Directors' unique traits that differentiate them from others

I've also talked a lot about Polanski - for how many things are "signature" devices - from certain compositions he always does (ie things in the background always matter hugely in his films) and his worldview (unreliable narrators, shifting perspectives very often) - but also how many different ways he uses music.

Very often his characters are alone with no one to help them regardless of the film - that's what makes it a Polanski device. But usually before that even there's a scene where one character relents to the will of another and sets themselves up for that being alone. This scene (again it starts with a character in the foreground and one in the background) is less than 2 minutes, it's ominous, funny, menacing, sexy, and later it's where you can pinpoint everything has changed in the film, but what makes it so special is you can pinpoint it to a split second - a darkness in the music ever so slightly creeps in for the first time, with a single note.

For some fans of his work of here: Leo_The_Last, @raygittes07, Mattsby, RiverleavesElmius

In his prime, Stone was truly the best at using different types of cameras/editing all in the same scene.

I can't find it on youtube, but when Kevin Bacon's talking to Costner/Rooker for the first time is probably the best example of this (not the best scene in the film, however). Another good one would be where Costner is giving a statement in court detailing what they say happened vs. how it would actually happen and it cutting between present day and the two variations of the past.

The Mr. X scene kinda does this too, but not the best example for what I'm trying to say Stone's signature is.

I remember reading that Werner Herzog hypnotized his cast for a film. So it's Heart of Glass. I want to see it. Herzog is so fascinating.

The way Altman presents overlapping dialogue gives some of his films a very lived in vibrancy.

Sono conveying intense, repressed emotion through hyper-realistic, borderline absurd scenarios/actions (the young leads repeatedly violently abusing each other in Himizu, Yu's erections in Love Exposure, etc.) is always done in a unique way and makes for an interesting and often powerful watch because of how utterly grounded in genuine sincerity it is.

Slightly different from what you're asking, but I'll add that the way Kurosawa uses rain is really singular and amazing.

Yeah, I agree 100% with this. Even the most absurd or outrageous scenarios in most of his films feel deep-felt and sincere. And I think the best example of this is Why Don't You Play In Hell?. The film is bizarre and extravagant for the most part, but once it ends you feel that you have experienced one of the most genuine love letters to cinema from a filmmaker that clearly has a passion for this business.

How many films would you give a filmmaker before saying he "sucked"? Well what if his early films maybe - and that's a big maybe - didn't completely work, they were so full of revolutionary ideas he created a whole new genre of film? You want a filmmaker to tell you what's wrong with the world you live in, in 2019 - well David Cronenberg did it for you way in advance.

His films explored mixed genres and predicted some pretty outlandish things (AIDS, the rise and fall and rise of capitalism/socialism, Donald Trump (!) (The Dead Zone but others too) the "feminization" of men (as far back as his 1st film!), abortion debate (The Brood), the weaponization of sex and violence and consuming both in an increasingly Atheist world, Body Dysmorphia, feminism and anti-feminism - one is humanist, the other as a frightening political term - in his work........... they both apply.

He also mocked his audience - mercilessly too - here he cast an adult film icon as the lead where she sometimes stalks, sometimes she is stalked, but death is the same result - it isn't the person, it's the point, right? No one else would think to do that or write the scenes he does for Marilyn Chambers in this film - this is totally Cronenberg in the casting, the subconscious ways to "read" a scene and the quick juxtaposition of arousal and dread. Later he'd get bigger budgets and stars but the ideas were always there and always his own.

He didn't just do horror, what he was saying about us, was always rather horrific.

Well if Spike uses the montage then Francis Ford Coppola, loves the Eisenstein intercutting technique and uses it not just in his Godfather films, but in the end of Apocalypse Now, Cotton Club and several times in his first (imo) great film too -"The Rain People".

He used it to draw parallels, irony, underline thematic points. Most famous example below but that's not all - the fade to black screen often makes an appearance in his work too and he used the same ENDING, altered slightly, in 5 films in a row:

- you maybe don't see it at first because he rearranges some of the details but the same emotional note is in every one.

Greenaway

hmmmm ok, where to begin? Let me try to explain.

