100 Greatest Directors Quiz (2)

About This Quiz

Remind yourself of the first time you saw the name Martin Scorsese inhaled in a darkened cinema or saw Stanley Kubrick’s name credited to that harrowing nightmare. Directors rarely feature on screen but there’s a fingerprint of theirs on everything.

This test runs through movie histories, from boyish wonder to the grit of John Huston, the gothic fancies and silent shadows of F.W. Murnau and on to del Toros. It’s all about seeing a style in one frame or remembering whose encouragement prompted that great performance.

Release your inner cinephile and try to guess how many of the puppeteers behind the screen you can. You may find yourself discovering new favorites as you fête the classics.

START QUIZ

1/30

1. Who is this director?

[C] John Huston | Rugged adventurer behind The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; turned jungles, deserts and greed into cinematic gold.

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2. Who is this director?

[D] Guillermo del Toro | Gothic fabulist who blends fairy-tale wonder with monster lore in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.

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3. Who is this director?

[A] John Hughes | Chronicler of teenage angst and suburbia; The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off define ’80s adolescence.

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4. Who is this director?

[A] David Lean | Epic poet of sand and snow; Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago stretch horizons across 70 mm canvases.

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5. Who is this director?

[B] John Carpenter | Synth-scored maestro of dread; Halloween and The Thing turned shadows and fog into pop-culture nightmares.

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6. Who is this director?

[C] Mel Brooks | King of the irreverent gag; Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein roast every sacred cow in sight.

7/30

7. Who is this director?

[C] George Cukor | Sophisticated stylist of elegant wit; The Philadelphia Story and My Fair Lady refined Hollywood glamour.

8/30

8. Who is this director?

[D] Brian De Palma | Split-screen voyeur of obsession and suspense; Carrie and Scarface pulse with operatic menace.

9/30

9. Who is this director?

[A] Terry Gilliam | Monty Python alumnus turned baroque fantasist; Brazil and 12 Monkeys bend reality into surreal satire.

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10. Who is this director?

[D] Wes Anderson | Symmetrical diorama-maker of melancholy whimsy; Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel color-code human quirks.

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11. Who is this director?

[D] Fritz Lang | Expressionist pioneer who created cinema’s first super-villain in Metropolis and film-noir DNA in M.

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12. Who is this director?

[B] William Friedkin | Street-level realist who turned car chases and demonic possession into pop milestones with The French Connection and The Exorcist.

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13. Who is this director?

[C] Buster Keaton | Stone-faced daredevil of silent slapstick; The General and Sherlock Jr. redefined physical comedy with clockwork precision.

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14. Who is this director?

[A] Howard Hawks | Versatile storyteller of fast talk and faster action; His Girl Friday and Rio Bravo set templates for genres still copied today.

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15. Who is this director?

[D] Robert Altman | Master of overlapping dialogue and ensemble chaos; Nashville and M*A*S*H let characters talk over each other and into legend.

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16. Who is this director?

[C] George Lucas | Myth-maker who launched galaxies and revved engines; Star Wars and American Graffiti rewrote blockbuster DNA.

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17. Who is this director?

[B] François Truffaut | Heart-on-sleeve pioneer of the French New Wave; The 400 Blows and Jules et Jim celebrate cinema as love letter.

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18. Who is this director?

[A] William Wyler | Craftsman of intimate epics; Ben-Hur and Roman Holiday balance spectacle with human grace.

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19. Who is this director?

[D] Michael Curtiz | Warner workhorse who gave us Casablanca’s fog and Yankee Doodle Dandy’s sparkle, proving style can be studio swift.

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20. Who is this director?

[B] Richard Attenborough | Humanist epic-maker; Gandhi and A Bridge Too Far paint history with reverence and scale.

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21. Who is this director?

[A] Ron Howard | Everyman chronicler of space and spirit; Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind turn true stories into mainstream triumphs.

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22. Who is this director?

[A] Denis Villeneuve | Architect of austere sci-fi dread; Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 stretch time and atmosphere.

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23. Who is this director?

[B] Alfonso Cuarón | Gravity-defying visual poet; Children of Men and Roma move cameras like restless memories.

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24. Who is this director?

[A] Tim Burton | Gothic pop surrealist; Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands sculpt misfits into macabre fairy tales.

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25. Who is this director?

[B] Roger Corman | King of the shoestring epic; The Little Shop of Horrors and countless drive-in gems launched a thousand careers on pocket change.

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26. Who is this director?

[A] Jean-Luc Godard | Radical essayist of jump cuts and political jabs; Breathless and Pierrot le Fou tore cinema apart and rebuilt it as jazz.

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27. Who is this director?

[D] Werner Herzog | Ecstatic seeker of “ecstatic truth”; Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo haul boats over mountains and sanity over edges.

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28. Who is this director?

[C] Oliver Stone | Conspiracy-tinged chronicler of American trauma; Platoon and JFK interrogate history with a handheld glare.

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29. Who is this director?

[A] Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Time-bending dramatist of human fragility; Birdman and The Revenant blur stage, screen and survival.

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30. Who is this director?

[C] Jonathan Demme | Empathetic close-up portraitist; The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia turn whispers and screams into intimate conversations.