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E Y E W I T N E S S c o m pa n i on s
Film RONALD BERGAN
HISTORY • GENRES • WORLD CINEMA A–z Of DIRECTORS • TOP 100 MOVIES
eyewitness companions
Film Ronald bergan
LONDON, NEW YORK, MUNICH, MELBOURNE, AND DELHI
Senior Editor Sarah Larter Project Editors Nicola Hodgson, Marie Greenwood Additional text contributions Melinda Corey, Tom Charity Senior Art Editor Alison Gardner DTP Designer John Goldsmid Production Controller Rita Sinha Managing Editor Debra Wolter Managing Art Editor Karen Self Publisher Jonathan Metcalf Art Director Bryn Walls First published in 2006 by DK Publishing 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © 2006 Dorling Kindersley Limited Text copyright © 2006 Ronald Bergan All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. DK Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 or [emailprotected] A CIP cataloging-in-publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN-13: 978-0-67091-573-6 ISBN-10: 0-75662-203-4 Color reproduction by GRB, Italy Printed and bound in China by Leo
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The story of cinema 14 1895–1919 The Birth of Cinema 16 1920–1929 Silence is Golden 20 1930–1939 The Cinema Comes of Age 28 1940–1949 The Cinema Goes to War 36 1950–1959 The Cinema Fights Back 44 1960–1969 The New Wave 54 1970–1979 Independence Days 62 1980–1989 The International Years 70 1990– Celluloid to Digital 76
How movies are made 88 Pre-production 92 Production 96 Post-production 108
contents movie Genres 112
Action-adventure 116 Animation 118 Avant-Garde 122 Biopic 123 Comedy 124 Costume Drama 130 Cult 132 Disaster 133 Documentary 134 Epics 138 Film Noir 140 Gangster 142 Horror 146 Martial Arts 149 Melodrama 150 Musicals 152 Propaganda 158 Science Fiction and Fantasy 160 Serials 164 Series 165 Teen Movies 166 Thrillers 167 Underground 170 War 171 Westerns 174
World Cinema 178 Africa 184 The Middle East 186 Iran 187 Eastern Europe 188 The Balkans 192 Russia 194 The Nordic Countries 198 Germany 202 France 206 Italy 210 United Kingdom 213 Spain 216 Portugal 219 Canada 220 Central America 222 South America 224 Australia and New Zealand 228 China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan 230 Japan 236 Korea 240 India 242
A–Z of Directors 246 Profiles and filmographies of 200 of the world’s greatest movie directors
top 100 Movies 394 A chronological guide to the most influential movies of all time Reference 492 Glossary 500 Index 502
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intro d u c t i o n
i n t ro d u c t i o n
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In the US, movies began in the penny arcade kinetoscopes of the 1890s. You dropped a penny in a slot and peered through a viewer to watch the delights of Fatima, the belly dancing sensation of Chicago’s World Fair in 1896. Who could have predicted that this new medium would become the largest entertainment industry the world has ever known or that it was to be the new art form of the 20th century? From its very beginnings, the cinema provided romance and escapism for millions of people all over the globe. It was the magic carpet that took people instantly away from the harsh realities of life. The movies offered a panacea in the Depression years, was the opium of the people through World War II, and continued to waft the public away from reality throughout the following decades. It was Hollywood, California, known as “the Dream Factory,” which eventually supplied most of “the stuff that dreams are made of ”. But, as the following pages will reveal, although Hollywood has dominated the film industry worldwide from the 1920s, it is not the only “player” in a truly global market. What makes film the most international of the arts is the vast range of films that come from more than 50 countries — films that are as multifaceted as the cultures that produce them. More and more countries, long ignored as film-making nations, have produced films that have entered the international bloodstream. Certainly in the last few decades, creative cinema has spread from the US and Europe to Central and An exuberant Gene Kelly in a publicity still from Singin’ in the Rain (1952), a musical which affectionately satirizes the early days of sound.
Eastern Asia, and also to the Developing World, the most amazing amazing example of which is Iran. African nations have given birth to directors of unique imagination, such as Ousmane Sembene and Souleymane Cissé. China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea have produced films of spectacular visual quality as well as absorbing content. There has been a huge revival in Spain and the Latin American countries. Denmark, neglected as a film-making country since the days of the great director Carl Dreyer, started to experience a renaissance in the late 1980s. The barriers between Englishlanguage films and the rest of the world are disappearing daily as witnessed by the cultural crossfertilization of stars and directors. A child in the US is just as likely to watch Japanese “anime” films as Walt Disney cartoons, and young people in the west are as familiar with Asian martial arts films or Bollywood as audiences in the east are with US movies. However, not only does cinema provide pure entertainment worldwide, it is also known as “the seventh art.” Writing about film as early as 1916, the German psychiatrist Hugo Münsterberg discussed the unique properties of cinema, and its capacity
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“Another fine mess!”The matchless comic duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in a characteristically perilous situation in one of their many silent shorts.
to reformulate time and space. Riccioto Canudo, the Italian-born French critic, argued in 1926 that cinema must go beyond realism and express the film-makers’ emotions as well as the characters’ psychology, and even their unconscious. These possibilities of cinema were expressed by French “impressionist” film-makers and theorists, Louis Delluc and Jean
Epstein, and were underlined by the montage theory that was expounded by the great Russian film-makers of the 1920s. They disturbed the accepted continuity of chronological development and attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters’ thoughts, replacing straightforward storytelling with fragmentary images and multiple points of view. Film began to equal other arts in seriousness and depth, not only with so-called “art cinema,” but also in mainstream filming, in which such pioneers as D.W. Griffith, Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin, Busby Berkeley, Walt Disney, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock can be counted. Technical advances, such as fast film, sound, Technicolor, CinemaScope, and lightweight camera equipment, were used to look into new Maggie Cheung as Flying Snow in Zhang Yimou’s spectacular Hero (2002), an example of an Asian martial arts film entering the mainstream of western cinema.
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ways of expression on the big screen. In the last decade of the 20th century, CGI (computer generated imagery) continued this exploration, while digital cameras enabled more people to make features than ever before. With the emergence of videos and DVDs, and the downloading of movies from the internet, films can be viewed in a variety of ways. As British director Peter Greenaway has said, “More films go to people nowadays than people go to films.” Directors are learning to
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Edmund (Skandar Keynes) is confronted by the CGIcreated lion Aslan, in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
come to terms with these new ways of watching films. Yet, whatever technical advances have been made, no matter where and how we watch films, whether seen on a cell phone or on a giant screen, whether an intimate drama in black-and-white or a spectacular epic in Technicolor, it is the intrinsic quality of the film – the direction, the screenplay, the cinematography, and the acting – that continues to astonish, provoke, and delight audiences. We have attempted to make this guide to cinema as objective as possible, and to include films and directors that have made a difference to cinema, although some subjective selectivity is unavoidable. A note about foreign-language titles: in many cases, both the English title and the original title of the film is given. However, when the title of the film has never been translated or the film is best known under its original title (e.g. La Dolce Vita rather than The Sweet Life), the original title is used. If the film is better known by its English title (e.g. In the Mood For Love rather than Fa yeung nin wa), we give the English version only.
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the story of ci n ema
1895–1919 The Birth of Cinema In 1995 the world celebrated the centenary of cinema, marking the date the Lumière brothers had patented a device that displayed moving images. From the late 19th century into the first decades of the 20th century, the love affair with cinema grew. Why did the world celebrate the centenary of cinema in 1995? Thomas Alva Edison patented his invention of the Kinetoscope in 1891. This was first shown publicly in 1893. It was a peepshow device in which a 50 ft loop of film gave continuous viewing. The first pictures were of dancing girls, performing animals, and men at work. But one could go even further back than this. Film — photographic images printed on a flexible,
semitransparent celluloid base, and cut into strips — was devised by Henry M. Reichenbach for George Eastman’s Kodak company in 1889. It was based on inventions variously attributed to the brothers J.W. and I.S. Hyatt (1865), to Hannibal Goodwin (1888), and to Reichenbach himself. However, this would be dating the cinema from its conception rather than its birth and is only one step along the road to film as we know it.
The Arrival of a Train at a Station (L’Arivée d’un Train en Gare de la Ciotat, 1895) was a single-shot sequence lasting 50 seconds, filmed by Louis Lumière. The audience ducked under their seats, convinced that the train was real.
The Lumières’ first showing of the Cinématographe Lumière attracted little attention, but the crowds swelled and soon more than 2,000 people were lining up daily.
1895–1919
1895
The Lumière brothers patent and demonstrate the Cinématographe.
1899
Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, James Cagney, Noel Coward, and Alfred Hitchcock born.
1895 1897
Méliès builds a studio at Montreuil-sous-Bois, near Paris, where he eventually produces more than 500 films.
1903
The Great Train Robbery released, launching the Western movie genre.
1900 1900
At the World Fair in Paris, 1.5 million gaze at a giant Cinématographe.
1905
The first Nickelodeon opens in Pittsburgh, USA, seating 100. 1905 1905
American entertainment trade journal Variety begins publication.
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the birth of c i nema nickelodeons The first cinemas were called nickelodeons. The price of a ticket was just a nickel, and “odeon” is the Greek word for theater. They seated about 100, and showed films continuously, ensuring a steady flow of spectators. The first was built in the US in 1905 and, by 1907, around two million Americans were going to nickelodeons every day. But the boom was short-lived. By 1910, theatres with larger seating capacity, capable of showing longer films, were starting to replace them. In 1908, there were around 8,000 nickelodeons throughout the US. The Comet Theatre in New York City was one of them.
pour out of the gates, including a man In France, brothers Auguste and Louis on a bicycle, a dog, and a horse. Some Lumière were working in their father have argued that the film was staged Antoine’s photographic studio in because none of the workers look at Lyons. In 1894, Edison’s Kinetoscope the camera or walk toward it. Other Lumière films shown at was shown in Paris and, in the same city, Louis Lumière began work on a this first cinema show included The machine to compete Demolition of a Wall with Edison’s device. (1895), in which The Cinématographe, reverse motion was initially a camera used to “rebuild” a and projector in one, wall, thus making was patented in the this the first film brothers’ names on with special effects. February 13, 1895. A film called The first public Watering the Gardener performance of the (1895) is considered A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans Cinématographe took la Lune, 1902) was one of Georges Méliès’ the first film comedy. fantastical films. place on December It shows a gardener 28, 1895 at the Salon Indien in the receiving a jet of water in the face Grand Café on the Boulevard des when a naughty boy steps on a hose Capucines in Paris. It was a 20-minute and then releases it. program of ten films recorded with an Among the audience at this Cinématographe presentation was immobile camera with occasional panning. The first film seems to have Georges Méliès. He was a conjurer, been Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory cartoonist, inventor, and mechanic, (1895) in which a few hundred people and was greatly excited by what he The LumiÈre brothers
1908
The first movie star, Florence Lawrence, appears in 38 films.
1911
Credits begin to appear at the beginning of films.
1914
The first “picture palace,” The Strand, opens at New York’s Times Square. It seats 3,300.
1910 1906
The Story of the Kelly Gang premieres in Melbourne, Australia. At 70 minutes, it is the longest feature film to date.
1915
D.W Griffith’s 3-hour epic, The Birth of a Nation premieres.
1915 1913
“Hollywood”s name formally adopted, and becomes the center of the film industry.
1914
Charlie Chaplin makes his first appearance as the “Little Tramp” character in the Keystone Studios’ Kid Auto Races at Venice.
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the first BOX OFFICE hits 1 FR Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, 1895 2 fr The Demolition of a Wall, 1895 3 FR Watering the Gardener, 1895 4 Fr A Trip to the Moon, 1902 5 US The Great Train Robbery, 1903 6 fr The Melomanic, 1903 7 FR 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1907 8 FR The Tunnel Under the English Channel, 1907 9 US The Squaw Man, 1913 10 US The Birth of a Nation, 1915
saw. On April 4, 1896, Méliès opened his Théatre Robert Houdin as a cinema. In 1898, the shutter of his camera jammed while he was filming a street scene. This incident made him realize the potential of trick photography to create magical effects. He went on to develop many devices, such as superimposition and stop motion. For example, in The Melomanic (1903), Méliès plays a music master who removes his head, only for it to be replaced by another and another. The Squaw Man (1913), a Western adapted from the stage and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, was the first feature-length film to be produced in Hollywood.
As the music master throws each head onto a telegraph wire, they form a series of musical notes. fantasy and reality
Film scholars have pointed out that the films of the Lumière brothers and of Méliès reveal the distinction between documentary and fiction films. The Lumières employed cameramen to travel the world, while Méliès remained in his studio making his fantastic films. Among the hundred or so Méliès films still in existence are two adaptations of novels by Jules Verne, A Trip to the Moon (1902) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1907). the birth of hollywood cinema
In the early 20th century, American movie production companies were situated in New York. Biograph Studios (est. 1896) was an early home of many major silent film creative forces. Slapstick pioneer Mack Sennett worked there and at another New York studio, Keystone (est. 1912). There Charlie Chaplin also made movies,
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until, already famous, he was lured film star was Florence Lawrence, away to Essanay (est. 1907) in 1915. “The Biograph Girl.” Theda Bara was But the man with the greatest the subject of the first full publicity influence on the movies as an art form campaign to create a star image. Her was David Wark (D.W.) Griffith. From background was tailored to fit the role his first film, The of the exotic “vamp.” Adventures of Dollie (1908), At the same time, he transformed the other stars were medium. Originally an gaining influence. actor, he learned about Three of the most film-making from his famous worldwide employer, Edwin S. were Mary Pickford, Porter, whose movie Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin. The Great Train Robbery (1903), was the first to Pickford, who made convey a defined story, her name as “Little and use long-shot and Mary,” made a final close-up (of a enormous amounts of shot fired at the money with films like audience). Between Little Rich Girl and 1908 and 1913, he Rebecca of Sunnybrook directed 450 titles, in Farm (both 1917). In Cleopatra (1917) starred Theda Bara, which he developed 1920 she married aka Theodosia Goodman from Cincinnati. film grammar and Fairbanks, who gained Her pseduonym was an anagram of camera placement, a following after several “Arab Death”. and learned to elicit satires on American life. On January 15, 1919, unhappy naturalistic acting from his players. The biblical spectacle Judith of Bethulia with the lack of independence in (1914) was the first American fourworking under contract to others, Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, and reeler and The Birth of a Nation (1915) was its first masterpiece. D.W. Griffith founded the United Just before World War I, a number Artists Corporation. United Artists, of independent producers moved to unlike the other big a small suburb to the west of Los companies, owned Angeles; Hollywood, as we know it no studio of its own, today, began to take shape. More and and rented the more films were shot there because studio space required of the space and freedom the area for each production. provided; in 1913, Cecil B. DeMille It had no cinema directed The Squaw Man there. In holdings and had to March 1915, Carl Laemmle opened arrange distribution the Universal Studios at a cost of of its products with $165,000. A pioneering role can be cinemas or circuits. ascribed to Thomas Ince, who devised Despite these the standard studio system. This drawbacks, United system concentrated production into Artists survived. vast factory-like studios. This silent movie At the same time, the star system camera stands on top was developed and refined. The first of a sturdy tripod, and was cranked by hand. performer to lay claim to the title of
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1920–1929 Silence is Golden The Silent Film Era saw the consolidation of the studio system that was to endure into the 1950s. The 1920s was also a decade in which the first great stars lit up the screen, including Garbo and Dietrich. But, by 1929, a technological innovation had changed the course of cinema. In the economic boom that followed World War I, cinema moguls Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn, and Jack Warner with his brothers Harry, Albert, and Sam (all European Jewish emigrants), increased their grip on the film industry. genres and stars
The studios began to turn out stories that repeated themes and structures, forming what would later be dubbed “genres.” Westerns became a staple of the Rudolph Valentino (1895–1926), supreme Latin lover, in a scene from one of his greatest hits, Blood and Sand (1922) in which he played a hot-blooded matador.
Film poster, 1926
1920–1929
1920
The “marriage of the century” takes place between stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. He buys her a lodge called Pickfair. 1920
1922
Robert Flaherty releases Nanook of the North, about the life of an Eskimo family, the first film to be called a documentary.
1922 1921
Fatty Arbuckle aquitted of the rape and manslaughter of Virginia Rappe.
1922
Rin Tin Tin becomes cinema’s first canine star, helping save Warner Bros. from bankruptcy.
1924 1924
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is founded by the merging of three production companies.
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of the stars by the roles they played. One of the During the 1920s, a rash of biggest of these stars scandals broke out among was Rudolph Valentino. members of the Hollywood community. There was the Valentino came to the unsolved murder of director US from Italy in 1913 William Desmond Taylor, involving as a teenager. After film star Mabel Normand (the lover of Mack Sennett); the mysterious becoming a professional death of Thomas Ince aboard dancer in the cafés of newspaper tycoon William New York, he ventured Randolph Hearst’s yacht, and the trial for rape and murder of out to California in comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. 1917. In 1921, he Fatty Arbuckle (1887–1933) was appeared as the playboy cleared of the charges against him, hero in Rex Ingram’s but his career was finished. The Four Horseman of the studios in the 1920s, making good Apocalypse, and became the unrivalled use of Californian locations. Cowboy Latin lover of the screen, the male stars, who seldom deviated from their equivalent of the vamp. The Sheik established screen (also 1921) sealed roles, included his seductive “Collective madness, W.S. Hart, Tom image forever. incarnating the tragic Mix and Hoot In the optimism comedy of a new fetishism.” and materialism Gibson. James the vatican, 1926, on the orgy of mourning Cruze’s The Covered of the 1920s, following the death of Valentino Hollywood began Wagon (1923) and John Ford’s The Iron to represent Horse (1924) both showed the epic glamour, as well as a defiance of and artistic possibilities of the genre. conventional morality. Because of But, during the Silent Film Era, it box office hits of the 1920s was American comedy that reached the widest audiences worldwide. This 1 us The Big Parade, 1925 was due mainly to the comic genius 2 us The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1921 3 US Ben-Hur, 1925 of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, 4 US The Ten Commandments, 1923 Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and 5 US What Price Glory, 1926 Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, all 6 US The Covered Wagon, 1923 of whom reached their apogee in 7 US Way Down East, 1920 the 1920s. 8 US The Singing Fool, 1928 The studios also recognized the 9 US Wings, 1927 value of typecasting, so that the 10 US The Gold Rush, 1925 audience quickly identified the persona star scandals
1925
The Phantom of the Opera is released, starring Lon Chaney in his most notable role.
1926
Don Juan released by Warner Bros. with sound effects and music but no dialogue.
1926 1925
Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush is released.
1926
Rudolph Valentino dies at 31. Some 100,000 fans attend his funeral, and suicide attempts are reported.
1927
Fox’s Movietone newsreel, the first sound news film, released.
May, 1929
The first Academy Awards ceremony held in Hollywood.
1928 1928
Mickey Mouse appears for the first time in Steamboat Willie.
1929
George Eastman demonstrates his first film in Technicolor.
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concerns over the immorality of the than sinning. European sophistication was offered by Erich von Stroheim, film business both off and on screen, in 1921 the Motion Picture Producers who built almost the whole of Monte and Distributors of America (MPPDA) Carlo on the Universal backlot for was founded as a self-regulating body. Foolish Wives (1921). Among the Former Post-Master General, Will H. marital comedies of manners that Hays, became its first president, Ernst Lubitsch directed at Warner serving until his retirement in Bros. were The Marriage Circle 1945. Hays tried to mold the (1924) and Lady Windermere’s Hollywood product into a Fan (1925). At the time, wholesome and totally Lubitsch admitted that inoffensive form of he had been inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s Woman family entertainment. His singular power led of Paris (1923), in which to the MPPDA being Edna Purviance, Chaplin’s leading lady generally known as the Hays Office and the in almost 30 comedies, Production Code on played a high-class Pola Negri (1894–1987) started her career in Germany prostitute. The studios, matters of morality was before coming to Hollywood called the Hays Code. with Ernst Lubitsch in the 1920s. now strongly established in Hollywood, started to buy up talented directors from Europe. Sin and Sophistication Nevertheless, “It Girl” Clara Bow and These included Ernst Lubitsch and F. “Flapper” Joan Crawford were seen as W. Murnau from Germany, Michael Curtiz from Hungary, and Mauritz freewheeling symbols of the jazz age, Stiller and Victor Sjostrom from replacing the post-Victorian ideals of Sweden. There were also leading womanhood as exemplified by Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, players to enrich the star system, such and Bessie Love. D.W. Griffith’s as the Polish-born Pola Negri. She was the first European star to be given the melodramas, Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920) marked the full Hollywood star treatment. Another European-born star was the imposing end of an era, while Cecil B. DeMille Swiss-born Emil Jannings, who arrived made a series of risqué domestic in Hollywood from Germany in 1927. comedies that tested limits. Six of He was the first to win the Best Actor these moral tales, such as Male and Female (1919), starred Gloria Swanson Oscar twice, for The Way of All Flesh as an extravagantly gowned (1927) and The Last Command (1928). sophisticate, more sinned against picture palaces They heyday of the picture palaces was roughly the period spanning the two world wars. During these years, many hundreds of movie houses were built all over the world, with splendid foyers, imposing staircases, and mighty Wurlitzer organs. On average, picture palaces were capable of seating about 2,000 people, and they ran three or four shows every day. Many were masterpieces of Art Deco architecture. These opulent pleasure palaces insulated the public from the harsh outside world and were as much a part of the experience of moviegoing as the film itself. However, by the end of the 1930s, box office returns were failing to keep pace with the vast investment required by the studios to keep up the lavish picture palaces Illustration of London’s Art Deco Regal Cinema (1929).
garbo and gilbert
The Swedish-born Greta Gustafsson (1905–90) was brought to Hollywood by Louis B. Mayer in 1925 with her mentor, Mauritz Stiller, who had renamed her Garbo, made her lose 22 pounds and created her mystique. However, Stiller was not chosen to direct her first American film, The Torrent (1925), and was replaced by Clarence Brown (1890– 1987) after only ten days on her second film, Flesh and the Devil (1926). The urgency of her love scenes with John Gilbert, with whom she was involved off-screen, conveyed a mature sexuality and vulnerability never before seen in American films. The cinematographer William Daniels, who shot nearly all her Hollywood films, devised a subtle romantic lighting for her that did much to enhance her screen image. Garbo and Gilbert were paired for the last time in Queen Christina (1933). Whereas the film launched Garbo into a series of tragic roles on which her reputation as an actress rests, Gilbert
Flesh and the Devil (1926) was the first and most memorable of the three silent films in which Greta Garbo and her lover John Gilbert were paired. Garbo, at her most seductive, plays a femme fatale.
made just one further picture before dying of a heart attack brought on by excessive drinking. Action and horror
Home-grown talent was also in evidence in Hollywood. Lon Chaney was justly famed for his make-up skills and was known as “The Man With a Thousand Faces.” However, his portrayal of a series of grotesques in such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) was based not only on external distortion but sensitive acting, that brought a quality of humanity even to these most warped and terrifying characters. Also hugely popular was the derring-do of Douglas Fairbanks, who went from strength to strength in The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and The Black Pirate (1926), all vehicles built
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around the star’s muscular athleticism. Fairbanks had a hand in every aspect of film-making, and was particularly interested in set design.
Europe and russia
After World War I, the prosperity of the film industry in France and Italy was eclipsed by increased imports of American films. Nevertheless, despite the flood of Hollywood films, Europe would continue to produce films of great artistic quality. Among the masterpieces were Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) from France, and G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) from Germany. In the Soviet Union, the release of Sergei Eisenstein’s The Strike (1924) opened one of the most exciting periods of experimentation and creative freedom in the history of Soviet cinema.
The coming of sound
In contrast, despite notable exceptions such as F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven (1927) – which won three of the very first Oscars — and King Vidor’s The Crowd (1928), Hollywood production was unremarkable in the late 1920s. Conditions were ripe for radical innovation. In August 1926, Warner Bros., ailing financially, presented the first synchronized program using a sound-on-disc system called Vitaphone. Their main intention was to offer cinema owners a substitute for the live performers in their programs, in particular the cinema orchestra and the stage show. The final shot of Raoul Walsh’s spectacular The Thief of Bagdad (1924) shows Douglas Fairbanks in the title role and his princess (Julanne Johnston) sailing over the rooftops on a magic carpet.
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During the filming of Stroheim’s Because of this, their first feature film with sound, Don Juan (1926), starring Queen Kelly (1928), starring Gloria Swanson, the producers (including John Barrymore, was not a talking Swanson herself and Joseph P. picture at all. It used only a musical score, recorded on discs, to accompany Kennedy, father of the future US the silent images, thus saving the extra president) called a halt. They claimed cost of hiring an orchestra. that, with a third of the film The breakthrough shot without sound, it was came in October 1927 impossible to reshoot it when Warner Bros. with sound, and therefore launched the first the film was redundant. In reality, it was because commercially successful Swanson and Kennedy sound feature film, The Jazz Singer, this came to consider the time featuring lip-synch subject matter of the film recordings of songs as too shocking. Queen Kelly well as some dialogue. was hastily edited, given The success of The an arbitrary ending and a Jazz Singer gave impetus music track was added. The German poster for to the installation of sound Pandora’s Box (1929) shows the Swanson’s luminous unique allure of Louise Brooks. recording and projection career survived the arrival equipment in studios and cinemas. of sound; but Queen Kelly, although In May 1928, after thorough released in Europe, never secured a commercial release in the US. examination of the different sound Twenty-two years later, Swanson techniques, almost all the studios and Stroheim would come together decided to adopt Western Electric’s more flexible sound-on-film recording again in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, process. This meant the end of about a forgotten star of silent films. In this film, the sequences screened by Warner’s Vitaphone. By 1929, thousands of cinemas were equipped An unemployed man appeals for help in the soulless with sound, and dozens of silent big city in King Vidor’s silent, poignant masterpiece, films had added talking sequences. The Crowd (1928).
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New Yorkers queue to seeThe Jazz Singer (1927), eager to experience the novelty of synchronized sound — the “talkies” — for the first time.
Norma Desmond (Swanson) at her home are from Queen Kelly, and there are other allusions to Stroheim’s unfinished and largely unseen sado-masochistic masterpiece. MGM interfered with the editing and added a sound track to Victor Sjöström’s finest achievement in the US, The Wind (1928). This film featured Lillian Gish, one of the greatest of silent screen stars, giving the performance of her life. There were some directors in Hollywood who were able to use the new technology creatively. Rouben Mamoulian, on his first film, Applause (1929), insisted on using two microphones on certain scenes, later mixing the sound. the birth of RKO
Sound led to the creation of a new major studio, Radio-Keith-Orpheum or RKO in 1928, whose trademark was a pylon transmitting radio signals on a globe. It also led to a new genre — the musical. It was MGM’s The
Broadway Melody (1929), which won the Academy Award for Best Film, that opened the floodgates for other musicals, dozens of which appeared before the decade was out. The Broadway Melody (1929), was the first “100% All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing, Motion Picture”.
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Most of the early talkies were The coming of sound was as seismic successful at the box-office, but in other countries as in the US. many of them were of poor quality — In Great Britain, the success of dialogue-dominated play adaptations, “talkies” from the US resulted in a with stilted acting (from inexperienced wild scramble to wire studios and performers) and an unmoving camera or microphone. (The period of cinemas for the new techniques. Hollywood’s transition to talkies was Other countries started to demand dialogue in their wittily re-created “You ain’t heard nothing yet!” in Singin’ in the own languages, which led to the Rain, 1952, see Al Jolson, 1927, The Jazz Singer disintegration of page 436.) Screenwriters were required to place the international film market, dominated by Hollywood for more more emphasis on characters in their than a decade. It split into as many scripts, and title-card writers became unemployed. Most of the entries were markets as there were languages. Some experiments in producing literal transcriptions of Broadway shows put on the screen. However, multi-lingual films were tried, such as E.A. Dupont’s Atlantic (1929). The gradually directors and studio film was shot in English, French, and technicians learned how to mask German, with three different casts. It camera noise, free the camera and was a very expensive solution. Sound mobilize the microphones and sound recording equipment. The technology affected not only film content and style, but the structure of the industry. became subservient to the direction The artistic effect of this was to and not vice versa. From this period immobilize the camera and to freeze onwards, there was no looking back. The talkies were here to stay. the action in the studio. the scramble for sound
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1930–1939 The Cinema Comes of Age Besides changing the shape of the whole film industry, the coming of sound affected the careers of many directors and actors. During the 1930s many genres went from strength to strength, and a new generation of stars, including Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, and Clark Gable, transfixed viewers. Three of the four founders of United Banky was one of Hollywood’s most Artists, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary bankable stars, but her Hungarian Pickford, and D.W. Griffith, made accent was deemed too thick for the talkies. Norma Talmadge unsuccessful attempts at the talkies. Griffith, one retired after Du Barry, of the most important Woman of Passion (1930) figures in the history when certain critics reviled of film, became one of her Brooklyn accent – the most old-fashioned rather out of keeping almost overnight. with the 18th-century Fairbanks and Pickford, costumes. John Gilbert, teaming up for the only who had costarred time in The Taming of the with Greta Garbo in Shrew (1929), revealed several films, is chiefly their vocal deficiencies, remembered as one of and the film flopped. the casualties of sound. Only Chaplin survived When dialogue was Garbo talks! The Swedish star into the sound era, added to His Glorious made a smooth transition to sound deciding to ignore spoken in Anna Christie (1930). Night (1929), his highdialogue until The pitched voice was Great Dictator (1940). ridiculed by critics. “Give me a whiskey, He sensed rightly various attempts ginger ale on the side – His that words would at a comeback and don’t be stingy, baby.” failed, despite his weaken the international appeal efforts as Garbo’s Greta garbo, Anna Christie, 1930 and effectiveness of leading man in much of his comedy. Thus in City Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina Lights (1931), perhaps the peak of his (1933) — the sexual electricity was no career, Chaplin used only music and The supreme dancing duo of Fred Astaire and Ginger realistic sound effects. In the mid and Rogers perform in Top Hat (1935). The film is perhaps late 1920s, the Hungarian-born Vilma the most popular of their nine black-and-white musicals.
1930–1939
1930
Debut issue of The Hollywood Reporter, published. The daily trade paper would become an institution. 1930 1930
The movie industry begins to dub in dialogue of films exported to foreign markets.
1932
Four-year-old Shirley Temple is signed to 20th-Century Fox.
1933
The first drive-in movie theatre opens in New Jersey, US.
1932 1931
Fritz Lang’s influential M appears, the first psychodrama about a serial killer.
1934 1933
King Kong released, featuring stop-motion special effects.
1934
A new Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays Code, established.
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1935
It Happened One Night (1934) becomes the first film to sweep the Oscars, winning five major awards, a feat unrepeated until 1975.
1937
The first US full-length animated feature, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released.
1936 1934
Warner Bros. shuts down its German distribution office in protest against Nazi anti-semitic practices.
1939
Gone With the Wind premieres.
1938 1936
Chaplin’s Modern Times, a comment on the Depression, is released.
1938
African-American leaders challenge the Hays Office to make roles other than servants and menials available to blacks.
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Jean Gabin gives a spellbinding performance of tragic stature in Daybreak (Le Jour Se Lève, 1939), Marcel Carné’s masterpiece of “poetic realism.”
longer there. Garbo herself had little trouble making the transition. Her deep, accented voice was immediately acceptable from the moment she spoke her first line in Anna Christie (1929). Similarly the celebrated husky contralto of Marlene Dietrich was heard in six baroque erotic dramas directed by Josef von Sternberg in Hollywood. The director had made her a star overnight in Germany’s first talking picture, The Blue Angel (1930). Some directors really came into their own with the talkies: Frank Capra and Howard Hawks with their machinegun dialogue, George Cukor with his glossy, literate films at MGM, and Ernst Lubitsch, who was able to demonstrate his cynical wit and sophistication in films such as Trouble in Paradise (1932) as well as in musicals starring Maurice Chevalier. european film in the 1930 s
In France, René Clair and Jean Renoir made good use of sound. Clair’s first sound film, Sous les Toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris, 1930) used songs and street noises with a minimum of dialogue. Renoir’s La Chienne (The Bitch, 1931) made brilliant use of direct sound. Renoir also made two of the
most important films of this rich period in French cinema, La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu (1939). In 1936, the Cinémathèque Française was founded by Henri Langlois, Jean Mitry and Georges Franju. Its immediate task was to save old films from destruction. In 1935, the famous studio Cinecittá was built on the outskirts of Rome, supported by Mussolini. But the quality of the films, grandiose propaganda epics and “white telephone” films — unreal, glamorous tales set in elegant surroundings – was low. Until the Nazis came to power in Germany, films there showed an awareness of social and political trends, most notably G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930) and Kameradschaft (1931), and Fritz Lang’s M (1931).
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Socialist realism, a strictly ideological interpretation of history told in an unimaginative and straightforward style, was becoming entrenched in the Soviet Union, and all artists had to toe the party line. In Great Britain, the outstanding figure in the industry at the time was Hungarian emigré Alexander Korda, who settled in England in 1931 and formed his own production company London Films. Denham Studios was built in an attempt to rival Hollywood. Boom and Bust
Meanwhile, the Hollywood studio system, having recovered from the Wall Street Crash of 1929, was reaching its apogee. First there was a “talkie boom” at the end of the 1920s, and the
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box office hits of the 1930s 1 us Gone With the Wind, 1939 2 us Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937 3 US The Wizard of Oz, 1939 4 US Frankenstein, 1931 5 US King Kong, 1933 6 US San Francisco, 1936 7 = US Hell’s Angels, 1930 = US Lost Horizon, 1937 = US Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939 8 US Maytime, 1937
American movie industry enjoyed its best year ever in 1930 as theater admissions and studio profits reached record levels. Then, in 1931, the Depression caught up with the movie industry, and profits fell drastically. The rapid rise of the double feature with a cheaply made second, or “B-movie,” was a direct result of the Depression. To attract patrons in those troubled times, most of the theaters offered two features in each program, The celebrated “Battle on the Ice” sequence, in which the invading Teutonic knights are lured by Russian forces onto the ice, which then melts and drowns them, from Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938). The spectacular tour de force is enhanced by Prokofiev’s pulsating music.
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and changed the programs they offered two or three times a week. As a result, “Poverty Row” studios, such as Monogram and Republic, could specialize in B-movies, usually Westerns or action adventures.
the monster. The studio also produced Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) starring the Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi in the role that typecast him for the rest of his career. In the mid-1930s, wholesome teenage soprano Deanna Durbin almost single-handedly rescued Major hollywood studios the studio from bankruptcy with In the 1930s, the ten lighthearted, greatest asset of economical musicals, Columbia Pictures, all produced by Hungarian-born Joe which grew from a Poverty Row company Pasternak (1901–91), into a major contender the most successful under the dictatorial purveyor of popular Harry Cohn (1891– classics in the movies. 1958), was Frank RKO, born with Capra. The director the coming of sound, made a succession of produced nine chic Fred Astaire-Ginger films that earned critical Rogers musicals from acclaim and secured Capra an unusual Flying Down to Rio (1933) degree of independence. James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), to The Story of Vernon marked the beginning of Universal These included It and Irene Castle (1939), Pictures’ horror movie output. Happened One Night and Katharine Hepburn’s earlier films, including (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby Universal Pictures, which started (1938), one of the four films she made the decade with Lewis Milestone’s with Cary Grant. The groundbreaking celebrated antiwar film All Quiet King Kong (1933) was also a monster hit for RKO (see page 410). on the Western Front (1930), established Twentieth Century Fox was a itself as the horror movie studio by producing all the early classics of the latecomer among the major genre. These included Frankenstein Hollywood studios. It was formed in (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein 1935 by a merger of two companies: (1935), both directed by James Whale, Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film Corporation. Twentieth Century and both with Boris Karloff (born William Henry Pratt in London) as Pictures was set up in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–79), one of the very few American-born Hollywood moguls, and Joseph Schenck (1877– 1961) who was married to actress Norma Talmadge. The Fox Film Corporation had been in the business since 1915, but had been in financial straits since William Fox himself was ousted in 1930. Filmgoing became a weekly ritual for the majority of city dwellers during the1930s, when the distinctive product of the studios was immediately identifiable.
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“biopics” (biographical pictures, see page 123) starring Paul Muni as Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola. The company’s impressive trademark Warner Bros. musicals were grittier — searchlights scanning the heavens than those of other studios, but they above futuristic skyscraping letters also contained the most fantastic spelling the company’s name – cinematic numbers ever committed became synonymous with big-feature to film, by the dance director Busby entertainment. But the company only Berkeley (see page 259). His most really started to make its mark at the characteristic work — the famous start of the 1940s. kaleidoscopic effects —was done at Warner Bros. became associated Warners between 1933 and 1937. If Warner Bros. could be with gangster pictures, often starring James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, considered working-class, then, in and George Raft. Also on their roster sharp contrast, MGM, with its logo were Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart of a roaring lion, could be considered (mostly performing as a heavy middle-class. Driven by Louis B. throughout the decade), and Errol Mayer and, until his premature death, Flynn, who was at his swashbuckling “Boy Wonder” Irving Thalberg (1899– best in Captain Blood (1935), The Charge 1936), MGM operated on a lavish of the Light Brigade (1936), and The budget making “beautiful pictures for Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), all three beautiful people.” MGM had Garbo, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer directed by Hungarian-born Michael (Thalberg’s wife), Joan Crawford, Curtiz. Another European emigré at Warner was the German-born William Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. Powell and Dieterle, who directed two successful Leo the lion poses for MGM’s studio logo, which is still in use today; on the circle framing Leo was the MGM motto: “Ars Gratia Artis” — art for art’s sake.
