Best Movie Directors for the Deviant Intellectual
by ZardexM | created - 23 May 2012 | updated - 13 Feb 2015 | PublicIn order of intellectual and philosophical superiority, artistry and creativity.
Philosophy that rings true to a deviant intellectual must be art and art must surpass the languages that constitute the fabric of human ideologies, culture and thought.
Art must be an expression not of human thought but of the instinct and emotion of an animal.
[Disclaimer]Being well known, widely appreciated or "Merited" does not effect the way I have rated these Directors one way or the other.
1. Nagisa Ôshima
Director | Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Nagisa Oshima's career extends from the initiation of the "Nuberu bagu" (New Wave) movement in Japanese cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to the contemporary use of cinema and television to express paradoxes in modern society. After an early involvement with the student protest movement in ...
Here, from newest to earliest are those of his movies I have managed to watch... Sadly not all of them are easily available for those who cannot understand Japanese.
Taboo
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Empire of Passion
In the Realm of the Senses
The Ceremony
Death by Hanging
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide
Violence at Noon
Pleasures of the Flesh
Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel
Night and Fog in Japan
The Sun's Burial
Cruel Story of Youth
A Town of Love and Hope (or "A Street of Love and Hope" in some translations)
...and all of them masterpieces.
2. Luchino Visconti
Writer | Il gattopardo
Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally ...
Death in Venice, The Damned, The Leopard
3. Kaneto Shindô
Writer | Ichimai no hagaki
Kaneto Shindô was born on April 22, 1912 in Hiroshima, Japan. He was a writer and director, known for Postcard (2010), The Naked Island (1960) and A Last Note (1995). He was married to Nobuko Otowa and Miyo Shindo. He died on May 29, 2012 in Hiroshima, Japan.
Having worked in the movie business most of his over 100 Years of life Kaneto Shindô directed 48 films and wrote 238 scripts.
As a movie Director He was the most raw kind of animalistic interpreter of humanity I have seen. A wonderful delight to watch for those people with a touch of Satanic character.
As with many good Japanese movie directors he is barely known at all in the west and less then half of his works are even translated for subtitles.
Naked Island, Onibaba, Kuroneko
4. Hideo Gosha
Director | Goyôkin
Hideo Gosha was born on February 26, 1929 in Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan (undisclosed). He was a director and writer, known for The Steel Edge of Revenge (1969), Yôkirô (1983) and Onimasa (1982). He died on August 30, 1992.
(The Oil-Hell Murder) Onna goroshi abura no jigoku, Sword of the Beast, Three Outlaw Samurai, Oar, The Geisha, Onimasa, Hunter in the Dark, Tenchu!
5. David Lynch
Writer | Twin Peaks
Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future ...
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Inland Empire, Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr., Wild at Heart
6. Elia Kazan
Director | On the Waterfront
Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He ...
The Arrangement, Panic on the beach, America, America!, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Viva Zapata!, Splendor in the Grass, Baby Doll
7. Takeshi Kitano
Actor | Zatôichi
Takeshi Kitano originally studied to become an engineer, but was thrown out of school for rebellious behavior. He learned comedy, singing and dancing from famed comedian Senzaburô Fukami. Working as a lift boy on a nightclub with such features as comic sketches and striptease dancing, Kitano saw ...
Fireworks (Hana-bi), Sonatine, Kids Return, Achilles and the Tortoise, Kikujiro
8. David Lean
Director | Lawrence of Arabia
An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding ...
Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Ryan's Daughter, A Passage to India
9. Susan Streitfeld
Director | Female Perversions
Susan trained in painting at Syracuse University, completed a BFA in Film and Television at NYU Film School and after a stint making documentaries for The Smithsonian Institute, she relocated to Los Angeles to join the faculty of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts/West as an acting teacher and ...
Unsurprisingly undervalued female intellectual. (Undervalued, not because of being a woman but because of the kinds of things she reveals.) Her keen insight on sexuality and the sexuality of women in particular and shamelessness in showing it through her art, make it inevitable that she will be shunned by most "civilized" people.
Also if you think nobody can understand how women think watch "Female Perversions" and you may just change your mind about that if you are intelligent enough to unravel what unique insight that masterpiece can reveal.
Female Perversions
10. Tomas Alfredson
Director | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Tomas Alfredson was born on April 1, 1965 in Lidingö, Stockholms län, Sweden. He is a director, known for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Let the Right One In (2008) and Fyra nyanser av brunt (2004). He is married to Charlotte Alfredson. They have one child. He was previously married to Cissi ...
To get in to the heart of "Let the Right One In" and see the masterpiece you have to be of the right kind of character.
Otherwise it's just a good vampire movie.
Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Four Shades of Brown
11. Johnny Depp
Actor | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. He was raised in Florida. He dropped out of school when he was 15, and fronted a series of music-garage bands, including one ...
As a masterful actor he uses a lot of time earning money by collaborating on big money B-Sh*t projects and is barely known at all as a director of his one time masterful directorial debut.
The Brave
12. Ole Bornedal
Writer | Nattevagten
Ole Bornedal was born 1959 in Noerresundby, Denmark. From the time he was fourteen he knew he wanted to become a filmmaker. However, not being able to get into The Danish Film School, he had to create his own career and after a few years of University Studies in Film, he started working for The ...
