6. Robert Bresson
One of the most admired directors of all-time, Robert Bresson's films have long been praised for their emphasis on spirituality and their singular aesthetic design. Bresson was an idol for the French New Wave, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and essentially any other director who wanted to advance the language of cinema. Bresson was one of the first directors to make a conscious attempt to break cinema away from the conventions of the theatre. He used a very naturalistic style that did away with the emphasis on using acting to convey emotions and instead relied on cinematography to tell a story, or convey a mood. This resulted in such acclaimed classic as Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Au Hasard Balthazar, Pickpocket , and many others. Bresson believed that cinematography was the heart and soul of movies and later in his life he wrote one of the essential books on the subject. He believed in using non-professionals as actors and was more worried about them looking right for the part than whether they could act since his movies didn't rely heavily on dialogue. Bresson's style and frequent forays into spiritual and philosophical concerns has led to him often being referred to as one of cinema's patron saints, a figure who changed movies from simply being filmed theatre productions to pure cinema. He is one of the most widely respected directors in history and it's actually hard to find a critic or fellow director who did not admire him. The only thing keeping him higher in this list is that although many of his films are extremely well-respected, few of them are ever mentioned among the true "greats" of moviemaking.