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Loy were very popular as the husbandwife detective team in the “Thin Man” series which ran for six films. Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller made his debut for MGM as the vineswinging hero in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), which led to a string of sequels. MGM devised the formula of providing idealistic folksy films of Americana, and glamourous and prestigious romantic screen classics, such as George Cukor’s David Copperfield (1934). Other hits for the studio were Mutiny on the Bounty (1935),
The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the longest Hollywood talkie released up to that time, at 2 hours, 59 minutes, Captains Courageous (1937), and Boys Town (1938), which won Spencer Tracy consecutive Best Actor Oscars. If MGM encapsulated middleclass values, then Paramount had aristocratic pretensions. Run by Adolph Zukor, it had Lubitsch’s elegance, Sternberg’s exoticism, and DeMille’s extravagance. Players under contract to Paramount included Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, the Marx Brothers (until 1933), W.C. Fields, and Mae West, whose saucy humor was partly responsible for the creation of the Legion of Decency in 1934. seal of approval
In September 1931, the Production Code was considerably tightened, and submission of scripts to the Hays Office was made compulsory. By 1934, with the cooperation of the largely Catholic Legion of Decency, members pledged to condemn “all motion pictures except those which did not offend decency and Christian morality.” The PCA (Production Code Administration) was set up to give a Seal of Approval on every print of a film, with most studios agreeing not to release a film without this certificate. As a result, a number of films were withheld from release, and drastic reconstruction undertaken. The conversion of Mae West’s It Ain’t No Sin into the innocuous Belle of the Nineties (1934) was the most prominent. The Production Code even found the cartoon character Betty Boop immoral and demanded that her sexiness be hidden. Among the proscriptions were: profanity, nudity, sexual perversion, miscegenation, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) introduced Johnny Weissmuller, the most successful Tarzan of them all. Jane was played by Maureen O’Sullivan.
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Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert share a motel room in It Happened One Night (1934). The screwball comedy was a surprise hit, winning five Oscars.
and scenes of childbirth. The Code also suggested that respect must be shown to the flag, no sympathy for criminals must be shown, a man and woman, even if married, must not be shown in bed together. The Code amounted to a form of censorship. Though it inhibited some film-makers, it did help to ensure a steady flow of high quality family entertainment. The films of 1939 – a golden year for Hollywood — included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, John Ford’s mold-breaking Western Stagecoach, Dark Victory, with Bette Davis, Goodbye Mr. Chips, starring Robert Donat, (who won the Best Actor Oscar); Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men, Lubitch’s Ninotchka (publicized by “Garbo laughs!”), and Gone With the Wind. We will not see its like again.
glorious TECHNICOLOR By the 1930s, Technicolor had become such a successful cinematography process that it was often used as the generic name for any color film. Walt Disney (1901–66) enjoyed the exclusive rights to make animated films in color from 1932–35, producing Oscarwinning shorts, such as Flowers and Trees (1932) and The Three Little Pigs (1933). By the mid1930s, color was no longer a novelty, but was being used for about 20 percent of the Hollywood output. Technicolor reached its zenith at the end of the decade with two expensive MGM movies, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, both Technicolor credited to Victor Fleming. cameras, here with film rolls on top, were mainly used in studios. Hollywood’s first full-length feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp (1935) — an adaptation of William Thackeray’s Napoleonicera novel Vanity Fair.
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1940–1949 The Cinema Goes to War The outbreak of World War II in Europe finally brought the economic problems of the 1930s to an end in the US. There was a return to full employment, which led to a boom in film attendance. During the postwar years, the studios were troubled by union problems and strikes, followed by the notorious anti-Communist “Hollywood witch-hunt.” for America to take up arms, and In October 1940, the New York Herald Tribune wrote, “The incomparable which extolled the virtues of Charles Chaplin is back on the screen democracy over the brutality of Fascist in an extraordinary film. The Great regimes, were William Wyler’s Mrs. Dictator is a savage comic commentary Miniver, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, on a world gone mad. It has a solid set in 1941 war-time Morocco, and Ernst Lubitsch’s fabric of irresistible humor and also To Be or Not To Be. Tragically, Carole blazes with indignation.” Lombard, the star Chaplin’s first talkie, of the latter, didn’t a thinly disguised live to see its release. satire on Nazi In early 1942, while Germany, earned on a War Bond tour, more money than she was killed in a any of his other plane crash, at just William Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver (1942), showed pictures. However, 34 years old. how an upper middle-class English family bore The outbreak he, and the world, up bravely during World War II. of war in Europe had much to be threatened to devastate Hollywood’s indignant about. vital overseas trade. The studios’ exports to the Axis nations – film fights Fascism principally Germany, Italy, and Japan Although the US was neutral in the war until the bombing of Pearl Harbor – had declined to almost nil in 1937–8, but Hollywood still derived about by Japan on December 7, 1941, Hollywood seemed to be on prewar one third of its total revenue from alert with several related films made overseas markets, the United before the attack. Howard Hawks’ Kingdom in particular. By Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper, late 1940, Britain stood alone though set in the First World War, was as Hollywood’s significant an attack on isolationism. Other calls remaining overseas market.
1940–1949
1940
Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film, Rebecca, released. It will win Best Picture Oscar.
1941
Bette Davis becomes the first female president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1940 1941
Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, released. It is to become one of the most highly regarded films in cinema history.
1942
Paul Robeson leaves the industry because of the lack of quality roles for black actors.
1942 1941
The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston, is the first of the classic film noir.
1944 1944
The first TV ad for a film is broadcast by Paramount.
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In Britain, more than half the studio space was taken up by the making of propaganda films for the government. Many were of real merit, like London Can Take It (1940), The Foreman Went to France (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). The movement also produced Humphrey Jennings, a poet of the documentary, whose best work, Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943), summed up the spirit of Britain at war. Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944), made on the eve of Britain’s invasion of occupied France, used the patriotic fervor of the Shakespeare play to good effect. Weekly attendances by wartime British audiences tripled from 1939 to 1945. In France, in 1940, the French film industry fell under Nazi control and all English-language films were banned.
box office hits of the 1940s 1 US Bambi, 1942 2 Us Pinocchio, 1940 3 us Fantasia, 1940 4 US Song of the South, 1946 5 US Mom and Dad, 1945 6 US Samson and Delilah, 1949 7 US The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946 8 US The Bells of St. Mary’s, 1945 9 US Duel in the Sun, 1946 10 US This is the Army, 1943
René Clair and Jean Renoir left for Hollywood. To avoid censorship, directors chose nonpolitical subjects, though Marcel Carné’s Les Visiteurs du Soir (The Devil’s Envoys, 1942) was seen by the French as an allegory of their situation, with the Devil (played with relish by Jules Berry) seen as Hitler. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau (The Raven, 1943) made by a Germanrun company, was temporarily banned after Liberation. Other films were more overlty pro-Axis. Jean Delannoy’s L’Eternel Retour (Love Eternal, 1943), with a screenplay by Jean Cocteau, was an update of the Tristan and Isolde legend featuring Aryan lovers, which was pleasing to the Occupiers. In all, Germany made 1,100 feature films under the Nazi regime, many of them harmless entertainments, with anti-Semitic propaganda films among the dross. Emil Jannings, who had Humphrey Jennings’ beautifully photographed documentary, Fires Were Started (1943), depicts the National Fire Service at work during the London Blitz.
1945
1946
Roberto Rossellini’s Italian The Cannes Film Festival realist masterpiece Open debuts on the French City is released. Riviera.
1947
As a result of HUAC investigations, The “Hollywood Ten” are jailed for refusing to cooperate.
1946 1945
Restrictions on the allocation of raw film stock ends with the War’s finish.
1948 1946
The Jolson Story, a popular biopic of Al Jolson, is released.
1949
The US Supreme Court rules that Hollywood-based studios must end monopolization of US moviemaking, heralding the end of the studio system.
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returned to Germany from Hollywood to costar with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, and remained there, was appointed head of the country’s biggest studio, UFA, in 1940. In the following year, he played the title role of Ohm Krüger, an anti-British film set in the Boer War. Because of his cooperation with the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda he was blacklisted by the Allies and spent his last years in retirement in Austria. Studio Fare
Back in Hollywood, to meet the increased demand for top features, studios either turned to independent producers, whose ranks grew rapidly in the 1940s, or granted their own contract talent greater freedom over their productions. At Paramount, Cecil B. DeMille was granted the status of “in-house independent” producer, which got him a profit participation deal on his pictures.
The growing power of the independent film-makers and top contract talent in the early 1940s was reinforced by the rise of the talent guilds — The Screen Writers Guild, The Screen Directors Guild, The Screen Actors Guild — which provided a serious challenge to studio control, particularly in terms of the artists’ authority over their work. Moreover, top contract talent was going freelance. This further undermined the established contract system which was a crucial factor in studio hegemony. Despite the success of Walt Disney’s Fantasia and Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film, Rebecca (both 1940), RKO was in serious financial difficulties. RKO’s distribution was seriously affected when Walt Disney, David O. Selznick (who had brought Hitchcock to Hollywood), and Sam Goldwyn set up their own releasing companies. Looking for a quick return, RKO took a chance on the 26-year-old Orson Welles with Citizen Kane (1941), but, though it brought them prestige, it didn’t bring in funds. They had more success with Val Lewton, who produced a series of subtle, low-budget psychological thrillers, such as Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942). hollywood’s war effort
Ironically, the war years were comparatively good times for Hollywood. With America suddenly engaged in a global war, Hollywood’s social, economic, and industrial fortunes changed virtually overnight. The government now saw “the national cinema” as an ideal source of diversion, information, morale boosting, and propaganda for citizens and soldiers alike. Within a year of Pearl Harbor, nearly one-third Simone Simon played a feline heroine in Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), afraid that an ancient curse would turn her into a panther when sexually aroused.
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entertaining the troops Big name stars who enlisted in the US Army included James Stewart and Clark Gable, while others performed for the forces at military bases, or contributed to the war effort in other ways. Some of Hollywood’s best directors – John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston, and William Wyler – made war-related documentaries or training films. The US Government’s Office of War Information (OWI), formed in 1942, served as an important propaganda agency during World War II, and co-ordinated its efforts with those of the film industry. Marlene Dietrich became less mysterious when she helped the Allied cause by entertaining US troops.
of Hollywood’s feature films were war-related. The studios reasserted their hold over the industry and enjoyed record revenues, while playing a vital role in the war effort. The US film industry was extremely prolific, affluent, powerful, and productive during the 1940s, while European film production suffered because of the impact of hostilities. Hollywood film production reached its peak during the years 1943 to 1946 with cinema attendance at preDepression levels. The Big Five studios radically reduced their output from an average of 50 films a year to 30, concentrating on bigger pictures which played longer runs. Motion pictures offered the masses an easy, inexpensive, and accessible means of escape from long working hours, austerity, and the horrifying news from abroad. Westerns, Technicolor musicals, and sophisticated comedies were perfect tranquilizers. As a gesture toward topicality, the established genres, like the gangster movie and the thriller, often substituted a Nazi or a Fifth Columnist for the traditional underworld baddie. But wartime audiences also wanted to be uplifted The Saturday morning matinee was a staple of kids’ film-going from the 1940s to the 1960s. The program was mostly cartoons, serials, and B-Westerns.
by the movies, and dramas, such as Casablanca (1942) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), were immensely popular. A Woman’s Place
America’s entry into the war in 1942 meant big changes in the position of women in society. Traditional models for representing male-female relationships came into increasing conflict with the realities of the world where women were doing men’s jobs and looking after the home alone while
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and Alan Jay Lerner. Freed also signed Lena Horne, the first AfricanAmerican woman to have a long-term contract with a major studio. Horne negotiated a clause that prevented her from playing domestics, jungle natives, or other racial stereotypes. However, she was used as a speciality Shooting Stars performer, so that her Despite losing Gable numbers could be edited and others to the out for theaters in the Southern states. armed services, and Columbia was Garbo to permanent retirement from the fortunate in having the screen in 1941 at age flame-haired sex goddess 36, MGM could still Rita Hayworth under contract. Charles Vidor, boast of “more stars the Hungarian-born than there are in the Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce heavens.” Throughout (1945) gave Joan Crawford, playing a director brought out the self-sacrificing mother, her only Oscar. the 1940s, songwriter best in her in Cover Girl Arthur Freed (1894–1973) headed (1944) and Gilda (1946). In the latter, MGM’s top musical production unit, she “sings” (dubbed by Anita Ellis) “Put the Blame on Mame,” peeling off making the studio synonymous with her long gloves, as Glenn Ford – and the best screen musicals. Among the talents Freed gathered were Gene millions of hot-blooded men — lusted Kelly, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Judy after her. The biggest wartime star at Garland, and June Allyson; directors 20th-Century Fox was leggy blonde Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen, John Mills (right) as Pip and Alec Guinness as Herbert George Sidney, and Charles Walters; Pocket in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), lyricists Betty Comden, Adolph Green, perhaps the finest of all Dickens screen adaptations. the men were away fighting. Many of the films of the time reflected this, with forceful female stars, such as Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford in powerful melodramas, including Now, Voyager (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945).
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Betty Grable, a favorite forces pinup, who appeared in several highly Technicolored musicals. However, when studio head Darryl F. Zanuck returned after his war service, he made Fox’s output more serious-minded. Post-war boom
In 1940s Great Britain, the average annual cinema attendance reached 1,462 million. In 1947, the new Labour Government imposed a 75 per cent tax on foreign film imports; the US responded by placing an embargo on the export of films to Britain. The sudden shortage of American films
“Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me.” rita hayworth, 1946, Gilda
was a challenge to the British film industry. When an agreement was signed with the Motion Picture Association of America in 1948, a flood of Hollywood films hit the market and, at the same time, Americans were obliged to spend 75 percent of their British earnings to make American films in British studios. In the late 1940s, the Rank Organization owned the two largest studios in Britain, Denham and Pinewood, and several smaller ones. The War’s end brought rapid changes in the industry, particularly with the application of the antitrust legislation that signaled the end of the old Hollywood. Forced by law to divest themselves of financial control of the theaters, the major studios lost the guaranteed outlets for their products just as the audience started to decline in numbers. France reinforced the quota system on American films. It Rita Hayworth in Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946), the role with which she was most identified, epitomized 1940s Hollywood glamour.
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the s to ry o f c i n e m a “How Would You Like To Tussle With Russell” was the slogan for The Outlaw (1943), dreamt up by the producer-director Howard Hughes, who discovered Jane Russell.
completed in 1941. The delay was a result of the producer Hughes challenging the legal authority of the Production Code when the film was refused a Seal of Approval, mainly for “glamourizing crime and immorality.” It could have had more to do with Jane Russell’s cantilevered bra, also initiated coproductions between specially designed for her by Hughes. France and Italy, which helped to More realistic representations of finance independent production. The most important aesthetic sexual and psychological problems change that took place in films at the and psychopathic behavior could be time was Italian neorealism, a term found in the film noir genre, as well as movies such as Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s first applied to Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1942), shown only Agreement and Edward Dmytryk’s clandestinely at the time, but which Crossfire (both 1947), about antisemitism in the US. Kazan’s Pinky and had a profound influence on other young Italian directors, such as Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De (both 1949) dealt with racial prejudice, Sica, and those in other countries. while Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend Split into two countries, East and (1945) explored alcoholism. However, this willingness to West Germany had two separate film industries. A certain number of engage in serious confrontations directors who worked during the Nazi with social problems and era, such as Leni Riefenstahl, were religious and racial bigotry blacklisted. In East Germany, Russian emerged just as the House of films dominated the cinemas while, in Representatives UnAmerican the West, mostly American films were Activities Committee (HUAC), spurred on by shown with the aim, it was stated, of Senator Joseph McCarthy, aiding de-Nazification. Similarly, Japan was flooded with American films began its investigations into that were supposed to show the people alleged Communist infiltration a modern democratic society. of the motion picture industry. After declaring that Hollywood Challenging Authority film-makers “employed subtle The release of the Billy the Kid techniques in pictures glorifying the Communist system,” the Western, The Outlaw, by the maverick millionaire Howard Hughes, caused a HUAC held public hearings in October 1947 to question “friendly” huge censorship uproar. The film was withdrawn after it finally got a general witnesses (friendly to the purposes of the committee), who included Adolph release in 1946, although it had been
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biopics), Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg, Menjou, Ronald Reagan, Robert and Elia Kazan were so afraid of Taylor, and Gary Cooper. Ten socalled “unfriendly” witnesses were going to prison, they named people subpoenaed. The Hollywood Ten, as who had been members of left-wing groups. It was one of the shabbiest they were called, were imprisoned after claiming that the periods in the history of “Are you now or Fifth Amendment of Hollywood, and sapped the US Constitution have you ever been its creative spark into gave them the right to the 1950s. a member of the The mid-1940s also refuse to answer the question of whether or Communist Party?” saw the emergence in Britain of Ealing Studios, not they had been HUAC 1947 Communists. One of a team of directors, them, director Edward Dmytryk, later writers, and technicians who believed recanted. Eventually more than 300 that the way to an international market film artists and technicians were was to capture and exploit the British blacklisted, their contracts terminated spirit with all its oddities and humor. and their careers finished. Some It could be described as a genuine worked under assumed names or went indigenous school of film-making. abroad. Others, including Larry Parks Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, leading (who had risen to fame in The Jolson a line of Hollywood artists, scriptwriters and directors, march in protest against the McCarthy witch-hunts. Story, 1946, one of the most popular
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1950–1959 The Cinema Fights Back The 1950s gave cinema a rival — television. Throughout the decade cinema attendence dropped as people tuned in to the small black-and-white screens in their living rooms. The big Hollywood studios responded by developing a series of devices and new tricks to tempt audiences back in front of the silver screen. In the early 1950s, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was at its peak, interrogating Americans about their Communist connections and distributing millions of pamphlets to the American public with titles such as “One Hundred Things You Should Know About Communism.” The second wave of HUAC hearings began in 1951 with Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy leading the charge. Over the next three years McCarthy subpoenaed some of the most prominent entertainers of the era. But, in 1954, with the help of Edward Murrow’s unedited footage of the hearings (the subject of George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, 2005), the public was able to see McCarthyism for what it really was — a witch-hunt. While Senator McCarthy was seeing Reds under every bed, film moguls saw the box in people’s living rooms as the real enemy. Although cinema’s audience figures
had already started to decline in 1947, the main cause for the drastic reduction in cinema admissions was blamed on the television sets that were proliferating in homes across the USA. In the first years of the 1950s, 50 percent of US homes had at least one TV set, a number that was set to grow
Ernest Borgnine played a Bronx butcher, a role that revealed his tender side, in Marty (1955), a film that began a vogue for dramas about ordinary people.
1950–1959
1950
Gloria Swanson, and other actors from the silent screen, play aspects of themselves in Sunset Boulevard. 1950
1952
A Streetcar Named Desire is the first film to win three acting Oscars, for Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter. 1952
1951
HUAC opens a second round of hearings in Hollywood, and blacklists 212 people.
1953
Single- or multi-film contracts replace sevenyear contracts for actors. 1954
1952
MGM releases Singin’ in the Rain, perhaps the best-loved film musical of all.
1953
The Academy Awards are televized for the first time.
1954
Akira Kurosawa’s influential epic, The Seven Samurai, released.
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t h e c i n e m a f ig h t s bac k at the Drive-in Outdoor drive-ins, first introduced in the USA in 1933, flourished in the 1950s. Patrons watched a film from their own cars, parked in a semi-circle around a giant screen. The sound was supplied by small speakers attached inside each car. Drive-ins attracted families with small children, avoiding the need for a babysitter, and young couples. With the latter in mind, many of the drive-ins showed “B” horror movies, dubbed “drive-in fodder”. Some 4,000 drive-ins were constructed across America but, in the 1960s, their popularity started to decline. Today only a few still exist, frequented by nostalgic audiences.
dramatically. As Samuel Goldwyn made The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Sidney Lumet, Robert Mulligan commented, “Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films (best known for To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962), and Delbert Mann. Mann’s when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?” Marty (1955), based on a Paddy Chayefsky teleplay Jack Warner stipulated that no TV about a lonely, set was to be seen in a unattractive Warner Bros. movie. butcher from the Television, which was Bronx (movie heavy Ernest Borgnine, added to the list of taboos, was seldom cast against type, mentioned in films winning the Best Actor Oscar), was except in a satirical context as in the the “sleeper” of Most of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men MGM musical It’s the decade. As a (1957) takes place in a jury room, creating Always Fair Weather result, other intimate, an intimate, claustrophobic atmosphere. (1955) and Elia realistic television Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957), dramas such as Lumet’s 12 Angry a biting attack on the manipulation Men (1957) were successfully adapted of the masses by TV. for the big screen. Ironically, the arch-enemy provided Hollywood with some of the best A lion in your lap screenplays of the era, as well as the The existence of a financial first generation of directors to come to competitor to Hollywood stimulated all sorts of movie innovations. One the movies via the TV studio. These included John Frankenheimer who novelty that had mixed results was 1955
James Dean is killed in a car accident.
1955
RKO sells its film library to television.
1957
The first kiss between a black man and a white woman (Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine) is featured in Island in the Sun.
1956 1955
On the Waterfront sweeps the Academy Awards, winning eight Oscars.
1958 1956
Cecil B. DeMille remakes his own silent epic, The Ten Commandments. It is nominated for seven Oscars.
1958
Horror film The Fly appears.
1959
Release of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
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3-D movie-making. The first color feature-length Hollywood film made in Natural Vision (soon to be dubbed 3-D), was Bwana Devil (1952); the film’s publicity slogan was “A Lion in your lap.” Arch Oboler, who produced, directed, and wrote it, made a huge profit on his comparatively small investment, due to the novelty value of the film’s pioneering technique. However, these films, which could only be seen through cheap cardboard Polaroid spectacles, were still fairly crude, with images changing in quality
and causing “ghosts” on the screen. Nevertheless, Hollywood began making about 30 3-D films a year, with audiences being subjected to all sorts of missiles hurtling towards them. Gradually, the glasses became an increasing annoyance, and many The only distinguishing feature of Bwana Devil (1952), an African adventure shot in the Californian hills, was the novelty value of 3-D.
The 3-D experience was uncomfortable for those who already wore glasses, headaches were common, and the novelty soon wore thin.
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good films produced in 3-D such as MGM’s Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) were released as ordinary “flat” films. Stretching the screen
In 1952 a film was released showing how a technology called Cinerama could make films more realistic by involving viewers’ peripheral vision. This is Cinerama informed its audiences that “you will be gazing at a movie Richard Burton and Jean Simmons starred in Henry screen — you’ll find yourself swept Koster’s CinemaScope spectacle The Robe (1953). The right into the picture, surrounded by sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators, followed in 1954. sight and sound.” A series of short subjects followed, including scenes of a expand the size of the image. roller coaster, a bullfight, and Niagara The Robe, a biblical epic starring Falls. The process had three 35mm British actor Richard Burton, was projectors, three screens curved to cover the first CinemaScope feature. By 140 degrees, as well as stereophonic the end of 1953, every major studio sound. However, theatres that showed except Paramount — whose rival films in this new way were required to VistaVision process had a 35mm employ three full-time projectionists film running horizontally instead and invest thousands of vertically — was of dollars in new making films in CinemaScope. equipment, and The size of the Cinerama’s popularity was short-lived. screen, to a large Todd-AO was extent, dictated developed in the the content of early 1950s to the movies, so that produce a wide Knights of the Round How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) tried to screen image by Table (1953), Land of prove that CinemaScope could be as effective photographing on the Pharoahs (1955), for comedy as for spectacles. 65mm and printing and Helen of Troy on a 70mm positive. The remaining (1955) filled the screens, if not the theatres. The need to cram every inch space at the side of the print allowed room for six Stereophonic soundtracks. of the screen with spectacle was an The process was developed by the expensive operation, and CinemaScope American Optical Company (hence films seldom recouped their costs. AO) for showman Mike Todd. ToddExceptions included Elia Kazan’s AO was successfully used for Oklahoma! East of Eden (1955), Nicholas Ray’s (1955) and the star-studded Around the Rebel without a Cause (1955), Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956), and Otto World in Eighty Days (1956). Todd married Elizabeth Taylor in 1956, but Preminger’s River of No Return (1954). their stormy marriage was cut short when he was killed in a plane crash. the movies mature In 1953, 20th Century Fox unveiled There was a more interesting device CinemaScope, a process that used for getting people to leave their TV an anamorphic (distortable) lens to sets for a movie theater: controversial
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and adult subjects deemed unsuitable by TV’s sponsors for family viewing at home. So if someone wanted to hear the words “virgin” and “seduce,” they would have to go out to the movies to see Preminger’s The Moon is Blue (1954), which was released without the Production Code’s Seal of Approval. This film helped to create a permissiveness that wrested Hollywood from the puritan values that had gripped it for so long. Independent producers were also breaking the hold of the major studios, and tackled more daring subjects, delving into areas that Hollywood had previously avoided. Movies such as Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956) led to revisions of the Production Code, after which BOX OFFICE hits of the 1950s 1 us Lady and the Tramp, 1955 2 us Peter Pan, 1953 3 US Cinderella, 1950 4 US The Ten Commandments, 1956 5 US Ben-Hur, 1959 6 US Sleeping Beauty, 1959 7 US Around the World in Eighty Days, 1956 8 US This is Cinerama, 1952 9 US South Pacific, 1958 10 US The Robe, 1953
Carroll Baker plays the virgin bride in Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956), a film that scandalized puritan America because of provocative poses such as this.
“mature” subjects such as prostitution, drug addiction, and miscegenation could be shown if “treated within the limits of good taste.” Hollywood themes
Despite the Communist witch-hunts, against the background of the Cold War Hollywood continued to explore liberal themes. Native Americans were, for the first time, sympathetically treated in films like Delmer Daves’ Broken Arrow (1950) and Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954). Racial intolerance was examined in Joseph Mankiewicz’s No Way Out (1950) and Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958). Juvenile delinquency was explored in Richard Brooks’ The Blackboard Jungle (1955), the first major Hollywood film to use rock ‘n’ roll on its soundtrack. Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Fred Zinnemann’s A Hatful of Rain (1957) tackled the subject of drug addiction with a frankness hitherto unknown. With the Korean War over and wounds beginning to heal, Stanley
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businessman Howard Hughes had Kubrick was able to make Paths of Glory (1957), one of the screen’s most bought in 1948 for $9 million, and powerful anti-militarist statements. later paid $23 million for ownership The steep decline in weekly theatre of the subsidiaries, ceased production in 1953. The studio was sold to Desilu attendance forced studios to find creative ways to make Productions in 1957, a TV money from the new medium. Converted company owned Hollywood studios by Lucille Ball. Columbia were beginning to produce more hours recovered in of film for TV than the early 1950s, for feature films. with the help The vast studio and support structure was of independent This classic poster for Otto Preminger’s weakened, but the producers, David The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) was created Lean (The Bridge on studios still had a by Saul Bass; the film starred Frank Sinatra as a certain identity, and professional gambler hooked on narcotics. the River Kwai, 1957), Elia Kazan (On the kept turning out good films under their banners. Waterfront, 1954), and Fred Zinnemann At MGM the artistic status of (From Here To Eternity, 1953). The latter the musical was raised by Vincente was notable for casting the usually Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951) ladylike Deborah Kerr in an adulterous and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s affair with Burt Lancaster, and for reviving Frank Sinatra’s flagging Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Although Republic Pictures produced some career. Lancaster emerged, with Kirk of their best films — Nicholas Ray’s Douglas, as the most versatile and Johnny Guitar (1954), and John Ford’s adventurous of the stars of the 1950s. Rio Grande (1950) and The Quiet Man Alec Guinness (right) is the stubborn English POW (1952) — the company abandoned colonel in the seven Oscar-winning The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The bridge is in the background. making films in 1958. RKO, which
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The Wild One (1954), the film noted In fact, they were among those performers who gained greater for a line of dialogue that typified independence by going freelance, and his attitude. “What are you rebelling becoming producers against?’ Brando “I don’t believe you want is asked. “Whaddaya themselves. Other stars, such as Bette to go to the theater to see got?,” he replies. Davis, successfully James Dean somebody you can see (1931–55), reinvented themselves. who next door.” starred in only three hip New stars films, Rebel without a joan Crawford, 1950 With youth culture Cause (1955), East of beginning to infiltrate the movies in Eden (1955), and Giant (1956), was the the 1950s, it was now possible for personification of adolescent rebellion and despair. On September 20, 1955, young people to identify with certain stars. Joan Crawford, a remnant of Dean died when the silver Porsche Spyder he was driving was involved past glamour, was scathing about the “ordinary” characters in films that in a head-on collision with another vehicle. It resulted in a level of hysteria were becoming popular with young people. But it was precisely because not seen since the untimely death of Rudolph Valentino in 1926. Dean of their youth that audiences could imagine the new stars living next has since become one of those stars door and that made them attractive. whose popularity is Marlon Brando projected an antinot diminished conformist image, especially in by death.
In Laslo Benedeck’s The Wild One (1954), Marlon Brando’s inarticulate biker character made him the leather-jacketed idol of the erotic and anarchic motorcycle cult, and spawned a series of bike movies.
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What Brando and Dean were able to do was attract a new type of youngster to the cinema — those who preferred their heroes to be more nonconformist than the clean-cut, studiobred idols of the 1930s and ’40s.
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James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson, three of the biggest stars of the 1950s, are pictured on the set of George Stevens’ Giant (1956), which was Dean’s last film.
“the method”
the legacy of the 1950s
Away from the new wave of anarchic performers, there were still a number of stars in the glamorous Hollywood tradition, such as Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Rock Hudson, and Audrey Hepburn. Three names from an earlier era made sensational comebacks: Bette Davis played a fading actress in All About Eve (1950), Judy Garland played her greatest role in A Star is Born (1954), and Ingrid Bergman returned to Hollywood to win an Oscar for Anastasia (1956). However, the predominant US movie symbols of the 1950s remain Brando in leather astride a motorcycle in The Wild One, the boyish blond features of rebellious James Dean, and the wide eyes of pin-up idol Marilyn Monroe, who did not live much beyond the end of the decade. The ghosts of the 1950s are still there to haunt us.
A “Method” session takes place at the Actors’ Studio; founded by Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford, its most famous teacher was Lee Strasberg. “The Method” was advanced by a group of actors and directors at the Actors Studio in New York in 1948. It was influenced by the teachings of the Russian stage director, Konstantin Stanislavsky, who stressed a more instinctive approach to acting than had been popular until that time. Marlon Brando (1924–2004) typified this style of acting. Many thought there was madness in “The Method” and it became the most caricatured of all acting styles with its mumbled delivery, shrugging of shoulders, fidgeting, and scratching. Humphrey Bogart commented, “I came out here with one shirt and everyone said I looked like a bum. Twenty years later Marlon Brando comes out with only a sweatshirt and the town drools over him. That shows how much Hollywood has progressed.”
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In From Here To Eternity (1953), the fact that the hitherto ladylike Deborah Kerr played the adulterous army wife caught up in an affair with Burt Lancaster added to the frisson felt by audiences— especially evident during the celebrated erotic beach scene.
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1960–1969 The New Wave Much was changing as the new decade dawned. America had a dynamic new leader, John F. Kennedy, and in Europe more liberated attitides to sex, fashion, and politics filtered into books, art, and movies. In the film world, the first rumblings of change came about in France with the New Wave, whose influence reached as far as Hollywood. At the start of 1960, the Writers’ Guild of America went on strike for more equitable contracts and a share of the profits of films sold to TV. The Screen Actors’ Guild of America demanded a raise in minimum salaries and a share in TV residuals. Both the writers and the actors won their cases, victories that became a contributory factor in pushing Hollywood to the brink of economic disaster. Due to various insecurities and financial difficulties the studios were quickly taken over by multi-national companies. Paramount was rescued by Gulf + Western Industries; Warner Bros. merged with Seven Arts Ltd, a TV company, to become Warner Bros.–Seven Arts; MGM shifted its BOX OFFICE hits of the 1960s 1 us One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961 2 us Jungle Book, 1967 3 US The Sound of Music, 1965 4 UK Thunderball, 1965 5 US Goldfinger, 1964 6 US Doctor Zhivago, 1965 7 UK You Only Live Twice, 1967 8 US The Graduate, 1967 9 US Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 10 US Mary Poppins, 1964
1960–1969
1961
West Side Story receives 11 Oscar nominations. In the event, it wins all but one. 1960 1960
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho terrifies audiences for the first time.
Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon star in Billy Wilder’s comedy The Apartment (1960), the last blackand-white film to win the Best Picture Oscar, until Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993).
interests to real estate; and MCA (the Music Corporation of America) acquired Universal-International Studios. The Bank of America absorbed United Artists through its Transamerica Corporation subsidiary. Even without huge overheads and star salaries, this studio continued to attract many leading independent producers and directors such as Stanley Kramer. He had his greatest ever success with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) — a $10 million earner. United Artists also had directors Billy Wilder (The Apartment, 1960), Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, 1967), John Sturges 1962
The first James Bond film, Dr No, is released.
1962 1962
Marilyn Monroe is found dead of a drug overdose at her home in Los Angeles.
1963
The first video recorder is sold for $30,000. 1964
1963
Sidney Poitier becomes the first black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar, for Lilies of the Field.
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(The Great Escape, 1963), and Blake Edwards. The latter, with The Pink Panther (1963), initiated a slapstick comedy series starring Peter Sellers as the incompetent Inspector Clouseau. On the whole, while the studios became administrative centres organizing finance and distribution, they were losing their individual stamp. To fill the gap, independent producers became more common to the movie-making package. They would come to the studio with a package consisting of director, script, writers, and marketable stars. Although the structure of the industry had changed drastically, most of the pictures still followed the genre pattern initiated by the studios in their heyday. There were musicals: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story (1961), George Cukor’s My Fair Lady (1964)
1965
The Sound of Music surpasses Gone with the Wind as the number one box office hit of all time.
The 1961 screen version of the landmark Broadway musical West Side Story features finger-snapping, high-kicking street gangs.
Steve McQueen, here commandeering a Nazi soldier’s motorbike and teaching it to jump fences, contributed as much as anyone to the vast appeal of The Great Escape (1963).
1966
Revisions to the Hays Code allow some films to be recommended for “mature” audiences.
1966 1966
Paramount is bought by multi-national conglomerate Gulf + Western Industries.
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1967
Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde is released with the tagline: “They’re young. They’re in love. They kill people.” 1968
1967
Mike Nichols becomes the first director to be paid $1,000,000, for one film, The Graduate.
1968
Stanley Kubrick’s innovative 2001: A Space Odyssey is released.
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and William Wyler’s Funny Girl (1968), all derived from Broadway shows; Westerns, notably from veterans John Ford and Howard Hawks with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and El Dorado (1966) respectively, and newcomer Sam Peckinpah with Ride the High Country (1962), all of them valedictions to the Old West; and romantic comedies like the popular Doris Day—Rock Hudson cycle. the movie-going habit
As movie-going had ceased to be a habit, each film had to attract its own audience, and extravagant advertising campaigns accompanied the many million-dollar spectacles that pushed their way onto the screens, among them Anthony Mann’s El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964); Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) and 55 Days at Peking (1963); and George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). All of them were shot in Spain or Italy, further diminishing Hollywood as a production centre. Movies shot on location in Europe in
Richard Burton (Marc Antony) and Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra) caused a scandal with their highly publicized off-screen love affair during the making of Cleopatra (1962) as they were both married to other people at the time.
the 1950s such as Roman Holiday were considered novel and were successful; these later features were not. Cleopatra (1962), shot on location in Rome, nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, already the highest-paid performer in the history of Hollywood at $1 million, as the Queen of Egypt, and future husband Richard Burton as Marc Anthony, it cost a record $44 million. Fox then regained a fortune with Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music (1965) and then lost it all again with Richard Fleisher’s Dr. Dolittle (1967) and Wise’s Star! (1968). The concurrence of Fox’s failure, and the success of more youthoriented movies, proved to be a major turning point in Hollywood history. In the mid-1960s, Hollywood found itself with a new audience drawn mainly from the 16–24 age bracket. With different tastes from their elders,
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multiplex cinemas From the mid-1960s, the traditional picture palace with one auditorium was largely replaced by multiplex cinemas. These comprised a single utilitarian building divided into a number of cinemas and about six to eight screens (most of them smaller than the old auditoria). Ostensibly, this gives distributors a wider choice of outlets and audiences a wider choice of films and times. In the 1990s, many multiplexes grew into megaplexs with 20 or more screens, some screens showing the same presentations. One of the Virgin Megaplex cinemas in the UK boasts 20 screens and has seating capacity for up to 5,000 people.
this younger generation expressed a growing aversion to traditional values. Hollywood needed to tap in to this new audience and its adult tastes. Instead of paying huge amounts to respected and experienced directors like Robert Wise and Richard Fleischer, it suddenly seemed reasonable to take a risk on younger, more experimental directors.
sex and violence
With the demise of the Production Code in the US, the limits of language, topics, and behavior were considerably widened, almost enough to satisfy young audiences craving for sex and violence. Films started to depict violence in a more brutal and graphic manner, notably Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1966), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). Though it made no reference to civil rights or Vietnam, Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) was taken as a symbol of the counterculture of the time. The title character of Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) had a great appeal among middle-class college kids and the use of Simon & Garfunkel songs such as Mrs. Robinson instead of an orchestral music score Playing the title role of The Graduate (1967), Dustin Hoffman is on the verge of being seduced by his parents’ friend, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The film’s frank treatment of sex appealed to young audiences.
