era of Hollywood, his influence is undeniable. However, I’m sure many people would disagree, and what is influential to one person’s creative style will not be the same as another, and the use of data and science cannot change how we feel about an artist.