Peter Greenaway is the most unique filmmaker I'm aware of. I feel like every single one of his traits is idiosyncratic, starting I suppose with his influence from Renaissance and Baroque painting (he began his artistic career as a painter before turning to filmmaking), and this is demonstrated by the way his shots are composed among other things. His films also tend to be anti-narrative and heavily self-reflexive and meant to dispel the illusion of realism. They're similar to the nouvelle vague films in that way, but the viewing experience is much different because Greenaway is pulling more from artistic abstracts and concepts and less from past cinematic traditions. His films are extremely intellectual and cerebral for that reason. Simultaneously elusive and overpowering.

Shot composition is an easy indicator. Wes Anderson is the only filmmaker that warrants a comparison to Greenaway because they both use shots that are flat and obsessively symmetrical, chalk full of information and meticulous set decoration, contain action both in the foreground and background often occurring concurrently, and utilize a lot of flat space camera moves like tracking left and right as if in front of a stage. Wes Anderson's films are of course more whimsical and feel more lively but the look is similar, and the closest comparison I can think of.

He's an example of an especially crowded Greenaway shot from Drowning by Numbers, which is also a long take with a wealth of visual information to process. This is one of the most prop-heavy of Greenaway's films.


I think the most important trait one can extrapolate from Greenaway's filmmaking is his compulsive commitment to formalism and especially symmetry, which is apparent not only in the shot compositions themselves but also in the dialogue, how Greenaway incorporates music, sometimes even the narrative itself (Draughtman's Contract and Drowning By Numbers are excellent examples of what you might call "mathematical narratives"). You know those "Oddly Satisfying" compilations on youtube that were a thing a couple years ago. Greenaway's films are like that. The way they're meticulously composed and crafted, the way Greenaway has them shot and scored, the way he incorporates prop and set design, the way he creates these unique and strange little micro-worlds and the way his films feel like paintings in motion. Even if you don't understand what he's doing or why he's doing it or even if what you're seeing is abysmal and shocking, his films just feel so damn satisfying. There's a delightful balance and structure to them that serves as counterweight to the chaos and lack of control in our lives.

All of that hardly scratches the surface of course. For anyone that's curious to read more about his style, I recommend this piece published in Postmodern Culture which articulates all of this and more much better than I ever could. you can also get a terrific sense about his approach to narrative from this recent interview he gave with BAFTA Guru, which is well worth watching. "We don't need a text-based cinema, we need an image-based cinema."

Tommen_Saperstein

Great write-up on Greenaway. His style is definitely one of a kind. I want to add that he is one of the very few directors that utilizes the production design of his films (sets, costumes, ect.) not only for it's aesthetic, but for symbolic purposes as well. The best example of this is The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, where each room is in a different colour, representing a different cultural universal. The restaurant is red, a form of hell, where the theif has free reign to conduct his malicious business, the bathroom is white, representing light, a sanctuary in which the wife can spend time away from her evil husband, the kitchen is green, representing nature and it's neutral stance towards human activity. That is obviously the clearest example of this unique trait, but he also utilizes it on many of his other works as well (the theatre in The Baby Of Macon, the estate and costumes in The Draughtsman's Contract, ect.). I think this is also another important aspect of his unique style.

@redhawk10 correctly mentioned Robert Altman's overlapping dialog and that of course is his big claim to fame. One of his others within that, and he uses this all the time - is the encroaching reveal closeup - it's quite unique to him actually. This scene shows it but it's throughout McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville especially - and pops up in all his work. In general, it's when the camera has been acting like the dialog - sight and sound - the camera too picks up overlapping things, and random details, and then incrementally focuses on one thing - often then the overlapping dialog stops too.

In this scene the camera starts far away or lingering but every time he cuts back to any characters whether they are in the background or not the camera gets incrementally closer to each one - so now, you listen to precisely the dialog and understand before the other characters do. Look where the camera starts, where it ends up and how deftly he goes from shot to shot. The first shot mimics the effect of last shot (body/bottle)...another director would go to that immediately without the inbetween and lose atmosphere, context, setting, themes.