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added to the film’s attraction for young angry young men people. It also initiated the trend for In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there emerged in England a pop-song soundtracks in the movies. It was only after Hoffman came movement of playwrights, novelists, along that the names and faces of and film-makers who were labelled “Angry Young Men.” Many of their movie stars reflected more accurately the diversity of ethnic groups in works dealt honestly and vigorously America, opening with working-class up the floodgates “Their Credo is Violence… life. As such, many for Barbra contained an overt Their God is Hate…” Streisand, Al criticism of the the Wild Angels 1966 Pacino, Elliott “never had it so Gould, Robert De good” philosophy Niro, and Richard Dreyfuss. of the Conservative government of Roger Corman — who since 1953, the day. Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night had been making “Z movies” (films and Sunday Morning (1960), Tony on a tiny budget and in rented studios) Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1961) — formed American International. It and The Loneliness of the Long Distance produced The Wild Angels (1966), a Runner (1962), and Lindsay Anderson’s low-budget biker picture, and The This Sporting Life (1963) made important Trip (1967), the title referring to a contributions to this movement. psychedelic LSD “trip.” Both films In contrast to these grimey starred Peter Fonda (son of Henry, “kitchen sink” dramas, the “sparkle” brother of Jane, and father of Bridget), of Swinging London was depicted in who produced, cowrote and featured a whole series of films that showed in Easy Rider (1969). This inexpensive trendy young people living it up in affluent surroundings. Actually, the bike movie, directed by Dennis phrase “Swinging London” originated Hopper, earned around $35 million. from the New York TV columnist John Crosby, who had grown disenchanted with America and come to London in 1964 looking for a job. He wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph’s color supplement in which he used this phrase for the first time, describing London as being more “swinging” than New York. In Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Tom Courtenay plays a rebellious reform school boy who deliberately throws the big race as an affront to the school.
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Sean Connery and Ursula Andress starred in Dr. No (1962), a successful Bond recipe of sex, violence, and camp humor.
James Bond movies. The first, Dr. No (1962), was made for less than $1 million. The Bond films got progressively more expensive as they took more at the box office. Thunderball (1965) became the sixth-highest earning movie of the decade from any source, pulling in nearly $26 million. The Bond producers with the gold fingers were US agronomist, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, and Canadian-born Harry Saltzman. They set up Eon productions Curiously, it was an adaptation of in England, from where all the Bond a classic 18th-century novel, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1963), directed features have originated, although the by Tony Richardson and written by film locations ranged far and wide. It took three years before the Look Back in Anger playwright, John Italian-made Western Sergio Osborne, that triggered the vogue for “Swinging Leone’s A Fistful of London” films. Their Dollars (1964) was picked apotheosis was reached up for distribution in the by Italian Michelangelo US in 1967, although Antonioni’s Blow-Up it had been a hit in Italy. It started a whole spate of (1966), in which swinging Spaghetti Westerns, and London society is seen made Clint Eastwood, through foreign eyes. after small parts in ten bond and spaghetti movies, and seven years in TV’s Rawhide series, an With the high cost of producing and making international superstar at Thunderball was the fourth film films in Hollywood and the age of 37. The plot in the James Bond series, starring was taken from Yojimbo the shrinking of studio Sean Connery in the title role. (1961), directed by Akira size, many studios reduced their internal production and Kurosawa, whose The Seven Samurai increased movie-making outside the (1954) was remade as The Magnificent country, mostly in Britain (an Seven (1960) by John Sturges. economically advantageous production base), making big-budget films there. french new wave For example, there was the creation Perhaps the main impetus for the of the most durable series in the change in the way films were made came with the New Wave in France. history of cinema, the string of 007
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“La Nouvelle Vague” managed to revitalize French cinema when it had been in danger of being totally ossified. Several young critics on the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma decided to take practical action in their battle against the staid content of French productions by making films themselves. The leading figures of the group were François Truffaut, JeanLuc Godard, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Louis Malle. The French New Wave directors turned their backs on conventional filming methods. They took to shooting in the streets with hand-held cameras and a very small team, using jump cuts, improvisation, deconstructed narratives, and quotes from literature and other films. The young directors, producers, and actors captured the life of early 1960s France — especially Paris — as it was lived by its young people. Although the films represented a radical departure from traditional cinema, and were aimed at a young, intellectual audience, many of them
The film poster for A Fistful of Dollars (1964), starring Clint Eastwood as the impassive, laconic, poncho-clad loner, constantly smoking a cheroot.
Blow-Up (1966) was director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first international commercial success. In it, David Hemmings plays a fashion photographer.
achieved a measure of critical and financial success, gaining a wide audience both in France and abroad. Their methods and subject matter were taken up and adapted by young directors in other countries — especially the UK and Czechoslovakia — and eventually opened the way for the American indie movement. In 1960 alone, some 18 directors had made their first features in France. At the same time, Italian cinema had its own new wave with Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Winners at the 1960 Cannes film festival included Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Kon Ichikawa’s Kagi (1959), Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1959), Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1959), and Luis Buñuel’s The Young One (1960), all of which were films that were not afraid to enter unchartered territory. But towards the end of the decade the mood began to change. At the Cannes Film Festival in May 1968, as French workers went on strike and
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students in Paris were setting cars alight, digging up the paving stones on the Left Bank, and confronting the riot police, French cinema’s ruling body adopted a motion demanding that the festival be cancelled as a sign of solidarity with the workers and students. “We refuse to be of service to a brutal capitalist society which we put in question,” it stated. Protestors led by Louis Malle, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard prevented the showing of Carlos Saura’s Peppermint Frappé, with the help of its director and star, Geraldine Chaplin. The jury resigned and the festival was aborted. Neither France nor French cinema would be the same again. After 1968 the experimental elements of the French New Wave were already starting to become assimilated into mainstream cinema. Many of the technical and conceptual advances of the New Wave were transformed into the clichés of filmmaking. Truffaut incorporated more traditional elements in his films, while Godard became increasingly political and radical in his film-making.
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Chabrol continued to make genre thrillers of varying quality, and Rohmer pursued his own obsession with the behavior of young people. censorship
In the same year, 1968, the Russian invasion of Prague interrupted one of the most creative periods of filmmaking that part of the world had ever known. Rigid censorship was returned to Eastern Europe. In Poland, the purges that followed the student demonstrations in March 1968 hit the cinema harder than any other art or industry. Every aspect of cinema came under official attack. In Latin America, political repression intensified and the most famous of Brazil’s Cinema Novo directors, Glauber Rocha, went into exile in protest. In the US, the antiVietnam war protests grew. However, it took Hollywood almost ten years to address these issues. Sami Frey, Anna Karina, and Claude Brasseur, three petty crooks in Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part (1964), do a spontaneous synchronized dance in a café – a scene to which Quentin Tarantino paid homage in Pulp Fiction (1994).
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1970–1979 Independence Days An estimated 43.5 million Americans visited cinemas each week in 1960, compared with only 15 million a decade later. However, when there were pictures that the public really wanted to see — blockbusters like Star Wars and Jaws — then cinema attendance shot up, and profits soared once again. The result of this pattern was that cinema and had a passion for the films of classical Hollywood. They had also certain films grossed a fortune, while many others barely recouped their studied, and were influenced by, the costs. Escalating production expenses masters of foreign cinema. For made film-making a risky business. example, Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) was But Hollywood, as ever, recovered influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s The well, managing to pour out a stream Hidden Fortress (1958). The resemblance of pictures that for between the two buffoon richness, variety, and farmers in The Hidden intelligence compared Fortress and the two talkative droids, C-3P0 with the very best of and R2-D2, in Star Wars the past. Francis Ford Coppola’s success is apparent. Even the name Ben Obi-Wan with The Godfather Kenobi (played by Alec (1972) was seminal. Following in his Guinness) is Japanesefootsteps were Martin sounding. Of course, Scorsese, Steven such cinephilia had Spectral pirates on a ghost ship get ready to terrorize a coastal town in Spielberg, George no effect on the film’s John Carpenter’s chiller The Fog (1979). Lucas, Michael immense popularity, Cimino, Brian De Palma, Peter and Star Wars succeeded in grossing Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader, John more than $164 million in only two Milius, John Carpenter, and many years in the USA. The merchandising others. These directors ushered in of this film was also hugely lucrative. the New Hollywood. Both Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and Star Wars were the first films to earn more the movie brats than $100 million in video rentals. Many of these “movie brats,” as they “Don’t go in the water” was a tagline of Jaws (1975), were dubbed, were graduates from Steven Spielberg’s incredibly successful horror-disaster film schools, a new phenomenon. Born film, which made beach-goers around the globe hesitate in the 1940s, they had grown up with before plunging into the water.
1970–1979
1970
CBS hold a demonstration of colour video-recording in New York. 1970 1970
The IMAX widescreen format premieres in Japan.
1971
The Beatles last film Let It Be released.
1972
1973
Two years after Airport, the The Exorcist, inspired by a true disaster movie trend continues story about a girl possessed by with The Poseidon Adventure. a demon, shocks audiences. 1972
1971
Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song kicks off the blaxploitation genre.
1974 1973
Universal turns down George Lucas’s idea for Star Wars – and Fox picks it up.
1974
Roman Polanski’s thriller Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson, is a big hit.
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1975
Jaws is released and becomes a worldwide phenomenon.
1976
1977
Dolby stereo is used in films.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind released.
1978
Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall wins the Best Picture Oscar.
1976 1975
Robert Altman’s Nashville, a complex, epic study of US culture, appears.
1979
Miramax Films set up by brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
1978 1977
Star Wars grosses almost $200 million on its first release, and receives 10 Oscar nominations.
1978
Marlon Brando is paid more than $3million, plus royalties, for a fourminute appearance in Superman.
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It was Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973) that spawned many “rites of passage” films. This dreamy, rock ‘n’ roll-driven vision of adolescent life in a small Californian town in 1962, before the Vietnam War and the drugs scene, cost $750,000 and made $55 million at the
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, real-life lovers at the time, starred in Manhattan (1979), a sparkling romantic comedy in which Allen’s heart is in every frame.
box office. It helped boost the careers of Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ron (cast as Ronny) Howard. The film’s success convinced producer Garry Marshall to reconsider a failed pilot for a TV series eventually called Happy Days, featuring 20-year-old Howard. Harrison Ford went on to establish himself as Han Solo in the Star Wars cycle. Dreyfuss’ fame grew in two Spielberg blockbusters: as an ichthyologist somewhat out-acted by “Bruce,” the shark machine in Jaws, and as the representative of ordinary mid-western manhood chosen by little green men to take off with them in their flying saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Most of Spielberg’s films were aimed primarily at teenagers, whereas the films of Woody Allen were directed at more mature audiences.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was the Annie Hall (1977), which won him first of Steven Spielberg’s science fiction movies, a the Best Picture and Best Director favourite genre of the director. Academy Awards, was a breakthrough, capitalizing on the vogue for sexual acting style was derived from their “Method” predecessors like Marlon anxiety and the tendency for selfexamination — frequently on the Brando, whose character of Don Corleone, ironically, De analyst’s couch. Niro plays as a young angst and machismo man in The Godfather II If Allen represented (1975). Brando proved New York Jewish angst, he was still a force to be Scorsese explored the reckoned with in the ’70s close-knit Italian-American in Bertolucci’s Last Tango community with the in Paris (1972), Coppola’s underlying rigid and The Godfather, and sentimental codes of Apocalypse Now (1979). Marlon Brando plays the crazed The latter was one of masculinity, also evident in Coppola’s The Godfather. Colonel Kurtz in Francis Coppola’s a number of films on the Apocalypse Now (1979). As a result of these two Vietnam War. Hollywood Italian-American directors, Al Pacino had initially been reluctant to come to and Robert De Niro became two of grips with the war, which had ended in the key stars of the decade. Their 1975, probably because it was an issue
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that divided the nation. In commercial terms, the subject was therefore bound to offend and alienate a large part of the potential audience. The filmmaking community split itself between the hawks like John Wayne, whose The Green Berets (1968) had been contrary to the zeitgeist, and doves such as Jane Fonda, who made her documentary Vietnam Journey (1974) on behalf of the anti-war movement. the vexing issue of vietnam
Hollywood could no longer turn a blind eye to the war in Vietnam as a major subject. 1978 was the year when both Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter and Hal Ashby’s Coming Home appeared. Each reveals the scars, both physical and mental, left behind by the war and the extent to which US soldiers’ experiences there had entered the national consciousness. At the Oscar ceremony of that year, Francis Ford Coppola presented Cimino with the Oscar for Best Director. The Deer Hunter also won Best Picture, while Jon Voight and Jane Fonda won Oscars
Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play Washington Post investigative reporters in Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976).
for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively for Coming Home. At the same ceremony, there was a poignant moment when the Old Hollywood made way for the New. John Wayne, who was fighting his last battle with cancer, presented Cimino with the Best Film award. Wayne got the biggest cheer of the evening as, gaunt with illness, he tottered up the Academy staircase and said, “Oscar first came to the Hollywood scene in 1928. So did I. We’re both a little weatherbeaten but we’re still here and plan to be around a whole lot longer.” Wayne died a few months later. Coming Home (1978) was instigated by its anti-Vietnam War star, Jane Fonda. The film tells of the love affair between a volunteer (Fonda) at a Vietnam veteran’s hospital and an ex-soldier confined to a wheelchair by war injuries (Jon Voight). The Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal of 1974 fuelled
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an American malaise which of Light found was reflected in a spate it “sickening and of so-called “conspiracy” disgusting” and tried movies that explored the to stop it being shown. However, a spate of nation’s dark underside. The best of these were copycat violence, plus Alan J. Pakula’s The threats against Kubrick’s Parallax View (1974), own family, forced the Sydney Pollack’s Three director himself to request Days of the Condor (1975), a UK ban. A Clockwork and All the President’s Orange was not seen again Men (1976), all of which by British film-goers for Warner Bros. withdrew exposed government another 27 years, until Clockwork Orange from UK cover-ups. Coppola’s Kubrick’s sudden distribution at Kubrick’s request. The Conversation (1974) death in 1999. The dispute over A Clockwork Orange was a post-Watergate thriller about a professional eavesdropper (Gene never reached the same pitch in the Hackman) being bugged himself. United States but, in 1973, for its violence on screen
Vietnam was the first war to be consistently reported on television. It was one of the many reasons why violence in the movies would increase (race riots and campus unrest were two others). The moral ambiguity of Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971) — Clint Eastwood’s first incarnation of the cold-blooded rogue cop Harry Callahan — John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) worried many. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), “being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultraviolence, and Beethoven” did nothing to alleviate these concerns. The British Board of Film Classification passed the film with an X certificate, claiming that it was “…an important social document of outstanding brilliance and quality.” But a group calling itself The Festival
In Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971), Clint Eastwood stars as Harry Callahan, a dedicated cop who has no time for the niceties of the law.
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American release, Kubrick cut about brothel. Public disquiet became 30 seconds of footage to win an R vocal and there was again agitation rating. In 1968, the Motion Picture for federal legislation on censorship. Producers and Distributors of America In Europe, Spain, Portugal, and superseded the Production Code and the Communist countries there was incorporated a series some relaxation on censorship. Many of ratings for films. These included G for of the technical and general audiences, M conceptual advances of the French, for mature audiences, Italian, Czech, R for ages 17 and over, and X for overBritish, and other 18s only. The rating New Waves soon system then had became assimilated Brooke Shields and Susan Sarandon feature minor revisions in into mainstream in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (1978), which captures cinema. Rainer 1970, 1972, 1984, the tragi-comic life of prostitutes in a brothel. Werner Fassbinder, and 1990. Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders brought a brief New Wave to German sex on screen cinema in the 1970s. There were a few The market for mainstream films showing sex scenes expanded in other individuals who made an impact, the 1970s. There was also a more such Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov in the USSR and Andrzej outspoken approach to sex in films which came to the US from abroad: Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski in Poland, but Eastern European cinema Last Tango in Paris (1972), with its gradually lost its way. Milos Forman explicit sex scenes; Emmanuelle (1974) had fled Czechoslovakia in 1968, but by Just Jaeckin, in which bored his US career really took off with One bourgeois wife Sylvia Kristel explores all the possibilities of sex; Pier Paulo Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Based Pasolini’s Salo (1975), an updating of on a cult novel of the ’60s, it became the a Marquis de Sade novel; and Nagisa first film in 41 years (since It Happened Oshima’s Ai No Corrida (1976), One Night) to fly off with all five major Oscars, and raked in $56.5 million. featuring a gangster and a geisha acting out their sexual fantasies. Pretty Baby (1978), Louis Malle’s first stallone and travolta US film, featured a 12-year-old girl This sum was almost equalled (Brooke Shields) being brought up by Rocky (1976), the archetypal in a turn-of-the-century New Orleans rags-to-riches story of the decade. Producer Irwin Winkler recalled: BOX OFFICE hits of the 1970s “In comes this big lug who weighed 220 lb, didn’t talk well, 1 us Star Wars, 1977 and acted slightly punch drunk. 2 us Jaws, 1975 3 US Grease, 1978 He said he had an idea for a 4 US Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977 boxing script and wanted to 5 US The Exorcist, 1973 star in it.” The “lug” was 6 US Superman, 1978 Sylvester Stallone. 7 US Saturday Night Fever, 1977 8 US Jaws 2, 1978 9 UK Moonraker, 1979 10 UK The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977
Jack Nicholson cheers up his fellow inmates in a state mental hospital in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
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It is by now Hollywood folklore how Stallone, with only $106 in his bank account and three bad movies to his debit, turned down a one-off payment of $265,000 and instead secured $70,000, a percentage of the profits, and the lead role. Rocky became a box-office hit and won Oscars for Best Picture (the first sports film to do so), and Best Director (John G. Avildsen). Another of the crop of ItalianAmericans who made it big in the 1970s was John Travolta, who gave male dancing the on-screen kiss of life in Saturday Night Fever (1977), at the height of the disco craze. One of the most significant developments of the decade was when Sony brought out the home video-cassette recorder in 1975; it cost around $2,000 and had a recording time of up to one hour. Its future impact on viewing habits could hardly be imagined at the time. In Saturday Night Fever (1977), John Travolta showed the acrobatic exuberance of Gene Kelly, and a strut reminiscent of Fred Astaire — but his riveting dancing was all his own.
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1980–1989 The International Years In the 1980s, the Hollywood machine reasserted itself. The movie brats lost their way as the studios consolidated everything they had learned from the Star Wars phenomenon, marshalling the power of TV advertising to sell high-concept movie packages, pushing up the cost of marketing, and raising the stakes across the board. Martin Scorsese began the 1980s with Raging Bull (1980) and the ’90s with GoodFellas (1990). But Scorsese’s highcaliber output was the exception — and even he talked about giving up the fight in the 1980s. The 1970s “Hollywood Renaissance” proved to be a flash in the pan. The power enjoyed by the movie brats reached its apogee with the epic western Heaven’s
In Raging Bull (1984), Robert De Niro gained 60 lb to play boxer Jake LaMotta in middle age; his reward was one of the film’s disappointing haul of just two Oscars.
1980–1989
1980
Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense, dies age 80.
1981
1981
1984
Ronald Reagan Raiders of the Lost Ark marks the becomes the first first collaboration betwen Steven movie-star president. Spielberg and George Lucas.
1980 1980
Gate (1980), directed by Michael Cimino with such perfectionism that the budget rocketed 500 per cent to about $44 million. Modest by today’s standards, these figures were enough to bring United Artists to the brink of bankruptcy. Slow and anti-heroic, this was perhaps the most radical of all the revisionist westerns but, when the film was previewed at a running time of 219 minutes, the American critics were merciless. The studio panicked, and Heaven’s Gate was cut to 149 minutes — a desecration comparable to the treatment RKO had meted out to Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) four decades earlier. The shorter cut did nothing to salvage the film’s commercial prospects. It grossed only $1.5 million. United Artists’ illustrious name was history. The studio was sold in 1981, merging with another fallen giant, MGM. Heaven’s Gate effectively finished off the western for at least a decade. (The next significant contributions to the genre would be TV’s Lonesome Dove in 1989 and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves in 1990.) More than that, it became a watchword for unchecked
Sherry Lansing becomes the first female president of a major studio (20th Century Fox).
The US Supreme Court rules that home videotaping does not violate copyright laws.
1982 1981
Katharine Hepburn wins her fourth Best Actress Oscar for On Golden Pond.
1984 1982
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner opens.
1982
Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly actress Grace Kelly (High Noon, Rear Window) dies in a car crash.
T h e i n t e r nat i o na l y e a r s
directorial megalomania — a widespread condition in the late 1970s and early ’80s (the subject of Peter Biskind’s well-sourced history of the period, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls). Francis Ford Coppola had got away with his vastly over-budget Apocalypse Now, but his bold dreams of a film-makers’ studio, Zoetrope, foundered on One from the Heart (1982), an innovative but expensive exercise in digital cinema that didn’t connect with critics or audiences. Its failure plunged him into debt and pulled the plug on a studio that at one point housed such eclectic talents as Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, Gene Kelly, Michael Powell, and Tom Waits. Such spectacular failures curtailed artistic ambition in American cinema. When a film of real daring did come along, Hollywood seemed bent on
Jonathan Pryce plays day-dreaming bureaucrat Sam Lowry pursuing his ideal woman in the weird, totalitarian future of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985).
suppressing it. Sergio Leone’s magnificent gangster opus Once Upon a Time in America (1984) was hacked back from 229 minutes to 139 for its US release, in spite of the fact that the film performed well in Europe. Universal sat on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) for a year, preparing their own edit, before the film-maker shamed them into releasing his cut. The motto RKO had
Sergio Leone’s gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984) was a violent requiem for the immigrant’s dream. It was Leone’s last film.
1985
The first Blockbuster video store opens in Dallas, Texas.
1986
Film star Rock Hudson dies of AIDS and the epidemic begins to be acknowledged. 1986
1988
Video sales of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial exceed 15 million.
1989
Warner Communications merges with Time, Inc to become the biggest media company in the world.
1988 1986
Media mogul Ted Turner buys MGM’s film library and begins “colourizing” its black and white films.
1987
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The first Disney tie-in with McDonalds: a Happy Meals toy based on Duck Tales.
1988
Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ is released despite objections by some Christians.
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adopted after ridding themselves of Orson Welles in the 1940s applied across the board in the 1980s: “Showmanship, not genius.” If the balance of power shifted definitively away from the directors (and the big directors’ vanity and self-indulgence didn’t help their cause), the studios themselves were in a state of flux. Increasing competition from independent production companies like Cannon, DEG, Orion, and Tri-Star had, by 1986, knocked the major studios’ share of the US box office to a low of 64 percent. Increasingly, the real power fell to the talent agencies. The largest was Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which represented numerous A-list stars, writers, and directors. They began to pitch studios pre-packaged deals: scripts with their clients already attached. CAA president, Michael Ovitz, became the most feared and courted man in Hollywood, and star salaries rose steeply, pushing up the average cost of a movie even as admissions continued to flatline. For the agents, the deal was the be-all and end-all. It’s not that there weren’t box-office hits. Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial (1982) consolidated his reputation as the man with the Midas touch. As the decade progressed, Hollywood channeled more and more of its resources into supporting BOX OFFICE hits of the 1980s 1 us E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982 2 us Return of the Jedi, 1983 3 US The Empire Strikes Back, 1980 4 US Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 1989 5 US Rain Man, 1988 6 US Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981
In the 1980s, popcorn entertainment came back into style. Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) epitomized the return to mainstream blockbusters.
7 US Batman, 1989 8 US Back to the Future, 1985 9 US Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988 10 US Top Gun, 1986
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blockbuster “event” movies, generally Vietnam war veteran failing to adapt released on public holiday weekends to life back home (First Blood). But three with saturation marketing campaigns. years later, by the time of Rambo: First These, in turn, aggravated inflationary Blood, Part II (1985), the character had pressures across the business. been transformed into an invulnerable The rewards were phenomenal, one-man army, and any vestiges of not only in box office terms, but also in realism had been obliterated. By Rambo ancillary merchandising deals. But in III (1988) he was battling the Soviets this model there was less and less room in Afghanistan — and Stallone was earning $20 million for the picture. The for the adult dramas that had always been Hollywood’s mainstay. Teenagers same trajectory is obvious in Stallone’s became the prime Rocky films. A credible audience — the 12– underdog in the first 20 age group movie, he became a pumped-up American constituted 48 percent of box-office champ in the later in 1980. sequels, a warrior Slasher horror wrapped up in the patriotism of Ronald movies and risqué Reagan’s presidency. adolescent comedies Even then, were the new staples: Friday the 13th (1980) another action star would spawn more was poised to outgun Sylvestor Stallone’s John Rambo went from Stallone. Former than a dozen sequels underdog in First Blood (1982) to killing machine in the eponymous sequels. bodybuilder Arnold stretching into the Schwarzenegger, probably the most new millennium; Porky’s (1982) would beget innumerable imitators. iconic star of the era, had been hanging around Hollywood since the While established stars like early 1970s. With his thick Austrian Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood continued to write their own ticket, accent, negligible acting ability, and a the teen audience fostered its own physique memorably described by stars. The “Brat Pack” included journalist Clive James as “like a Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, Emilio walnut wearing a condom,” he Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and Andrew was an unlikely superstar. John Milius McCarthy. Some other actors of the cast him as Conan the Barbarian (1982), 1980s, such as Tom Cruise, Demi and he then played a taciturn robot Moore, Matt Dillon, and John Cusack, assassin in James Cameron’s The have since enjoyed long film careers, Terminator (1984). Even though the while some were not so fortunate. character was the villain — literally a killing machine — audiences adored the film, and Schwarzenegger birth of the action hero Reports of video-savvy audiences was made. (“tape-heads”) shouting “Fast forward” With the exception of Sigourney at the screen may have been apocryphal, Weaver in Alien (1979) and Aliens but it’s arguably true that the 1980s (1986), women in action films of this refined the movie with action era are usually relegated to supporting sequences into a new genre: the action bit roles. These films are characterized film. In 1982 it was still possible for by bombast and machismo — Sylvester Stallone to star in a passably explosions, fusillades of bullets, serious, if formulaic, thriller about a fireballs, and car chases, all as
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multiple angles and, as action sequences became longer and more elaborate, this aesthetic infected Hollywood’s visual language. Shot destructive as demolition derbies. The genre was aimed primarily at durations shrank, and visual continuity young men, and translated well into was handled by back-lighting and design. The aesthetic was often the increasingly important overseas markets — not least attributed to “You have twenty seconds the influence because the of MTV. Music films had very to comply.” little meaningful television’s non-stop robocop 1987 dialogue. The best diet of pop promos, action films have with their rapid-fire backbeat an exhilarating cinematic dynamic: montage, became popular with the Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (1987), John spread of cable television in the early McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988), and 1980s, and music promo directors James Cameron’s Terminator films (1984 sometimes graduated to feature films. More came from advertising, with and 1991) are as accomplished as slapstick comedies of the 1920s or their visual skills honed in 30-second musicals from the 1950s. Directors had segments. The Britons Ridley and Tony Scott, Adrian Lyne, Hugh always shot action sequences from Tom Cruise attracts Kelly McGillis in Top Gun (1986), a typical high-velocity movie from US über-producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson.
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THE VIDEO REVOLUTION In 1982, MPAA industry spokesman Jack Valenti told a US Senate committee that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Valenti’s concerns about copyright infringement devastating the Hollywood industry were misplaced.
Hudson, and Alan Parker all came up through advertising. Between them Tony Scott and Adrian Lyne directed Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987), Flashdance (1983), 9½ Weeks (1986), and Fatal Attraction (1987), some of the biggest hits of the decade. These were quintessential “high concept” movies: films that could be pitched and sold in 30 words or less.
VHS beat out Betamax in the videotape wars, in large part because it courted Hollywood. And the video rental market proved to be manna for film producers. Video stores flourished, granting audiences unparalleled control over what they watched and how: rewind, replay, and fast forward buttons were the first step toward viewer interactivity. A by-product of the success of video was that cinemas shrank, as single-screen venues were halved and quartered to allow for more flexible programing. Across the US, drive-in theaters closed (more than 1000 in the 1980s) and were replaced with ever more multiplexes housed in suburban malls. A whole sector of films would henceforth find their audience at home, on video, instead of on the big screen.
cinema was rocked by the suicide of director Jean Eustache. The New German Cinema was, likewise, knocked off course by the death, in 1982, of its most prolific talent, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, aged just 36. Wim Wenders had a tough Hollywood initiation with Hammett (1982), but recovered with Paris, Texas (1984). He returned to Berlin for Wings of Desire (1987). Some of the best outside hollywood There was a related international cinema fashion in France, of this time came from where Jean-Jacques further east: from China’s Fifth Beineix pioneered what critic Serge Daney Generation filmmakers (Chen Kaige dubbed “le cinéma du look” with the and his erstwhile flamboyant Diva (1981) cameraman Zhang Yimou); from Hong and Betty Blue (1986). Kong (where Tsui Luc Besson (Subway, Hark, John Woo, and 1985) and former critic Designer cinema even prevailed in France, where films like Jean-Jacques Stanley Kwan were Leos Carax (Boy Meets Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) privileged Girl, 1984) represented style over content. making their names); the extremes of the and especially from Taiwan, where Hou Hsaio-hsien and style, the first a resolute populist, the Edward Yang were constructing a second a confrontational intellectual. cinematic identity reflecting Taiwan’s Aging practitioners of the “nouvelle own complex self-image. Hou’s films vague” continued to work: Jean-Luc were the antithesis of Hollywood’s Godard returned to cinema after a faster, faster approach. Languorous flirtation with video, as did Maurice Pialat, whose intense emotional meditations on the recent past, they authenticity inspired a generation of were often composed of scenes filmed 1990s film-makers. But in 1981 French in a single, unobtrusive master shot.
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1990– Celluloid to Digital After a century of celluloid, a radical technological shift began to take effect in the 1990s with the advent of digital film-making. While the studios increasingly concentrated their resources on blockbusters like Titanic, the independents made intelligent, adult drama and reached wider audiences than ever before with movies like Pulp Fiction. One hundred years after Pierre and necessitated by the increasingly Auguste Lumière screened their first frenetic montage techniques one-reelers in Paris, 40 of the world’s popularized by film-makers such as Martin Scorsese in films leading film-makers took up the challenge of like GoodFellas (1990), making a film using the and his one-time pupil Oliver Stone in JFK original cinematographe camera to create a silent, (1991) and Natural Born monochrome movie Killers (1994). The first with no cuts, in natural 35mm feature with a light, and lasting no digital soundtrack was more than 52 seconds. Dick Tracy (1990). The groundbreaking Lumière and Company (1996) showed both animation Toy Story how much and how little (1995) was the first cinema had changed feature film made over the course of its entirely on computer, short history. For all but Jurassic Park (1993) the innovations of sound Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump crosses and Forrest Gump (1994) paths with JFK, President Nixon, and and color, the various had already integrated Elvis Presley through the magic of CGI. refinements of film stock computer-generated imagery (CGI) into live action films. and size, in essence, the technology This technique opened up new avenues remained the same: strips of celluloid pulled through a shutter to be exposed for the later spectacular historical epics to light for a fraction of a second. — Titanic (1997) and Gladiator (2000) By the dawn of the 21st century, — and fantasy films such as the Lord of that technology was superseded with the Rings trilogy (2001–03) and the the transition from analogue to digital Harry Potter series (2001–). These systems. The cutters were the first to movies dominated the box switch, moving from moviolas to office, ringing up billioncomputers. This shift was partly dollar receipts worldwide.
1990–2006
1990
Macaulay Culkin becomes a child star in Home Alone.
1993
Disney buys Miramax Films for $80 million, considered a bargain price.
1990 1990
Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Gérard Depardieu, wins a record ten César Awards.
1994
The first new major studio in more than 50 years, Dreamworks SKG, is announced by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen.
1993
1996 1993
Actor Brandon Lee (son of Bruce) is killed by a faulty prop gun during filming of The Crow (1994).
1994
Spielberg’s 1993 film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, wins seven Oscars.
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The more gradual transition to digital cameras was anticipated by a new generation of improved, lightweight video cameras. Although they could not match the aesthetic quality of film, video cameras had one key advantage: they were much cheaper to use.
digital film-making
Shrewd low-budget film-makers in the early 1990s capitalized on the digital camera’s limitations and a fashion for extreme handheld cinema-verité style camerawork set by Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992), Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), and Lars
Going against the grain of the CGI spectacular, The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was a slow-paced, old-fashioned prison drama that could have been made any time in the last 30 years. Significantly, it was only a minor hit on theatrical release, but became an all-time favourite when audiences saw it on video and DVD.
1998
Saving Private Ryan wins Steven Spielberg his second Best Director Oscar.
1999
The first of three prequels, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, makes $100 million in a record five days. 1999
1997
The most expensive film ever, Titanic, also becomes the highest grossing.
2000
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the first Asian action film to find US commercial and critical success.
2002
Halle Berry is the first black actress to win Best Actress Oscar. African-American actor Denzel Washington also wins Best Actor. 2002
2001
The final episode of Peter Jackson’s critically acclaimed Lord of the Rings trilogy released.
2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes Governor of California
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By shooting in black and white, the talented young French director Mathieu Kassovitz gave his angry youth movie La Haine a patina of realism. The film graphically illustrates the racial divisions that would erupt across France ten years later.
dogme 95
With developments encouraging more elaborate fantasies and facilitating back-to-basics realism, four Danish directors seized the moment to announce the Dogme 95 Manifesto. “Today a technological storm is
von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996), as well as TV shows like NYPD Blue. In this idiom, poor image quality translated as gritty realism. No film exemplified this better than The Blair Witch Project (1999). It purported to be discovered footage shot on camcorder and 16mm film by a student research team The Coen brothers’ comic thriller Fargo who got lost in the stars William H. Macy in a biting woods and disappeared (1996) moral fable set in a wintery US midwest. while investigating a local legend. This simple scenario was augmented by an elaborate internet campaign fostering the notion the film was, in fact, a documentary. The Blair Witch Project cost approximately $35,000 and made a staggering $248 million worldwide. A sequel followed two years later, but it was a flop.
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Contentious and at least partly tongue raging, the result of which will be in cheek, the Dogme 95 movement the ultimate democratization of the nevertheless struck a chord. Thomas cinema,” they claimed. “For the first time, anyone can make Vinterberg’s Festen movies…” They went (The Celebration) was on to stress the the first film to be importance of released under the the avant-garde banner in 1998, and and denounce won the Jury Prize at Cannes. Like von the superficial, Trier’s The Idiots, cosmetic aspects of the Hollywood released the same Emily Watson gives a bravura performance year, and contrary to mainstream. as a giddy modern-day saint in Lars von Signed by the the vows’ diktats, it Trier’s vertiginous Breaking the Waves (1996). controversial director was shot on video. Lars von Trier, the document concluded with ten “Vows of the independents Chastity” designed to return cinema By 2005 there would be over 50 official Dogme films, but that was just a drop to its roots in realism: film-makers pledged to shoot on actual locations, in the ocean compared to the booming American independent film scene. using only the props that belonged there; to avoid period and genre films; James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) cost $200 million to dispense with optical effects and to make and, despite rocky reviews, became the first film “superficial action; ”to use a handheld to gross over one billion dollars. It ensured mainstream stardom for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. camera; and no postrecorded music.
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The Usual Suspects (1995) was a lower-budget independent movie that was a box office hit. The stylized, edgy thriller had powerful performances from the “lineup” of hoodlums, and a plot that twisted and turned.