Just Another Love Story, I Am Dina, Nightwatch (1994)
13. Darren Aronofsky
Director | Pi
Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation). He won ...
Despite being a modern Director he has a pure record of not making un-enjoyable movies.
Black Swan, The Wrestler, The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, Pi
14. Stanley Kubrick
Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...
Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining
15. David Cronenberg
Actor | The Fly
David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early...
Dead Ringers, A History of Violence, Spider, M. Butterfly, Naked Lunch, Eastern Promises
16. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer | Il Decameron
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life ...
With clearly being very intelligent he could be a great intellectual, if only he would have had more courage of his own. He seems like a brave and faithful soldier, but a soldier of his own peers none the less and not the master of his own mind.
Had he been a master of his own mind he would not have only been able to so accurately criticize everyone who is not part of his own reference group. There is too much red humanism in him to criticize the very fundamental failures within humanism.
He can very well depict perversion and twistedness of individual ideologies, but fails to bring out the human qualities that breed them.
His style of directing usually targets a single powerful and important subject and its perverse nature, often revealing a generally held misconception within a culture.
Medea, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Teorema
17. Andrei Tarkovsky
Writer | Offret
The most famous Soviet film-maker since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky (the son of noted poet Arseniy Tarkovsky) studied music and Arabic in Moscow before enrolling in the Soviet film school VGIK. He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), which won the...
Very clearly the greatest and best of all movie directors in terms of making the most out of what can be done with movies Tarkovsky, while working in USSR, was also a deviant intellectual in his storytelling.
Last European made movies though seem totally unworthy of wasting ones time with. Perhaps he was only able to work artistically in the atmosphere of USSR.
18. Alfred Hitchcock
Director | Psycho
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and ...
The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo
19. Roman Polanski
Director | Chinatown
Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.
His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years ...
Bitter Moon, Chinatown
20. Louis Malle
Director | Au revoir les enfants
Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies ...
Damage, Pretty Baby
21. Ed Harris
Actor | Appaloosa
By transforming into his characters and pulling the audience in, Ed Harris has earned a reputation as one of the most talented actors of our time.
Ed Harris was born in Tenafly, New Jersey, to Margaret (Sholl), a travel agent, and Robert Lee Harris, a bookstore worker who also sang professionally. ...
Pollock, Appaloosa
22. George Ratliff
Director | Joshua
George Ratliff is an American filmmaker and fifth-generation Texan from the high plains town of Amarillo, TX. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Ratliff made his feature film debut soon after college with "Plutonium Circus", a documentary about the lunacy surrounding the Pantex ...
The movie "Joshua" is so sharply cunning it takes intellect and insight to the human psyche to not misinterpret it completely by interpreting it through the pitfalls of status-qua psychology. (And clearly the producers on FOX have misinterpreted the story, since they have agreed to produce it.)
Joshua
23. Stanley Kramer
Producer | Judgment at Nuremberg
Stanley Kramer was born on September 29, 1913 in Hell's Kitchen [now Clinton], Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and Inherit the Wind (1960). He was married to Karen Sharpe, Anne P. ...
Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind
24. Francis Ford Coppola
Producer | Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...
Dracula, The Godfather 1-3
25. Bernardo Bertolucci
Writer | Il conformista
Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (...
Though clearly able to grasp great concepts and having made a couple masterpieces, Bernando Bertolucci must have done it with the help from outside influence because he has clearly degenerated with the times. It doesn't take mutch of an intellectual to only be an intellectual in intellectual times, namely the 60's and the 70's.
The Conformist, The Sheltering Sky, 1900, Last Tango in Paris
26. Euzhan Palcy
Writer | Siméon
Euzhan Palcy was born in Saint-Joseph, Martinique, France. Euzhan is a writer and director, known for Siméon (1992), Sugar Cane Alley (1983) and A Dry White Season (1989).
A Dry White Season
27. Neil Jordan
Writer | The Crying Game
Neil Jordan was born on February 25, 1950 in Sligo, Ireland. He is a writer and producer, known for The Crying Game (1992), Greta (2018) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005). He has been married to Brenda Rawn since June 30, 2004. They have two children. He was previously married to Vivienne Shields.
The Butcher Boy, The End of the Affair
28. Charles Chaplin
Writer | The Great Dictator
Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...
Chaplin has a few intelligent themes he can bring out in an intelligent way, but over all there is too much humanist in him for him to get very far at being a proper intellectual.
Modern Times, The Great Dictator
29. Woody Allen
Writer | Annie Hall
Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen ...
Despite looking like an intellectual and talking like an intellectual, he still is an intellectual.
I like Woody Allen and Woody Allen is good, even Great.
I also like many directors that aren't as good as Woody Allen but Woody Allen is the mark for me in this list of movie directors to stop listing intellectual directors.
With so much the style of trying too hard and just barely making it, you cannot be worse then Woody Allen and still be an intellectual.
There may still be some directors that should be on this list that I have forgotten or have not watched enough movies from yet.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Annie Hall
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