From Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1990) British-American
Think: nail-biting suspense, droll humor, cool patrician blondes.
(One of the few directors who was able to "brand" himself with the American public.)
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From Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) British-American
Think: silent-movie slapstick, tears-and-laughter pathos.
(Score points with film aficionados by noting that he was the first true genius of cinema.)
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From Frank Capra (1897-1991) American
Think: celebration and eventual triumph of the average guy, sentimentalism.
(Probably the first nonactor movie director to be known by the general public.)
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From Orson Welles (1915-1985) American
Think: cinematic pyrotechnics done to technical and dramatic perfection.
(Spoiler alert: it's a sled!)
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From Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) American
Think: irony, emotional aloofness, deliberate pacing.
(Don't even try deciphering what the finale with the Star Child means.)
From Federico Fellini (1920-1993) Italian
Think: poetic neorealism, surrealism, and sometimes just plain weirdism.
(Carl Jung's ideas about the collective unconscious helped inspire the dreamlike images in many Fellini films.)
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From Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) Swedish
Think: deep, dark, depressing.
(Never play chess with someone who introduces himself as Death, and do not rent "Winter Light" if you're looking for a pick-me-up.)
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From Andy Warhol (1928?-1987) American
Audacious, minimalist, unwatchable.
(According to legend, when "Sleep" - an eight-hour static shot of a man snoozing in bed - played in a Los Angeles theater in 1963, 500 people started watching it and 50 remained at the end.)
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From Steven Spielberg (1947-) American
Think: exhilarating, over-the-top action sequences, childlike wonder, feel-good endings.
(And audience members who still fear deep water, even in pools.)
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From Sergey Eisenstein (1898-1948) Russian
Think: montage, montage, montage.
(Claim that you have studied the Odessa Steps scene frame by frame; some scholars actually have.)
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