The American actor and cultural icon Clint Eastwood isn’t the first person you’d think of when it comes to the greatest directors of modern cinema, but the filmmaker is certainly worthy of being mentioned. Creating such celebrated movies as Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and American Sniper, the actor and director sits among an elite group of similar multi-tasking creatives, such as Ron Howard, Robert Redford and Bradley Cooper.
Making his first movie back in 1971, the same year he made and would help make the celebrated crime drama Dirty Harry, Eastwood went on to create some of the very best films of the decade. Continuing his persona as an icon of western cinema, Eastwood starred in and directed such movies as High Plains Drifter and the Oscar-nominated flick The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Although he continued through the end of the 20th century starring in his own movies, Eastwood also worked with some of the industry’s finest filmmaking talents, collaborating with the likes of Don Siegel, Wolfgang Petersen, Michael Cimino and John Sturges. Still, whilst he enjoyed these partnerships, they didn’t compare to some of Eastwood’s all-time favourite filmmakers.
During a conversation with the DGA back in 2006, the director was asked which directors he admired the most, with his answer providing valuable insight into his career as a filmmaker and creative.
Going back to the start of his career, Eastwood highlights, “In those days it wasn’t as fashionable to know who the director was. You knew who was in the picture–Gary Cooper or Ingrid Bergman–and you liked that person so you went to see that movie. You didn’t go because of the director. But later on you did”.
Continuing, he listed some of his all-time favourite filmmakers, exclaiming: “I liked Italian films–[Mario] Monicelli, [Vittorio] De Sica, [Federico] Fellini. I always liked [Akira] Kurosawa. And as I revisit old films now, there are some directors you appreciate more. You look at a picture like [John Ford’s] The Grapes of Wrath and you realize that it’s a small film shot in a relatively short period of time, and yet it has a lot of scope. [William Wellman’s] The Ox-Bow Incident is also an intimate story”.
Whilst the likes of Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, and Federico Fellini are somewhat expected favourites from a master filmmaker, the Italian duo of Mario Monicelli and Vittorio De Sica are more surprising. The former, the least well-known of the pair, helmed The Organiser in 1963, whilst De Sica is celebrated for his seminal 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves and 1952’s Umberto D.
Clint Eastwood’s favourite directors:
- Vittorio De Sica
- Federico Fellini
- John Ford
- Akira Kurosawa
- Mario Monicelli
- William Wellman