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As soon as the technology became A piecemeal movement sprang up available, Digital Video (DV) around role models John Sayles cameras made an immediate impact (social conscience liberalism) who — in the year 2000, twice as many made Silver City (2004), Casa de los independent features were made Babys (2003), and Sunshine State (2002), as in the preceding year. and Jim Jarmusch (minimalist cool) Among the first director of films major film-makers including Coffee to go digital were and Cigarettes (2003), Mike Figgis, who Ghost Dog: The ran four cameras Way of the Samurai concurrently and (1999), and Mystery quartered the Train (1989). screen in the Primarily real time drama centred on the US east coast, Timecode (2000). Spike Lee used the 1980s David Fincher marked the millennium with the subversive black comedy Fight Club (1999), starring digital technology independents Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Critics recoiled from for his close-toproduced the film but it became a cult hit on DVD. home racial satire breakthrough films about African-Americans (Spike Bamboozled (2000), while Eric Rohmer recreated Revolutionary France by Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, 1986), gays and lesbians (Sayles’ Lianna, 1983, using digital paintings as backdrops and Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche, 1988), in The Lady and the Duke (2001). and about women (Susan Seidelman’s Zacharias Kunuk’s digital Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) was the first Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985). native Inuit feature, and Michael These films found critical support Mann mixed digital and celluloid in and developed their own art-house Ali (2001). Mann went on to exploit digital’s superior night vision for Collateral (2004). Meanwhile, artist David Fincher, who had started out in a special effects production company, showed how seamlessly CGI could be integrated into traditional film drama in the anarchic Fight Club (1999). The indie boom had started in the 1980s, partly due to the proliferation of film festivals like Sundance, and perhaps because Hollywood films had become conservative and formulaic, and so removed from the realities of American life. Octogenarian Eric Rohmer embraced the latest technology to fashion The Lady and the Duke (2001), a portrait of Revolutionary France that resembled a painting brought to life.
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dvds As technology is constantly evolving, the way we watch films is changing. Portable DVD players like this mean films can be seen anywhere.
Movie audiences have declined almost everywhere as widescreen High Definition TV sets, TiVo recorders, and DVD players combine to make home viewing a more attractive proposition. DVDs (Digital Versatile Discs) were introduced in late 1997, and their superior reproduction of picture and sound, durability, and slimline packaging proved a runaway success with consumers. By 2005 the DVD market had become the film industry’s single greatest revenue source, overtaking VHS and theatrical box-office. DVDs have also given a new lease of life to the studios’ back catalogues. For Hollywood, this revenue helps to counterbalance high production and marketing costs (about $30 million apiece) and lower movie attendance.
audience. Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape (1989) was a landmark, making $24.7 million in the US, and another $30 million internationally. It was the biggest hit to date for New York “speciality” distribution company, Miramax, and the first American indie to break out of the art-house circuit and into the multiplexes. Soderbergh immediately landed a studio contract and would become one of the most successful directors of the era, nabbing two Oscar nominations in the same year for Erin Brockovich and Traffic in 2000. He was not alone in embracing the mainstream for most,
“independence” was a transitional station on the way to a Hollywood career. Jim Jarmusch was an exception, finding funding out of Japan that allowed him to retain copyright to his cool bohemian doodles. Hal Hartley was another who preferred to work cheaply without watering down his deadpan neo-Godardian comedies, such as Flirt (1995) and Henry Fool (1997). Soderbergh himself stepped out of the Hollywood mainstream on occasion to recharge his creative batteries with avant-garde experiments like Schizopolis (1996). And Gus Van Sant went from the art house (My Own Private Idaho, 1991) to the multiplex (Good Will Hunting, 1997) and back again (Elephant, 2003). But most found they could co-exist with the studios — in general, this was not an era of confrontational political film-making or challenging formal innovation. the new indies
Quite a few of the talented young filmmakers who emerged from the indie sector contented themselves with working clever, ironic variations on classical Hollywood genres.
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After two Hollywood flops, Alfonso Cuarón put his career back on track by returning to his native Mexico to make the earthy sex comedy Y Tu Mamá También (2001).
Joel and Ethan Coen, for example, invested some ethical complexity in a series of stylish pastiches on the worlds of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Clifford Odets, and Preston Sturges. quentin tarantino
Cult heroes the Coens were rudely trumped when Quentin Tarantino unleashed his more visceral brand of souped-up cinephilia with Reservoir Dogs in 1992. Born in 1963, Tarantino had grown up in the video age. In fact, he worked as a clerk in a video store before Harvey Keitel showed interest BOX OFFICE hits of the 1990 s –2000 s 1 US Titanic, 1997 2 us The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003 3 US Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001 4 US Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, 1999 5 US The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002 6 US Jurassic Park, 1993 7 US Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005 8 US Shrek 2, 2004 9 US Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002 10 US Finding Nemo, 2003
in his script about an undercover cop infiltrating a gang of jewel thieves. A magpie talent, Tarantino’s influences were legion: Hong Kong thrillers (Reservoir Dogs borrowed from a Ringo Lam thriller, City on Fire, 1987); JeanLuc Godard; Jean-Pierre Melville; Stanley Kubrick; and Sam Fuller. In synthesizing them, Tarantino also forged something new and arresting: a pop post-modernism that spoke for the young people novelist Douglas Coupland called “Generation X” and film-maker Richard Linklater dubbed “Slackers”. Non-conformists but avid consumers, this generation was media-savvy, ironic about relationships, cynical about politics, but inclined toward liberal multi-culturalism. Tarantino’s second film, Pulp Fiction (1994) rocked Hollywood with its audacious approach to narrative structure, outrageously casual violence, and flip, funny dialogue. Produced by Miramax, it became the first “indie” movie to break $100 million at the US box office. To the dismay of the old guard, it even walked away with the Palme d’Or at Cannes, depriving Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski
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of a third straight festival triumph for world cinema his Three Colours trilogy. Beyond US borders, Hollywood Tarantino’s success — and the continued to exert a strong grip on film markets in Europe disproportionate influence it bestowed on Miramax (with the partial exception of France), Asia, and the — has been criticised for “mainstreaming” artsouthern hemisphere, although India, China, house and independent Hong Kong, and South film. Conversely, he could be credited for pushing the Korea all maintained borders of the commercial strong local industries. Initially it was Hong film, breaking ground for the wider acceptance of Kong that made the independent-minded most international artists like Richard impact, with a series Linklater, Paul Thomas of prestigious art house Bill Murray stars as a depressed films from Wong Kar-Wai Anderson, David O. movie star, Bob Harris, in Tokyo Russell, Spike Jonze, (Chungking Express, 1994) in Lost in Translation (2003). and Sofia Coppola, who and a cycle of stylish, became the first American woman souped-up urban crime thrillers like to earn an Oscar nomination for John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), Best Director with Lost in Translation Working stylish variations on the classic cops (2003). Tarantino was the most and robbers formula, Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs important American film-maker (2002) was a smash hit at home and abroad. Two equally inventive sequels followed soon after. of the 1990s.
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Ringo Lam’s Full Contact (1993), and Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s Infernal Affairs (2002). Woo and Lam both went on to Hollywood careers, while Martin Scorsese directed Leonardo DiCaprio in a remake of Infernal Affairs (The Departed, 2006). Hollywood continues to draw fresh blood from the thriving Asian horror market, remaking Japanese hits, such as Ring (1998) and The Grudge (2003), and enticing their directors — Hideo Nakata and Takasha Shimizu respectively — to America. Elsewhere, Mexico produced the thrilling Amores Perros (2000) and Y Tu Mamá También (2001), and Brazil came up with the incendiary favela story City of God (2002, see page 490). Isolated from American culture, Iran produced a refracted, poetic take on neo-realism through film-makers like Mohsen Makmalbaf, Jafar Panahi and the minimalist master Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry, 1997). Lacking a strong home market for genre films, and failing to compete with Hollywood production values, European cinema seems largely irrelevant to most audiences most of the time. Aside from a few arthouse stalwarts like Pedro Almodóvar (All About My Mother, 1999), Michael
The popularity of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books translated into mega box office for Warner Bros. The recipe was fidelity to the source, expert British character acting, and — the magic ingredient — dazzling CGI
Haneke (Caché, 2005), and Lars von Trier (Dogville, 2003), there is no guarantee of widespread international distribution beyond the film festival circuit and DVD. digital Downloads
Today the industry is just beginning to face up to its next great challenge: the internet. Digital downloads of feature films and streamed videoon-demand are becoming a reality, raising the spectres of widespread piracy and the collapse of theatrical exhibition. Yet Hollywood has survived such scares before, adapting to new technologies and ultimately profiting from them. The worldwide web holds out promises too: a video jukebox with an infinite range of choice, virtually no delivery costs, and an audience that would have been unimaginable at any time before in the art form’s history. Crash (2005) was a suprise winner over Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) at the 2006 Academy Awards, scooping the prize for Best Film. Set in Los Angeles it highlights racial tensions and the assumptions strangers make about each other.
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how movies are made
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End-of-movie credits run for minutes, and rightly so. It takes many dozens of creative, technical, publicity, and distribution talents to take a movie from idea to screen. The Godfather (1972) had crews across several continents; Gone With the Wind (1939) had multiple crews in the studio. Most movies are less complicated to make than these films, but still follow the same gestation process and have similar types of players. The basic stages of making a movie remain the same whatever the size of the budget or the cast. The process begins with pre-production, then moves through production, and postproduction. The players in preproduction and production include the producers, directors, screenwriters, and actors, who constitute the “abovethe-line” people who generally have higher status and wildly varying payment. Below-the-line players generally include the production department, cinematographers, composers, editors, costume designers, production designers, stuntpeople, and sound crew. Their costs are generally lower and more predictable. After the movie is made, the postproduction begins. Its players include the editor, sound editor, composer, and special effects crew. The final part of post-production involves getting the movie to its audience, and entails the steps of distribution and exhibition. The movie that has completed postproduction work and is a finished product goes into the hands of the distributors and exhibitors. The distributors decide when the movie will be released and get it to the cinemas, and the exhibitors show it. The Perils of Pauline (1914) made farmer’s daughter Pearl White a star and honed the elements of action films — danger, stunts, and suspense.
Anecdotes about how actors, directors, producers, and screenwriters collaborate are legion. The inception of a film may be straightforward — as with the concept for It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), which was transmitted from Frank Capra to James Stewart — or it may be long and involved, as in the search for the new James Bond, Daniel Craig. Equally intricate is the work of technical staff, such as costume designers, who come up with ways to make the fashions of the Roman empire look authentic, as in Gladiator (2000). Dazzling special effects combine computer-generated images and old-fashioned physical trickery to enliven a story of a giant gorilla or a galaxy far, far away. After the movie is made, it has to reach the viewer. Distributors set up showing periods with cinemas, then alter the time if a film is a surprise hit or underperforms. Deals are also made for international markets, where established stars can save a movie that flounders in its home country. Finally, there is the video market, where all movies end up, often (as with children’s classics) to healthy profit. The complexity of the moviemaking process gives the lie to silent star Norma Desmond’s (Gloria Swanson) contention in Sunset Boulevard (1950) that “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
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Pre-production The pre-production stage of making a movie usually begins with a conversation. Held anywhere, it will mark the first time producers, screenwriters, and studio executives discuss the concept and potential actors for their movie. the “pitch” and the producer As captured in movie lore and skewered in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), a movie pitch is a short encapsulization of a movie idea which, if it succeeds, pleases a studio executive or other powerful individuals. Some ideas get the go-ahead but fail in execution, such as the remake of Sabrina (1995). Other ideas, such as James Cameron’s premise for Titanic (1997) as primarily a love story, can result in a film classic. From the beginning, the producer is central to the making of the movie. He may be a forceful, creative type or he may be part of a group of investors who has a more distant relationship with the industry but knows the star. Since the
days of the Hollywood studio stystem, the definition of a producer has become increasingly fluid and many are now seeking to have the tasks of producers defined more clearly. But traditionally, a producer is responsible for securing the money to make the movie. In most cases, the money for a movie comes from the studio executives. As with producers, the studio executives vary in the scope of their power. Wherever they fit, they will provide money and will be highly involved with the screenwriter and with the producer through the next stage of the movie’s development. Director Nicholas Ray (left) discusses a project with screenwriter Philip Yordan. The two collaborated on Johnny Guitar in 1954.
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the development stage where this may be the case is if the actor In restaurants and offices, producers and is the director himself (such as Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson). Often, stars movie executives cook up a deal and talk it through. At this stage a screenwriter that are big in the box office are involved will also produce a during development to draft of the script. secure the necessary The screenwriter is funding for a big film. A top US star can usually known to the producers or command $30 million executives through per movie — and past work with them may also receive a or experience on percentage of the gross similar types of profit. Less well-known projects. Whatever actors are usually signed Film scripts are often revised, both before and during filming. This is a marked-up script by the screenwriter’s up during the preHarold Pinter for The Servant (1963). stature, the script is production stage. Pre-production encompasses the activities very often rewritten again and again to please the producers and studios in a necessary to get a movie ready for production, that is, filming. These process known as development, which, if tortured enough, may even earn the activities include casting, scouting name “development hell.” When the locations, doing historical research, script is finished and believed to represent and storyboarding. a potentially profitable venture, studio executives “green light” the picture and pre-production begins. The actors may be involved at the development stage. This is even more likely to be the case if the script is being written as a vehicle for a particular actor, or is attached to a well-known actordirector/producer team (such as James Cameron/Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s and 1990s). Another situation
Storyboards help the director visualize each scene — these are from The Wizard of Oz (1939).
producer and production crew Depending on his level of involvement, the producer may be responsible for choosing locations, setting up a shooting schedule and budget, and hiring the crew, which includes a director of photography, a production designer, a costume designer, a composer, and an editor. At the preproduction stage there is work for the
practical members of the production department, who calculate the cost of the preparation for, and the shooting of, the film. At this stage the location scout will also search for the best locations for the movie. These may be real locations, for example, New York for On the Town (1949), or a convincing substitute, such as using Italy for 19th-century New York
who’s who on set Best boy
Assistant to the gaffer
Boom operator
Positions and operates the microphone
Chief/key/head grip
Moves the camera
Continuity person (script supervisor)
Ensures make-up, costumes etc. don’t change between scenes
Director of photography Responsible for lighting, (cinematographer/ composition, choice of camera, first cameraman/ lens, and film — in fact, the lighting cameraman) “look” of the film First assistant cameraman (focus puller)
Maintains camera, changes lenses and magazines, operates focus control
Gaffer
Chief electrician
Grip
Moves equipment on set
Location manager
Finds suitable locations and clears their use with owner
Mixer (sound recordist)
Person on set in overall charge of sound recording
Production manager (line producer)
Person who controls the day-to-day budget
Second assistant cameraman (clapper loader)
Loads magazines, operates clapperboard, and performs other camera tasks
Set decorator
Finds props and decorates the set
Set designer
Designs the set using sketches and models
Stills person
Takes still photographs of the production
Wardrobe
Responsible for care and repair of costumes throughout the production.
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The Living Daylights (1987), in which Timothy Dalton made his debut as James Bond, was shot in Europe, the US, and in the studio. Here, the crane allows for a panoramic view of the set.
streets in Gangs of New York (2002). To film the 16th-century feudal Japan of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957), the director commissioned a castle to be built. The 19th-century story of love and obsession on the British coast, Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) was filmed in part on location, in a British town largely untouched by time (Lyme Regis).
Polish director Andrzej Wajda casts for the film Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania, 1999.
creative crew To sign actors, casting directors break down a script to see what roles have to be cast. In the US, he or she may use the private company Breakdown Services, which distributes daily lists, or “breakdowns” of available roles to Screen Actors Guild (SAG, the major actors’ association) franchised agents and personal managers. The agents and managers then submit names of clients who might be right for the part. Following auditions and hiring, the casting director negotiates the contract with the actor. Additionally, the cinematography, production design, and editing components of the movie are set up. The director and director of photography, or DP, may discuss the intended look for the film and how to achieve it. The DP may also confer with the production designer and crew to make sure that the cameras can be accommodated in the set design. When planning the shoot, the scenes are not shot in order, for example all the action in one location will be filmed together, even though it might be viewed at different times in the final version. The editor will put it all together logically in postproduction.
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Production As immortalized in movies about the movies, such as Singin’ in the Rain (1952), production is the shooting of the movie. It occurs after pre-production is completed and includes the crafts of acting, cinematography, costume design, directing, lighting, and design. cinematography Lighting and photographing a film is called cinematography, and is the responsibility of the DP, also known as the cinematographer. Although they are responsible for how the film is lit and photographed, they do not run the camera or set up the lights. Instead, under the supervision of the DP, these activities are done by members of the cinematographic crew. The camera operator runs the camera. The electrical crew is under the guidance of the gaffer or chief electrician. In all phases of making the movie, the DP is a craftsman and an artist. He or she uses knowledge of many kinds of Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) required cinematographer Eduardo Serra to recreate artist Johannes Vermeer’s esthetic sensibility.
Director David Lean often discussed the overall look of particular shots with cinematographers, as here in Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
technology, such as film stocks and printing processes, cameras, lenses, and filters; they apply artistic sensibilities to place the camera and compose the picture in the
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Alex McDowell’s set for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) involved merging the imaginative views of children’s novelist Roald Dahl and director Tim Burton.
frame. Nearly every day, the DP reviews the “rushes” or daily footage and discusses it with the director to make sure the movie has the director’s desired approach. In the US, some cinematographers are invited to become members of the professional society called the American Society of Cinematographers. DPs belonging to the society appear in the film credits with an ASC after their name. production design The physical world to be photographed in a movie is created by the production designer. He or she acts as architect, decorator, and visionary to create everything from elaborate sets to small props that may become totemic items, like the light sabers of Star Wars (1977). Among the production designer’s duties are designing and overseeing the construction of sets and scenery; designing props and overseeing their purchase or rental; and working with the costume designer to make sure the actors’ wardrobe coordinates with the rest of the film’s look. The production designer usually has knowledge of architecture, engineering, painting, drawing, and theater and film arts. He or she applies this background to research the historical period of the movie and the material
world of its inhabitants, or to realize an imaginary culture. The range encompasses the look of an Elizabethan theater in Shakespeare in Love (1998) and the futuristic world of Gattaca (1997). Active in both the pre-production and production stages, the production designer works with the director and producer to create sketches of sets. Implementing these ideas requires adhering to budgets, time constraints, and the vision of the director. It also requires a staff, known as the art department, including the art director, set designer, set decorator, scenic artist, property master, construction coordinator, and landscaper.
A member of the art department paints a background for an imaginary, historical, or inaccessible location. The department works under the production designer.
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Acting Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Once signed, actors prepare for their Dramatique. Germany has the Berlin University of the Arts, Spain has the roles. They develop the appropriate characteristics for their character, such as Septima Ars School of Cinema and TV. gaining weight, as Robert De Niro did to Finland has its Theater Academy, and play Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), in New Delhi, India, there is the Imago School of Acting. or finding a walk, as While audiences Alec Guinness is said to have done for each of are no longer shocked his roles. Some immerse by variances from an themselves in the period actor’s persona, as of the film. But nearly they were with aspects of James Stewart’s all serious actors have prepared beforehand performance in Anatomy through training in of a Murder (1959), acting. One of the actors still manage their best known schools careers effectively by for actors has been the remaining consistent Clint Eastwood attended acting classes Actors Studio in New with the sensibilities when he came to Hollywood in 1955; his first York City. Founded in they have established in break was the television series Rawhide. 1947 and led by Lee their films. Thus, Tom Strasberg, the Actors Studio has Hanks is likely to continue to represent the decent everyman, while Julia Roberts stressed having actors develop a deep understanding of their characters’ will doubtless remain the accessible, motivations. Famous actors who have practical everywoman. used the Actors Studio “Method” style include Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, film actor in action Dustin Hoffman, and Marilyn Monroe. On the set, actors endure challenges and Notable university acting programs advantages unique to the form. Unlike include the Yale School of Drama in the stage, the set offers no live audience the US, while drama schools such as for reaction and support; but it does allow The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts the actor to redo a line or scene they are (RADA) in London have trained many not happy with. Movies are a medium well-known faces. Internationally, drama Joseph Fiennes, himself a stage-trained actor, plays schools abound. In Paris, there is France’s the title role in Shakespeare in Love (1998), which celebrates stage-trained actors from the Elizabethan era. national drama and theater school, the
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that picks up small nuances in expression; the stage represents the character through movement and gesture. The film actor is also in constant collaboration with the various film technicians who handle cinematography, music, and editing. All come together to highlight the actor’s performance. Charlton Heston’s Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) is accorded stature by the forceful color on screen and Cecil B. DeMille’s direction, which defines Heston’s powerful character through sweeping gestures. In the US, actors are members of the Screen Actors Guild, which has established a minimum payment for its actors. More established or in-demand actors get salaries far beyond scale, but for many actors, the rate is scale plus ten (ten percent for the agent). stunt performers The players who substitute for principals and perform acts of derring-do are the stunt performers. These trained men and women are largely unknown to the movie-going audience, but their presence in fires, explosions, or chase scenes is essential. They are chosen for their general resemblance to the star and are dressed to match him or her. Although some actors do at least some of their own stunts, stunt doubles replace actors when the stunt is considered too dangerous for anyone but a trained person. In part, the stunt performer is used for economic reasons: to keep the actor in sufficiently good health to complete the movie and make good on the investment. If the stunt is considered too dangerous for a human, the effects are done by digital imagery and longestablished tricks of photography. In using stunt performers, the goal is to avoid mishaps such as the injury sustained by silent comic actor Harold Lloyd, who lost a thumb and forefinger while filming Haunted Spooks (1920).
Jackie Chan is renowned for doing his own stunts, as here in Rush Hour (1998). Other examples of his stuntwork include Rumble in the Bronx (1995) and the early masterpiece, Drunken Master (1978).
US stunt performers are members of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures and the Screen Actors Guild. A few are so accomplished that they receive industry accolades. Perhaps the most honored was Western and action movie stuntman Yakima Canutt (1895–1986), who appeared in Stagecoach (1939), and who received a special Academy Award for his extraordinary stuntwork in 1966.
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how m ov i e s a r e m a d e Shirley Temple was by 1938 the top boxoffice draw in Hollywood, delivering cheer during the Depression in movies such as Bright Eyes (1934) and Dimples (1936).
animals and children While digital effects and animatronics can be used to create an animal, or at least place it where the director wants it to be, real animals are still effective additions to many movies, particularly family-oriented ones. To circumvent some of the troubles in dealing with animals, multiple lookalike animals are sometimes used, each performing a different set of scenes. Or animals may be made to perform by a trainer dangling food before its eyes. In some films, the animals themselves are
the stars. Notable examples include Lassie, whose first big-screen feature, Lassie Come Home (1943), was actually Oscarnominated, and the killer whale Willy, who makes friends with a young boy in the heartwarming Free Willy (1993). Children are also big draws for the movie-goer seeking familiarity. On the set, child actors pose many of the same challenges as animals, and are dealt with in the same way. Multiple child actors are chosen for a role (such as twins or triplets in a movie calling for a baby), and they perform for only limited periods. In most countries, child labor laws regulate how long child actors may remain on the set. Furthermore, school-age children are usually tutored when they are not filming. Whether child or animal, the nonadult actor will, through natural affinity to the camera, forever frustrate the trained adult actor by stealing the movie.
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sound Sound is crucial to a film, helping to create the required atmosphere as, for example, in Jaws (1975). Sound in film is made up of three parts — the dialogue, sound effects, and music — and is created and implemented by three talents — the mixer, sound editor, and composer. The sound components appear on separate tracks, recorded separately, but run together in the movie. The sound crew works on the film during both the production and postproduction phases of making a film. The first of two phases of creating a movie’s sound occurs during the production stage. This is when most of the dialogue and some sound effects are recorded on the set. The person in charge at this point is the floor mixer, who ensures that the recording is clear and in balance. The dialogue takes priority over background sounds, since the latter can always be dubbed in later. A guide track is used to dub dialogue and background sounds if necessary. The many tasks involved in creating the sound mix are done by the sound crew: its members include the sound
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In producing the voiceover for Princess Fiona in Shrek (2001), Cameron Diaz continued the venerable tradition of having notable stage and screen voices feature in an animated film.
mixer (or floor mixer or recordist), who is responsible for the sound recording on the set and directs the rest of the crew. Other sound crew members include the sound recorder, boom opearator, cablemen, and playback operators. Racing Stripes (2005) brings the animal/animatronics film into the 21st century but relies on a classic story of outsized wishes coming true as a zebra (voice of Frankie Muniz) believes he is a racehorse and comes to race with thoroughbreds.
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costumes, makeup, and hair Just as the production designer creates a world on the set or location of a film, the costume designer, makeup artist, and hairstylist create a vision on the actors. They change the actors’ clothes and their overall appearance so that they fit into the world that is being created onscreen. The costume designer works closely with the director, cinematographer, and production designer to design a wardrobe. Part of the job is to research the period covered in the film for clothing style, color, fabric composition, and fit on the body. The different jobs that may be included within this area are costume supervisor, costumer/stylist, set costumer, tailor/seamstress, wig master or mistress, and wardrobe attendant. Wardrobe pieces that can be purchased offthe-rack (from a shop) may be obtained by the stylist. Many of the top costume designers have become known for the looks they create, the actors they have dressed, or the stories they generate. The broadshouldered look that Adrian created for Joan Crawford was embraced (in modified form) for ladies’ wear during the 1940s. Givenchy was the man who dressed Audrey Hepburn, Travis Banton Elizabeth Taylor is fitted into costume for Cleopatra (1963). Designer Irene Sharaff created costumes for later Taylor movies, including The Taming of the Shrew (1967).
Robert Englund is transformed into Freddy Krueger, the horribly scarred dream monster of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and its sequels. Creature make-up typically requires several hours daily for application and removal of latex appliances.
dressed Marlene Dietrich. Consummate studio designer Edith Head dressed just about everyone — stories and anecdotes abounded about her famous clients’ attributes and habits, such as Barbara Stanwyck’s tiny waist or Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s unfussy ways. Even more than the costume designer, the makeup artist develops a close relationship with the actors. The makeup artist is responsible for conveying the actor’s sensibility for the film by preparing the actor’s face, neck, forearms, and hands. The work is redone at least once a day and must remain consistent throughout shooting. Members of the makeup team include the makeup artist and his or her assistant. If relevant to the film, there may also be a body makeup artist, who applies special effects makeup. There has been a separate category for makeup in the Academy Awards since 1981. Awards have been given to such diverse films as Frida (2002) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). A huge version of Mount Rushmore was created in a studio as a menacing backdrop to Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959). The US government forbade the use of the real monument.
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how m ov i e s a r e m a d e Jaws (1975) used an animatronic shark to bring to life the killer fish of Peter Benchley’s novel. The shark proved memorable on screen.
special effects Beyond the ability of the stuntperson or makeup artist lies special effects. In a huge ranges of movie genres, including drama, epic and horror, special effects
are manufactured illusions that can be imagined, but are impossible to film without trickery. Examples include the sinking of the Titanic in James Cameron’s spectacular fim of the same name, and the transformation of mad scientist, Seth Brundle, (Jeff Goldblum) into a horrific giant man/fly hybrid in The Fly (1986). In many cases, special effects are used to reduce costs. A matte painting is less costly than filming with live actors upon a huge national monument (such as Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest). It also gives the illusion of filming on-site when, in fact, a location is off-limits to filming. There are two kinds of special effects (abbreviated as FX, SFX, SPFX or EFX). They are visual
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or photographic effects, which are achieved by manipulating the film image, and mechanical or physical effects, achieved through the use of mechanical devices on the set. (While a physical effect may be simple, such as using an unseen rope to move or knock over a prop, special effects today are usually much more complicated.) In this book, the term “special effects” refers to both visual and mechanical effects. Visual effect techniques include computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital compositing, digital matte paintings, green screen technology, miniatures, morphing, motion-capture, rotoscopes, and traveling mattes. Mechanical effects include animatronic puppets, explosions, fullscale mock-ups, rain and snow machines, squibs that replicate bloody bullet hits, and wires attached to actors. A complicated FX sequence may include a variety of visual and mechanical effects. King Kong (2005) uses green screen technology, (inset) to allow Naomi Watts to interact with Kong (below).
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The Fantastic Four (2005) employs digital effects to transform a 3D laser scan of actor Chris Evans into the Human Torch. The fiery effect was a highlight of the film.
technological advances The technology for special effects is changing so rapidly that many longstanding practices, such as brushand-canvas matte paintings, and rear projection have now fallen out of use. Even animatronics, used (with difficulty) for the shark in Jaws (1975) and refined in the films of the 1980s and 1990s, is less widely used today. Yet some established technologies are still used, such as rain and snow machines, which permit filming even when the weather is uncooperative. Some digital effects, such as morphing (a computer-generated effect in which one image is transformed into another), have been around so long they are almost considered old-fashioned. Current technologies include motioncapture, in which an actor’s movements are translated to a computer-graphics model. Motion-capture can be blended with digital animation to create realistic virtual creatures, such as the giant gorilla in King Kong (2005). Green screens are green fabric backgrounds positioned behind actors that allow CGI to be integrated into the scene. Green screens have largely superseded blue screens because the green delivers finer outlines.
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The 2005 stop-motion feature, Corpse Bride, uses puppets made of stainless steel covered by silicone skin. Directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, it is the first feature to use digital still, not film, cameras.
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Post-production A crucial part of the movie-making process begins once filming is finished. Thousands of frames of film must be assembled into an order that conveys a story, and the scenes may be shortened or reordered so that the finished product reflects the director’s vision. Editing cut, the first fully edited Most films are shot out of work print. This includes sequence. During filming, the soundtrack to the film. it is the editor’s job to begin But the individual shots are assembling the pieces of film not completely determined into the order that they will at this stage. This version be seen in the final film. The of the film is dominated by editor talks with the director the director’s vision and is Charlie Chaplin editing a film. known as the director’s cut. about the previous day’s He also wrote, directed and acted During post-production, the filming, known as rushes. in his films in a 50-year career. DP and the director also The film shot may be transferred to videotape or digital format work together to oversee the timing of the first print. Among the tasks in this stage for ease in rearranging or selecting. The film construction made at this point is are correcting density and color balance. called the assembly. The bulk of the Following repeated consultation with the editing is done during post-production. director, the editor assembles the shots with visual effects into the fine cut. It The film editor carries out many different stages of editing to shape the runs to the length the director, editor, final arrangement of shots that makes a and producer have decided. finished film. First, they work with the The sound mixing desk is where the various tracks of director to refine the assembly of all the human dialogue, sound effects, and music are combined different sections of the film into a rough to create an original to transfer to the film negative.
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For the first hundred years of filmmaking, film editing meant physically cutting and reassembling the edited film reel itself. Today, however, much film editing is done electronically, using video and digital technology. Films are transferred to videotape and digital format, and are computer coded; this allows the editor to edit scenes on screen. Using the fine cut as a guide, the original negative is cut. Post-production Sound There are four post-production stages that go into creating the movie’s sound. These include dialogue and sound effects, composed music, the sound mix, and transferring the original sound mix on to the film negative. Firstly, the sound editor, or sound effects editor, works with the director and editor to create the soundtracks. Additional sounds are created by a foley artist or from film library stock. A composer (such as John Williams or Danny Elfman) is used if the film requires an original score. A music editor will then edit the music to fit the film. For existing music under copyright, rights managers arrange fees for its use in the film. A recording or rerecording mixer works US stars, such as Tom Cruise, agree to do publicity to promote their recent releases, as here on Jay Leno’s late-night talk show.
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Composer John Williams has won Academy Awards for best score for Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler’s List (1993).
with the director to blend together the many tracks of different sound. The finished mix is transferred on to the original negative. The film sound is recorded with a digital system and reproduced as an optical sound track. It is then read as synchronized sound when it is sent through the loudspeakers during an audience showing. Release Prints Color testing follows the making of the original negative. Once all phases of the movie are completed, the movie is previewed with audiences; depending on their reaction, final cuts are made. When the original negative is finalized, master prints are made from the original negative. Duplicate negatives are made from that to produce release prints.
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Distribution and Exhibition Once a movie is completed, the distributor gets it to cinemas and exhibitors make sure that it is shown. The distributor is usually the movie studio that financed the film. The distributor plans the release date, licenses movies to cinemas, arranges to have prints of the film sent to exhibitors, and creates a marketing and advertising programme for the film. The exhibitor negotiates a financial deal with the distributor for the financial take at the cinema on the film, including paying advance money to secure an expected hit.
Charlize Theron on the red carpet at the 57th Cannes Film Festival Award Ceremony. In recent years, awards ceremonies have set fashion trends as well as invigorating takings at the box office.
The studio is also responsible for advertising and publicizing the film. This includes market research, advertisements (television, radio, newspaper, and online), “coming attractions” trailers in cinemas, posters, lobby cards, and stills. Other aspects of publicity include press kits and press releases to the media, and booking stars for media interviews and general exposure. Theatrical Release Once the film is in the cinema, it has only a short time to earn its money as a theatrical release. After a few weeks or
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(if the movie is a blockbuster or an Academy Award winner) months, attendance will diminish. The days of one film (such as The Sound of Music, 1965) playing at the same cinema for a year are gone, and unlikely to return. Therefore, distributors have to judge box office receipts carefully and recalibrate the number of cinemas showing a film. A movie with good wordof-mouth and sustained interest (such as March of the Penguins in 2005) will be
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Movie merchandise, such as this toy from the 1963 film The Great Escape, is a multi-million dollar industry and can generate more income than the film itself.
shown on more screens. If it is underperforming, it may need a different advertising campaign (as with Munich, 2005) or be withdrawn altogether. After the domestic theatrical release, a film’s earning potential is extended by its release in overseas cinemas. There is also revenue to come from the home-video/DVD sales and the licensing to a variety of television rights, including pay-per-view, premium cable channels, basic cable channels, and terrestrial television. The distributor can also extend a film’s life by licensing merchandising rights to makers of toys, mugs, T-shirts, recordings, and video games. Since the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, and the highly successful accompanying figurines and book tie-ins, merchandising has taken on a new importance. Many products relating to a film are now sold even before the release of the film. the role of the film critic Good planning and deal-making does not ensure a movie hit. Neither does advance audience interest. Often, a film’s success begins (or ends) with the film critics. Film critics are the first to slot a movie into its place in the film canon. They prescreen the movie and tell the audience whether they believe it is worth the price of admission. Despite the critics, however, the strongest force for the popularity of a movie is the audience. Based on the film’s stars, subject matter, director, time of year, and the cultural atmosphere of the time, the public decides whether to go and see a film or not. Audiences are affected by timing: Jaws worked well as a summer blockbuster. They also want an element of familiarity: Shakespeare in Love works, but Marlowe in Love probably wouldn’t. Finally, the time has to be right culturally: the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain was very successful when released in 2005; but 20 years ago, it may have been an art-house staple.
movie genres
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When a film is labelled a Western, a musical or a romantic comedy, audiences already have certain preconceptions and expectations about what genre, or kind, of film it is. Although within each category films differ in many respects, they share comparable, recognizable patterns in terms of theme, period and setting, and plot, and in their use of iconography, or symbols, and the type of characters portrayed. The concept of genre really began during the Hollywood studio period. It helped production decisions and made a film easier to market. Also, during Hollywood’s golden era, when the studios were turning out hundreds of films at a rapid rate, the generic concept provided script writers with a template on which to work. Each studio specialized in a particular genre: Universal (horror), Warner Bros. (gangster), MGM (musical), and Paramount (comedy). Some directors became connected with a specific genre: John Ford (Westerns), Cecil B. DeMille (epics), Alfred Hitchcock (thrillers), Vincent Minnelli (musicals), and Douglas Sirk (melodrama). But it was with the stars that the public most associated certain types of pictures: James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson (gangsters), Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck (melodrama), Fred Astaire, Betty Grable (musicals), John Wayne, Randolph Scott (Westerns), and Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi (horror). Performers were so closely linked with certain genres that it became an event when they departed from the norm. “Garbo Laughs!” was the publicity line for Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka Janet Leigh about to be stabbed in the shower in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), one of the most famous and shocking scenes in cinema history.
(1939), which prepared audiences to accept Greta Garbo, previously seen only in melodramas, in a comedy. Today, genres and actors have become more flexible, though stars such as Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone remain linked in the public’s mind with action movies and Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler with comedies. There are still directors who specialize in certain genres: John Hughes in teen movies, Woody Allen with comedy, John Woo with action, and Wes Craven with horror. Over the years, the well-loved conventions became clichés, such as the good cowboy and the villain having a showdown on a dusty street. So traditional genres began to be reinterpreted, challenged or satirised. Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone’s Westerns can be termed revisionist, as can the film noirs of the Coen Brothers. Audiences are familiar enough with genres to enjoy lampoons, such as Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974) and the Austin Powers movies of the late 1990s, directed by Jay Roach. Despite auteur cinema (the personal expression of a director) being the antithesis of genre cinema, directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville and Wong KarWai have used established genres for their own purposes.
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Action-adventure “Lights, camera, action” is the command given by the director at the beginning of each shot. Action films — often linked to adventure — tend to be real crowd-pleasers, with their combination of exciting storylines, physical action, and special effects. Action-adventure encompasses several genres — Westerns, war films, crime pictures, and even comedies. The style is associated with nonstop action —dramatic chases, shoot-outs, and explosions — often centered around a male hero struggling against terrible odds. Action films offer pure escapism and entertainment for the audience and are often big box office hits. It was in the 1980s that the actionadventure genre became established. The style inherited the law-and-order ideology from the “rogue cop” films Errol Flynn (right) faces Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne at the exciting climax of Michael Curtiz’s classic swashbuckler, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The film was a huge hit for Warner Bros.
what to watch 1920 The Mark of Zorro (US) 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood (US) 1954 The Seven Samurai (Shichi-nin no Samurai, Jap) 1986 Top Gun (US) 1987 Lethal Weapon (US) 1991 Thelma and Louise (US) 1996 Mission: Impossible (US)
of Clint Eastwood — such as the Dirty Harry films — and the vigilante movies of Charles Bronson in the late 1960s and 1970s. Hollywood’s big action films became increasingly gungho with Top Gun (1986) as the apotheosis of renewed American confidence and power in the Reagan era. Among the action men who
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Bruce Willis as one-man army John McClane survives various hairraising stunts in the explosive action thriller Die Hard (1988).
Belmondo carried on the tradition. In Japan, Toshiro Mifune starred in numerous samurai films, or jidai-keki, filled with furious swordplay. dominated the genre in the 1980s were Harrison Ford (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981), Bruce Willis (Die Hard, 1988), and Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon, 1987).
Gender Roles
Traditionally, action-adventure movies were aimed mostly at male audiences in their teens to mid-30s. Women are generally shown as either having Action Heroes a restraining influence or No hero came larger or fueling men’s violence. more testosterone-filled However, in the 1990s than former Mr. Universe, a new style of actionArnold Schwarzenegger. adventure film began to Schwarzenegger made appear where women an impact in sword-andplayed roles traditionally taken by men. In Ridley sorcery fantasies (Conan Scott’s Thelma and Louise the Barbarian, 1982), science fiction action (1991) two women go on (Terminator, 1984), a crime spree. Lethal Weapon and military movies 3 (1992) added a tough, (Commando, 1985). An female martial-arts expert Film poster, 1981 equally macho fantasy to the buddy-buddy figure was Sylvester Stallone as a formula. However, the genre is still Vietnam vet in the jingoistic Rambo male-dominated, and although the cycle. These films glorified the power heroes are more clean-cut and cocky, of the individual to solve political and such as Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible, social problems through a combination 1996) and Keanu Reeves (The Matrix, of excessive musculature and firearms. 1999), they are equally lethal. Pre-1960s action heroes were far tom cruise Actor Box more moral. Their code was to kill only in self-defense. Costume epics Tom Cruise (born 1962), one of the most successful stars in movie history, first leapt into stardom in featured flamboyant characters Risky Business (1983), in which he dances in his played by actors such as underwear. The versatile Cruise appeared in some of the top box-office films of Douglas Fairbanks. He the 1980s, including Top Gun swashbuckled his way supremely (1986), Rain Man (1988), and though The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Born on the Fourth of July (1989), in which he played Three Musketeers (1921), and Robin Hood a paraplegic Vietnam vet. (1922). Fairbanks’ worthy successors Other demanding roles were were Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and in Interview with the Vampire (1994), Jerry Maguire (1996), Stewart Granger in the US, while Eyes Wide Shut (1999), in France, Jean Marais, Gérard and Collateral (2004). Philipe, and Jean-Paul
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Animation Film animation encompasses a multitude of styles, themes, and techniques. From the simplest drawing by hand to images created using the most up-to-date digital technology, it has always aimed to appeal to the widest possible age range. In the middle of the 19th century, more than 100 brief animated films long before the invention of cinema, between 1908 and 1918, and created devices to give drawings the illusion the first regular cartoon character. of movement were In 1909 Winsor in use. In 1832, McCay, an American the Belgian Joseph cartoonist, created Plateau invented Gertie the Dinosaur an apparatus that using simple line produced an drawing. It was the apparently moving first animated cartoon picture from a series to be shown as part of drawings. The of a theatrical action was viewed program in the US. through slits on a In 1919 he made revolving disc. In probably the first 1882, Emile Reynaud animated feature, The introduced his Sinking of the Lusitania. Gene Kelly and Tom and Jerry dance Praxinoscope, using The years 1919–20 perforated film, which together, combining animation with saw the emergence of live-action in Anchors Aweigh (1945). projected images on a the first cartoon screen to a theater audience at the production units. These turned out Musée Grevin in Paris. However, one-reel films about ten minutes long, when live action cinema was invented, which supported cinema programs. animation was neglected until 1908, This was possible due to the laborwhen it was almost reinvented by the saving method of “cel” animation, American J. Stuart Blackton. He allowing the tracing of moving parts pioneered stop-motion photography, of characters on celluloid sheets a technique which was taken up by without having to redraw the entire Émile Cohl in France. Cohl made character and background for every frame of film. In the 1920s, Pat what to watch Sullivan’s Felix the Cat 1928 Steamboat Willie (US) reigned supreme — 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (US) his witty thoughts 1940 Pinocchio (US) given in bubbles — 1968 Yellow Submarine (UK) until the coming of 1988 Akira (Japan) sound transformed 1995 Toy Story (US) animated films. 2001 Spirited Away (Japan) Walt Disney’s 2003 Belleville Rendez-vous (France) Steamboat Willie (1928) was 2005 Wallace and Gromit: the first sound cartoon. It The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (UK) demonstrated the force of music,
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not as background accompaniment, but as an element intrinsic to the film’s structure and visual rhythm. From 1928, cartoon characters such as Max Fleisher’s Betty Boop and Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy became as well known as film stars. Disney’s studio, which
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Mickey Mouse is the sorcerer’s apprentice in one of the most memorable of the musical sequences in Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940).
streamlined cartoon production, dominated Hollywood animation in the 1930s, consolidating its position with the hugely successful animation features, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940 — the first film to use stereo sound commercially), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). Dave Fleisher, whose Plasticine buddies — the cheese-loving Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit, the lovable Oscar-winning creations of Nick Park and Aardman Animations.
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Sylvain Chomet’s Belleville Rendez-vous (2003) proved a huge success for French animation. Here, the aged song-and-dance team make a comeback.
Popeye shorts proved very popular from 1933 to 1947, tried to rival Disney’s full-length cartoons with Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Hoppity Goes To Town (1941), but they were perhaps too sophisticated for children to have been commercial successes. In the 1940s, MGM made headway with William Hanna and Joe Barbera’s cartoon shorts featuring Tom and Jerry, which had jazzy sound effects, little dialogue, and zany violence as frustrated cat Tom eternally pursued resourceful mouse Jerry. Also at MGM, Tex Avery’s anarchism was given free rein in a series of crazy cartoons that exploded the boundaries of the genre, among the best of which were Screwball Squirrel (1944) and King Sized Canary (1947). At Warner Bros., Chuck Jones helped to create Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. Jones was also responsible for the Roadrunner/ Coyote series in the 1950s, noted for its speed and devastating use of the desert landscape. Another major force was UPA (United Productions of America), set up in 1948 by a breakaway group of Disney animators.
In reaction to the naturalistic graphic style and sentimentality of Disney, UPA developed freer, more economical, contemporary art styles. Among their most famous creations was Mr. Magoo. All this inventive cartoon work was halted with the proliferation of television, when studios began to devote their output almost entirely to low budget massproduced cartoons. animation abroad
While America was developing animation, other countries were experimenting with the genre. In Canada, Norman McLaren used many techniques, such as drawing directly on film, mixing live action and drawings, and pixillation (the use of a stop frame camera to speed up and distort movement). In Great Britain, Len Lye painted directly onto film stock, while John Halas and Joy Batchelor made Animal Farm (1954), the first British animated feature film. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that British animation was really put on the map by Aardman Animations with their plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit. After Nick Park and his team won the Oscar for best short animation with The Wrong Trousers
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(1993), they were able to raise the Borowczyk made bitterly ironic finances to make the features Chicken animated films such as Mr. and Mrs. Run (2000) and Wallace and Gromit: The Kabal’s Theatre (1967). Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). France also came up new talent with a winner in Sylvain In the US, after a decline Chomet’s exhilarating in the quality of Disney Belleville Rendez-vous (2003). animated features, there In Czechoslovakia, was a revival by a new celebrated puppet crew of younger talents, animator Jiri Trnka who produced a string of made his feature-length hits unequalled since the A Midsummer Night’s 1940s. Among them were Dream (1958), without Beauty and the Beast (1991) dialogue, and Karel and The Lion King (1994). Zeman made ten A new golden age of Film poster, 2001 features, some of them animation dawned at the combining live actors beginning of the 21st with animated models and drawings. century, leading to the creation of an Jan Svankmajer, a graphic artist and Oscar for the Best Animated Feature. puppeteer, made the weird Alice (Neco z In 2003, it was awarded to Hayao Alenky, 1988), which follows Lewis Miyazaki’s inventive Spirited Away. Carroll’s heroine (played by an actress) In 2004 Pixar Animation Studios took through an animated land of wonders. the Oscar for The Incredibles (2004). The Zagreb animation studio in The green troll and the talkative donkey were Croatia, which was formed in 1950, voiced by Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy respectively turned out a string of witty and in the computer-animated Shrek (2001), which won inventive satires while Polish Walerian the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
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Avant-Garde Avant-garde is a term applied to any experimental movement in the arts that is in opposition to conventional forms. In cinema, it specifically refers to a group of influential and radical film-makers who were active throughout Europe from the end of World War I. In 1918, French poet Louis Aragon wrote that “cinema must have a place in the avant-garde’s preoccupations… if one wants to bring some purity to the art of movement and light.” Critic Riccioto Canudo argued in 1926 that cinema should express the film-maker’s emotions as well as a character’s psychology and even their unconscious. The formalist possibilities of cinema were expounded by the French filmmakers and theorists Louis Delluc and Jean Epstein, and underlined by the montage theory of the great Russian film-makers in the 1920s. Avant-garde films disturbed the accepted continuity of chronological development and attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters’ thoughts. Collages of fragmentary images, complex allusions, and multiple points of view replaced logical explanation of meaning. Avant-garde artists, such as Man Ray, Hans Richter, Fernand Léger, Oskar Fischinger, and Walter Ruttmann, made films influenced by such movements as German expressionism, Russian constructuralism, surrealism, and Dadaism. Salvador Dali’s contribution to Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1928) and L’Age d’Or (1930) was invaluable. Marcel L’Herbier, with L’Inhumaine (1924) and L’Argent (1928), hoped to create “visual music” by using sets created by modernist artists. what to watch 1924 L’Inhumaine (France) 1928 Un Chien Andalou (France) 1930 L’Age d’Or (France)
Each set for Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Inhumaine (1924) was created by a different designer, including Fernand Léger.
By the 1930s, Hollywood film-makers were experimenting too. Director and editor Slavko Vorkapich called his montage sequences “symphonies of visual movement,” and dance director Busby Berkeley used overhead shots, trompe l’oeil, superimposition, trick photography, and surreal settings in his musicals. The spirit of the avant-garde movement lived on in the American Underground and in the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Jean-Marie Straub and his wife Danièle Huillet. The latter couple in particular have never swerved from making films that break away from accepted notions of realism, disengage from bourgeois values, and question the primacy of narration.
AVA N T- G AR D E /biop ic
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Biopic By its very nature, the biopic (biographical picture) exists in all genres. Examples include a war film, Patton (1970), an epic, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and a melodrama, Mommie Dearest (1981). Yet there are characteristics that mark the biopic out as a genre of its own. On the whole, a biopic is a rather what to watch fanciful dramatized portrayal of the 1939 Young Mr. Lincoln (US) life of a famous figure. There are 1982 Gandhi (UK) certain narrative principles that govern 2004 The Aviator (US) the conventional biopic: the protagonist risks all for success, endures a period Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney as composer-entertainer George M. of neglect, then achieves success, before experiencing personal conflict Cohan; The Jolson Story (1946); and or becoming afflicted in Cornel Wilde as some way. Typically, the Chopin in A Song to protagonist falls from the Remember (1945). height of fame and makes A close resemblance a triumphant comeback. between the actor and It was German-born the real-life figure was William Dieterle who achieved by Henry set the pattern with Fonda in John Ford’s Film poster, 1942 numerous biopics. His Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), most successful starred Paul Muni Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh in Lust for behind heavy makeup in The Story of Life (1956), Ben Kingsley in Gandhi Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile (1982), and Anthony Hopkins in Nixon Zola (1937), and Juarez (1939). The (1995). Jamie Foxx provided the right most archetypal of the genre to follow gestures for singer Ray Charles in were The Story of Alexander Bell (1939) Taylor Hackford’s Ray (2004). with Don Ameche; Young Tom Edison and Edison the Man (both 1940); Yankee Joaquin Phoenix plays the country music legend Johnny Cash, and Reese Witherspoon plays singer June Carter in Walk the Line (2005)
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Comedy In its various forms, from visual slapstick to verbal repartee, comedy has been part of cinema ever since a naughty boy stepped on a hose in the Lumière Brothers’ Watering the Gardener in 1895. Since then, many stars have employed many different ways of making us laugh.
Comedy is one of the oldest of The Keystone Kops, the famous slapstick troupe, pose for the camera in 1912. Many famous faces started their theatrical genres. Originally derived careers in the Kops, including Fatty Arbuckle, far right. from the commedia dell’arte and the star. Other comedians followed both in burlesque, circus, and vaudeville France and Italy, each with their own traditions, comedy found a more natural home in silent cinema than specific character. The most gifted and tragedy, the reverse influential of all the mask. Slapstick, which comic artists was Max derives its name from Linder from France. the wooden sticks that Charlie Chaplin called circus clowns slapped him “the Professor to whom I owe everything.” together to promote audience applause, While the other was predominant in comic stars were manic the earliest silent films, and grotesque, Linder since it didn’t need adopted the character Charlie, The Little Tramp, struggles of a handsome young sound to be effective. to survive in one of Chaplin’s bestboulevardier, a bemused loved shorts, A Dog’s Life (1918). FIRST FILM COMICS dandy with sleek hair, Most of the earliest comedies were trimmed moustache, and a made by the French and, in 1907, the silk hat that survived all Pathé Company launched a series of catastrophes. By 1910, comedies featuring the character Linder was making one Boireau, played by the comedian film a week playing the André Deed, cinema’s first true comic character of a wealthy
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bachelor in hopeless pursuit of wellbred pretty ladies. Just a year later he was the highest paid entertainer of the time, writing and directing his own films and enjoying fame throughout Europe. EARLY US COMICS
It was not until 1912 that US comedy emerged with Mack Sennett’s films for the Keystone company and, famously, the Keystone Kops. In five years, Sennett established the type of rapid, irreverent comedy forever associated with his name. Using sped-up action, reverse motion, and other camera and editing tricks, the films usually ended with a chase of death-defying thrills, with many stunts executed by the comics themselves. Sennett filmed the throwing of the first custard pie by Mabel Normand at Fatty Arbuckle in A Noise from
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the Deep (1913). He also made the first feature-length comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), which starred Marie Dressler and Charlie Chaplin. The four giants of American silent film comedy, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon, all emerged from one- or two-reelers to make features in the 1920s. Whereas Chaplin was cocky, Keaton stoical, and Lloyd foolhardy, Langdon cultivated the character of what the writer and film critic James Agee called “an elderly baby.” With his white moon face, and innocent and morose demeanour, he seldom instigated any of the chaos around him. With Safety Last (1923), Harold Lloyd introduced a comedy of thrills by hanging precariously on the side of a skyscraper. Although he is now best known for these feats, of the 300 films he made, only five contain such sequences. Harold Lloyd, who did most of his athletic stunts without a double, keeps his balance in a highly dangerous situation in Safety Last (1923).
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laurel and hardy Actor Box The English-born Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and the American Oliver Hardy (1892–1957) are the most famous and best-loved comedy team ever. They are at their hilarious best in more than 60 short films that they made together from 1927, such as The Music Box (1932), in which they try to deliver a piano up a huge flight of stairs. Their bowler hats and suits are symbols of their pretentions to middle-class respectability, but their innocence, Stan’s clumsiness, Ollie’s delusions of grandeur, and their constant squabbling, mark them out as overgrown children. Stan and Ollie established their complementary characters early on, with Hardy’s famous glare at the camera, and baffled Laurel scratching his head and crying.
Dick (1940) and Never Give a Sucker an Although the coming of sound Even Break (1941). Fields costarred with Mae West in My Little Chickadee diminished slapstick comedy, the tradition of sight gags was continued (1940), a spoof Western, in which they by the teams of Stan Laurel and exploited their unique comic personae. Oliver Hardy in the 1930s, Bud West, with her ample hourglass figure, Abbott and Lou Costello in the 1940s, was a sashaying parody of a sex and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis symbol and the mistress of sexual in the 1950s. Peter Sellers fell about innuendo, and one of as the maladroit the few comediennes Inspector Clouseau to make it big in the in Blake Edwards’ movies. Her racy Pink Panther series wisecracks in She begun in the 1960s, Done Him Wrong while in France, the and I’m No Angel pratfall tradition was (both 1933) resulted carried on by Jacques in the formation of Tati, Pierre Etaix, the Motion Picture and Louis De Funes, Production Code. Film poster, 1978 and in Italy by Toto. West responded More recent examples by resorting to include the Police Academy movies, double-entendre to make her comedy a little less direct. The Marx Brothers containing typical doses of 1980s crude visual gags, Jim Carrey in broke into cinema in 1929 with Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1993) and The Cocoanuts, but they had been The Mask (1994), and the so-called performing on stage long before that. The four brothers – Groucho, Harpo, “gross out” comedies of the Farrelly Brothers, Bobby and Peter, such as Chico, and Zeppo – had been in There’s Something About Mary (1998). vaudeville since childhood and, by the 1920s, had become one of the the birth of the Wisecrack most popular theatrical acts in the US. Uninhibited and irrepressible, The leading exponent of the wisethe Marx Brothers conveyed a sense cracking comedies, which inevitably came with the talkies, was the irascible, of spontaneity as they disrupted all bibulous, raspy-voiced W.C. Fields, around them with their unique brand two of his best films being The Bank of surreal, madcap humor. Although VISUAL GAGS
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there were four brothers originally, it was three that took centre stage – and Groucho’s witticisms, Harpo’s dumb show, and Chico’s massacre of the English language combined several traditions of comedy. Duck Soup (1933), directed by Leo McCarey, an anarchic spoof on warfare, is considered by many to be their finest film. Their last film together was Love Happy (1949). In 1940, Bob Hope teamed up with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour to make seven hilarious Road To... pictures. Both Groucho Marx and Bob Hope were plainly potent influences on Woody Allen.
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Film poster, 1949
Screwball comedy
Screwball comedy was a unique creation of Hollywood in the 1930s; its main elements were irreverent humor, fast-paced action and dialogue, and eccentric characters, generally the idle rich. The improbable plots commonly focused on the battle of the sexes. An archetypal film is Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936), which tells of a man (William Powell) from a shantytown who becomes butler to a wealthy family, straightens out their lives, and marries their scatterbrained daughter (Carole Lombard). Other screwball comedy gems were Frank The Marx Brothers demonstrate their musical skills in an MGM studio publicity still — Harpo on harp, Chico on piano, and Groucho on trombone.
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“rom-coms” or “chick flicks,” as they would be dubbed a few decades later, was “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.” This was a durable formula, as evidenced by modern variations such as Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally (1989), Gerry Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990), Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle (1993), James L. Brooks’ As Good as It Gets (1997), and the British hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). In Pillow Talk (1959), Doris Day’s and Rock Hudson’s first outing as a winning romantic comedy team, Day’s character bravely defends her virginity.
Capra’s five-Oscar winning It Happened One Night (1934), about a wacky runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert) with a hard-boiled reporter (Clark Gable) on her tail; Mitchell Leisen’s Easy Living (1937) and Midnight (1939), and Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937). Howard Hawks directed, among others, the madcap Bringing Up Baby (1938) with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn — the title role being taken by a leopard — and the irreverent, fast-paced His Girl Friday (1940), also starring Cary Grant. Preston Sturges’s social comedies continued in a similar vein into the 1940s, but with the advent of World War II, frivolity and social ridicule seemed inappropriate. The 1950s saw more sophisticated harder-edged comedies such as Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950) and several Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy vehicles in which they brought the battle of the sexes to a new level, particularly in George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib (1949). The latter could be seen as forerunners of the glossy Rock Hudson–Doris Day movies: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964), and other romantic comedies of the 1960s and beyond. The formula for these Renée Zellweger as the eponymous heroine in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), about a 32-year-old single girl’s misadventures with men and life.
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EALING comedy
Long before British comedies became internationally popular in the 1990s, Britain had provided the delightful Ealing comedies from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, including Charles Crichton’s The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Alexander MacKendrick’s The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), and Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). All starred Alec Guinness, the latter in eight different roles. The Ladykillers was remade in 2004 by the Coen Brothers.
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what to watch 1927 The General (US) 1937 Duck Soup (US) 1940 His Girl Friday (US) 1955 The Ladykillers (UK) 1963 The Pink Panther (US) 1977 Annie Hall (US) 1980 Airplane! (US) 1994 Four Weddings and a Funeral (UK) 1997 The Full Monty (UK) 2000 Meet the Parents (US)
Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street (I Soliti Ignoti, 1958) about a group of useless crooks trying to carry out a heist. It was remade by Louis Malle as Crackers (1984), given a California setting, and SATIRE was the inspiration Parallel to Hollywood behind Woody Allen’s romantic comedies were Small Time Crooks (2000). Film poster, 1979 US comedians that black comedies, such as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1964) came to the fore in the 1980s and 90s and Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H included Eddie Murphy (Trading Places, 1983), Steve Martin (L.A. Story, 1991), (1970); the more genial genre spoofs of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974) and Jim Carrey (The Cable Guy, 1996), and Young Frankenstein (1974); the each in their own way continuing the wacky humour of Jim Abrahams’ and genre, and displaying a flair for visual the Zucker brothers’ Airplane! (1980) comedy rather than elegant, verbal wit. and The Naked Gun series (1988–91); as well as the deliciously silly Mike Myers’ Austin Powers movies (1999– 2002), parodies of James Bond films. Although a number of “naughty” French comedies were shown widely in the 1960s, one had to wait for La Cage aux Folles (1978) — Edouard Molinaro’s drag queen farce — to break all box-office records in the US for a foreign language film to that date. Hollywood remade it as The Birdcage (1996), along with a number of other French comedies, such as Coline Serreau’s Three Men and a Cradle (Trois Hommes et un Couffin, 1985), which became Three Men and a Baby (1987). Michel Serrault camps it up in La Cage aux Folles Italian comedy became popular (1978), a French farce set in St Tropez, which was transplanted to Miami in the remake, The Birdcage (1996). abroad after the success of Mario
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Costume Drama The classic costume drama, or period piece, derives from literary sources. The best examples of the genre are typified by lavish costumes and design, which succeed in capturing the ambience of the particular era in which they are set in meticulous detail. Becky Sharp (1935) was the first Technicolor feature film and the sixth adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair. The most visually striking moment in the film was the ball scene, which showed off the women’s gorgeous gowns and the soldiers’ red uniforms to great effect. Technicolor and costume dramas were made for each other, but the marriage was only consummated in 1939 with Gone With the Wind. A year earlier, Bette Davis had won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the spoiled Southern Belle Julie Marsden in William Wyler’s Jezebel (1938), set in pre-Civil War New Orleans. The role was compensation for not getting the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. In one great scene in Jezebel, Davis arrives at a ball — at which unmarried girls traditionally wear white — dressed in a scarlet gown, in order to scandalize the assembled company. The impact of this single splash of color was brilliantly suggested by Ernest Haller’s black-and-white photography. what to watch 1938 Jezebel (US) 1945 Les Enfants du Paradis (France) 1954 Senso (Italy) 1975 Barry Lyndon (UK) 1988 Dangerous Liaisons (US) 1992 Howards End (UK) 1995 Sense and Sensibility (UK/US)
Miriam Hopkins plays the title role of Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp (1935).
melodrama
Gainsborough Pictures in England made a series of melodramatic period pieces in the 1940s with a list of stars headed by Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Stewart Granger, and Phyllis Calvert. Two of the most popular films were directed by Leslie Arliss: The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945), both with Mason and Lockwood relishing respectively the roles of sadistic lover and sexy villainess. Two decades later, Tony Richardson’s bawdy four-Oscarwinning version of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1963) captured a similar spirit. In the 1980s, James Ivory made a number of refined costume dramas, which were adapted from the novels of Henry James and E.M. Forster. across the world
Martin Scorsese uncharacteristically entered Ivory territory with The Age of Innocence (1993), adapted from Edith Wharton’s novel. Other leading directors who made rare, and usually successful, ventures into the genre were Stanley Kubrick with Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon (1975); Ingmar Bergman with Fanny and Alexander (1982); Peter Greenaway with The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982); Stephen Frears with Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and Mike Leigh with Topsy-Turvy (1999).
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In Italy, former Neo-Realist film-maker, Luchino Visconti, made two lush historical romances, Senso (1954) and The Leopard (1963). France, which has always produced fine costume dramas, turned out a string of successful historical romances in the 1990s, including Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and The Horseman on the Roof (1995), and Patrice Chéreau’s La Reine Margot (1994).
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Pride and Prejudice (2005) stars Keira Knightley as heroine Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as her love interest, Mr. Darcy.
Jane Austen Mania
Sense and Sensibility (1995), Douglas McGrath’s Emma (1996), Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park (1999), and Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (2005) were released as well as a Bollywood version of the latter, Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice (2004). Coincidentally, the Indian-born Mira Nair directed the seventh version of Vanity Fair (2004).
The 1990s also saw a resurgence of interest in the six novels of Jane Austen. Over a few years, Roger Mitchell’s Persuasion (1995), Ang Lee’s
The Catholic Marguerite de Valois (Isabelle Adjani) marries the Protestant Henri de Navarre (Daniel Auteuil) in a sumptuous scene from Patrice Chéreau’s La Reine Margot (1994).
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Cult Movies The term cult movie denotes any film that, for a reason unallied to its intrinsic artistic quality, has attracted obsessive devotion from a group of fans. The expression “so bad it’s good” is often used to describe many cult movies. Considered one of the worst film directors of all time, Edward D. Wood has gathered a cult following. So cheap were Wood’s films that the spaceships in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) were represented by spinning hubcaps and paper plates. Reefer Madness (1936) was a propaganda film made by a religious group to warn of the dangers of marijuana. In the film, a group of dope peddlers turn clean-cut teenagers into raving lunatics by giving them a puff of “the demon weed.” Reefer Madness remained in obscurity for nearly 40 years until it was rereleased in 1972. The film became a camp hit, especially among the potsmoking young, the very people it had aimed to alarm. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), combining the conventions of science fiction, musicals, and horror films with elements of transvestism and homosexuality, attracted fans to midnight
The poster for Attack of the 50ft. Woman (1957) shows Allison Hayes turned into a giant; she wreaks havoc and eventually crushes her cheating husband to death.
screenings dressed as characters from the film. Russ Meyer’s “nudiecutie” films also gained a cult following, especially Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). Gaining more of a following among gay audiences was John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972), starring drag superstar Divine. Cultists revel in films with ludicrous titles such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) or Attack Of the 50ft. Woman (1957). Occasionally a more mainstream film would catch the imagination of a group of fans, such as This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Rob Reiner’s hilarious mockumentary send-up of the rock’n’roll industry, and Bruce Robinson’s acidly witty Withnail and I (1987), about two “resting” young actors in the 1960s. Christopher Guest plays Nigel Tufnel, co-lead guitarist of an ageing British rock group on tour in the US in Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984).
what to watch 1958 Plan 9 from Outer Space (US) 1965 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (US) 1972 Pink Flamingos (US) 1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (UK) 1987 Withnail and I (UK)
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Disaster The heyday of the disaster movie was the 1970s, the decade in which this sub-genre of action movies reached its zenith. A string of films were released, featuring stellar casts threatened by earthquakes, sinking ships, fires, air crashes, tidal waves, and other catastrophes. The success of Airport (1970) – in which an airliner comes under threat from a bomb – spawned three sequels and the spoof Airplane! (1980). It also initiated a cycle of disaster movies that included Earthquake (1974), a film made in “Sensurround,” which gave audiences the sensation of a minor tremor at certain climactic moments. Taking advantage of this vicarious enjoyment of others in peril, and the latest special effects, was the producer Irwin Allen, dubbed “The Master of Disaster”. In The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, and Ernest Borgnine, among others, try to escape from a capsized luxury liner, while in The Towering Inferno (1974), Paul Newman and Steve McQueen battle the flames to rescue various well-known faces from a burning 138-story hotel. These films actually formed part of a second wave of disaster movies. The first wave included San Francisco (1936), In Old Chicago (1937), and The Rains Came (1939); in these, an earthquake, a fire, and a flood
what to watch 1970 Airport (US) 1972 The Poseidon Adventure (US) 1974 The Towering Inferno (US) 1996 Independence Day (US) 1997 Titanic (US)
featured as the respective climaxes of each film — unlike the films of the 1970s where the disasters were central to the plot. The genre faded after Allen followed his triumphs with the laughable The Swarm (1978), in which Michael Caine battles killer bees, and Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1979), featuring Caine again, now trying to loot the ship. There was a revival of disaster movies from the mid-1990s with Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997), Armageddon (1998), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004), all benefitting from the arrival of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). Jake Gyllenhaal stars in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Roland Emmerich’s big-budget warning about the effects of global warming on the planet.
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Documentary The documentary, or non-fiction film, goes back to the very beginning of cinema history. Since undergoing a rennaissance and becoming more popular than ever at the beginning of the 21st century, the genre could be considered the most enduring of all film forms. John Grierson, the leading force behind the British documentary movement in the 1930s, defined documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality.” Documentaries dominated the cinema in its early years but, after 1908, they became subsidiary to fiction films. Documentary films began to be taken seriously immediately after the Russian Revolution (1917), when propaganda pictures were sent across the vast country on “agitprop” trains to educate the masses about communism. Dziga Vertov edited a series of “agitprop” films between Impoverished fisherman Colman “Tiger” King and his family struggle to survive in Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran (1934).
1922–25 called Kino-Pravda (Cinema Truth). These were created from newsreel sequences to which he added slow or reverse motion, animation, texts, and still photographs. In contrast to the didactic Russian films were American Robert Flaherty’s ethnological documentaries, such as Nanook of the North (1922). The future directors of King Kong (1933), Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, directed two exotic adventure–travel films: Grass (1925), following a Persian tribe during their annual migration, and Chang (1927) about a Thai family’s struggle to survive life with a herd of elephants.
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Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944) was William Wyler’s record of a B-17’s last bombing mission over Germany in World War II.
In Germany, Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), an impressionistic view of a day in the life of the German capital, was shot using cameras concealed in a removal van and in suitcases to catch people unawares. Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), a filmed poem of a Soviet city, displayed all the techniques of the cinema at his disposal. These experimental films were part of an effort to distance documentaries from the style of fiction films.
Joris Ivens’ The Spanish Earth (1937), with a commentary written and spoken by Ernest Hemingway, was one of several films that supported the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9). The outbreak of World War II took both documentary and fiction film-makers, on both sides, into the field of propaganda. The end of the war saw a drop in the output of documentary films in the west. Firstly, they had become too closely associated with wartime propaganda, and secondly, television documentaries were taking their role. It took more than 15 years for the crisis to pass. films of truth
In late 1950s England, the so-called Free Cinema — a series of shorts describing mostly working-class people
social comment
In western Europe and the US, documentaries highlighted social and environmental problems. In the UK, the Crown Film Unit developed under Grierson, who believed that film should have a social purpose. The unit produced some of the most outstanding documentaries of the 1930s, including Alberto Cavalcanti’s Coal Face (1935) and Basil Wright and Harry Watt’s Night Mail (1936), both of which included W.H. Auden’s verse and Benjamin Britten’s music. In the US, Pare Lorentz’s The River (1938) showed the effects of soil erosion in the Mississippi Basin. The film won the best documentary award at the Venice Festival in competition with Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938), which was about the Man with a Movie Camera, Russian film poster, 1929 1936 Berlin Olympics. Dutch-born
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and places — launched the careers of tour — started a trend for Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, “rockumentaries.” In this vein, and Karel Reisz. In France, Alain Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock (1970) Resnais’ career stands out, winning the Oscar for Best began with several Documentary remarkable short art films, among Feature. them Van Gogh (1948), Guernica reportage (1950), and Night Beginning in the and Fog (1955), his late 1960s, there devastating was a gradual documentary about move away from Nazi concentration cinéma verité and Bob Dylan, holding the lyrics of “Subterranean camps. Georges the recording of Homesick Blues”, is the subject of D.A. Pennebaker’s Franju’s powerful reality toward documentary, Don’t Look Back (1967). Blood of the Beasts historical reporting (Le Sang des Bêtes, 1949) showed the and investigative exposés. These included films such as Marcel Ophüls’ daily slaughter of animals in an abattoir juxtaposed with everyday four-and-half-hour The Sorrow and the life in Paris. Other film-makers who have contributed to the cinéma verité (the cinema of truth) movement include Chris Marker and Jean Rouch. The latter believed that the camera’s intervention stimulated people to greater spontaneity. In the US, Direct Cinema was developed in the early 1960s by a group of film-makers, notably Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and the Maysles brothers, Albert and David. Like the cinéma verité film-makers, exponents of Direct Cinema also believed that the camera should unobtrusively record the “truth.” Fred Wiseman, a leading exponent of Direct Cinema, eavesdropped on many institutions such as High School (1968), Juvenile Court (1973), and Welfare (1975). Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967) — a behind-the-scenes look at Bob Dylan’s British concert what to watch 1929 Man with a Movie Camera (USSR) 1955 Night and Fog (France) 1967 Don’t Look Back (US) 1969 The Sorrow and the Pity (France) 2003 Capturing the Friedmans (US)
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No less serious were Pity (1969), which Michael Moore’s builds up a complex picture of France examinations of the under the Occupation. dark side of America: By the same director, Roger and Me (1989), Hotel Terminus: The Bowling for Columbine Life and Times of Klaus (2002), and Fahrenheit Barbie (1988) was a 9/11 (2004). discomforting portrait Documentaries of the “Butcher of now compete with Michael Moore, a sharpshooter literally and figuratively, narrates Bowling for Lyons,” and Claude fiction films at the Columbine (2002), his Oscar-winning exposé Lanzmann’s Shoah box office. Être et Avoir of America’s love affair with guns. (1985) gave an insight (2002), the story of into the Holocaust. Errol Morris’s an inspirational rural school teacher in investigation into a 1976 murder, The France, Spellbound (2002), about children competing in the US National Thin Blue Line (1988), helped free an innocent man from death row, and his Spelling Bee, and Super Size Me (2004), Morgan Spurlock’s take on fast-food Fog of War (2003) put in the confessional the man who was US Defense and obesity in the US, were all Secretary during the Vietnam conflict. international commercial hits. Nicolas Philibert’s Être et Avoir (2002) is a delightful portrait of George Lopez, a dedicated rural schoolmaster, seen here with the impish Jojo.
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Epics Narratives in the epic tradition surpass the ordinary in scale, and are of heroic proportions. This applies to the film genre, too. Epic movies typically feature vast panoramas with hundreds of extras, and are likely to be historical or biblical stories containing spectacular scenes. film inspired Laurence Olivier’s The first film to be worthy of the title of epic was Cabiria (1914), a huge Henry V (1944), made when Britain spectacle made in Italy following the was preparing to launch an invasion of German-occupied France. adventures of a slave girl during the In the 1940s, MGM head Dore Second Punic War, in about 200 bce. Schary was eager to Its great success in America inspired film a novel about D.W. Griffith to Roman dictator Nero, in order to embark on his largeequate Nero with scale productions of The Birth of a Nation modern dictators. (1915) and Intolerance But the hit $8 (1916). But it was million movie Quo Cecil B. DeMille Vadis was not made who became most until 1951. Cleopatra (1963) was panned by critics and avoided by film-goers but made its money back. associated with epics, in a series of films that started filling the screen with The Ten Commandments (1923) It was appropriate that the first feature film in CinemaScope was The Robe and ended with his 1956 remake of the film. Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1926) (1953), a biblical epic that began a featured a spectacular sea battle and renaissance of epics that filled the a breathtaking chariot race (replicated vast screen. Among the biggest and in William Wyler’s version of 1959). best were Howard Hawks’s Land of the Pharaohs (1955), King Vidor’s War Politics and epics and Peace (1956), Stanley Kubrick’s Sometimes, epic films had a topicality. Spartacus (1960), and Anthony Mann’s In the USSR, Sergei Eisenstein’s El Cid (1961). From 1958, Italy Alexander Nevsky (1938), made under the turned out numerous “sword and threat of a Nazi invasion, told how the sandals” movies starring famous hero defended Holy Russia in the 13th bodybuilders such as Americanborn Steve Reeves, who played century against brutal Teutons. The Hercules among other what to watch mythological heroes. 1915 The Birth of a Nation (US) 1938 Alexander Nevsky (USSR)
epic costs
1953 The Robe (US)
Cleopatra (1963) took over four years to shoot in Rome at a cost of around $40 million and nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. Yet studios were still willing to invest in epics.
1956 The Ten Commandments (US) 1959 Ben-Hur (US) 1960 Spartacus (US) 1965 Doctor Zhivago (US) 2000 Gladiator (US)
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David Lean made the leap from small black-and-white British pictures to long, lavish films such as Doctor Zhivago (1965). Akira Kurosawa’s impressive Kagemusha (1980), was completed only with the assistance of his American producers. Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) was the biggest flop of all In the celebrated 20-minute chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959), Charlton Heston, playing the title role, was watched by 8,000 extras in an 18-acre set.
