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Of The 80 Greatest “Directorial Achievements,” 79 Are By Men

Photo: Picture Perfect/REX/Shutterstock.
The Directors Guild of America — a.k.a. the DGA — celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. To honor the auspicious occasion, the group decided to do a little poll of the 80 "greatest directorial achievements in feature film" since the organization was founded in 1936. It's not a bad way to look back at nearly a century of existence, of course. But here's where things get predictably disappointing. Of the 80 movies that made the list, only one — ONE! — was directed by a woman. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker was the lone lady-led film. There are currently more than 16,000 members of the DGA. Who knows how many of them actually answered the cattle bell of the poll. But seriously, they could only come up with one female-helmed film? Even for PR purposes, you'd think the guild would have been a little more thoughtful about its picks. Anyway, here are the rest of them, all of which are great, 79 of which are directed by men. Because of course they are.
1. The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
2. Citizen Kane, Orson Welles (1941)
3. Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean (1962)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick (1968)
5. Casablanca, Michael Curtiz (1942)
6. The Godfather: Part II, Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
7. Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola (1979)
8. Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg (1993)
9. Gone With the Wind, Victor Fleming (1939)
10. Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (1990)
11. Chinatown, Roman Polanski (1974)
12. The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming (1939)
13. Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese (1980)
14. Jaws, Steven Spielberg (1975)
15. It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra (1946)
16. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Stanley Kubrick (1964)
17. The Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont (1994)
18. The Graduate, Mike Nichols (1967)
19. Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, George Lucas (1977)
20. Blade Runner, Ridley Scott (1982)
21. On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan (1954)
22. Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (1994)
23. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg (1982)
24. Annie Hall, Woody Allen (1977)
25. Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (1998)
26. Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa (1954)
27. A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick (1971)
28. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg (1981)
29. Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
30. Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder (1950)
31. To Kill a Mockingbird, Robert Mulligan (1962)
32. Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock (1960)
33. The Searchers, John Ford (1956)
34. Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis (1994)
35. Singin’ in the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (1952)
36. 8 ½, Federico Fellini (1963)
37. The Third Man, Carol Reed (1949)
38. The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler (1946)
39. Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock (1954)
40. The Bridge on the River Kwai, David Lean (1957)
41. North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
42. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Miloš Forman (1975)
43. The Sound of Music, Robert Wise (1965)
44. Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese (1976)
45. Titanic, James Cameron (1997)
46. The Shining, Stanley Kubrick (1980)
47. Amadeus Miloš, Forman (1984)
48. Doctor Zhivago, David Lean (1965)
49. West Side Story, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise (1961)
50. Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder (1959)
51. Ben-Hur, William Wyler (1959)
52. Fargo, Ethan and Joel Coen (1996)
53. The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme (1991)
54. The Apartment, Billy Wilder (1960)
55. Avatar, James Cameron (2009)
56. The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow (2008)
57. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, John Huston (1948)
58. Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Alejandro G. Iñárritu (2014)
59. All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1950)
60. The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino (1978)
61. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)
62. The Sting George, Roy Hill (1973)
63. The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah (1969)
64. Alien, Ridley Scott (1979)
65. Rocky, John G. Avildsen (1976)
66. The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci (1970)
67. Gandhi, Richard Attenborough (1982)
68. The Bicycle Thief, Vittorio De Sica (1948)
69. Cinema Paradiso, Giuseppe Tornatore (1988)
70. Brazil, Terry Gilliam (1985)
71. The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford (1940)
72. All the President’s Men, Alan J. Pakula (1976)
73. Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick (1975)
74. Touch of Evil, Orson Welles (1958)
75. Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone (1984)
76. Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood (1992)
77. The Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer (1995)
78. Network, Sidney Lumet (1976)
79. Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa (1950)
80. Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone (1968)

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