Live Poll: Greatest German Film Director

Correction: if you judge greatness from the historical magnitude and the directing talent in its core, it's a tie between Riefenstahl and Lang.


Unless, you are using the royal we in that sentence.

If by "you", you mean "me", then yeah, I shouldn't say "we", if I mean "me", I often use "you" to mean "me" but maybe I trust others would go through the same experience, presumptuous maybe, but unconsciously I swear.

AHH finally...thank you Suzy!

The poll would be a lot better if you gave a couple of movies made by each director to illustrate each director's accomplishments, DC. To be honest, most of the names are complete unknowns to me.

May I help out?

(leaving out the top 3)

Wolfgang Petersen - Das Boot; Hollywood action movies like Air Force One and Troy.
Ernst Lubitsch - best known for comedies, mentor of Billy Wilder. The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka, To Be or Not To Be.
Wim Wenders - Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire. Recently he's going for documentaries like Pina.
Leni Riefenstahl: propaganda movies for the Nazis. Roger Ebert called her most famous film, Triumph of the Will, great but evil.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: The Lives of Others; Never Look Away. He only made The Tourist in between, so it's a 2/3 successful career so far.
Margarethe von Trotta: political movies about extreme left terrorists (Marianne and Juliane); politician Rosa Luxemburg; and political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

(continuing in another post as many links apparently trigger the spam filter)



Tom Tykwer: Run Lola Run; Perfume, Cloud Atlas.
Oliver Hirschbiegel: Downfall (the Bruno Ganz Hitler movie); The Invasion (2007).
Robert Wiene: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (it's been said that he tried to copy the success of the groundbreaking 'Caligari' for the rest of his career, and failed).
Robert Siodmak: Best known for noir movies like The Killers (1946) with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.
Hans-Christian Schmid: honestly, I've never heard of him and haven't seen any of his movies.
F.W. Murnau: Nosferatu; The Last Laugh; Faust; Sunrise. A good deal of German film authorities (Werner Herzog among them) favor him over Fritz Lang.

Volker Schlöndorff: mostly political or historical movies. Won the Golden Palm for The Tin Drum (1979) about a 3 year old boy who refuses to grow up in a time that sees the Nazis rise to power.
Wolfgang Becker: Goodbye, Lenin (2003), a woman falls into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hilarity ensues when her son pretends that the old Communist state still exists, to spare her the culture shock.
Arnold Fanck: dominated the national subgenre of 'Bergsteigerfilme' (mountaineer movies) with much adventure, lots of pathos, and authentic break-neck climbing footage. Mentor of Leni Riefenstahl. White Hell of Pitz Palü is referenced in the tavern scene in Inglourious Basterds.
Frank Beyer: I didn't recognize the name, but judging from movies like Jacob the Liar he's probably the most notable East German director, and someone who managed to question the status quo in his works.

Detlev Buck: the name definitely rings a bell but he's mainly known for gross-out comedies and horse movies for girls. Perhaps Measuring the World (2012), about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, is a more flattering example of his work but I haven't seen it.
Douglas Sirk: made romantic Hollywood movies like All that Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959) that are said to have much subtext in them (about homosexuality, for example). Major influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes (director of Carol).
Uwe Boll: infamous as one of the worst, if not the worst director in the world. He is also a doctor of literature and philosophy who challenged critics in a boxing match, lol.
Edgar Reitz: director of a whole series of films about the life in a little village and a few other places: Heimat (1981-2012) ("home", "homeland"). Chronicles events from around 1900 to the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Uli Edel: Christiane F. (1981), one of the most depressing (well-made) movies ever, about a teenage drug addict.
Walter Ruttman: Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927). Chronicles one day in Berlin and all sorts of things that happen in it.

Andreas Dresen: Anyone interested in Gundermann, a biopic about an East-German miner-singer who kind of criticized the regime but also kind of spied for it?
Alexander Kluge: intellectual, political, and, depending on your point of view, dry and didactic director. Hard to understand even for Germans. Along with Fassbinder, he contributed to the documentary Germany in Autumn (1978), about a time when extreme left terrorists shocked the country and provoked counter measurements that led some to believe the end of democracy was nigh.
Paul Wegener: a pioneer of the fantasy and horror genre. Directed The Student of Prague (1913) and The Golem (1915).
Kurt Hoffman: didn't know about him either. His movies seem to be considered jolly and lightweight post-war entertainment.
Werner Schroeter: experimental filmmaker whose Palermo or Wolfsburg won the Berlin Golden Bear.

Percy Adlon: Bagdad Cafe or "Out of Rosenheim" (1987). A lonely German woman ends up in a desert in the United States.
Leander Haußmann: movies (drama, comedy, satire?) about East Germany or West Berlin. For example Sun Alley (1999) and Herr Lehmann (2003).
Dominik Graf: one of the few modern German directors who consistently makes high-quality genre films. The Cat (1988) is one tense heist movie.
Veit Harlan: infamous for propaganda movies like Jud Süß. I can't say anything about their cinematic quality. Jud Süß is banned in most countries as far as I know.
Fatih Akin: director of Turkish origin who often movies about multicultural experiences and racism, among them Head-On and In the Fade.

After some deliberation, these may have been worthy additions/replacements (nothing against DC's poll; after all, I and everyone else had plenty of time to suggest other options):

Sebastian Schipper: Victoria, the (not gimmicky) single-continuous take drama-thriller about a young Spanish woman and a couple of German dudes who spend a night in Berlin. Mostly in deliberately awkward but understandable English.
Roland Klick: 70s prodigy whose career was basically destroyed by strictly politically-minded domestic colleagues and critics, who claimed that his movies were commercial garbage (which is beyond ridiculous). He is responsible for the groundwork of the above-mentioned Christiane F.; his movie Supermarkt (1974) is clearly a precursor. He also made a gritty Western called Deadlock (1970) that was shown in Cannes... but because of a huge rainstorm, Alejandro Jodorowsky was the only one to come and see it, and was blown away (by the movie, not by the storm). Nowadays, he's more appreciated at home, and on an international level, both Spielberg and Tarantino are fans.
Christian Petzold: an exponent of a more subtle kind of political cinema and frequent international festival nominee. Director of Barbara and Transit.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst: Perhaps number three of the great German silent directors, behind Lang and Murnau. He was known for great realism but also for eroticism; a great example for the latter is Pandora's Box (1929), which features one of the prototypes of a femme fatale.


Oh, and something important is missing in my Wolfgang Becker description:

Hilarity ensues when she wakes up and her son pretends that the old Communist state still exists, to spare her the culture shock.

For me Christiane F. (1981) is maybe not the best German movie ever made but certainly one of the most touching movies I have ever seen worldwide. Taking into account that most actors in the movie are not professional, the film delivers an astonishing realistic document about drug addiction.