What’s the Best Four-Film Run by a Director?

RE-POST: Here’s a thinker via The Ringer. What's the Best Four-Film Run by a Director?

Many will inevitably point out Francis Ford Coppola’s four-film run between 1972-1979, which consisted of four stone-cold masterpieces (“The Godfather,” “The Conversation,” “The Godfather Part II” and “Apocalypse Now”).

Coppola had four of his films crack the top 10 in our 1970s critics poll. That’s something we haven’t encountered in any of our decade polls, which include the ‘50s, ‘60s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s.

Hitchcock had three titles in the top 10 of the ‘50s poll. Kubrick had two films crack places in our ‘60s poll. Paul Thomas Anderson also had two films in our ’90s and ’10s polls. It’s hard to find a filmmaker who has managed to release four or five straight genuine classics.

If “Spartacus” doesn’t count as a Stanley Kubrick-directed movie, since he completely disavowed the film, then his streak could genuinely extend from “The Killing,” “Paths of Glory,” “Lolita,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Barry Lyndon,” to “The Shining.” That’s eight straight bangers right there.

Speaking of Alfred Hitchcock, how about his ‘58–‘64 run, which consisted of “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” “Psycho,” and “The Birds.” A sublime streak of films that could match up with Coppola’s run.

Terrence Malick has a more complicated case, but it should still count. He made “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven” in the ‘70s, then disappeared for 20 years before giving us “The Thin Red Line,” “The New World,” and “The Tree of Life” — that counts as five consecutive great films.

How about Paul Thomas Anderson? A ‘97–‘12 run that cemented his status as some kind of modern-day master with “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “The Master.” Over time, this streak of films will be seen as one of the most impressive ever assembled.

I’d also mention the recent reappraisal of Steven Spielberg’s stunning run from ‘98–‘02, the greatest streak of films he’s ever had: “Saving Private Ryan,” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” “Minority Report,” and “Catch Me If You Can.” Before then, Spielberg had released a handful of classics, but also some real streak-killing clunkers (“Hook,” “1941,” “Always”).

I’m a devout fan of David Cronenberg’s ‘80s output, specifically “Videodrome,” “The Dead Zone,” “The Fly,” and “Dead Ringers,” all released consecutively between 1983–1988. I’m also big on Charlie Chaplin (1925–1936): “The Gold Rush,” “The Circus,” “City Lights,” “Modern Times,” and “The Great Dictator.”

One glaring omission in The Ringer piece is the total lack of foreign filmmakers. They should have included Michelangelo Antonioni, who also had five straight bangers between ‘60–‘66, with “L’Avventura,” “La Notte,” “L’Eclisse,” “Red Desert,” and “Blow-Up.” Ditto Andrei Tarkovsky (“Andrei Rublev,” “Solaris,” “Mirror,” “Stalker”) and Robert Bresson (“The Diary of a Country Priest,” “A Man Escaped,” “Pickpocket,” “Au Hasard Balthazar,” “Mouchette”).

Akira Kurosawa is another filmmaker you could add to the list; he’s had a handful of four- or five-film consecutive streaks. I’m more prone to lean towards his run from ‘50–‘57 (“Rashomon,” “Ikiru,” “Seven Samurai,” “I Live in Fear,” and “Throne of Blood”).

With that said, what Coppola accomplished in the ’70s is very hard to match. He defined an entire decade with those four films. The saddest part of it all is that, unlike the directors mentioned above, he would never again be the same filmmaker after “Apocalypse Now” — a film that completely broke him as a man and as an artist.