THE Masterpiece of a director

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Richard Linklater - Boyhood

Clint Eastwood - Mystic River

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"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're rational, should change your beliefs" Ricky Gervais

Personally, I think Goodfellas is Scorsese's masterpiece and Fargo is the Cohen Brothers' masterpiece. I would consider Fight Club to be Fincher's masterpiece and Requiem for a Dream to be Aronofsky's.

Other Director Masterpieces IMO:


Sidney Lumet, Network

Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho

William Wyler, The Best Years of our Lives

Woody Allen, Crimes and Misdemeanors

Alan J Pakula, All the President's Men

Sydney Pollack, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment (that's as far as I can narrow it down)

Blake Edwards, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Robert Altman, Nashville

Mike Nichols, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Vincente Minnelli, Meet Me in St. Louis

Clint Eastwood, Mystic River

Samuel Fuller - Pickup on South Street

John Cassavetes - A Woman Under The Influence (although I found The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie to be better, A Woman has more popularity behind it)

James Cameron - The Terminator

Ridley Scott - Alien

Roman Polanski - Rosemary's Baby

Brian De Palma - Scarface or Carrey

David Lynch - The Elephant Man

John Frankenheimer - The Manchurian Candidate

As much as I love Rosemary's Baby, I feel that Polanski's masterpiece is Chinatown all the way.

Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are my 2 favorite movies, yet I've always thought of Raging Bull as Scorsese's Masterpiece.

Boogie Nights is in my top 5, but for PTA, I go with There Will Be Blood.

For Eastwood, Mystic River is a favorite of mine, but so is Unforgiven. I'll go with Unforgiven.

Kubrick has made 3 huge favorites of mine, one in my top 5, but I consider his masterpiece to be 2001. I don't even like 2001.

For Kurosawa, give me The Seven Samurai.

A masterpiece doesn't automatically mean that that particular film is my absolute favorite of that director. That said, here are some directors and their masterpieces (sometimes more than one) according to me:

Stanley Kubrick - 2001 - A Space Oddysey
Martin Scorsese - Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (which is probably his "grandest" film)
Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo
Steven Spielberg - Schindler's List
Frederico Fellini - 8 1/2
Wong Kar Wai - In the Mood For Love, The Master
Quentin Tarantino - Pulp Fiction
Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood
Coen Brothers - Fargo
Woody Allen - Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors
Tim Burton - Ed Wood
Hayao Miyazaki - Spirited Away
Robert Altman - Nashville, Short Cuts
Orson Welles - Citizen Kane
Billy Wilder - Sunset Boulevard
Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times
Mike Nichols - The Graduate
Wes Anderson - Moonrise Kingdom
David Fincher - Fight Club
John Huston - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Mel Brooks - Young Frankenstein
Sergio Leone - Once Upon a Time in America, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
David Lynch - Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive
Roman Polanski - Chinatown
Terry Gilliam - Brazil
David Cronenberg - Dead Ringers
Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather, Apocalypse Now
Ridley Scott - Blade Runner
David Lean - Lawrence of Arabia
John Ford - The Searchers
Spike Lee - Do the Right Thing
Brian De Palma - Body Double and Femme Fatale (the two films that capture his typically recognizable style with the grandest and most imaginative vision, in my opinion)


There are certain great directors that I really respect, but that I still need to see a few more (important) films from to truly be able to capably aswer this question. Then there are also some popular directors that I think didn't deliver any masterpieces (yet).

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

I'll second A Woman Under the Influence, Rosemary's Baby, and The Elephant Man. Personally, for John Frankenheimer, I would have chosen Seconds.

You see, Seconds is magnificent but The Manchurian Candidate is more known. Don't doubt either choice tbh.

Love your choices for Tim Burton, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks

Ridley Scott - Blade Runner

David Lynch - Mulholland Drive

Sam Peckinpah - The Wild Bunch

Wong Kar Wai - In the Mood for Love

Wachowski Siblings - Cloud Atlas

Ang Lee - The Life of Pi

Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo

Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver (Just edging Goodfellas for me, which might reverse, depending on mood)

Stanley Kubrick - Wow, so hard to choose... I will go against the grain here: Eyes Wide Shut

Coen Bros. - Miller's Crossing

Alfonso Cuaron - Children of Men

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Taking a look at some of my favorites apart from the usual suspects like Hitch, Ford, Scorsese, Kurosawa and the like.

Helmut Käutner - Under the Bridges (1946)

King Hu - A Touch of Zen (1971)

Mikio Naruse - The Sound of the Mountain (1954) - though he has several you could debate over (Yearning, A Woman Ascends the Stairs, etc), Mountain is my pick for his masterpiece

Larisa Shepitko - The Ascent (1977)

Christian Petzold - Phoenix (2014)

Mrinal Sen - And Quiet Rolls the Dawn (1979) - though I imagine "Interview" would be the go-to for this one, I have it at #2

Aki Kaurismaki - The Man Without a Past (2002)

Emilio Fernández - Maria Candelaria (1944)

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Completed Extant Filmographies: Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Fritz Lang, Andrei Tarkovsky, Buster Keaton, Yasujirō Ozu - (for favorite directors who have passed or retired, 10 minimum)

Out of the 137 which I classify as masterpieces:
72 are from directors with 1 entry in the list
44 from directors with 2 entries, and
21 from 5 other directors with 3-6 each