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Akira Kurosawa’s epic Kagemusha (1980) follows a thief who poses as a clan leader to confuse his enemy. It was the most expensive Japanese movie of the time.
time, costing United Artists $44 million and earning only $1.5 million at the box office. A new cycle of epics kicked off with Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995) and continued with Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) and Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004), both of which included computer-generated effects.
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Film Noir Film noir is a term that French film critics originally applied to the dark, doom-laden, black-and-white Hollywood crime dramas of the 1940s, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), which were only seen in French cinemas for the first time after World War II. The roots of film noir can be seen in the German expressionist films of the 1920s and 1930s, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Fritz Lang’s M (1931). The style and subject matter were also influenced by certain French films of the 1930s, including Jean Renoir’s La Chienne (1931) and La Bête Humaine (1938). Both were remade by Fritz Lang as noirs in Hollywood, as Scarlet Street (1945) and Human Desire (1954) respectively. Noir in American society
The low-key lighting, off-center camera angles, and shadowy, claustrophobic atmosphere were imported to the US by emigré film-makers, such as Lang, Robert Siodmak (Phantom Lady, 1944), Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, 1947), Otto Preminger (Fallen Angel, 1945), Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, 1944), and Edgar Ulmer (Detour, 1945), who all made among the best film noirs. The style may have originated in Europe, but the Film poster, 1944 subject matter was found in urban America and inspired by hard-boiled crime writers like James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich. Jane Greer plays a femme fatale who has caught Robert Mitchum in her web in Out of the Past (1947), which was released in the UK as Build My Gallows High.
film noir what to watch 1944 Double Indemnity (US) 1945 Fallen Angel (US) 1946 The Big Sleep (US) 1955 Kiss Me Deadly US)
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passion, deceit, and murder by a beautiful and charming — but amoral and double-dealing — femme fatale. PostNoir and neonoir
By the early 1950s, the classic period of film noir had ended, but there were isolated examples of the genre still 1997 L.A. Confidential (US) being made, such as Robert Aldrich’s Film noir developed during and after Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Orson World War II in the context of postWelles’s Touch of Evil (1958). In the war anxiety and cynicism. The almost 1960s, Jean-Pierre Melville kept film exclusively male antinoir alive in France heroes of the genre, with his crime many of whom were thrillers and, some private eyes, shared years later, a number this malaise. They of post- and neowere disillusioned noirs appeared in the US, notably Robert loners moving through dark Altman’s The Long alleyways, rundown Goodbye (1973), Roman Polanski’s hotels, cheerless bars, and gaudy Chinatown (1974), nightclubs. The Lawrence Kasdan’s detectives, the police, Body Heat (1981), and the villains were the Coen brothers’ Film poster, 1997 all as corrupt and Blood Simple (1983), mercenary as each other. and Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), all of them paying homage hard-boiled anti-heroes to film noirs of the past. Alan Ladd made a name for himself Chiaroscuro as the baby-faced killer in This Gun for Hire (1942), his first film opposite The word chiaroscuro comes from the Italian chiaro (bright) and oscuro (dark). It was first used to refer vampish Veronica Lake. The couple to the use of light and shade in paintings. The bold teamed up again in The Glass Key contrast between light and shade in cinematography (1942), based on Dashiell Hammett’s gave film noirs their look and atmosphere. The effect is seen here in a scene from The Killers (1946), novel, and The Blue Dahlia (1946), featuring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. scripted by Raymond Chandler. Chandler’s cynical private eye Philip Marlowe was portrayed most memorably by Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946). Chandler also cowrote the script for Double Indemnity, the archetypal noir, in which an insurance salesman, Fred McMurray, is led into fraud and murder by the amoral and seductive Barbara Stanwyck. Many film noirs center around a weak man whose life is ruined when caught up in a web of 1958 Touch of Evil (US) 1974 Chinatown (US)
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Gangster The gangster movie came into being as a distinct genre in Prohibition America of the 1920s, when alcohol was banned and racketeers flourished. The crime films of the late 1920s and 1930s were updated with dramatic effect in the 1970s and 1990s mob movies. Although the gangster New York street gang. The film only came into film was shot on location in the Bowery in New York. its own with the Later, in Germany, Fritz introduction of sound — guns blazing, cars Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, the screeching, and the fastGambler (1922), about a paced, tough, and slangy master criminal who tries dialogue — urban crime to take over the world, had provided material foreshadowed the coming for the cinema from the of Hitler. However, the earliest days. One of the first true gangster first was D.W. Griffith’s movies were Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld 17-minute The Musketeers of Film poster, 1931 (1927), starring George Pig Alley (1912) set in a New Bancroft, and Lewis Milestone’s The York slum. A former assistant to D.W. Griffith, Raoul Walsh’s first feature Racket (1928), both of which dealt with organized crime. Sternberg followed film, Regeneration (1915), was about a up with two more crime pictures James Cagney stars as “Rocky” Sullivan, a hoodlum featuring Bancroft, The Dragnet (1928) who proves to be a bad influence on the Dead End Kids and Thunderbolt (1929), his first sound in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) .
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Alain Delon plays Jeff Costello, a cold-blooded hired killer, in his last hours of life, in Jean-Pierre Melville’s ultra-stylish Le Samurai (1967).
film. Rouben Mamoulian’s City Streets (1931), with Gary Cooper as an innocent drawn into the underworld, featured the first sound flashback. new realism
It was the cycle of gangster movies that Warner Bros. produced that achieved a new realism. Some of them were based on real incidents and living hoodlums. Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar (1931), depicting the rise and fall of a gang boss, was closely modelled on Al Capone. The final line, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?” spoken by the dying Edward G. Robinson, was just the beginning of a Hollywood crime wave – 50 gangster movies were made in 1931 alone. Little Caesar made Robinson into a star. James Cagney achieved the same status for William Wellman’s Public
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Enemy (1931), which includes the celebrated scene in which Cagney shoves half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s kisser. There were complaints that these films endowed gangsters with a certain kind of glamour. When Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932) was released, it immediately ran into trouble with the censors. Some of the violent scenes had to be cut and the subtitle “Shame of the Nation” added. One of the great classics of the genre, Scarface, starred Paul Muni as a brutish, childish, and arrogant racketeer. Brian De Palma directed a violent remake in 1983. In 1934, the puritanical Production Code was enforced, stating that “crime will be shown to be wrong and that the criminal life will be loathed and that
what to watch 1931 Little Caesar (US) 1931 Public Enemy (US) 1938 Angels With Dirty Faces (US) 1967 Bonnie and Clyde (US) 1972 The Godfather (US) 1990 GoodFellas (US) 1994 Pulp Fiction (US)
Al Pacino plays the ruthless Cuban refugee turned cocaine-smuggler in Scarface (1983), Brian De Palma’s powerful and violent update of Howard Hawks’ 1932 classic of the same name.
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Takeshi Kitano, the director and star of Fireworks (Hana-Bi, 1997), plays a hard-boiled cop who faces numerous tragedies in his life.
the law will at all times prevail.” Villains could no longer be protagonists, but gangster films were Hollywood’s most profitable movies. So the studios switched to making law enforcement officers the heroes. Cagney and Robinson changed sides, though the films were still about gangsters and no less violent. William Wyler’s Dead End (1937) and Michael Curtiz’s Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) both showed the bad influence a gangster can have on kids. The stars of these films, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney, faced each other in Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Joe Pesci (centre left) plays a brutal gangster in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990). His ruthlessness impresses small-time crook Ray Liotta (foreground).
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Twenties (1939), the Prohibition-era, documentary-style culmination of the Hollywood gangster cycle.
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(Touchez pas au Grisbi, 1954), starring the magisterial Jean Gabin as an ageing gangster, looked forward to Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime dramas of the 1960s. In 1960, both Jean-Luc end of the era Godard and François Truffaut paid World War II saw the demise of the gangster film, which reappeared in homage to the American gangster the 1940s in the guise of movie in Breathless (A film noir (see pages 140–1). Bout de Souffle) and Shoot Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of the Pianist respectively. Death (1947) introduced Akira Kurosawa did Richard Widmark to the same in Japan with the screen as a giggling his two adaptations from Ed McBain cop novels, psychopath killer. Walsh and Cagney The Bad Sleep Well (1960) were reunited in and High and Low (1963). White Heat (1949), There were also the yakuza with the latter playing (Japanese organized crime) films, such as Seijun a mother-fixated Suzuki’s murderer. Roger Tokyo Drifter (1966), Film poster, 1994 Corman picked up the Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles genre in the late 1950s and 1960s with Without Honour and Humanity (1973), Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), with Charles and Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks Bronson, and The St. Valentine’s Day (Hana-Bi, 1997). In the US, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie Massacre (1967). In France, Jacques Becker’s influential Hands off the Loot! and Clyde (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) gave a new direction to the gangster genre. Mean Streets (1973), featuring a group of small-town hoods, established Martin Scorsese’s reputation. He went on to make GoodFellas (1990), Casino (1995), and Gangs of New York (2002), which took street gang warfare in 19th-century New York as its subject. Other directors, such as Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in America, 1984), Warren Beatty (Bugsy, 1991), and the Coen brothers (Miller’s Crossing, 1990) ventured successfully into traditional film gangsterdom, while the UK’s Guy Ritchie, with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), started a trend of British crime movies. Quentin Tarantino made most impact in the genre with Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), both of which looked back to early Warner Bros. heist classics like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
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Horror Horror movies tap into our deepest fears and anxieties, and what is suggested is often more frightening than what is revealed. The German expressionist films of the 1920s, influenced by the English Gothic novel, were among the first examples of the genre. the two most influential films, both made in 1931, were directed by an American, Tod Browning, and an Englishman, James Whale. Browning’s Dracula, helped by Bela Lugosi’s chilling performance, and Whales’s Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, set the style for a cycle of horror films, mainly from Universal Studios. classic chillers
Boris Karloff stars as the monster in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), a performance that was both touching and poetic. The striking make-up was devised by Jack Pierce.
The high watermark of Hollywood horror was the 1930s. The films of the period were informed by a crystallization of influences, which included Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; German expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Nosferatu (1922); and, from the mid1920s, the emigration of European film-makers to Hollywood. However, what to watch 1922 Nosferatu (Germany) 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein (US) 1942 Cat People (US) 1968 The Night of the Living Dead (US) 1973 The Exorcist (US) 1978 Halloween (US) 1998 Ring (Ringu) (Japan) 1999 The Blair Witch Project (US)
Browning had previously made eight horror movies with Lon Chaney. Whale was to contribute two more classic horrors to the genre, The Old Dark House (1932) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The former was another strand of the horror genre — the haunted-house movie, one of the first being The Cat and The Canary (1927) directed by German-born Paul Leni. The studio also created a new creature in The Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941), the latter with the hulking Lon Chaney Jr., who was to reprise the role three more times. Arguably the best of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde films was Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 version (the fifth) starring Fredric March. The same year also saw the release of the Danish Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr, which had an eerie, dreamlike quality. During the 1940s, the real horrors of World War II made monster movies seem innocuous in comparison. The chillers produced by Val Lewton at RKO relied on a suggestion
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Corman’s low-budget independent of horror rather than its depiction. An underlying fear of the supernatural example was George A. Romero, whose horror movies were full of invested each scene in Jacques slavering zombies, Tourneur’s Cat People (1942) from Night of the Living and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and Mark Robson’s Dead (1968) to Land of the Dead (2005). The Seventh Victim (1943). In the 1960s and 1970s, Italy produced low-budget scare a stream of startling Britain’s Hammer Studios baroque horror flicks brought all the notorious directed by Mario Bava monsters back to life in and Dario Argento. gory Technicolor in the The 1970s saw 1950s and 1960s. They a number of gory made stars of Christopher horrors, including Lee and Peter Cushing in Tobe Hooper’s a number of Dracula and Film poster, 1931 exploitative The Texas Frankenstein films. Also in England in the 1960s, Roger Corman Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and William produced a series of garish adaptations Friedkin’s horror hit The Exorcist of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, (1973). John Carpenter’s Halloween taking their tone from Vincent Price’s (1978), Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980), and Wes Craven’s ghoulish hamming. Following Frances Dee features in Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943), an example of RKO’s horror output of the 1940s. The atmosphere, lighting, and exotic setting of Haiti contributed to the film’s disturbing mood.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) all featured terrorized teens and spawned endless inferior sequels. The Blair Witch Project (1999) showed what could be achieved with a tiny budget, with the protagonists filming on two video cameras as if it were a real documentary (see page 78). The one country that has produced more horror films than any other is Japan, which has almost redefined the genre. The most successful of its films was
A woman has a look of pure shock and fear on her face after viewing a mysterious video tape in Hideo Nakata’s Ring (Ringu, 1998).
Hideo Nakata’s Ring (Ringu, 1998), about a video tape that shocks to death those who watch it. The film was remade in the US in 2002 as The Ring. Old favourites such as The Mummy, which first terrified film-goers in 1932, continue to be revisited. The 1999 version benefits from the use of CG1 technology.
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Martial Arts The popularity of martial arts movies grew in the early 1970s due to a growing interest in the west in Eastern philosophy, and the star presence of Bruce Lee. In recent years the genre has been discovered again through films such as Hero (2002). Martial arts movies typically include a series of brilliantly choreographed fights in which the hero is outnumbered by his or her enemies, armed with knives or clubs, and defeats them with his bare hands. The plots are usually simple affairs of good versus evil. The most well-known actor in this field was Bruce Lee, whose reputation is based on only four films: Fists of Fury (1971); The Chinese Connection (1972); Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote and directed himself; and Enter the Dragon (1973), in which he and two others manage to free hundreds of prisoners from an island fortress over which an evil warlord holds sway. Enter the Dragon was Lee’s last completed film before his mysterious death at the age of 32. It was given the Hollywood treatment and made a fortune for Warner Bros. From the 1980s, a plethora of martial arts films appeared, such as Bruce Lee prepares for action in Enter the Dragon (1973), which was the first American-produced martial arts film. It made its star a legend and inspired a generation of film-makers.
what to watch 1971 Fists of Fury (Hong Kong) 1972 The Chinese Connection (Hong Kong) 1973 Enter the Dragon (Hong Kong/US) 1984 The Karate Kid (US) 1991 Once Upon a Time in China (Hong Kong) 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan/H.Kong/US) 2002 Hero (China/Hong Kong) 2003 Kill Bill Volume 1 (US)
Jackie Chan is a fan of both Buster Keaton and Bruce Lee, and successfully combines physical comedy with action.
The Karate Kid (1984) for younger audiences, and those starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (known as “the muscles from Brussels”); Chuck Norris; Steven Seagal; and Jackie Chan, whose comic take on the genre earned him the nickname the “Buster Keaton of Kung-Fu.” But Bruce Lee’s true successor was Jet Li, who began a new wave of kung fu movies in China in the 1990s, such as Once Upon a Time in China (1991). Using outstanding special effects, the martial arts movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) became the highest grossing foreign-language film ever released in America.
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Melodrama In between the male-orientated war films, Westerns, and action movies that Hollywood turned out in the 1930s and 1940s, there was what was called “the woman’s picture.” The genre continued with success into the 1950s and 1960s, with a slightly more feminist slant. The term “melodrama” is often used when referring to Hollywood tearjerkers, whose plots revolve around a woman who is the victim of adultery, unrequited love, or a family tragedy. The heroine would overcome these difficulties or, at least, learn to cope with them. British dramas were often too restrained to become melodramas, though David Lean’s heartbreaking
Brief Encounter (1945), about an illicit, seemingly unconsummated affair, comes close. Among the American directors who instigated these highclass soap operas were Frank Borzage, Edmund Goulding, and John M. Stahl. Borzage’s forte was sentimental romances with sweet and innocent Janet Gaynor (Seventh Heaven, 1927; Street Angel, 1928) and the delicate Trevor Howard bids Celia Johnson goodbye on the platform where they first met in David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), written by Noël Coward.
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what to watch 1934 Imitation of Life (US) 1937 Stella Dallas (US) 1942 Now Voyager (US) 1945 Mildred Pierce (US) 1952 The Life of Oharu (Japan)
and tragic Margaret Sullavan in four movies including Little Man, What Now? (1934), about young lovers fighting against adversity. Goulding, at Warner Bros., provided Bette Davis Julianne Moore stars as a repressed 1950s suburban with four of her best and most typical housewife who falls for her black gardener in Todd melodramas including Dark Victory Haynes’ Douglas Sirk pastiche Far from Heaven (2002). (1939), in which Davis goes blind before dying France (Arletty), radiantly. Stahl pulled Greece (Melina Mercouri), and Italy out all the stops for (Anna Magnani) all Leave Her to Heaven (1945), a lurid tale of a produced their own woman (Gene Tierney) stars, arguably the whose jealousy ruins greatest actress in all those around her. screen melodrama Stahl also directed was Kinuyo Tanaka Film poster, 1939 of Japan. She featured three elegant weepies, in 14 of Kenji Mizoguchi’s films, Magnificent Obsession (1935), Imitation of Life (1934), and When Tomorrow Comes including The Life of Oharu (1952) and (1939), all three remade (the latter as Sansho, the Bailiff (1954), period films Interlude, 1957) by Douglas Sirk, whose that transcended the genre. films of the 1950s provided the peak joan crawford of Hollywood melodrama. The German Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the Spanish Pedro Almodóvar, both gay, embraced the flamboyant style and plot absurdities of the Sirkian soaps, while commenting upon them. In 2002, Todd Haynes made the perfect Sirk pastiche, Far from Heaven. Much of these melodramas depended on the leading lady. Barbara Stanwyck (King Vidor’s Stella Dallas, 1937), Bette Davis (Irving Rapper’s Now Voyager, 1942), and Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (1904–77) was a major star for more (Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, 1945) than 30 years. With her shoulder pads, enormous reigned supreme among the soap eyes, and large mouth widened into “The Crawford Smear”, she often portrayed a woman from the queens, all three sacrificing themselves wrong side of the tracks who claws her way to the for others in the films mentioned and top, sacrificing love and happiness to stay there. many more. While India (Nargis),
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Musicals Born with the coming of sound, the movie musical had its base in vaudeville and in opera. With its brazen blending of fantasy and reality, the musical provided audiences with an accessible and immediate escape from life in the Great Depression, and then beyond. In The Pirate (1948), Judy Garland says, “I know there is a real world and a dream world and I shan’t confuse them.” This is exactly what this and other musicals set out to do, and it was this unreality that gave directors, cameramen, and designers most creative scope within the commercial structure of Hollywood. Musicals could also more easily circumvent censorship than other genres. Scantily dressed women and sexual innuendo almost went unnoticed by the censors
what to watch 1931 Le Million (France) 1933 42nd Street (US) 1934 The Merry Widow (US) 1935 Top Hat (US) 1944 Meet Me in St. Louis (US) 1952 Singin’ in the Rain (US) 1958 Gigi (US) 1961 West Side Story (US) 1972 Cabaret (US)
Lucille Ball, bedecked in plumes of feathers, cracks a whip at a posse of girls dressed as black cats performing a feline dance from Ziegfeld Follies (1946).
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Saxon reserve and self-mockery produced a seductive, piquant combination. The Love Parade (1929), distinguished by its lavish settings, songs integrated into the scenario, and sexual innuendo, set a pattern for screen operettas. At MGM, Lubitsch directed Chevalier and MacDonald again in The Merry Widow (1934), a film that moves from one wondrous moment to the next. Russian-born Rouben Mamoulian directed the couple in the witty and stylish Love Me Tonight (1932). backstage musicals Dance director Busby Berkeley’s water sprites in “By a Waterfall”, a typically extravagant number from the film Footlight Parade (1933).
when within the seemingly harmless confines of the musical. It was the studio system of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s that enabled these lavish dreams to take shape. Each major studio stamped its product with distinguishing aesthetic trademarks, emphasized by their own particular stars, dance directors, designers, and orchestrators.
Coming from the American vaudeville tradition, The Broadway Melody (1929) invented the backstage musical, which was to dominate the genre, on and off, for decades to come. It was also the first all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing movie and the first sound film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. The plots of backstage musicals revolved around fred astaire
european style
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, artists and technicians from Europe flooded into Hollywood, bringing with them a cosmopolitan style and approach. Their musical theatre background was opera and operetta. They knew little of the American tradition of vaudeville, the inspiration behind so many “backstage” musicals. And they did not perceive America as a glamorous enough setting for musical comedy Paris was the glittering backdrop of three musicals the German Ernst Lubitsch made for Paramount — the most European of the studios — which starred Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier. Chevalier’s gallic charm and MacDonald’s Anglo-
Fred Astaire (1899–1987), born Frederick Austerlitz, was the supreme screen dancer who simply “reeked of class.” He walked with a jaunty dance-like strut, and his light, carefree singing voice inspired top songwriters. Teamed with Ginger Rogers for the first time in Flying Down to Rio (1933), there followed another eight black-and-white RKO musicals. Besides the superb dance duets were Astaire’s magical solos. Later, he moved with exceptional ease into the MGM Technicolor musical, his most memorable being The Band Wagon (1953).
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The cast of On the Town (1949) included Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly.
the problems of putting on a show. They followed the auditions, the rehearsals, the bickering, the wisecracking chorus girls, the out-of-town tryouts, the financial difficulties, and the final, spectacular production; this often featured a youngster taking over the lead at the last moment and achieving instant stardom. Unlike in operettas, people only sang and danced within the confines of the show. Another formula was to dispense with plot altogether in favor of a string of statically filmed numbers. The first of these was Hollywood Revue of 1929 in which the song by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown called “Singin’ in the Rain” was first heard. MGM paid three extravagant tributes to Broadway Cyd Charisse plays the tantalizing gangster’s moll and Fred Astaire is a private eye in the “Girl Hunt” ballet from The Band Wagon (1953).
judy garland Born Frances Gumm, Judy Garland (1922–69) gained an MGM contract at the age of 13. She had an early success as Dorothy in the perennial favorite, The Wizard of Oz (1939). After a series of “juvenile” musicals with Mickey Rooney, Garland gained maturity in future husband Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). She was fired by MGM, but made a triumphant comeback in A Star is Born (1954).
impresario Florenz Ziegfeld: The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which featured a gigantic revolving wedding cake; Ziegfeld Girl (1941), which, with clever editing, shows Judy Garland on top of the same wedding cake set; and Ziegfeld Follies (1946), featuring the studio’s biggest stars of the period including Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. great dancers
Astaire was the Film poster, 1955 greatest dancer in the history of cinema. He remains unsurpassed in invention, virtuosity, and elegance. Although he tried various cinematic forms, they never hindered the purity of his dancing, either solo or with his many dancing partners, the most famous and durable of whom was Ginger Rogers. They danced through nine RKO musicals between 1933 and 1939 — all lighthearted comedies of errors set against
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sophisticated, cosmopolitan settings. As a dancer, choreographer, and director, Gene Kelly became one of the most creative forces in the heyday of the musical in the 1950s. Kelly experimented with slow motion, multiple images, animation, and trick photography to extend the appeal of dancing. He showed two sides of his dancing skills in the 18-minute ballet that ends Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951), and in the exuberant title number of Singin’ in the Rain (1952), co-directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen. What distinguished the films that burst forth from MGM by directors such as Donen, Kelly, and Minnelli was the integration of musical numbers into the film’s narrative theme — in these features, song, dance, and music no longer punctuated the story, but actually worked to advance the plot. Minnelli’s sumptuous Gigi (1958) was among the very last musicals especially written for the screen, excepting the stream of colorful Elvis Presley vehicles in the 1960s. stage adaptations
In the early days of the musical, studios lavished fortunes on celluloid versions of Broadway shows in the hope of repeating their success, but these bore little resemblance to the
The girls sing an exuberant number from Grease (1978), the popular nostalgic high-school musical set in the 1950s, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
stage originals. More faithful adaptations began in 1950, with MGM’s Annie Get Your Gun. Guys and Dolls (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), The King and I (1956), South Pacific (1958) and, in the ’60s, West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music (1965) followed. However, after the flop of Hello, Dolly (1969), the musical — like the Western — became a rare phenomenon. A limited revival of the genre came in the 1970s with Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972), which captured the essence of Berlin in the early ’30s, and Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978), the films in which John Travolta made his name. musicals abroad
The Hollywood musical had a little influence on the few notable musicals made outside the US. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Grigori Alexandrov made four Hollywoodstyle musicals, the best known being Jazz Comedy (1934). Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort In Moulin Rouge (2001), Ewan McGregor is a poet and Nicole Kidman a courtesan, both singing 20th century pop music in the Paris of 1899.
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(1967) was a direct homage to the MGM musical — Gene Kelly was persuaded to feature — but his The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which all the dialogue was sung, was intrinsically French. Up until the mid-1960s, British musicals were mostly rather genteel affairs that had little impact outside the UK. That all changed with USborn Richard Lester’s two Beatles’ movies, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965). There followed Carol Reed’s Oscar-winning Oliver! (1968), Catherine Zeta-Jones plays murderous, vampish flapper Velma Kelley in Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Bob Fosse’s jazzstage Broadway musical Chicago (2002).
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Ken Russell’s Busby Berkeley parody The Boy Friend (1971), and Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (1976). Other examples were few and far between until Parker’s Evita (1996). Interest in the American musical was retained in Baz Luhrmann’s visually extravagant Moulin Rouge (2001), and in further reproductions of Broadway hits such as Chicago (2002) and The Producers (2005). Sadly, musicals written directly for the screen, which made it a cinematic genre independent of the theatre, have become almost obsolete.
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Propaganda Produced with the intention of persuading viewers of a particular belief or ideology, propaganda films have been used by governments around the world since the early 20th century. Though documentary is the most popular form, drama is also used to convey a “message.” The manipulative power of film was purposes. At the same time, the films recognized from the earliest days of were revolutionary in form. Between cinema; part of its effectiveness came the wars, many British documentaries from the mistaken explored social belief that the evils, such as Housing camera cannot Problems (1935). In the US, the state lie. Propaganda tried to sell the New films came of age during World War I, Deal — the reform when every major of the economy belligerent power during the commissioned Depression — to official films showing Westfront 1918 (1930), directed by G.W. Pabst, the public with focuses on the lives of four World War I soldiers its enemy in an Pare Lorentz’s and highlights the reality of life at the front. unfavorable light. The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936). In Germany, Kuhle political aims Wampe (1932), which was co-written Vladimir Lenin, the head of the Soviet by playwright Bertolt Brecht, focused state, realized at the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917 that film was the most important of all the arts because it could educate the masses — many of whom were illiterate — to support Bolshevik aims. Almost all the great silent Soviet films of the 1920s by Sergei Eisenstein, V.I. Pudovkin, and Alexander Dovzhenko, as well as Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda (literally Cinematic Truth) newsreels (see page 134) were made for propaganda In To Whom Does the World Belong? (Kuhle Wampe,1932), children from Berlin’s tent city look up to see an unemployed young man about to throw himself off a building. The film was banned by the Nazis.
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“Cinema is not an extension of revolutionary action. Cinema is and must be revolutionary action in itself.” cuban film-maker santiago álvarez
Film poster, 1943
on the effects of unemployment, while G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930) showed the horror of life in the trenches. However, after the Nazis took over the film industry in 1934, anti-Semitic films serving the government’s policies became de rigueur. Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, The Triumph of the Will (1935), earned her the reputation of Germany’s foremost ideological propagandist. World War II and Beyond
During World War II, the British director Humphrey Jennings made documentaries about the effect of the war on ordinary people. His London Can Take It! (1940) and Listen To Britain (1942) did much to influence public
opinion in America. When the US entered the war in 1941, a stream of anti-Nazi dramas were produced, with titles such as Hitler’s Madmen (Douglas Sirk, 1943) and Hitler’s Children (Edward Dmytryk, 1943). Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and even Donald Duck were recruited into battle against the enemy in Walt Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943). Frank Capra, John Huston, William Wellman, William Wyler, and John Ford all served with the American Office of War Information, making important contributions to the war effort, most importantly in Capra’s series Why We Fight (1942–45). During the Cold War, the efforts of the US Information Service to make anti-Soviet Film poster, 1967 documentaries, and the various crude fiction films that replaced Nazis with communists, had little effect in the liberal climate of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, some of the most effective propaganda films of the period were anti-American, including the shorts by Cuban Santiago Álvarez, such as Hanoi, Tuesday 13th (1967). what to watch 1935 The Triumph of the Will (Germany) 1936 The Plow that Broke the Plains (US) 1943 Der Fuehrer’s Face (US)
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Science Fiction and Fantasy In science fiction and fantasy films, imaginary worlds and scenarios are constructed — often with the aid of special effects — to enable the improbable to become possible. Themes within these films include alien life forms, space/time travel, and futuristic technology. Jean Cocteau, who directed the magical Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête, 1946), remarked that “the cinema is a dream we all dream at the same time.” This is no more so than in science fiction (sci-fi) and fantasy films. The Wizard of Oz (1939) makes the distinction between reality and fantasy by showing Dorothy’s dream domain in glorious Technicolor and her home in Kansas in monochrome. Yet the message of the film is, “there’s no place like home.” Fantasy adventures go beyond the limitations of our minds to an imagined, but not always preferable, world. Similarly, the worlds that science fiction creates are often warped.
what to watch 1926 Metropolis (Germany) 1939 The Wizard of Oz (US) 1960 The Time Machine (US) 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (US) 1972 Solaris (Russia) 1977 Star Wars (US) 1999 The Matrix (US)
Many fantasy adventures are about displacement, where a character is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Examples include Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial (1982), and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990). special effects
To quote the motto of the Star Trek series, both science fiction and fantasy films “boldly go where no man has gone before” and, as a result, are more reliant than any other genre on special effects (SFX). In the wake of Star Wars (1977), the art of special effects entered a new age. Computer-generated imagery (CGI) soon dominated most of the science fiction and fantasy American blockbusters from the 1980s, often becoming their raison d’être. Ironically, the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix (1999), heavily dependent on CGI, is a cautionary tale about a world taken over by computers. early sCi-Fi Johnny Depp plays the naïve man-made boy in Edward Scissorhands (1990), Tim Burton’s comic-tragic satire, hatched from an idea the director had as a child.
Nonetheless, audiences still delight in films from the pre-digital days of cinema. The space travel genre was launched by George Méliès’s A Trip
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to the Moon (1902), based tells of a mad scientist on a story by Jules Verne who utilizes a magic (see page 18). Méliès went ray (an effect created on to film more of Verne’s with stop-motion visionary novels, many photography) on the of which — such as citizens of Paris, Twenty Thousand Leagues causing them to freeze under the Sea and A Journey in different positions. To The Center of the Earth After the influential — were filmed and Metropolis (1926), Fritz refilmed over the years. Lang embarked on The Russian cinema’s Woman in the Moon (1929), first venture into about a scientist who science fiction was believes the moon is rich Film poster, 1956 Yakov Protazanov’s in gold and tries to corner the market. Raoul Walsh’s Aelita (1924), a delightful didactic comedy-drama featuring The Thief of Bagdad (1924), starring two Russians who land on Mars and Douglas Fairbanks, set new Hollywood organize a Soviet-style revolution standards for special effects, which still against the autocratic Queen Aelita. astonish despite Alexander Korda’s It would be many years before Russia impressive 1940 Technicolor remake. returned to the genre with Andrei Fairbanks climbs a magic rope, braves the Valley of Monsters, rides a flying Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979), which both manage to be horse, and sails over the rooftops on a technologically convincing with magic carpet. only minimum special effects. Michael Rennie as Klaatu is brought back to life In France, René Clair’s first film, by his robot Gort, watched by earthling Patricia Neal in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). The Crazy Ray (Paris Qui Dort, 1923),
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The starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the first of a successful run of ten movies derived from the cult TV series.
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war sci-fi classic, features an alien who warns that, unless nuclear weapons are destroyed, his race will annihilate Earth.
The 1930s and 1940s were not very rich in science fiction or fantasy monster movies movies. However, there were three In Japan, a decade after the horrors superlative adaptations of H.G. Wells of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla novels: James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1954) was the first of a series of (1933), in which Godzilla movies in Claude Rains made which many of the his first screen creatures were the (dis)appearance; result of nuclear William Cameron radiation. They Menzies’ Things to were influenced by Come (1936), about an The Beast from 20,000 apocalyptic world war Fathoms (1953), about and the undemocratic a dinosaur revived society that results; by an atomic blast, and Lothar Mendes’ which spawned “Get ready to crumble,” as Godzilla The Man Who Could countless imitations. battles with a UFO that turns into a strange Work Miracles (1936), The monster was monster in Takao Okawara’s Godzilla, 2000. animated by Ray in which a bashful clerk is granted the power to do what Harryhausen, the most celebrated he wishes by the gods. H.G. Wells of all SFX men, whose crowning also provided the source material for achievement was Jason and the War of the Worlds (1953) — remade by Argonauts (1963). Spielberg in 2005 — and The Time Machine (1960). Both were produced sci-fi writers by Hungarian-born special-effects Unlike the low-budget sci-fi that expert George Pal, whose Destination dominated the 1950s, Stanley Moon (1950) began a stream of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Hollywood sci-fi movies in the 1950s, revolutionized space travel films with many of them metaphors for the Cold its dazzling technology. The screenplay War. Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth was written by Arthur C. Clarke, and Stood Still (1951), an intelligent, antiadapted from one of his short stories.
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Other science fiction writers whose novels have been adapted into films include Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, 1972), and Isaac Asimov (I, Robot, 2004). Many of the novels and short stories of the prolific Philip K. Dick have become films, including Blade Runner (1982) and Minority Report (2002). Alien tripod fighting machines invade the Earth in War of the Worlds (2005), Steven Spielberg’s version of H.G. Wells’s classic 1898 futuristic novel.
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Time travel became popular in the 1980s with Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) — the first in a fantasy trilogy with Brazil (1985) and 1988’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen — James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future (1985), paradigms for future science fiction and fantasy movies.
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Serials The serial was a multi-episode, usually action-adventure, film. It was shown in cinemas in weekly instalments, and each chapter ended on a cliffhanger. It is the only obsolete cinematic genre, though some of its features are evident in television soap operas and mini-series. what to watch 1914 The Perils of Pauline 1936 Flash Gordon 1938 The Lone Ranger
“Buster” Crabbe’s most famous role was as Flash Gordon, whose adventures in outer space thrilled audiences through three serials in 1936, 1938, and 1940.
reputation with The Spiders (1919–20), which featured the use of mirrors, hypnosis, underground chambers, and arch criminals, elements that would often reappear throughout his oeuvre. In the US, 28 serials were made in 1920 alone. With the coming of sound, the main studios started producing serials of better quality. These included Universal’s From the earliest days Flash Gordon (from of film, serials were an 1936) with Larry important ingredient of “Buster” Crabbe in cinema programs. The the title role, battling his nemesis Ming the Adventures of Kathlyn (1913) Merciless (Charles was the first true serial, Film poster (1938) Middleton). At but a year later director Louis Gasnier caused a sensation with $350,000, it was the most expensive The Perils of Pauline (1914), starring serial ever made, three times the average Pearl White. As the most famous of serial budget. Crabbe also starred in “serial queens,” she endured all sorts Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939). Other hit serials of the 1930s were of indignities from villains, such as being tied to a railroad track. Dick Tracy, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and In France, Louis Feuillade was Hawk of the Wilderness. During World War II, Captain America, Superman, and directing serials such as Fantômas (1913–14), about a master criminal. Batman all faced German or Japanese villains. In the 1950s, mainly thanks to His greatest triumph was Les Vampires (1915–16), which had a dreamlike the advent of television, the output of quality that was admired as much by serials began to diminish. The Western the general public as by the surrealists. serial Blazing the Overland Trail was the In Germany, Fritz Lang made his last serial ever produced, in 1956.
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Series Series can either be sequels (The Godfather: Part II), prequels (the Star Wars saga), or films with different plots but the same characters (the Harry Potter cycle). The convention of putting numerals after film titles, as in Spider-Man 2 (2004), did not begin until the 1970s. Before the 1970s, feature film sequels were rare, yet favorite characters kept on reappearing in numerous films. One of the first was Tarzan, who initially swung into view in 1918 played by Elmo Lincoln in Tarzan of the Apes. Several other silent Tarzans appeared before Johnny Weissmuller’s famous yodelling call was heard in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). Weissmuller, a former US Olympic swimming champion, went on to make 19 Tarzan movies over the next 16 years. Series made up a significant proportion of Hollywood’s B picture output from the 1930s. Among the longest running were Andy Hardy (1938–58), Sherlock Holmes (1939–46), Harrison Ford as the eponymous hero (right) and his archeologist father, Sean Connery, are bound together in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Jones’ third adventure.
what to watch 1931–49 Charlie Chan films 1951–65 Don Camillo films 1962–89 Zatoichi films 1962–
James Bond films
Dr. Kildare (1938–47), Charlie Chan (1931–49), and the gang of lovable juvenile delinquents in their various incarnations as The Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids, and The Bowery Boys (1938–58). Notable series from the 1960s onwards included The Pink Panther and Planet of the Apes. The French-Italian co-produced series Don Camillo (1951–65), the story of a parish priest in conflict with a communist mayor, was a major international hit. In England, the broad Carry On… farces ran from 1958–78, while the James Bond thriller series began with Dr. No in 1962, making it the longest ever continuing series in the English language. The ingredients of the successful Bond recipe, which remains virtually unchanged to this date, are exotic locales, a bevy of (mostly treacherous) beautiful women, and an evil genius who wishes to take over the world. But in terms of sheer numbers, you can’t beat the Japanese series Zatoichi, in which the hero, a blind swordsman, featured in 27 films between 1962 and 2003.
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Teen Movies In the 1950s, producers first recognized a market for youth-oriented films, the number of which grew steadily until a dramatic increase in the 1980s. Often set in a school, these movies invariably showed teens trying to attract the opposite sex and attempting to escape adult control. Teenagers were typically patronized what to watch and ridiculed in films made before the 1955 Rebel Without a Cause (US) 1950s. An example was the extremely 1973 American Graffiti (US) popular Andy Hardy series of the 1930s 1985 The Breakfast Club (US) and early 1940s, which starred Mickey Rooney as Hughes, including a happy-go-lucky The Breakfast Club adolescent getting (1985) and Pretty into scrapes. in Pink (1986). The growing teen Although most audience of the 1950s teen stars fade began to identify with from view as they new stars like Marlon (and their fans) Brando (The Wild One, mature, a few 1954) and James Dean have gone on Film poster, 1959 (Rebel Without a Cause, to productive 1955). In the next decade, a series careers, including Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, and James Spader. Actors such of “beach party” movies came out, as Drew Barrymore and Scarlett while Roger Corman’s bike and LSD films appealed to a hipper youth Johansson have established themselves audience. In the 1970s, George Lucas’ as bone fide 21st-century stars. But seminal American Graffiti (1973) sparked already Lindsay Lohan is beating a off other “rites-of-passage” pictures. path for the next generation... Then came the so-called “Brat Pack,” Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly a group of young actors associated Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall star in John Hughes’ Brat Pack flick, The Breakfast Club (1985). with the films of writer director John
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Thrillers Thrillers are gripping yarns of suspense, where the tension is created by placing one or more characters in a threatening situation from which they have to escape. This type of film can cross several genres to produce action, science fiction, and even Western thrillers. It was Alfred Hitchcock, “The Master of Suspense,” who perfected one of the fundamental thriller types in North by Northwest (1959): the picaresque pursuit. This is usually a mystery involving spies or terrorists, in which the protagonist is the pursued or the pursuer, attempting to solve a crime or prevent a disaster. Among the large number of films that could be called Hitchcockian are Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966), and several thrillers by Brian De Matt Damon and Julia Stiles star in Palma, particularly Obsession (1976). The Bourne Supremacy (2004), the second thriller in the Another Hitchcockian theme is series about special agent Jason Bourne. the “woman-in-peril” psychological thriller and Phillip Noyce’s Dead as epitomized by Psycho, Calm (1989), where Nicole (1960). Other potent Kidman fights for her life examples include Gaslight on a yacht after picking (1940 and 1944), in which up a crazed castaway. In the 1970s, there a husband drives his wife slowly insane in order to emerged a number gain an inheritance; of post-Watergate Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, conspiracy thrillers, Wrong Number (1948), including Alan Pakula’s featuring an invalid The Parallax View (1974), (Barbara Stanwyck) who a disturbing no-holdsoverhears a murder plot barred look at a political Film poster, 1966 on the phone — against assassination cover-up. herself; Terence Young’s Wait Until The conspiracy thriller reappeared in Dark (1967), in which Audrey Hepburn the 1990s with films such as Phillip Noyce’s Patriot Games (1992) and Clear plays a blind woman left alone in an apartment and terrorized by gangsters; and Present Danger (1994), both with Harrison Ford as an intrepid CIA what to watch agent. It continued with Doug Liman’s 1949 The Third Man (UK) The Bourne Identity (2002) and its sequel, 1960 Psycho (US) starring Matt Damon as an amnesiac 1991 The Silence of the Lambs (US) agent, as well as Fernando Meirelles’ 2005 The Constant Gardener (UK/Germany) The Constant Gardener (2005).
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Cary Grant is pursued by a mysterious crop-dusting plane that suddenly appears from nowhere in North by Northwest (1959), one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated set pieces.
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Underground The term “underground” as a film genre originated in the US toward the end of the 1950s. It applied to US experimental film-making, which was rooted in the European avant-garde but was strongly connected to the American Beat movement that emerged at that time. In the 1940s, a period of experimental film-making began in the US. Encouragement came from a number of artists and film-makers from Europe, among them the New York-based Hans Richter and Marcel Duchamp, and Oskar Fischinger in Los Angeles. Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) was one of the first independent underground films. Dealing with a suicide, it is famous for its fourstride sequence: from beach to grass to mud to pavement to rug. In the early 1950s, younger directors such as Stan Brakhage emerged, working in a similar mode. The films they made are often described as “psychodramas.” In 1955, the magazine Film Culture was of crucial importance to the new US cinema. Guns of the Trees (1964) was one of a number of feature-length films that was inspired by the French New Wave. Toward the end of 1960, the New American Cinema Group was formed, favoring films that were what to watch 1943 Meshes of the Afternoon (US) 1967 Wavelength (Canada/US) 1968 Flesh (US)
Maya Deren stars in her own Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), a study of feminine angst. The film rejects the traditional narrative structure in favour of a dream logic.
“rough, unpolished but alive.” Many of them, such as Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) embraced Hollywood even as it defied its narrative traditions by using clips of “tits ‘n’ sand” movies. The mode for campiness was exploited by Andy Warhol in films such as Blow Job (1963). A year later, Kenneth Anger’s gay biker film Scorpio Rising was released, and it became a seminal movie in US underground cinema. In films such as Wavelength (1967), Michael Snow attempted to redefine our way of seeing by exploring new time and space concepts.
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War Battle scenes and war have been the subject of films since the beginning of cinema, but as a genre, war movies came of age during World War I. Often, they take an anti-war stance, but equally they can be made to stir up popular support and even serve as propaganda. a great star, Rex Ingram’s The Four War films emerged as a major film genre after the outbreak of World Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), had War I. The most significant was D.W. a strong anti-war message. However, Griffith’s Hearts of the World (1918), it was also so anti-German that some which used documentary material and thought it incited hatred between a studio reconstruction of nations, and the film was banned in Germany a French village occupied by “beastly huns” led by and withdrawn from ruthless German officer circulation for years. Erich von Stroheim. War films were Charlie Chaplin’s revived in the mid-1920s with King Vidor’s The Shoulder Arms (1918), set partly in the trenches, Big Parade (1925), Raoul was released only a Walsh’s What Price Glory? few weeks before the (1926), and William armistice, drawing Wellman’s Wings (1927), howls of protest. Yet the first film to win the Film poster, 1927 Best Picture Oscar. At it was Chaplin’s biggest triumph up to that time, proving that the beginning of sound, cinemas were comedy could provide a much-needed flooded with war films, and in 1930 release from tragic events. alone there appeared Howard Hawks’ After the armistice, war films all The Dawn Patrol, Howard Hughes’ but ceased. Exceptions were Abel Hell’s Angels, James Whale’s Journey’s Gance’s J’Accuse (1919), described by End, and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet the director as “a human cry against A soldier stands in the war cemetery before the dead the bellicose din of armies.” The film of World War I rise up from their graves to accuse the that launched Rudolph Valentino as living in Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919).
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A Royal Air Force aircraft in action in The Battle of Britain (1969), Guy Hamilton’s all-star tribute to the 1942 film The First of the Few.
on the Western Front, a portrayal from In Which We Serve (1942) and Carol the German perspective. In Germany Reed’s The Way Ahead (1944) were itself, G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930) deemed more realistic but more classconscious than their US counterparts. depicted the futility of life in the trenches. But as the memories of the Unlike the usual war saga, war and the mood of anti-militarism Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) that marked these films began to fade, concentrated on the fatigue and so the subject became less popular. anxiety that the common soldier Jean Renoir’s La Grande suffered. The heroics were left to Errol Flynn and John Illusion (1937), the first war film for some years, was a Wayne, who were depicted moving anti-war statement winning the war almost that did not actually single-handedly. include any fighting. Post-war films were Hawks’ Sergeant York allowed to be a little more (1941), based on the critical of the military establishment. Mark true story of World War Robson’s Home of the Brave I’s most decorated US soldier (played by Oscar (1949) courageously took winner Gary Cooper), on the subject of racism Film poster for Peter Weir’s WWII drama Gallipoli (1981) in the US army, while few was intended to inspire American audiences as the country punches were pulled in Attack! (1956), Robert Aldrich’s powerful indictment emerged from isolationism to join the fight against the Axis powers. of life in the military. World War II has always been Japan, which had made jingoistic the most popular period for war genre films during the war, concentrated on film-makers because the issues seemed more pacifist themes after it, almost as an act of atonement. One of the more straightforward than in most first, Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese wars. After the US entered the war, Hollywood turned out a stream of Harp (1956), is a cry of anguish for flag-waving action features, as did the those that suffered during World War UK. British films like Noël Coward’s II. A year later, Stanley Kubrick’s anti-militarism was revealed in the what to watch bitterly ironic and moving World 1919 J’Accuse (France) War I drama, Paths of Glory. In 1957 Paths of Glory (US) contrast, the 1960s saw a number 1979 Apocalypse Now (US) of war epics celebrating Allied 1981 Das Boot (Germany) victories, such as The Longest Day 1987 Full Metal Jacket (US) (1962), The Battle of the Bulge (1965), 1998 Saving Private Ryan (US) and The Battle of Britain (1969).
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Robert Altman’s iconoclastic M*A*S*H (1970), though set in Korea, was plainly a reference to the Vietnam War. The only US film on the subject made during the Vietnam War was The Green Berets (1968), a gung-ho action movie starring John Wayne. It was only in the 1970s that the conflict was properly explored in movies. Among the most effective of these films were Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). However, film-makers constantly returned to World War II for inspiration. From Germany, there came Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981), which followed the efforts of a U-boat crew to survive, and The American soldiers’ assault on a Normandy beach is realistically filmed in the celebrated opening sequence from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998).
173 George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube star in David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999), set during the 1991 Gulf War.
the spectacular Stalingrad (1993). Russia, which had earlier produced such remarkable war films as Grigori Chukrai’s The Ballad of a Soldier (1959) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962), continued the tradition with Elem Klimov’s powerful Come and See (1985). In America, there was an 18-year gap between Sam Fuller’s tough, symbolic The Big Red One (1980) and other distinguished WWII dramas such as Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, with its opening 30-minute soldier’s eye view of battle. The 1991 Gulf War was examined in Edward Zwick’s Courage Under Fire (1996), and in David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999). Whichever conflict is being portrayed, the eternal truths of war lend a similarity to all war movies.
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Westerns The Western is not only the oldest of all film genres, but it is the only home-grown American art form. From the 1920s to the early 1960s, it was the Western’s popularity that consolidated Hollywood’s dominance of the global film market. The historical setting of the Western However, some Westerns extend back is traditionally the 1850s to the 1890s, to the time of America’s colonial era a period that saw the California and or forward to the mid-20th century. Dakota gold rushes, the American The geographical location is usually west of the Mississippi river, north Civil War, the building of the transof the Rio Grande continental railway, the Indian wars, river, and south the opening up to the border with Mexico. of the cattle ranges, the range wars, The most and the steady fundamental theme spread westwards of the Western is of homesteaders, the civilizing of the Film poster for the first Western, released in 1903 farmers, and wilderness — the immigrants. It also taming of nature, saw the virtual extermination lawbreakers, and “savages” (usually “Red Indians”). Among the iconic of the buffalo and most of the indigenous Native American tribes. elements are remote forts and vast ranches, and the small-town saloon, John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) was a milestone jail, and main street — where the in the history of the Western and was the first to be shot in Utah’s Monument Valley. inevitable showdown between
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The patriarchal John Wayne and his adopted son Montgomery Clift (in his first film) have an uncomfortable relationship in Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948).
hero and villain takes place. However, many of the best Westerns have a psychological complexity that stretches beyond the simplistic good versus evil premise towards the dimensions of Greek tragedy. birth of the western
Before the beginning of cinema in 1895, there were the popular Wild West shows of “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the frontier stories of Zane Grey, Owen Wister’s influential The Virginian — the first modern Western novel, published in 1902 — and dime novels that
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narrated the exploits of heroes on both sides of the law: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Bat Masterson, the James Brothers, and Billy the Kid. As the newspaperman says in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So, by the time of the first narrative screen Western, Edward S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), the legends of the West had already become embedded in American popular culture. That ten-minute film launched the film career of “Bronco Billy” Anderson, who became the first Western hero. Other cowboy stars followed, the most famous being W.S. Hart and Tom Mix. Also in the early 1900s, D.W. Griffith was making Westerns, mainly featuring red devils thirsty for the blood of whites, such as the two-reeler The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913). The next year, Cecil B. DeMille’s first film, The Squaw Man, became the first feature shot entirely
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movi e g e n r e s Clint Eastwood stars as “Blondie” in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), the third and last of the Spaghetti Westerns he made for Sergio Leone.
directors of Westerns, and ensured John Wayne’s rise from B-movie obscurity to A-list stardom. Most of the leading Hollywood directors made Westerns, including the German-born Fritz Lang with The Return of Frank James (1940), Western Union (1941), and Rancho Notorious (1952); and Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz with Dodge City (1939), Virginia City (1940), and Santa Fe Trail (1940), all three starring Errol Flynn. in Hollywood. More crucial to the In this rich period, Ford made his development of the genre was James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923), resplendent Cavalry trilogy: Fort Apache an epic, two-and-a-half-hour long (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), reconstruction of one of the great and Rio Grande (1950), romantic visions of the Old West with John Wayne at 19th-century treks across America. Its huge success led to the increase of their centre. Wayne also starred in Western production, and allowed John Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948), in Ford to make the far superior and which his muscular even longer The Iron macho security was Horse the following contrasted with Montgomery Clift’s year, which was shot mainly on nervy angularity, location in Nevada. creating a special tension. Hawks a golden age went on to make Westerns were three more fine enhanced by the Westerns with coming of sound, Wayne, the best Film poster, 1952 but the golden age being Rio Bravo (1959). Anthony Mann’s five films began with John Ford’s Stagecoach starred a new, tougher James Stewart, (1939), beautifully shot in the now familiar Monument Valley, Utah. and included Bend of the River (1952) It raised the genre to artistic status, and The Man from Laramie (1955); these stamped Ford as one of the great were among the most distinguished Westerns of the 1950s. Others include what to watch Bud Boetticher’s seven taut Westerns 1939 Stagecoach (US) with Randolph Scott, one of which 1955 The Man From Laramie (US) was Seven Men from Now (1956); Henry 1956 The Searchers (US) King’s The Gunfighter (1950), Fred 1960 The Magnificent Seven (US) Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952); George 1962 The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (US) Stevens’s Shane (1953); William Wyler’s 1969 The Wild Bunch (US) The Big Country (1958); and a very few 1969 Once Upon a Time in the West (Italy/US) in which Native Americans were 1992 Unforgiven (US) treated sympathetically, such as
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Delmer Daves’s Broken Arrow (1950) and Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954). decline of the genre
In 1950, Hollywood produced 130 Westerns. A decade later this was down to 28. There are several explanations for this decline: the increase in Western television series, which replaced the many B-Western features produced for the cinema; the fact that the ideology that formed the Western was becoming outmoded in the new permissive society; and the rise of the more violent Spaghetti Westerns, which brought stardom for Clint Eastwood. These Italianproduced films were influenced in plot and tone by Japanese samurai films, as was John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960), a transplanting of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954). The genre was kept alive by Sam Peckinpah’s nostalgic but harsh views of the Old West, and revisionist Westerns like Arthur Penn’s Little Jake Gyllenhaal (left) and Heath Ledger star in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on E. Annie Proulx’s short story.
Director and star Kevin Costner carries his dead wife (Mary McDonnell) in Dances with Wolves (1990), in which Costner’s Unionist soldier is adopted by a Sioux tribe.
Big Man (1970). However, studios considered the Western a moribund genre, which accounts for Kevin Costner’s long battle to make Dances with Wolves (1990). His patience paid off, however, when it won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. Two years later, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven also won the Best Picture award. In a modern twist on the genre, Brokeback Mountain (2005) features two cowboys in love.
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In an age of internationalism, the cinema has proved itself the most international of the arts. Just as more and more people are visiting the Taj Mahal, the Kremlin, the Eiffel Tower, Mount Fuji, and the Sistine Chapel, so growing numbers of movie lovers have come to appreciate Indian, Russian, French, Japanese, and Italian films, not to mention the rich output of China, South America, Spain, Scandinavia, and Iran. In the 1890s, early cinema came into being almost simultaneously in the US, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Within 20 years, cinema had spread to all parts of the globe, had developed a sophisticated technology, and become a major industry. Today, both the sheer diversity of world cinema and the number of films produced is staggering. This chapter attempts to cover as many countries and as many significant films as possible but a book of any size cannot hope to include everything. (The omission of countries, such as the Netherlands and some from South-East Asia, is addressed in this introduction.) In the 1920s, the general public went to see silent movies from many parts of the world. But a wider appreciation of world cinema by western audiences really began after World War II, when Italian, Japanese, German, and French motion pictures were once more available. The increasing awareness of the quality of these films was aided by the recognition given each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine (1946) was the first to receive a special award in 1947. In 1956, Federico Rosario Flores plays the bullfighter, Lydia, who is badly gored in a corrida and remains in a coma in Pedro Almodóvar’s sensitive and intriguing Talk To Her (2002).
Fellini’s La Strada (1954) became the first winner of the new Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language (as in non-English language) Film. In the last few decades, it has gradually become recognized that entertainment is not the preserve of Hollywood. Gangster movies, horror films, whodunits, Westerns, war epics, melodramas, musicals, and love stories are produced all over the globe. A glance at the long list of American remakes of “foreign” films will confirm that Hollywood has drawn inspiration from world cinema. Neither is it oneway traffic. There are film noirs of Jean-Pierre Melville that are based on the American model, and countless quotes in French New Wave films that come from Hollywood movies. Witness the popularity of Spaghetti Westerns and the influence of US movies on German directors Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. From its earliest days, Hollywood has benefited from an influx of gifted stars from abroad. From Sweden came Greta Gustafsson (Garbo) and Ingrid Bergman (mother of Isabella Rossellini). From Germany came Maria Magdelena Von Losch (Marlene Dietrich) and from Austria, Hedy Kiesler (Hedy Lamarr). Italy gave America Sofia Scicolone (Sophia Loren), while Egypt supplied Michel
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The blind toddler in Kurdish-Iranian Bahman Ghobadi’s devastating picture of the effects of war (in this case the second Gulf War) on children in Turtles Can Fly (2004).
Shahoub (Omar Sharif). From Brazil came Maria do Carmo Miranda Da Cunha (Carmen Miranda). Over the past few decades we have grown used to seeing stars like Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Isabella Rossellini, Gérard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, Penelope Cruz, Audrey Tatou, and Jackie Chan move with ease between English-speaking and foreign films Directors, too, brought their expertise to Hollywood: Victor Sjöström (Sweden), Fritz Lang (Germany), Billy Wilder (Austria),
Jean Renoir (France), Miloš Forman (Czechoslovakia) to name but a few. One of the first European directors to have careers on two continents was Louis Malle, who made Atlantic City (1981) in the United States and returned to his native France for Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987). In recent years, there has been even more crossfertilization: a New Zealander, Peter Jackson, directed The Lord of the Rings trilogy; and a Mexican, Alfonso Cuarón, directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). The supreme example is the Film poster for the moving Taiwanese-born Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff, 1954) by Japanese Ang Lee, who director Kenji Mizoguchi. has made films that are typically English (Sense and Sensibility, 1995), Asian (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), and American (Brokeback Mountain, 2005). Brigitte Lin plays the mysterious drug dealer in Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express (1994), which has two unconnected stories set in Hong Kong.
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Dutch director Paul Verhoeven made successful erotic thrillers in his homeland such as Spetters (1980) and The Fourth Man (1983) before crossing the Atlantic to make major hits such as RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Basic Instinct (1991). Other notable directors to come from the Netherlands were the documentary film-makers Joris Ivens and Bert Haantra, and Fons Rademakers, who directed The Assault (1986), winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar. From Belgium came André Delvaux, whose films, merging dream and reality, put him in the tradition of other Belgian artists like René Magritte. Most conspicuous are the Belgian Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre (born 1951) and Luc (born 1954), whose international reputation has grown over the years with such realistic dramas as The Promise (1996), Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), and The Child (2005). In South-East Asia, Indonesia is mostly known for popular teenage films and musicals. Since 1998, a new generation of film-makers has emerged that includes as many female as male directors, writers, and producers. The majority of Thai films are made for entertainment, mixing comedy, melodrama, and music. Wisit Sasanatieng’s Tears of the Black Tiger (2000) was a successful pastiche of such films. Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s musical Gael García Bernal plays the young Che Guevara with Roderigo de la Serna as Alberto Granado in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).
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Aoua Sangare stars in Yeleen (Brightness, 1987), the Malian Souleymane Cisse’s magical film, drawing on African ritual with elemental imagery of water, fire, and earth.
Monrak Transistor (2001) was another Thai film that did well internationally, as did the bizarre Tropical Malady (2004), directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Tran Anh Hung is Vietnam’s most celebrated director whose The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), Cyclo (1995) and The Vertical Rays of the Sun (2000) were shown worldwide. In the Philippines, Lino Brocka broke new ground for his country’s cinema when his films Insiang (1976), Jaguar (1979), and Bona (1980) were acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival. In fact, it could be said that the centre of cinema has had a major shift from its traditional bases of the US and Europe to Asia and beyond.
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Africa There are three distinct areas of film production on the African continent, all rising out of centuries of colonialism, and mostly divided linguistically into films in Arabic, French, and English. In recent years there have been more big-budget hits seen by western audiences. Many African nations did not have a film industry before they became independent of colonial rule in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, film has begun to flourish and productions have attracted international attention. France has been a major provider of financial resources for African filmmakers, many of whom have received training at cinema schools in Europe. From the 1930s, Arab cinema became synonymous with Egyptian cinema. What was to become the preeminent genre, the Egyptian musical, made its first appearance in 1932 with The Song of the Heart, directed by the Italian Mario Volpi. However, production of films made in North Africa, as a whole, remained very low until well after World War II. It was only with the emergence of Youssef Chahine that Egyptian cinema began to be taken seriously internationally.
what to watch 1968 The Money Order (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal) 1969 The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdelsalam, Egypt) 1974 Xala (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal) 1975 Chronicle of the Burning Years (Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria) 1978 Alexandria… Why? (Youssef Chahine, Egypt) 1986 Man of Ashes (Nouri Bouzid, Tunisia) 1987 Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, Mali) 1989 Yaaba (Idrissa Ouadragoa, Burkina Faso) 1994 The Silences of the Palace (Moufida Tlatli, Tunisia) 2002 Heremakono (Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania)
Chahine’s Cairo Station (1958) focused on the dispossessed. Chahine would alternate between big-budget productions such as Alexandria… Why? (1978) and Adieu Bonaparte (1984), and patently political films, such as The Sparrow (1973), which deals with Egypt’s Six-Day War against Israel. Chahine’s films and Shadi A young man returns home from Europe in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness (2002), a rare film to come from Mauritania.
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Abdelsalam’s The Night of Counting Tsotsi (2005), which follows the life of a violent gang leader in Johannesburg, South Africa, won Best Foreign the Years (1969), about the robbing of Language Film at the 2006 Academy Awards. mummies’ tombs, all stood out from the commercial dross of the Egyptian dominated Arab country. The prefilm industry. eminent director of sub-Saharan In the Maghreb, Algeria’s first films African cinema is Ousmane Sembene of independence reflected the struggle of Senegal. Thanks to his pioneering work, younger African film directors, for liberation, the most famous being Gillo Pontecorvo’s The such as Souleymane Cissé from Mali and Battle of Algiers (1966), Idrissa Ouedragoa an Italian-Algerian co-production. from Burkina Faso, Mohammed Lakhdarwere able to make Hamina’s Chronicle their mark. The most famous African of the Burning Years (1975), which traces film festival, which the history of Algeria Ousmane Sembene, born in 1923, is the is held biannually director of a number of acclaimed films, and is in Ougadougou, from 1939 to 1954, considered the father of black African cinema. was one of the most Burkina Faso, since expensive productions to come out 1969, has been a wonderful shop of the Developing World. Algeria, window for sub-Saharan cinema. Morocco, and Tunisia have all Under the years of apartheid, South Africa produced very little of produced award-winning films worth. Many films post-apartheid over the years, such as the Tunisian Moufida Tlatli’s The Silences of the continued to look back on that period. Palace (1994), an emotionally powerful Mapantsula (1988) by Oliver Schmitz and Graham Hood’s Oscar-winning look at the role of women in a changing world, a rare feature by a Tsotsi (2005), about black-on-black woman film-maker working in a maleviolence, look at the present day.
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The Middle East Although the cinema of this region has been dominated by films from North Africa, particularly Egypt and the Maghreb, there have been significant films made in the Middle East, many based on the political tensions in the area. In Lebanon, before the Palestinian director Tawfik Abu Wael, Thirst long civil war started in 1975, cinema attendance (2004) is a beautifully was the highest in the composed film about an Arab world (though the Arab family living in an country produced few abandoned village in a dusty corner of Israel. features of its own). Syria The best-known Israeli and Iraq made a number Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now of strong documentaries (2005) tells of two friends recruited director internationally, for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Amos Gitai, made Free but, like their neighbors, turned out few feature films. Zone (2005), in which three women — an American, an Israeli, and a However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the tragic situation in the Palestinian — become traveling Middle East, particularly the tensions companions in a remote area of Jordan. between Israel and Palestine, gave rise The controversial Foreign Film to some of the best films to come from Academy Award nominee, Paradise that area. Palestinian writer-director Now (2005), traces 24 hours in the lives Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention of two Palestinian suicide-bombers. The director, Hany Abu-Assad, is a (2002) brilliantly chooses to look at Palestinian born in Israel, and he made the situation at an Israeli-Palestinian checkpoint with black humor. The the story an exciting thriller, while at Syrian Bride (2004), by the Israeli the same time perceptively revealing director Eran Riklis, is also set in nothe minds of these “martyrs.” man’s land, an arid area between what to watch checkpoints at the Israeli and Syrian 2002 Divine Intervention (Elia Suleiman, Palestine) borders. The first feature by 2004 The Syrian Bride (Eran Riklis, Palestine)
Free Zone (2005) stars Nathalie Portman as an American woman in Jordan trying to establish her identity in the dramatic landscape of the country.
2004 Thirst (Tawfik Abu Wael, Palestine) 2005 Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, Palestine)
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Iran In the 1990s, the cinema of Iran entered the world stage with the gradual thaw in the country’s strictly controlled popular culture. What was revealed was a most original and vibrant national cinema.
Women in their colourful but imprisoning burqas Iran, under its various authoritarian make a journey in Afghanistan in Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s regimes, has produced only a few hotly topical Kandahar (2001). notable films over the years. But, in the 1960s, a handful of Iranian films the extraordinary Samira Makhmalbaf. began to be seen abroad. Among the At 18, Samira directed her first feature, first was Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow The Apple (1998), which launched her (1968), about a farmer as a leading figure who loses his beloved in world cinema. Despite the cow, assumes the animal’s identity, and restrictions imposed slides into madness. by the fundamentalist Islamic regime, most This minutely Iranian cinema — observed study of village life and its one of the most subtly sparse style presaged Two young girls, kept locked up by their feminist in the world later Iranian movies. parents, are released into society for the — has managed to first time in The Apple (1998). After the Islamic find ingenious ways Revolution of 1979, cinema was of making profound statements about condemned for its perceived western the human condition. values. Nevertheless, in 1983, a what to watch Cinema Foundation was established to 1968 The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui) encourage films with “Islamic values.” 1995 The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi) As a result, freed from the burdens of 1997 Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami) the past, new directors such as Mohsen 1997 The Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi) Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami 2000 Blackboards (Samira Makhmalbaf) emerged with a number of cinematic 2000 The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini) masterpieces. There followed many 2001 Secret Ballot (Babak Payami) more, including Jafar Panahi, Majid 2001 Kandahar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) Majidi, Marzieh Meshkini, Babak 2004 Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi) Payami, and Makhmalbaf ’s daughter,
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Eastern Europe The histories of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in the 20th century, and their film industries, follow certain similar patterns — independence followed by Nazi subjugation, then repressive Communism, liberalization, a hardening of the regime, and freedom. The first studio built in Poland was one of the first of a cluster of Polish in Warsaw in 1920, two years after films that emerged from the rubble of independence. In 1929, a group the war. It follows the lives of several of avant-garde film-makers formed families from different social classes START, a society for the devotees of in prewar Warsaw whose lives are artistic film. Alexander changed by the Ford, the best known tragic events of the of them, became a period. Ford’s Five key figure in Polish Boys From Barska cinema. His most Street (1953), the first important “socially major Polish film in useful” films were color, was about Legion of the Streets juvenile delinquency. (1932) and People of The assistant on the film was Andrzej the Vistula (1936). Kanal (1957), about the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Wajda, whose first During World War II, film-making shows how Polish partisans were pursued and feature, A Generation, trapped in the sewers by Nazi soldiers. was permitted in the following year, countries under German occupation, was to give a very different view of except Poland for fear of a subtle use Polish youth. Followed by Kanal (1957) of patriotic references. The devastation and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Wajda’s of the war forced the film industry to war trilogy brought Polish cinema to begin from scratch. The majority of the world’s attention as never before. postwar films tended to deal with the The late 1950s and 1960s was Nazi occupation, the horrors of the a fertile period for Polish cinema, ghetto and the heroes of the resistance. which produced Andrzej Munk’s Eroica Alexander Ford’s Border Street (1948) was (1957), Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (1961), set in a 17th what to watch century convent and one of the first 1962 Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, Poland) Polish films seen in the west not 1965 The Shop on the High Street dealing with a war theme, Roman (Ján Kádar, Czechoslovakia) Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), 1965 The Round-Up (Miklós Janscó, Hungary) Wojciech Has’ The Saragossa Manuscript 1965 Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia) (1964) and Jerzy Skolimowski’s Walkover 1966 Daisies (Vera Chytilova, Czechoslovakia) (1965). Many of these directors were 1966 Closely Observed Trains (Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia) graduates of the excellent film school 1976 Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda, Poland) in Lodz. However, after 1968, political 1993/4 The Three Colors trilogy repression and censorship, as in (Krzysztof Kieslowski, Poland) neighboring Hungary and 2000 The Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, Hungary) Czechoslovakia, limited freedom of 2000 Divided We Fall (Jan Hrebejk, Czech Republic) expression and the cinema suffered.
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In the mid-1970s, in the face of censorship, a new trend called Cinema of Moral Concern surfaced, characterized by sensitivity to ethical problems and a focus on the relationship between the individual and the state. Examples are Andrej Wajda’s Man of Marble (1976), Krzsztof Zanussi’s satires Camouflage (1977) and Constans (1981), Agnieszka Holland’s Provincial Actors (1979), and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s No End (1984). hungary
Hungary became the first country to nationalize its film industry, doing so several months before the Soviet Union under its brief period of Communism in 1919. When Horthy’s fascist government came into power in 1920, it was put back into private ownership, and Alexander Korda, Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz), Paul Fejos and the film theoretician Bela Balazs, all of whom had made valuable contributions to Hungarian film, were forced to leave the country. The quality of films was at its lowest during Hungary’s alliance with the Axis powers during World War II. The first important postwar success
Zygmunt Malanowicz and Jolanta Umecka embrace in Roman Polanski’s first feature, Knife in the Water (1962). An absurdist drama of sexual rivalry and the generation gap, it gained an Oscar nomination and brought Polanski immediate fame. In Miklós Jancsó’s The Round-Up (1965), a group of peasants is tortured in an attempt to find the leader of a partisan movement.
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was Géza von Radványi’s Somewhere in climate of Stalinist Hungary in the Europe (1947), which marked the return late 1940s, surprised and impressed critics in the west. Márta Mészáros, of Balazs as screenwriter, and led to formerly married to Miklós Jancsó, the renationalization of the film industry. In the late also made a 1950s, a younger reputation with generation of filmher intimate films on makers made their the female condition, mark, helped by most particularly the setting up of the her three-part “Diary” (1982–90), Balazs Bela Studio: Miklós Jancsó (The Diary for My Children, Round-Up, 1965), Diary for My Loves, Klaus Maria Brandauer (right) plays an actor and Diary for My István Szabó (Father, who sells his soul when working under the 1967), and István Mother and Father. Nazis in Szabo’s Oscar-winning Mephisto (1981). Gaál (The Falcons, Bela Tarr emerged 1970). The latter film draws an in the 1990s as one of the most remarkable of European directors impressive analogy between the taming of wild birds and a way of with his seven-and-a-half-hour life that requires blind obedience. Satanango (1994) and Werckmeister Pal Gábor’s Angi Vera (1979), which Harmonies (2000), in which the eloquently conveys the repressive long take is stretched to its limits. In Jan Hrebejk’s black comedy Divided We Fall (2000), Boleslav Polivka (center) is an unlikely hero who hides a Jewish friend, an escapee from a concentration camp, in his house under the nose of a Nazi sympathizer, who also lives in the house.
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Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia became an independent nation in 1918, though competition from German and US films limited independent Czech cinema for some time. Two films stood out during the end of the silent era: Gustav Machaty’s Erotikon (1929), which achieved much of its erotic effect by symbolic imagery, and Curt Junghan’s Such Is Life (1929), which dealt with conditions of working-class life in Prague. But Machaty’s greatest claim to fame was Ecstasy (1933), in which the nude scenes played by Hedy Kiesler (later Lamarr) caused a furor. The Pope protested when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival, the nude scenes were cut in the US, and Hedy’s husband tried to buy up all the prints. Despite the protests, the film is, in fact, full of pastoral beauty. In 1933, the Barrandov studios, one of the best equipped in Europe, then as now, opened in a suburb of Prague. During the war, the Germans took it
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Five-year-old Andrei Chalimon attempts to imitate his musician stepfather in the title role of Jan Sverák’s charming Oscar-winning Kolya (1996).
over, which interrupted any advance in the industry. After the war, the national film school FAMU was set up in Prague, and a new generation of directors emerged from it, notably Ivan Passer, Jirí Menzel, Vera Chytilová, and Miloš Forman. Ján Kadár’s The Shop on the High Street (1965) was the first Czech film to win a Foreign Film Oscar, while Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains (1966) soon became the second. The 1968 Russian invasion ended this exciting period of activity. Kádar, Passer and Forman left for the US. Chytilová, whose Daisies (1966) was the most adventurous and anarchic film of the period, was silenced. The animosity toward the Russians is dealt with in Kolya (1996), in which a Czech finds himself with a Russian stepson, who he learns to love. Film censorship was less rigorous in Slovakia and, directors, such as Stefan Uher, Dusan Hanák, and Juraj Jakubisko, were able to pursue their careers relatively freely. Since the breakup of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, the film industries have developed their own distinct characters.
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The Balkans Given the political upheavals that this region of Europe has suffered since cinema was invented, it is not surprising that film production has been sporadic and often traditionalist. However, a number of talented film-makers have come from these countries in recent years. Yugoslavia
Bulgaria
In Yugoslavia, the best of the small output of pre-World War II feature films was Mihailo-Miko Popovic’s With Faith in God (1934), a Serbian World War I epic. After 1945, Yugoslavian films dealt almost exclusively with the war, such as in the popular “partisan” movies. But it was animation films that made an impact abroad, especially through the work of the Zagreb school, whose style was a refreshing alternative to Walt Disney. The best known Yugoslavian directors are Dusan Makavejev, officially disapproved of at home, and Aleksandar Petrovic, whose films, Three (1965) and I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), were nominated two years running for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The Bosnian Emir Kusturica burst on to the scene in 1981, winning prestigious awards with each new film.
In 1915, seven years after independence, Bulgaria produced its first feature, The Bulgarian is Gallant. It starred and was directed by Vassil Gendov, who also directed Bulgaria’s first talkie, The Slaves’ Revolt (1933). During World War II, only propaganda films were allowed, and then under Communist rule, features focussed on the Soviet socialist realism model. As elsewhere in Europe, there was an improvement from the 1960s, with Vulo Radev’s The Peach Thief (1964) being among the first internationally important productions. Metodi Andonov’s The Goat Horn (1972) — remade by Nikolai Volev in 1994 — became the most critically acclaimed Bulgarian film of the time. Underground (1995) is directed by celebrated Bosnian director, Emir Kusturica, and is an epic portrait of Yugoslavia from 1941 to the present. Kusturica won Best Director at Cannes for Time of the Gypsies (1989).
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Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek (1964), directed by Michael Cacoyannis, one of the few Greek directors to gain international recognition for his work.
