Director: William Friedkin

William Friedkin came out of documentary television and never fully left it. The French Connection was shot on New York streets without permits, with a car chase filmed under a live elevated train, and the handheld immediacy of it changed how American thrillers looked for a decade.

The Exorcist applied the same approach to horror: long medical procedure scenes, cold documentary framing, and effects staged practically in a refrigerated set. It became the highest-grossing horror film ever made and remains genuinely difficult to watch.

Sorcerer, his remake of The Wages of Fear, opened against Star Wars and vanished. He spent years arguing it was his best work, and the reappraisal has largely agreed with him.