Directors !

Michelangelo Antonioni has always been my Nr 1. Bergman of course at Nr 2, and Hitchcock whom I never tire of at Nr 3.

Add in Joe Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder, Cukor and Minnelli, Hawks and Huston, Borzage, Von Sternberg, Nick Ray, Kazan, Preminger, Wyler, Zinnemann, and the pantheon is more or less complete, with Richard Quine, Blake Edwards, Pakula, Mulligan, Kubrick and Ford.

Visconti, some early Fellini, Bertolucci, Pasolini, the Taviani Brothers, Demy, Malle, Chabrol, Truffaut, - no Godard I am afraid. Losey, Lester, Schlesinger, Desmond Davis (I love his Girl with Green Eyes and I Was Happy Here and the slapstick Smashing Time), Clive Donner (Whats New Pussycat, Nothing But the Best, Alfred The Great, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush), J Lee Thompson, Ronald Neame, and of course David Lean (The Passionate Friends was a major discovery when re-released recently) for This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter and Great Expectations. Carol Reed, Michael Powell and Basil Dearden. All those English classics from the '40s to the '70s when Schlesinger and Bryan Forbes were keeping English cinema going.

Today, its Francois Ozon, Ang Lee, Todd Haynes, Almodovar, Condon and Bigelow ....