Given that scenario, an Oscar can be a delicious consolation after fighting in the trenches.

Fifty-four people have won the Academy Award for directing a film. John Ford holds the record with four wins, Frank Capra and William Wyler are tied with three, and a number of men - the most recent being Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Milos Forman - have a matched set. (A woman director has never won, and only Italy's Lina Wertmuller and New Zealand's Jane Campion have been nominated.) What follows are personal favorites, one per decade, all available on video.

- Frank Capra, "It Happened One Night" (1934): Nobody expected this little film about a runaway heiress to go anywhere. Capra had a devil of a time finding a lead actress and couldn't get his first choice as leading man, Robert Montgomery. He wound up with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable and the three of them won Oscars, as did the film.

Part of the movie's charm is its modesty and simplicity. The performances are completely honest, and there's a gem of a scene on a bus when several passengers spontaneously sing "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze." It's rare to find that kind of joy and spontaneity onscreen.

- William Wyler, "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946): Wyler had just returned from World War II, where he was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, when he made this saga about the emotional aftermath of the war. Through the tale of three men's readjustment to civilian life, he tells an entire nation's story.

- John Ford, "The Quiet Man" (1952): Ford returned to his native Ireland to shoot this sentimental yarn about an American prizefighter gone home to the motherland. The landscapes are breathtaking, the acting fine (if a little precious on Barry Fitzgerald's part) and the sexual politics deplorable by today's standards.

- David Lean, "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962): Perhaps the greatest of wide-screen spectacles, this whopper of a movie stars Peter O'Toole as British adventurer T.E. Lawrence. The film's biographical veracity is dubious, and the plotlines confounding to anyone lacking background. But the desert photography is so inspiring, and O'Toole so irresistibly flamboyant, that one doesn't mind.

- Bob Fosse, "Cabaret" (1972): Fosse pulled one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, winning the director's prize even though Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" won best picture that year. It was only Fosse's second film, after the disappointing "Sweet Charity," but the film's energy and style seem the work of a master. Fosse improved upon the stage version, which was based on Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin," and turns the decadent cabaret into a metaphor for political rot. Liza Minnelli plays entertainer Sally Bowles, and for once her frenzy and desperation to be liked are perfectly wed to a character.

- Warren Beatty, "Reds" (1981): Beatty bit off a very big chunk when he decided to film this epic about John Reed, the U.S. journalist who participated in the Russian Revolution and wrote about it in "Ten Days That Shook the World." Beatty plays Reed, of course, and Diane Keaton his wife, Louise Bryant. It was a stroke of brilliance to include a number of "witnesses" - the actual people (Henry Miller, Rebecca West) who knew Reed and appear in documentary vignettes, but at 3 hours and 27 minutes, the film is exhausting. Jack Nicholson's small role as a bitter Eugene O'Neill is a highlight.

- Steven Spielberg, "Saving Private Ryan" (1998): This film slips too often into Spielberg sappiness, but the 20-minute action sequence at Omaha Beach that opens it is a stunner. A lot of films, including Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" and Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," try to immerse us in battle, but Spielberg does it best. We feel the wooziness, the nausea, the white-hot fear of the soldiers. There's a great moment when Tom Hanks' character temporarily loses his hearing and the sound fades, then comes back up. It's hellishly good - due in no small part to the Oscar-winning sound-effects editing by Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns of Industrial Light & Magic.

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