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The automobile and its various offshoots, those gas-guzzling, defining innovations of the twentieth century, are as integral to movies as they are to our daily routines. Since films are the magic mirror held up to our everyday lives with, as Hitchcock said, “the dull bits left out,” this only makes sense.

If you’re trying to quit smoking, we support the effort enthusiastically. Just don’t look to the movies for much help. First, older films, with their smoke-filled rooms, reflect those bygone days when a lot more people were puffing. And cigarettes help form and define the characters we see: when these people smoke, the habit looks so cool and richly pleasurable that one can see the draw.

A few months ago, I was watching a flavorful early Cagney entry called “Taxi!” (1932), and in one early scene, witnessed the diminutive but feisty actor of Irish/Norwegian stock speaking Yiddish…not one or two words, mind you, but whole sentences. And I thought to myself — yet another reason to love Jimmy Cagney.

We’ve all done it, watched a movie and thought, “How do they think this stuff up?” and, “Do they expect us to believe this?” Yes, “they” do, because movies depend on the suspension of disbelief for their magic. Musicals, horror, and romantic comedies are all fueled by the high octane of fantasy.

Once famous, Bob Dylan didn’t wait long to put his poetic, socially rebellious, cage-rattling persona on film. In the words of former girlfriend Joan Baez, he “burst on the scene already a legend” in 1961, and had only been recording for three years when he became the subject of documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking tour diary, “Don’t Look Back” (1965). 

Young adult used to be just another stage in personal development, starting somewhere around the end of Barbie dolls and army men, and cresting just after the discovery of beer and indie rock. Growing up seems to happen in that one, long, hot zone of emerging identities and burgeoning freedom.  These days, YA is an entire industry of books and movies, a full lifestyle in fact, and one that doesn’t end once the “adult” is no longer “young.” After all, growing up is never quite over, which explains why YA audiences are as likely to be “adult” as they are “young.” For instance, who is the prime audience for “The Hunger Games?” Not just kids.   One forgets that the term “teenager”  gained traction only in the 1940s, as the popularity of Frank Sinatra took hold with a multitude of teen girls. Suddenly, this overlooked group had the attention of radio programmers and audiences, and a demographic was born. 

Cities are like people, in that some periods represent career peaks, and there are plenty of examples of golden ages to go around: Paris in the 1920s, Los Angeles in the 1940s, and New York in the 1950s all brim with romance in the popular imagination. But no scene was quite as explosive in sheer energy and style as London was in the 1960s. A nation finally emerging from Blitz mentality and the rationing of World War II, England was primed for a major cultural earthquake, thanks to the crumbling of centuries-old social constriction, and the emergence of the Baby Boomers's youth culture. And when that earthquake, or “youthquake,” came, it was the movies that registered its shockwaves. “Swinging” London was its epicenter, as bands like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks created a danceable soundtrack for the era, and pioneering hair stylist Vidal Sassoon snipped girls’ hair into a bob, perfect for bouncing along to the beat (and of course, boys’ hair grew down past their collars). 

Robert Duvall fully earns the hallowed term “actor’s actor.” He is superb in most anything he’s in. And at age 83, he’s still doing his thing. On a plane recently, I finally caught Tom Cruise’s diverting thriller “Jack Reacher” (2012), and there was octogenarian Duvall playing a gun dealer, stealing every scene he was in. Watching him ace this small but key supporting role made me feel it was time to pay tribute to a man who’s appeared in some of the greatest films of the past half-century.   Born to William Howard Duvall, a career military officer from Virginia, and his wife Mildred, an amateur actress and descendant of General Robert E. Lee, Duvall's childhood was peripatetic; his father was transferred frequently to various bases around the country.

Everyone knows Welles, Huston, Kubrick, Spielberg, Scorsese and Nolan. But what about Leisen, Hill, Hiller, Boorman, Mann and Sayles?  For every “name” director, there are several others we feel deserve more recognition. They may have had successes—critical and/or financial—but for some reason they’ve tended to fly under the radar. Here are six filmmakers whose legacies deserve our respect and appreciation. Even though their names may have faded from memory, their finest work lives on, as you’ll soon discover.