Were there to have been only one movie director, I believe that director would have been Alfred Hitchcock. Altman, Wells and Coppola may have taken film farther (arguably), but no one squeezed as much from each movie while stretching his entire oeuvre so far. The so-called master of suspense built his intellectual property upon the acting talents of Peter Lorre, George Sanders, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Tippi Hedron, Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck. His foundation came from writers such as Charles Bennett, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Cornell Woolrich and Robert Bloch. But Hitchcock himself was the singular architect. His storyboards have more value than most people's finished masterpieces.