Directors With Too Many Good Movies?

When the Sight & Sound 2022 poll was published, I was rather expecting all the arthouse darlings from the 80s to show up in force, because the 2012 poll was heavy with 70s movies… but instead the 2022 poll seemed to jump straight to 90s directors instead.

I mean, sure, there were 80s directors on the list, like David Lynch and… er… well, David Lynch, at least, but a very slight showing of the directors that used to be staples at Cinematheques throughout the world in the 80s, like Peter Greenaway, Wim Wenders, Wayne Wang, Wim Warmusch…

So I’m sort of (re-)watching these movies to find out whether they all just sucked, and so far, the answer seems to be “no”, but also “OK, I can see why they didn’t land on anybody’s Top 10 lists“.

But I’m just getting started on the (re-)watch, and I also wanted to see whether the non-showing of these directors might be because there isn’t a consensus about which movies were their absolute best — so people could be voting for these directors, but none of their films make it to the top 100, anyway?

You could sort of see this possible phenomenon happen on the Top 100: John Cassavetes had four (4) movies in the 2012 Directors’ List, but all the way down towards the bottom. On the 2022, there’s only one movie, but it’s higher up: People had collectively settled on A Woman under the Influence as being his best (which isn’t a bad choice at all).

But is this also a thing with other directors? Fortunately, a nice Reddit user has compiled all the data in a convenient format, so let’s see!

In the tables below, the first column is what rank the directors have in total, the second the highest ranking movie they have, and the third is the number of votes. In the first table, I’ve edited out all directors that have a movie in the Top 100:

So Howard Hawks would have been at 24 if people had agreed on what’s his best film, but instead his highest placing movie is at 117. Etc.

Perhaps the most striking director here are Krzystzof Kieslowski, who places at 83 cumulatively, but his highest ranking movie is at 235, and Vincente Minnelli who places at 87 cumulatively, but has a highest ranking movie at 302.

And look who appears at 90 cumulatively? Wim Wenders! But, alas, Peter Greenaway only makes it to 259 cumulatively, so I guess he really is a forgotten director these days. And Wayne Wang doesn’t have a single vote.

Hm… Oh, there’s Jim Jarmusch — at 233 cumulatively, but his highest-ranking movie is at 1015! So that’s pretty dramatic.

I might at well just include the complete list here for your bemusement, so here it is. Be prepared to scroll! (Oh, and I see the less-known director “David Lych” is a the bottom there, so perhaps this data set could do with somebody massaging it a bit further…)