David Cronenberg
Canadian filmmaker (born 1943)
A director's score is the sum of their films' composite canon scores — methodology.
- Born
- March 15, 1943 · Toronto
- Nationality
- Canada
- Work
- film director, actor, film producer, film editor
The philosopher of the flesh
Cronenberg is the rare director whose obsession is also his thesis: the body is the self, and everything else — mind, faith, technology, desire — is a rumour the flesh tells about itself. A declared atheist and materialist, he built an entire cinema on the proposition that we are meat that thinks and then dies, and he is the principal originator of the body-horror genre that dramatizes exactly that. What saves the films from clinical coldness is that he means the horror as inquiry, not effect. The transformations are arguments.
Toronto to the operating table
Born in Toronto on March 15, 1943 into a progressive Jewish household, he read Honours English at the University of Toronto from 1963 to 1967 and graduated top of his class — a literary formation that shows in his lifelong appetite for adapting the supposedly unadaptable. Film caught him late, after a classmate's picture convinced him it could be done, and he taught himself through camera-rental houses and two shorts, Transfer (1966) and From the Drain (1967), before the art-house features Stereo (1969) and the first Crimes of the Future (1970). The body horror proper begins with Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), financed by a Canadian government betting on genre. Then the ascent: The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), and the commercial peak of The Fly (1986), a sixty-million-dollar hit. He turned down Return of the Jedi to keep making them. The literary phase followed — Naked Lunch (1991) from Burroughs, M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996) from Ballard, which took a Special Jury Prize at Cannes cited, in the jury's words, "for originality, for daring, and for audacity." Composer Howard Shore has scored nearly everything since The Brood. Cannes gave him its Carrosse d'Or in 2006; Canada made him a Companion of its Order in 2014.
What the numbers say
Our library holds 18 Cronenberg films and ranks him #37 among all directors at a composite 15.90 — respectable, and pointedly not the ranking a horror partisan would predict. The revealing thing is the internal order. His top film is A History of Violence (2005) at #301 (2.24, cited by nine of our sources, more than any other Cronenberg picture), followed by Crash at #369 (2.05) and Eastern Promises (2007) at #682. The films that made his name sink: The Fly sits at #1382, Videodrome at #1457, Scanners down at #3606, The Brood at #4220. The composite, in other words, rewards the late respectable dramas over the transgressive genre work — the Viggo Mortensen thrillers the Academy could nominate, not the exploding heads. Whether that is the aggregate maturing with him or simply losing its nerve, I leave to you.
Where to start
Videodrome for the pure uncut thesis, The Fly for the tragedy underneath the goo, Dead Ringers (1988) for the coldest thing he made. Then A History of Violence, to watch the same preoccupations wear a straight face.
Films in our library, ranked
Ranked by composite canon score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — our ordering, with every placement citing its evidence on the film's page.
- 1
2005 · Germany / United States · thriller, crime, drama
Film Comment year-end poll 2005 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2005 #2 · Hoberman's annual top 10 2005 #1
2.249 citations - 2
1996 · Canada / United Kingdom · drama, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1996 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #225 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1997 #2
2.056 citations - 3
2007 · Canada / United Kingdom / United States · crime, drama, mystery
TIFF People's Choice winner 2007 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2008 #6 · Film Comment year-end poll 2007 #8
1.423 citations - 4
1988 · Canada · drama, horror, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1989 #3 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1988 #3 · Kehr's annual top 10 1988 #4
1.416 citations - 5
2002 · Canada / United Kingdom / France · drama, thriller, mystery
Hoberman's annual top 10 2003 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2002 #8 · Film Comment year-end poll 2003 #15
1.295 citations - 6
2022 · Canada / Greece / France · sci-fi, horror, thriller
Film Comment year-end poll 2022 #1
1.001 citation - 7
2012 · Canada / France / Portugal · drama, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2012 #2 · Film Comment year-end poll 2012 #15
0.882 citations - 8
1986 · United States / Canada · horror, sci-fi, drama
TIME All-TIME 100 · Kehr's annual top 10 1986 #5 · Sarris's annual top 10 1986 #8
0.875 citations - 9
1983 · Canada / United States · horror, sci-fi, fantasy
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #243 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies · Criterion Collection spine #248
0.824 citations - 10
1991 · Canada / United Kingdom / Japan · drama, horror, sci-fi
Kehr's annual top 10 1992 #5 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1991 #6 · Sarris's annual top 10 1991 #7
0.815 citations - 11
1999 · Canada / United Kingdom / France · horror, sci-fi, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1999 #4 · Hoberman's annual top 10 1999 #5
0.622 citations - 12
1993 · United States · romance, drama, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1994 #10 · Kehr's annual top 10 1993 #3
0.542 citations - 13
2014 · France / Germany / United States · drama
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2014 #4
0.431 citation - 14
2011 · Canada / Germany / United Kingdom · drama
Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #5
0.391 citation - 15
1981 · Canada · thriller, sci-fi, mystery
Criterion Collection spine #712 · Sarris's annual top 10 1981 #8
0.322 citations - 160.301 citation
- 17
1979 · Canada · horror, sci-fi, thriller
Criterion Collection spine #777 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.272 citations - 18
1983 · United States · horror, sci-fi, thriller
Sarris's annual top 10 1983 #11 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.252 citations
Complete filmography
All 28 directorial credits recorded on Wikidata, in chronological order; films in our library link to their canon-score page.
- 1966Transfer
- 1967From the Drain
- 1969Stereo
- 1970Crimes of the Future
- 1975Shivers
- 1976The Italian Machine
- 1977Rabid
- 1979Fast Company
- 1979The Brood
- 1981Scanners
- 1983The Dead Zone
- 1983Videodrome
- 1986The Fly
- 1988Dead Ringers
- 1991Naked Lunch
- 1993M. Butterfly
- 1996Crash
- 1999Existenz
- 2000Camera
- 2002Spider
- 2005A History of Violence
- 2007Eastern Promises
- 2007To Each His Own Cinema
- 2011A Dangerous Method
- 2012Cosmopolis
- 2014Maps to the Stars
- 2022Crimes of the Future
- 2024The Shrouds