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This week I set out to provide a film menu that is a little more limited in scope. After all, what good is a menu if it’s too daunting to sift through? Consider today’s list less of a Cheesecake Factory menu and more of the In-n-Out variety.
Menu For August 27th, 2021
My latest dive began after reading one of Maya Daren’s famed manifestos. If you’re not familiar with Maya Daren, it is definitely worth learning more about her. She was an innovative pioneer of film and a forerunner to America’s mid 20’th century avant-garde movement. What is so remarkable about her is that she didn’t just push the boundaries of cinema, she publicly questioned each aspect of the art form along the way. Daren was a renaissance woman in every respect. She was a filmmaker, writer, photographer, poet, and choreographer.
You can read some of her writing here.
Like any boundary pusher and breaker, she often worked either on her own or in concert with a small group of collaborators. Some of her most notable films were the product of Daren directing, writing, editing, and shooting them almost entirely herself.
This got me thinking about other filmmakers who have shouldered the responsibility of multiple roles in the creation of their films. We throw around the term auteur quite a bit. So much so that it has grown to encompass a wide variety of subjective factors.
Auteur in its pure definition is a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie.
Personal influence and artistic control. If you’ve ever met a director, you’d probably agree those are quite broad characterizations.
So let’s enlist the assistance of some objective data to see if we can identify some noteworthy filmmakers who can *statistically* claim the distinction of an auteur.
A quick note on my methodology for this. There are thousands of filmmakers who have received multiple credits on a single film. For the purpose of this exercise, I needed to reduce the sample size in a way that prioritized quality.
To do that I created an index of a little over 1,800 titles that met certain filtering criteria including placement on specific film lists, major award nominations, and award wins. I also used a blended scoring system comprised of IMDB ratings, Metacritic critic scores, and Rotten Tomatoes critic scores.
Of course, this is by no means a perfect system. The list inherits the biases, inconsistencies, and oversights of its sources. However, it does stand as a good foundation upon which we can continue to build a standardized index. This will be forever a work in progress, and I’ll update you as I include other indices. I would also love to hear any ideas you might have.
But if perfection is the enemy of progress (and to mix historic world leader metaphors) let’s make Ms. Daren proud and do what we can with what we have, where we are.
Let’s take a look.
What we’re looking at here is the breakdown of directors who possess more than just their directing credit on a given film. As you can see, there is a substantial proportion with either just the single directing credit or a directing credit plus another. The fact that there is a marked drop-off in percentages as the credit sum gets higher shows just what kind of accomplishment this is.
Before we get to the top of the heap, let’s take a moment and look at the fact that the proportion of “directing + 1 credit” actually outpaces the “director only” credits by about 4.1%. This is quite interesting to me that in a list of top-tier films (imperfect as it might be) it is more common for the director to take on multiple roles beyond just the one.
It’s important to note that in this cohort of “directing + 1” things clearly trend towards writing credits (64.71%) and producer credits (32.41%).
Looking at the grouping of everything above “directing +3” the spectrum of roles becomes more varied. It breaks down far more evenly across acting, writing, producing, editing, and cinematography credits. It also includes categories like composing, production design, and even costume design.
So who are these overachievers? Let’s meet them.
To honor my oath of the In-n-Out inspired menu, this week we’re going to look primarily at the names that fall within the top two groups (directing +4 and directing + 5 or more).
This is not to dismiss the heroic work of the others, and I will post those other names and films to the site and app as an update. But for now, these are the top go-getters.
The list is organized with the highest number of credits at the top. Tiebreakers are decided by the film’s blended score of IMDB rating, Metacritic critic score, and RT critic score.
Alejandro Jodorowsky -- The Holy Mountain, The Holy Mountain -- 1975
Charlie Chaplin -- City Lights -- 1931
Charlie Chaplin -- Modern Times -- 1936
Kurt Kuenne -- Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father -- 2008
Charlie Chaplin -- The Kid -- 1921
Jafar Panahi -- Taxi -- 2015
Charlie Chaplin -- The Gold Rush -- 1925
Anna Biller -- The Love Witch -- 2016
Steve James -- Hoop Dreams -- 1994
Alfonso Cuarón -- Roma -- 2018
Bing Liu -- Minding the Gap -- 2018
Charles Burnett -- Killer of Sheep -- 1978
Charlie Chaplin -- The Great Dictator -- 1940
Asghar Farhadi -- Darbareye Elly -- 2009
Kirsten Johnson -- Dick Johnson Is Dead -- 2020
Sean Baker -- Tangerine -- 2015
Xavier Dolan -- Mommy -- 2014
Alejandro Amenábar -- The Sea Inside -- 2005
RaMell Ross -- Hale County This Morning, This Evening -- 2018
Chantal Akerman -- No Home Movie, A Million Miles from Home: A Rock'n'Roll Road Movie, Home Movie -- 2016
Kevin Smith -- Clerks -- 1994
Damien Chazelle -- Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench -- 2010
The best part about all of this is the mixture of names that wind up on a list like this. We’ve got a nice mix of the classic, the new, the well-known, and the up and coming.
We should give a special shout-out to Alfonso Cuarón, Bing Liu, Charlie Chaplin, Alejandro Amenábar, and RaMell Ross. Their films (Roma, Minding the Gap, The Great Dictator, The Sea Inside, and Hale County This Morning, This Evening) all were nominated or won Oscars for either Best Picture, Best Documentary, or Best Foreign Language film.
I’ve linked everyone’s name on the list above to their IMDB profiles so you can learn more about each person and their respective filmography.
Remember, you can access the film menu by subscribing here.
And finally, to honor the inspiration of this week’s menu, you can watch some of Maya Daren’s work on the following platforms:
A Study in Choreography for Camera -- 1945 — Fandor, Kanopy
Meditation on Violence -- 1949 — Fandor
The Very Eye of Night -- 1958 — Kanopy
Ritual in Transfigured Time -- 1946 —Fandor, Kanopy
Meshes of the Afternoon -- 1943 —Criterion Channel, Fandor, Kanopy
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti -- 1993 — Fandor
At Land -- 1944 — Fandor, Kanopy
Happy watching!