One of America's most critically acclaimed filmmakers for more than 20 years, Scorsese has won worldwide plaudits with a body of work that is informed by his Italian-American Catholic upbringing. As a young man, Scorsese decided to enter the priesthood, but dropped out of seminary after his first yea

Open-ended, Polychromatic, Surreal, Tense

Master of the macabre, avatar of evil, intensifier of suspense, Hitchcock is the acknowledged king of the thriller genre he virtually invented. Hitchcock cheerfully poked ironic fun at the evil nesting inside the nicest of people. At the height of his career in 1950s Hollywood, his sophisticated blen

Classical, Elegant, Geometric, Hollywood gothic, Horror, Psychological, Tense

A vocal faction insists that Welles never produced anything worthwhile after his milestone directorial debut, "Citizen Kane." Even those who find a hint of brilliance in "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Touch of Evil" dismiss the last decades of Welles' life as a sad parade of impractical projects an

Anxiety, Enigmatic, Epic, Excessive, Huge, Voluminous, Witty

Losey's lofty artistic program was foiled by McCarthy and his anticommunist witch-hunters, who forced a bad hand and drove Losey into hiding in England, where he continued to churn out his cinematic epics undisturbed. After making films under a pseudonym for several years and releasing them in Britai

Blacklistees, Contemplative, Deconstructive, Dense, Political, Psychological