18. Luis Bunuel
Although he worked in all sorts of films during his career, Bunuel is usually remembered for being cinema's premier surrealist. One of the most radical filmmakers of the first half-century of cinema, Bunuel somehow became even more celebrated later in his life as he directed several classic films in the 1960's. Significantly influenced by the radical changes in post World War One Europe, Bunuel shook up the cinematic world with his first try in his 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou, which was essentially sixteen minutes of radical images that constituted an outright attack on the parisian intellectuals. In an ironic twist of fate, the film was a hit with the very people he was attacking, leading him to exclaim ""What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?" Bunuel bounced around the world for the next few decades, making films in Spain and in Hollywood before settling in Mexico where his career went to the next level artistically. In Mexico he filmed two of his most famous films: The Exterminating Angel and Virdinia. Two of the other classic films of his Mexican period, even though they were filmed in France, were Belle De Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Bunuel's films were notable for their takes on moral, religious, and ethical problems but his main contribution to cinema has been his filmmaking style. He was one of the first to experiment with sound after it became the standard practice to make sound films, he pioneered music in films, and of course his surrealist visuals were enormously groundbreaking. He was one of the first directors to bring an intellectual edge to movies and his importance can be seen in how many of his movies regularly place on lists of all-time great films.