10 Great Filmmakers Best Remembered For The Wrong Films

7. William Friedkin

Best Remembered For: The French Connection (1971), The Exorcist (1973) Should Be Remembered For: Sorcerer (1977) If you have an Oscar winner (The French Connection) and a box office smash (The Exorcist), as well as a major flop long out of print (Sorcerer) under your belt, chances are you're going to be remembered for the former two rather than for the latter. The pity is that Sorcerer is genuinely William Friedkin's best film, one that not only could've been a hit (had Star Wars not been released at the same time, commercially trouncing it), but really should've been. A remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer takes the same essential plot - four men race across a desolate South America to put out an oil fire, driving trucks laden with dynamite - and updates it with a 70s grunginess. It's one of the few remakes that holds up to the original, retaining the tension of Clouzot's film while adding a dimension of horror and a hallucinatory, sweat-soaked atmosphere. Friedkin makes the environment threatening in a heightened, almost stylised way, while always keeping a sense of realism at the fore, especially in his casting of an international ensemble of character actors, rather than conventional stars. Derided upon release, Sorcerer's currently undergoing reassessment: it's made Tarantino's top 12, Stephen King ranked it number 1 in his list of "movies that never disappoint," while some critics are now even calling Sorcerer a better movie than than the original. It also happens to be Friedkin's favourite amongst his own works.