10. F.W Murnau
In Murnau, German Expressionism reached its full potential and the entire cinematic style was expanded and experimented with. Murnau's career began with a bang as within three years of beginning work as a director he put together one of the seminal silent films of all-time with 1922's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror which has become one of the defining horror films of all-time. Two years later, he put together one of the most purely silent films ever made with The Last Laugh, which not only had a near total absence of title cards but was also one of the first movies in which the camera itself seemed to move, instead of watching actors and objects move across a stationary field of view. Faust in 1926 is still renowned for its remarkable visuals but his most significant film came after he left Germany for Hollywood, where he directed Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The film is regularly listed among not just the greatest silent films but among the best films of all-time and like The Last Laugh, it redefined how movies could be shot and directed. In 1931, at only 42 he died in a car crash weeks after finishing his last film. Even with his untimely death, Murnau is often considered the greatest pure director of silent films. Murnau was one of the all-time great visual stylists and any one of his silent films is likely to contain any number of iconic images from the vampire in Nosferatu, to Mephistopheles towering over a city in Faust, to the old man in The Last Laugh in dejection over his loss of position. Had he not died when he did, Murnau could have made several more classics but as it stands, few directors have ever put together a better resume and few have ever done it in more style.