10. Cecil B. Demille
Cinema's first director with a real sense of showmanship, Demille's name became associated with Hollywood extravaganza. From his early silent films to his monumental biblical epics, no one tried and succeeded more times at pushing the limits of big-budget filmmaking than Cecil B. Demille. He became the archetypal director in the eyes of the public, creating the image of the director as it often seen today.
Demille was around almost at the birth of cinema, directing his first silent feature in 1913, before Chaplin became the first movie star and before D.W Griffith rewrote the rules of the medium in Birth of a Nation. By 1919 he was one of the most successful and popular directors in the world, and he parlayed his success into the first version of one of his most famous later films with The Ten Commandments in 1923 and also the biblical epic King of Kings. Demille successfully transitioned to the sound age and with his later works such as Samson & Delilah and a remake of The Ten Commandments, he became synonymous with Hollywood spectacle and to this day he remains one of the masters of the screen epic. His films were notable for their cast of thousands of extra, extravagant sets, and biblical settings, which he was able to organize and channel effectively enough for his films to feel adequately larger than life. The immense popularity of his films led to most critics at the time to dismiss him as a bit of a hack but his enduring nature of his work, and some cinematic re-evaluation has cemented his reputation as one of the founding fathers of film. His gift was for pure storytelling and films that were innately exciting and entertaining, and his movies have been viewed by more people than all but a few, if any, directors.