The Online Film Critics Society has just released its list of the 100 Best Directorial Debuts in film history. Some predictable heavyweights (not intended to be a Welles’ joke, FYI) are predictably in the top 10. And not surprisingly, Coppola made the list…but it’s Sofia, not Francis Ford. A few other notables pop out to me like finding Night of the Living Dead above The Maltese Falcon. I think I personally might have put The Iron Giant above Toy Story; and I’m stunned as shit to find The Blair Witch Project on the list at all, let alone at #35?? Over Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at #36??! Wow. But I suppose that’s the nice thing about a list like this: endless opinions and debate. It’s also not frontloaded with pre-1950s classics, which doubtful AFI would ever not do.
The entire list is below, and you can click over to OFCS.org for a breakdown on the top 20.
1. Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Welles)
2. Eraserhead (David Lynch)
3. Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
4. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
5. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
7. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
8. Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen)
9. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
10. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
11. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
12. Toy Story (John Lasseter)
13. Badlands (Terrence Malick)
14. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (Marty DiBergi; co-directed by Rob Reiner)
16. Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris)
17. Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
18. Airplane! (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker)
19. Duel (Steven Spielberg)
20. The Iron Giant (Brad Bird)
21. The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi)
22. The Producers (Mel Brooks)
23. Knife in the Water (Roman Polanksi)
24. The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont)
25. The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
26. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
27. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones)
28. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)
29. L’Age d’Or (Luis Buñuel)
30. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
31. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray)
32. Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)
33. Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
34. Clerks (Kevin Smith)
35. The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez)
36. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)
37. Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
38. Primer (Shane Carruth)
39. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton)
40. Brick (Rian Johnson)
41. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
42. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
43. Mad Max (George Miller)
44. Pi (Darren Aronofsky)
45. In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)
46. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
47. American Beauty (Sam Mendes)
48. Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton)
49. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
50. Delicatessen (Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
51. Elevator to the Gallows (aka Frantic) (Louis Malle)
52. Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson)
53. Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman)
54. She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee)
55. Shadows (John Cassavetes)
56. Moon (Duncan Jones)
57. Monsters Inc. (Pete Docter)
58. Slacker (Richard Linklater)
59. Say Anything… (Cameron Crowe)
60. Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle)
61. Closely Watched Trains (Jiri Menzel)
62. Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck)
63. Repo Man (Alex Cox)
64. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)
65. Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
66. On the Town (Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly)
67. The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet)
68. Ivan’s Childhood (aka My Name Is Ivan) (Andrei Tarkovsky)
69. My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin)
70. El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez)
71. Performance (Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell)
72. In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
73. They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray)
74. Love Actually (Richard Curtis)
75. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling)
76. One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)
77. Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson)
78. Following (Christopher Nolan)
79. Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli)
80. George Washington (David Gordon Green)
81. Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau)
82. The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy)
83. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black)
84. Away from Her (Sarah Polley)
85. Thank You for Smoking (Jason Reitman)
86. The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
87. Chicago (Rob Marshall)
88. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow)
89. Pleasantville (Gary Ross)
90. Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
91. Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant)
92. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)
93. Heathers (Michael Lehmann)
94. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie)
95. Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann)
96. Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner)
97. The Falls (Peter Greenaway)
98. Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio)
99. Get Carter (Mike Hodges)
100. Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay)