Making movies is an art form built on collaboration. A single movie takes armies of talented artisans to turn cinematic dreams into reality. But when it comes down to it, it's the one who says "Action!" who quite literally gets the cameras rolling. But with so many directors to have lived and died in the history of movies, which filmmakers are actually deserving of "must-see" status?
Believe it or not, the history of directors hasn't always been so clear-cut. In a nutshell, the job of a director was figured out several years into the birth of the industry, when filmmakers recognized there had to be someone coordinating between the actors, designers, and technicians. By the 1920s, the emerging class of film criticism saw directors as the single "author" of a movie, with early reviews attributing the success or failure of movies to the one whose name came after the words "Directed by."