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Turkey
Omer Lutfi Akad was the D.W. Griffith of Turkish cinema. His Romania feature, In the Name of the Law (1952), Romania took a long time to build marked a departure from the number the semblance of a film industry, of cheap melodramas being made. which has produced about But it was almost three 15 films a year from the decades before Yilmaz 1960s. A breakthrough Güney became the was made with Liviu most influential and Ciulei’s Forest of the Hanged internationally acclaimed (1965), which won Best director Turkey has ever Director at Cannes. produced. However, This anti-war drama several of his best films, achieved an understated including Yol (1982), were quality, and contrasted directed by proxy as he with the propaganda epics languished in prison for his that preceded it. Lucian left-wing political activities. Yol shows Turkey through the eyes of five prisoners. Pintilie, the best-known Since Güney, there has Romanian director, made his very first been an impressive string of Turkish feature, Sunday at Six, in the same year. films including Yesim Ustaoglu’s Journey to The Sun (1999), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak (2002), and Semih Greece Although the first Greek film appeared Kaplanoglu’s Angel’s Fall (2005). in 1912, long periods of instability what to watch crippled any attempts at forming a 1957 A Matter of Dignity (Michael Cacoyannis, Greece) film industry, and few features were 1967 I Even Met Happy Gypsies produced until the 1950s when Michael (Aleksandar Petrovic, Yugoslavia) Cacoyannis became the embodiment 1972 The Goat Horn (Metodi Andonov, Bulgaria) of Greek cinema, reaching the peak 1982 Yol (Serif Gören, Yilmaz Güney, Turkey) of his popularity with Zorba the Greek 1995 Underground (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia) (1964). Since then, Theo Angelopoulos 1998 Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece) (see page 255) began to loom 2002 Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey) impressively in the 1970s.
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Russia In the 1920s, Russian cinema was the most exciting and experimental in the world until the heavy hand of Stalinism held it down. Despite occasional masterpieces, it would be many years before Russia reemerged to take its place among the great cinematic nations. There was little of cinematic interest in pre-revolutionary Russia as it was impossible to deal with contemporary issues under strict Tsarist censorship. Films depended heavily on adaptations from literature or the theater and, until World War I, foreign films dominated the Russian market. The leading director was Yakov Protazanov, who directed more than 40 films between 1909 and 1917. He was one of the few members of the old guard to remain in Russia after the revolution in October 1917. Protazanov went on to make the Soviet Union’s first science-fiction movie, Aelita (1924). In their first days of power, the Bolsheviks established a State Commission of Education, which included an important subsection
devoted to cinema. As the new Soviet leader, Lenin realized the immense value of film as propaganda, and early Soviet cinema played an important role in getting the revolutionary message across to the population all over the vast country, usually carried by “agit-prop” trains. Film schools were set up in Moscow and Petrograd (later Leningrad) in 1918 and the film industry was nationalized a year later. However, because of the Civil War and the foreign blockade of films, film stock, and equipment, it took a few years before it could start producing more than a handful of feature films. A gang of thieves is surprised by Mr. West and his faithful cowboy aide in The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West In the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924).
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Things started to change in 1924 as the economy improved and the Soviet government declared that the state would not interfere in matters of artistic style — even non-naturalistic and avant-garde expression — but that the films should have a revolutionary content. Thus began an exciting and fruitful period of film-making. Lev Kuleshov, one of the first theorists of the cinema, put his researches at the services of his first feature, the gagfilled satire, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924). Using mobile cameras, quick cutting, and sequences derived from American chase films, the film managed to deride the west’s stereotyped view of “mad, savage Russians” while creating its own stereotyped American — the HaroldLloyd type Mr. West.
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what to watch 1925 The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein) 1928 Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin) 1929 The Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov) 1930 Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko) 1944/6 Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II (Sergei Eisenstein) 1957 The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov) 1959 Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukrai) 1969 The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Paradjanov) 1985 Come and See (Elem Klimov) 2002 Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov)
Barnet made a number of delightfully fresh satirical comedies such as The Girl With the Hatbox (1927) and The House on Trubnaya (1928). Abram Room’s Bed and Sofa (1927) dealt with a ménage-à-trois with warmth and humor. Trauberg and Kozintsev’s The New Babylon (1929), set in Paris at the time of the Commune in 1871, brilliantly used montage and lighting to contrast silent masterpieces the rich and the poor. In contrast, Vertov (see There followed the silent masterpieces of Sergei page 377), continued to Eisenstein, Vsevolod make documentaries, Pudovkin, Alexander culminating with The Dovzhenko, Boris Barnet, A poster for Dovzhenko’s poetic Man with the Movie film Earth (1930) shows a brave Abram Room, Dziga Camera (1929). peasant representing the face Vertov, and the directing of collectivization. Tragically, this duo of Leonid Trauberg great period of Russian and Grigori Kozintsev, all bursting experimentation came to an end as with creative enthusiasm. Leading Stalin strengthened his hold. More the way was Eisenstein’s Strike (1924), and more of the best films, especially those of Eisenstein, were attacked for for which he used the “dynamic montage,” that is, visual metaphors being “bourgeois” due to their use of and shock cuts. This reached its peak symbolism and modernistic visual in The Battleship Potemkin (1925), with style. By the end of 1932, the slogan its memorable Odessa Steps sequence “socialist realism,” a phrase attributed (see page 401), and October (1928). to Stalin himself, was de rigueur in all Taking the same subject as October the arts. Socialist realism was opposed (the 1917 Russian Revolution), to “formalism,” or art that put style Pudovkin showed a different slant above content. Soviet art had to be in The End of St. Petersburg (1927), optimistic and understandable and while Dovzhenko made Earth loved by the masses. This meant that (1930), a pastoral symphony the experimentation that had made dedicated to his native Ukraine. Soviet cinema great was now reined in.
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Counterplan (1932), directed by Lev merited international successes. Arnshtam, Fridrikh Ermler, and Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Sergei Yutkevich, about the foiling Flying (1957), a lyrical love story, won of a sabotage attempt on a steel plant, the Best Film at Cannes and Grigori Chukrai’s Ballad of a was, according to one writer, Soldier (1959), an “the first victory of unrhetorical and socialist realism in moving view of the Soviet cinema.” everyday life in Nevertheless, in wartime Russia, the period before won a Special Jury World War II, the Prize at Cannes. Soviet Union did This relative produce some films freedom of that can still be expression enjoyed today, such Innokenti Smoktunovsky stars as the Prince continued into the of Denmark (left), and Viktor Kolpakov plays as the Hollywoodmid-1960s with the Gravedigger in Hamlet (1964). style musicals, Jazz some notable films Comedy (1934) and Volga-Volga (1938), such as Josef Heifits’ The Lady With the made by Grigori Alexandrov, a Little Dog (1959), Kozintsev’s Hamlet former colleague of Eisenstein. Mark (1964), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Donskoi’s “Gorky trilogy” — The Childhood (1962), and Sergei Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938), My Paradjanov’s Shadows of our Forgotten Apprenticeship (1939), and My Universities Ancestors (1964), before repression set in (1940) — was rich in incident, again. Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) character, and period detail; it was one and Paradjanov’s The Color of of the few masterpieces of socialist realism. Another was Eisenstein’s first sound film, Alexander Nevsky (1938), with a wonderful score by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. the death of stalin
During World War II, the film industry concentrated mainly on moraleboosting documentaries. One of the few features made was Eisenstein’s Ivan The Terrible (1944), which was made in two parts: the first was approved by Stalin, the second was banned and not released until 1958. The postwar years represented a low point in Soviet cinema both in quality and quantity. It was only after Stalin’s death in 1953, and Khrushchev’s famous speech in 1956 which attacked aspects of Stalinism, that it began to pick up. The result of this “thaw” was a number of films that
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Two young Russian women confide in one another in Vladimir Menshov’s Oscar-winning Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979).
Pomegranates (1969) were both shelved. Despite some exceptions, including Sergei Bondarchuk’s remarkable eighthour War and Peace (1966–7), good films were few and far between until the late 1970s when Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979), a romantic comedy-drama, won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in that year. the post-communist era
After the fall of communism, there was a phase when most Russian films
were either kitsch or imitations of American action movies. However, after the initial reaction against the past, Russia once again became one of the leading cinematic countries with films such as Pavel Chukhrai’s The Thief (1997), Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return (2003), Alexei German Jr’s The Last Train, and Boris Khlebnikov and Aleksei Popogrebsky’s Koktebel (all 2003). The breakup of the USSR meant that the former Soviet republics were able to establish a characteristic cinema, good examples of which are cosmopolitan Georgian director Otar Iosseliani’s Brigands — Chapter VII (1996) and Jamshed Usmonov’s Angel on the Right (Tajikistan, 2002). Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian royal family take tea on the eve of the Revolution in Alexander Sokurov’s extraordinary one-take Russian Ark (2002), filmed entirely in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
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The Nordic Countries Considering the small size of their populations, the contribution to the art of cinema of the Nordic countries, led by Sweden and Denmark, has been phenomenal. From Ingmar Bergman to Lars von Trier, many directors from this part of Europe have been highly influential. In 1906 the Nordisk film company (the oldest film company in the world still in existence) provided the impetus for the rise of Danish cinema. Some of the early Danish films went in for “shocking” subjects in films with such titles as The White Slave Trade (1910), The Morphine Takers (1911), and Opium Dreams (1914). Production dropped severely after World War I and it took a long time to recover, thus forcing Denmark’s two most famous directors, Carl Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, to seek work in other countries. In Sweden, Dreyer shot The Parson’s Widow (1920) and Christensen made his most famous film, Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922), a semi-documentary made up of a series of tableaux inspired by the artists Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. Dreyer returned to Denmark during World War II, where he directed one of his greatest films, Day of Wrath (1943). But fearing imprisonment by the Nazi authorities for what were Three great Swedes in Hollywood: directors Victor Sjöström (renamed Victor Seastrom by MGM) and Mauritz Stiller with Greta Garbo, at the start of her career in the US.
what to watch 1921 The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, Sweden) 1943 Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer, Denmark) 1966 Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden) 1987 Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, Denmark) 1998 Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark) 1998 The Idiots (Lars Von Trier, Denmark)
seen as allusions to the tyranny of the Occupation in the film, Dreyer fled to Sweden and returned only after the war. Among the light comedies and soft porn produced in Denmark in the 1950s, only Dreyer’s Ordet (1954), which won the Golden Bear in Berlin, stood out. A couple of notable Danish films from the 1960s were Palle KjærulffSchmidt’s Once There Was a War (1966), a tale of an adolescent boy in Copenhagen during the Occupation, and Henning Carlsen’s Hunger (1966), an atmospheric adaptation of Knut Hamsen’s famous first novel about a penniless writer.
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Sjöberg’s Frenzy (1944), about misunderstood youth. It not only In Sweden in 1907, the Svenska Bio launched 26-year-old Ingmar studio was founded, and two years later Charles Bergman — whose Magnussen joined first screenplay as production this was — and manager. In 1912, the teenage actress Magnussen signed Mai Zetterling, up two directors, but instigated Victor Sjöström and the renaissance Mauritz Stiller, who of Swedish cinema. were to transform From his debut Bibi Andersson (left) and Liv Ulmann as Swedish cinema. film, Crisis (1946), women who exchange identities in Ingmar In the same year, Bergman’s talent Bergman’s Persona (1966). Magnussen and Julius was immediately Jaenzon co-directed The Vagabond’s recognized, and from the 1950s he personified Swedish cinema. Lesser Galoshes, based on a Hans Christian figures, such as Arne Mattsson (One Andersen fairy tale, which had sequences shot on location in France Summer of Happiness, 1951) and Arne and the US, and included an early Sucksdorff (The Great Adventure, 1953) tracking shot. gained some recognition abroad. Mauritz Stiller made sophisticated, In the 1960s, a younger generation ironic sex comedies, such as Love and of directors emerged such as Bo Widerberg, most renowned for the Journalism (1916) and Erotikon (1920), before moving nearer the more sombre Swedish literary tradition with films based on the novels of Selma Lagerlöf. Sjöström, with Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), and Stiller, with Sir Arne’s Treasure (1919) and Greta Garbo’s first feature film, The Saga of Gosta Berling (1923), gave Sweden a reputation for making films of high artistic quality. When Sjöström, Stiller, and Garbo left for Hollywood in the mid-1920s, Swedish cinema suffered. The only director of note in the 1930s was Gustaf Molander, whose most famous film was Intermezzo (1936), a weepie in which the young Ingrid Bergman had her first starring role. David O. Selznick saw it and offered Bergman a contract and a remake of the film Hollywood-style two years later. One of the most significant Swedish films of the 1940s was Alf swedish cinema
In a portrayal that won her Best Actress at Cannes, Pia Degermark stars in the title role of Bo Widerberg’s lyrically photographed Elvira Madigan (1967), set to the strains of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21.
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One of the inept Soviet rock musicians in Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), a typically idiosyncratic film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki.
tragic love story Elvira Madigan (1967) and Vilgot Sjöman, who caused a scandal with I Am Curious Yellow (1967) and I Am Curious Blue (1968), both containing explicit sex. Mai Zetterling’s first two films as director, Loving Couples (1964) and Night Games (1966), were wickedly sensuous Strinbergian dramas with a feminist twist. However, Ingmar Bergman continued to cast his shadow. Following his classics of the 1950s, notably The Seventh Seal (see page 443) and Wild Strawberries (both 1957), he made a series of psychodramas in the 1960s, most of them starring Liv Ullmann. (In 2000, Ullmann would direct Faithless, a compelling film written by Bergman about their relationship.) She also starred in Jan Troell’s The Emigrants (1972) and The New Land (1973), two heartfelt sagas of Swedes who emigrated to the US in the 19th century. Ullmann had her first starring role in The Wayward Girl (1959). This tale of sexual liberation was the last film by Edith Carlmar, Norway’s first female director, who made ten features
between 1949 and 1959. In 1957, another Norwegian film had made an impact internationally — Arne Skouen’s Nine Lives was based on the real-life experience of resistance fighter Jan Baalsrud. Finland’s film of note in the 1950s was Edvin Lane’s The Unknown Soldier (1956), still the country’s highestgrossing film ever. Jorn Donner made many films dealing with sexuality. Donner was Finland’s best-known director until the arrival of the idiosyncratic Aki Kaurismäki, who put Finland firmly on the cinematic map in the 1980s. Kaurismäki’s best-known film is probably The Man Without a Past (2002). Like Kaurismäki, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson is the sole international representative of his country, Iceland, though he started to get widely well-known in the 1990s with off-beat films like Cold Fever (1994) and Devil’s Island (1996). Films from the Baltic countries, emerging from Soviet domination,
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tentatively began to be recognized abroad after 2000. These included Kristijonas Vildzhiunas’s The Lease (2002, Lithuania), Laila Pakalnina’s The Python (2003, Latvia), and Jaak Kilmi and René Reinumägi’s Revolution of Pigs (2004, Estonia). a creative explosion
The 1980s onwards have been a time of great creativity in the Nordic countries. In Denmark, it began when Danish films won Best Foreign Film Oscars two years in succession, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (1987) and Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror (1987). In 1995, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg jointly formulated the artistic manifesto Dogme 95, which turned low-budget film aesthetics into a rich cinematic principle. Among the Dogme films to make a huge impact were Vinterberg’s Festen (The Celebration), von Trier’s The Idiots (both 1998), Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s Swedish experts come to examine the domestic habits of Norwegian bachelors in Bent Hamer’s quirky satire Kitchen Stories (2003).
In a remote and austere Danish town, guests enjoy a sumptuous once-in-a-lifetime meal prepared by a French cook (Stéphane Audran) in Babette’s Feast (1987).
Mifune (1999), Lone Scherfig’s Italian For Beginners (2000) and Annette Olesen’s Minor Mishaps (2002). Notable Swedish films were Lukas Moodysson’s comedy-drama Together (2000), Roy Andersson’s weird Songs from the Second Floor (2000), and Björn Runge’s Daybreak (2003). Norway had hits with Ola Solum’s Orion’s Belt (1985), Nils Gaup’s Pathfinder (1987), and the life-enhancing documentary about a male choir, Knut Erik Jensen’s Cool and Crazy (2001).
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Germany Despite the considerable contribution that Germany has made to the history of film, there was a wide gap between its greatest period – the silent era — and the new dawn of German cinema in the 1970s, almost half a century later. “Never before and in no other country have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here. Nowhere else have people suffered such a loss of confidence in images of their own, their own stories and myths, as we have,” proclaimed German director Wim Wenders in 1977. Wenders is referring to the fatal legacy of Nazism, which permeated so many German films, whether from the Federal Republic (West Germany) or the Democratic Republic (East Germany). This took place mainly between 1949 and 1989, but also before and after that period. Much of this is expounded by the critic Siegfried Kracauer in his book, The clay monster (Paul Wegener, who was also the co-director) contemplates his victim in The Golem (1914), the first of several versions of the old Jewish legend.
From Caligari to Hitler (1947), which analyzed the German psyche through German films. The starting point of the book is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, see page 399), which was to become a trademark of German cinema of the 1920s with its stylized, distorted studio sets, artificial lighting and shadows. the silent age
Before World War I, there were 2,000 cinemas and two large film studios near Berlin. Most German films were farcical comedies and static adaptations from literature and the stage. Nevertheless, there were a few films that anticipated the expressionist style of Dr. Caligari, such as the first of three versions of The Student of Prague (1913), an early spark that ignited German
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cinema’s love of supernatural subjects, Nature. The latter was exemplified by leading in turn to the making of the films of Arnold Fanck, the best classics of expressionism. It starred being The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929). Paul Wegener, who sells his reflection Appearing in four of Fanck’s films was director Leni Riefenstahl (see page 355), to obtain the means to woo the girl of his choice. Wegener also played whose first feature as a director, the monster in The The Blue Light Golem (1914), which (1932) was a similar he co-directed (with “mountain film.” Henrik Galeen). Film production end of the dramatically golden age increased during Before the World War I Golden Age was because films from terminated by enemy countries — Hitler, there were the US, France, and a number of England — were significant sound not shown in films: Josef von Germany. The Sternberg’s The renowned UFA Blue Angel (1930), (Universum Film Pabst’s Westfront Aktien Gesellschaft) 1918 (1930) and film company was The Threepenny Emil Jannings as the proud hotel doorman who formed in 1917 Opera (1931), and loses his job and is reduced to lavatory attendant in Leontine Sagan’s and remained the F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924). dominant force in Madchen in Uniform the industry until the end of World (1931), about a lesbian relationship. War II. Among the directors that Fritz Lang’s M (1931) with Peter Lorre emerged at this period were F.W. as a child killer, and his Testament of Dr. Murnau, Paul Leni, Fritz Lang, and Mabuse (1933) were also made during Ernst Lubitsch. Murnau’s Nosferatu this period. The latter, made as Hitler (1922), Leni’s Waxworks (1924), and seized power, had the mad villain Lang’s two-part Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler expressing sentiments too close for Nazi comfort, thus provoking Joseph (1922) and Metropolis (1927), were expressionistic masterpieces. Lubitsch Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, to ask Lang to change the last reel. was also directing lavish, ironical historical romances, such as Madame what to watch Du Barry (1919), Anne Boleyn (1920), 1924 The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) and Pharoah’s Wife (1922). 1928 Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst) At the same time, there were the 1930 The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) kammerspiel (chamber play) films, 1931 M (Fritz Lang) chiefly Lupu Pick’s Shattered (1921) 1959 The Bridge (Bernhard Wicki) and Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924). 1975 Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders) There were also two other popular 1978 The Marriage of Maria Braun genres: “street films” like G.W. Pabst’s (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) The Joyless Street (1925), with 20-year1979 The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff) old Greta Garbo (in her last European 1981 Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson) film), and “mountain films,” which 1998 Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer) focussed on man’s battle against
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Lang declined and fled the country. All filming now came under the control of Goebbels, who purged Jews from the industry. Over 1,000 films were made under the Nazis, most of them frivolous The astonishing 12-year-old David Bennent plays Oskar in Schlöndorff’s Oscar-winning The Tin Drum comedies and (1979), based on an allegorical novel on Nazism. musicals, balanced Solveig Dommartin with a number is the trapeze artist of anti-Semitic propaganda pieces, in Wim Wenders’ including Jew Süss and The Eternal Jew Wings of Desire (1987), with whom an (both 1940). Other propaganda films angel (Bruno Ganz) were Hitlerjunge Quex (1933), and falls in love. Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938). One of the few films to survive the period was The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (1943), an elaborate fantasy, superbly photographed in Agfacolor, which was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary several stars, such as of UFA studios. Romy Schneider, Horst Buchholz, Curd After the war, it took just as long Jürgens, and Maria Schell, all of whom to rebuild the film industry as it did to became internationally recognized. The rebuild the now Allied-occupied only film of much note was Bernhard country. Almost all the production Wicki’s The Bridge (1959), about seven facilities, including UFA and Tobis schoolboys drafted into the dregs of studios, were in the Russian zone, and Hitler’s army in 1945 who are asked to were taken over by DEFA, the newly defend a bridge against American tanks, formed State film company. Most of which they do to the death. In the early 1960s, the West the postwar films (known as “rubble German film-maker Alexander Kluge films”) in both East and West Germany were marked by strong wrote a manifesto demanding subsidies sociological content, in an attempt and the setting up of a film school. It paved the way for a new wave of to come to terms with bitter reality. After the division of Germany in directors including Volker Schlöndorff, 1949, the two film industries developed Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders. There separately, East Germany made films with a heavy political slant, while followed Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, with West Germany, in contrast, turned his attempts to demystify Germany’s cultural and historical past, Edgar out more escapist entertainment. Reitz, whose Heimat (1983–2005) a slow rebirth mirrored modern German history, and feminist film-makers Margarethe von The 1950s was a fallow period for German films, although they produced Trotta and Helga Sanders Brahms.
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Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot (1981), Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2004), and Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) came to terms with recent German history. As the Nazi period — a subject that dominated much German cinema from the 1960s — recedes into the past, a new, more confident German cinema has emerged, typified by Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998), which cleverly covers the same time span in three different ways, Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators (2004), about a group of anarchists, and German-born Turk Fatih Akin’s Head-On (2004), a cry of rage on behalf of Turkish immigrants.
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Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to find 100,000 Deutschmarks to stop her boyfriend robbing a grocery store in Tom Tykwer’s fast-paced hit film Run Lola Run (1998).
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France No other country, except the US, has contributed so much to the technical and artistic development of film than France. However, it could be argued that France has an even more enviable record, consistently producing films of both commercial and artistic merit. which was distributed successfully in the US. But the most famous French name in the US was the elegant comedian Max Linder, who influenced Charlie Chaplin and other great comics of the silent screen. At the same time, Louis Feuillade was making his serials, Fantômas (1913–14), about a diabolical criminal, and Les Vampires (1915–16). World War I disrupted French film production, allowing American film to Louis Feuillade’s five-episode Fantômas (1913–14) puts the arch criminal and master of disguise (René Navarre) in a variety of tricky situations.
There is still a dispute as to which country invented cinema. What is certain is that the Lumière brothers of France were the first to exploit it commercially. They first showed their films to the general public in Paris on December 28, 1895, the date generally acknowledged as marking the birth of cinema. Not long after this, film producers Leon Gaumont and Charles Pathé, realizing the commercial potential of the new medium, began to build their movie empires. Alice Guy-Blaché, in charge of production at Gaumont, became the first woman director with La Fee Aux Chou (The Good Fairy and the Cabbage Patch, 1902). Some of the earliest French films, besides the magic cinematic tricks of Georges Méliès, were reproductions of classic plays, typically made up in a series of tableux. Early stars included the legendary stage actress Sarah Bernhardt who starred in Queen Elizabeth (1912),
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become more dominant in Europe. After the war, the French developed film as an art form. The film theoretician Ricciotto Canuda referred to film as “The Seventh Art” and one of the first serious critics, Louis Delluc, an important director in his own right, coined the word cinéaste meaning a film-maker. (The Prix Louis Delluc has been awarded annually since 1937 to the best French film of the year.) Germaine Dulac directed The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), which was probably the first surrealist film, while Dulac’s The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922) is recognized as the first feminist film. Other firsts include the use of slow motion in Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), and the blurred image (flou) in Marcel The great Jean Gabin, as a thief hiding in the Algerian Casbah, is confronted by his jealous mistress (Line Noro) in Julien Duvivier’s fatalistic romance Pépé le Moko (1936).
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what to watch 1927 Napoléon (Abel Gance) 1934 L’Atalante (Jean Vigo) 1937 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir) 1939 Le Jour se Lève (Marcel Carné) 1951 Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson) 1959 Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais) 1962 Jules et Jim (François Truffaut) 1968 Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard) 1995 La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz) 2000 The Taste of Others (Agnès Jaoui)
L’Herbier’s El Dorado (1921). Abel Gance was a towering figure who was already using split-screen techniques in J’accuse! (1919) before his masterpiece Napoléon (1927). The coming of sound
From the 1930s, Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol and Sacha Guitry relished using dialogue, while René Clair made musicals. This period was characterized by “poetic realism” in the work of Marcel Carné (Le Jour se Lève, 1939), Jean Renoir (La Bête Humaine, 1938) and Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko, 1936); all three films starred the charismatic actor Jean Gabin. The German Occupation of France in 1940 sent Renoir, Clair, Duvivier and the German-born Max Ophüls into self-exile in Hollywood. Carné remained in France, as did Jean Cocteau, Jacques Becker, Claude Autant-Lara, Henri Clouzot and Robert Bresson, all making escapist films that avoided propaganda and the censor. However, after Liberation, Cocteau, Clouzot, Becker and Bresson made their best films while Renoir, Clair and Ophüls made welcome returns. In 1946, the Centre National du Cinéma Français (CNC) was set up. One of its first actions was to protect the French film industry against the influence of foreign films, particularly American, by limiting the
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Claude Laydu in the title role of Robert Bresson’s poignant Diary of a Country Priest (1951), plays a man isolated and assailed by self-doubt.
number of foreign films shown. It also helped finance independent productions, many of which reflected the social and political climate of the post-war years, with a return to realism and film noir, of which Jean-Pierre Melville was the master. Yet, in the 1950s, there was still a dominance of veteran directors. Some, such as Marcel Carné, who had made the internationally acclaimed Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) during the Occupation, saw their reputations gradually decline. Many of them juliette binoche Actor Box
Believed to be the highest-paid actress in French film history, Juliette Binoche (born 1964) came to international attention in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). She starred in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Blue (1993), playing a woman painfully trying to come to terms with the death of her husband and daughter. Binoche continues to move easily between prestigious French films like The Horseman on the Roof (1995), co-productions like Caché (2005) and Hollywood productions such as The English Patient (1996) and Chocolat (2000).
Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot finds it difficult to enter the ultra-modern house of his brother-in-law (Jean-Pierre Zola) in Mon Oncle (My Uncle, 1958).
succumbed to the lure of commercial cinema, turning out lavish but uninspired color movies, often in lucrative co-productions with Italy. There was also a literary tradition pursued by Claude Autant-Lara, who adapted Stendhal, Maupassant and Dostoevsky to the screen. The French stars of the 1950s were, to a great extent, the French stars of the 1930s and ’40s – Jean Gabin, Fernandel, Edwige Feuillère, Gérard Philipe, Danielle Darrieux and Pierre Fresnay. The first rumblings of discontent were given influential expression in 1948 by Alexandre Astruc in an article called The Birth of the New AvantGarde: Le Camera Stylo which fulminated against the assembly-line method of producing films, which the French industry had inherited from Hollywood, and where front-office interference ensured that maverick films were tailored to fit tried-andtested formulas.
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cahiérs du cinema
In 1951, film critic André Bazin founded Cahiérs du Cinéma, the most influential of film magazines. Several young critics on the magazine decided to take practical action in their battle against traditional, literary French film, or “Cinéma du Papa,” by making films themselves, taking advantage of the film subsidies bought in by the Gaullist government. The leading figures of this movement, which became known as the “French New Wave,” were François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Louis Malle. The core group of Romain Duris is torn between becoming a pianist (here being coached by Linh Dan Pham) and a gangster like his father, in The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).
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directors initially collaborated and assisted each other. This helped in the development of a common and distinct use of form, style, and narrative, making their work instantly recognizable. Their influence is still felt throughout the film world. In the 1980s, three young directors — Jean-Jacques Beinex, Luc Besson, and Leos Carax — gave a new “postmodern” face to French cinema, deriving their aesthetics for their cool thrillers from commercials and pop videos. Women directors have also been among the first rank of French directors. After Agnès Varda and Marguerite Duras had become established, there followed Yannick Bellon, Nelly Kaplin, Coline Serreau, Diane Kurys, and Claire Denis. And excellent new French films and directors continue to emerge. Sophisticated comedies: Agnès Jaoui’s The Taste of Others (2000) and Look at Me (2004); affecting personal dramas: François Ozon’s Five Times Two (2004) and Time To Leave (2005); social satires: Laurent Cantet’s Human Resources (1999) and Time Out (2001); films of urban decay: Mathieu Kasovitz’s La Haine (1995); sexual explorations: Catherine Breillat’s Romance (1999) and Gaspard Noé’s Irreversible (2002); and romantic comedies: Amélie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
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Italy Italy has had a profound influence on cinema style, particularly within three periods: pre-World War l with mammoth epics, the immediate post-World War II of the neorealists, and from 1960 to the mid-1970s, the “second film renaissance” led by Federico Fellini. One of the huge sets built for Giovanni Pastrone’s pioneering epic Cabiria (1914), which took six months to shoot in studios and on location.
In 1905, the first Italian studios were built, owned by two of the largest production companies, Cines and Itala, both of which made successful costume dramas. At Cines, Mario Caserini directed Giovanna d’Arco (1908), and Ubaldo Maria del Colle made The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), while at Itala, Giovanni Pastrone made The Fall of Troy (1910) and, most significantly, the monumental Cabiria (1914). The adventures of a Sicilian slave girl accompanied by strongman Maciste took over six months to shoot and contained technical innovations such as dolly and crane shots. Its great success in the US inspired D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille to embark on large-scale productions. These early spectacles would be the prototypes for “peplum” (“Sword and Sandal”) epics, popular in the 1950s. World War I and competition from the US put an end to big production spectacles, and all the studios had
closed down by 1922. Ironically, it was Mussolini’s Fascist regime that revived Italian cinema. The film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografica, was founded in 1935, and the Cinecitta studios (soon to be known as “Hollywood on the Tiber”) was opened by Mussolini. Although Italian cinema in the 1930s was dominated by “White Telephone” films, superficial tales of the wealthy, and propaganda films that looked back on the glory that was Rome, such as Scipio l’Africano (1937), there were some notable exceptions. Mario Camerini’s What Scoundrels Men Are! (1932), the first Italian film to be shot entirely on location, and Alessandro Blasetti’s Four Steps in the Clouds (1942), anticipated neorealism by using humble characters and ordinary backgrounds. the neorealist movement
Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1942, see page 426), is regarded by many as the first neorealist film. This label was applied to any film, made after Liberation, which dealt with the working class, and was shot on location, whether with actors or nonactors. One of the key figures of the movement was Cesare Zavattini, who wrote scripts for almost all of Vittorio De Sica’s films from 1944–73, including Bicycle Thieves (1948, see page 430) and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). Although the world praised
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Italian Neo-Realist films, they only constituted a small percentage of production. After the war, Italian audiences preferred escapist entertainment, such as comedies starring Toto and Alberto Sordi. By 1950, Italian Neo-Realism began to decline, though De Sica’s Umberto D (1952) and The Roof (1956), continued the tradition, and some younger directors, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini in his first film Accatone (1961), showed its influence, as did some films from countries as diverse as Brazil and Iran. Roberto Rossellini, whose Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisà (1946) are among
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Sophia Loren in Vittorio de Sica’s Two Women (1960) for which she gained the rare distiction of winning a Best Actress Oscar in a foreign-language film.
the best examples of neorealism, began to move away from the style with spiritual melodramas starring Ingrid Bergman; and both Visconti and De Sica abandoned many of the principles of neorealism. The 1950s was the time of “peplum” movies and frivolous vehicles for international stars such as Sylvana Mangano, Gina Lollobrigida, and Sophia Loren. The climactic wedding celebration from Amarcord (1973), Federico Fellini’s affectionate, often dreamlike, semi-autobiographical memoir of Rimini, his home town.
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injecting new life into the genre. There was also the Italian horror cinema 1950 The Flowers of St Francis (Roberto Rossellini) whose leading practitioners were 1952 Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica) Mario Bava and Dario Argento. 1961 La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni) Following a lull in the 1980s, the 1963 The Leopard (Luchino Visconti) industry was given a boost by a wave 1964 The Gospel According to St. Matthew of films by new directors. At the fore (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 1973 Amarcord (Federico Fellini) front of these were Giuseppe 1977 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci) Tornatore with Cinema Paradiso 1994 Il Postino (Michael Radford) (1989, see page 478), Gabriele 2003 The Best of Youth Salvatores and Mediterraneo (Marco Tullio Giordana) (1991), and Roberto Benigni with Life Is Beautiful (1997). All won Best The 1960s heralded a golden age of Italian Foreign Film Oscars. There cinema. The watershed were many other year was 1960, which saw films of quality the release of Federico that kept interest Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (see page 449), in Italian cinema Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His alive, notably Brothers, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Gianni Amelio’s L’Avventura (see page 451). Then came a Open Doors (1990) flood of remarkable films from these three masters as well as from Pasolini, and The Keys to Jasmine Trinca and Luigi Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, the House (2004), Lo Cascio in the 383-minute 1970, see page 459), Marco Bellocchio, Il Postino (1994) The Best of Youth (2003). Ermano Olmi, Ettore Scola, Francesco by Michael Rosi, and the Taviani Brothers. At the Radford, Nani Moretti’s The Son’s same time, Sergio Leone and others Room (2000), and Marco Tullio were making “Spaghetti Westerns,” Giordana’s The Best Of Youth (2003). what to watch
Italian comedian Roberto Benigni directing Giorgio Cantarini, who plays his fiveyear-old son, in a scene from the absurdist Holocaust tragicomedy, the Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful (1997).
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United Kingdom Despite overwhelming competition from US films, British cinema has managed to survive under the shadow of its perceived rival in Hollywood. British cinema has created films with a distinctly British flavor, and continues to export its talented directors and stars. One of the first British production companies was founded as early as 1898 by an American, Charles Urban, one of many emigrés to play a part in British cinema. Cecil Hepworth was one of the first English directors to realize the imaginative possibilities of the medium, his most famous film being Rescued by Rover (1905), a seven-minute thriller made on a budget of $40 (£8). Two directors of the silent era who stood out were George Pearson, who made 11 films with the cockney comedienne Betty Balfour, and Maurice Elvey, whose career spanned 40 years, during which time he made over 300 features. Although the 1920s were rather barren, some soon-to-be important figures started making films in that decade: the producer Michael Balcon, who would be the main force behind the films produced at Ealing Studios, Alfred Hitchcock, who already was making a reputation as a master of suspense with films like The Lodger (1926), Victor Saville, who later directed three musicals with Britain’s top musical-comedy star Jessie Matthews in the 1930s, and Herbert Wilcox who directed many of his wife Anna Neagle’s films in the 1930s and
1940s. In an effort to counteract the dominance of American films, a British quota system was introduced in 1927, under which exhibitors were obliged to show a 5 percent quota of British films, increasing by annual stages to 20 percent by 1935. It resulted in an increase in the production of British films, but also had the adverse effect of encouraging cheap and inferior films, known as “quota quickies.” The first British talkie was Blackmail (1929), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who would go on to make some of the best British films of the 1930s. Alexander Korda, a Hungarian emigré, A sequence from Cecil Hepworth’s Rescued by Rover (1905), which follows the rescue by a collie dog of a baby abducted by gypsies.
what to watch 1938 The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock) 1945 Brief Encounter (David Lean) 1947 Odd Man Out (Carol Reed) 1947 Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) 1949 Whisky Galore (Alexander MacKendrick) 1963 The Servant (Joseph Losey) 1968 If (Lindsay Anderson) 1983 Local Hero (Bill Forsyth) 1985 Brazil (Terry Gilliam) 2000 Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry)
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formed London Films and built Denham Studios. He directed The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), which broke US box-office records and which gave Charles Laughton the first Best Actor Oscar in a British film. During World War II, there were excellent morale-boosting features and documentaries. Among the directors at work were Humphrey Jennings, whose documentaries such as London Can Take It (1940) showed the effect of the war on ordinary people, Carol Reed (The Way Ahead, 1944), David Lean and Noël Coward (In Which We Serve, 1942), Laurence Olivier who made Henry V (1944) into a patriotic pageant, and Powell and Pressburger (Colonel Blimp, 1943). After the war, entertainment was richly provided by the Ealing Comedies, many of them starring Alec Guinness, who played eight roles in Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). However, war films continued to be made like Michael Anderson’s The Dam Busters and Guy Hamilton’s The Colditz Story (both 1954). In the late
Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, the most glamorous couple in British cinema, in their first of three films together, Fire Over England (1937).
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1950s, dissatisfaction grew among younger film-makers who felt British films were not addressing contemporary issues. The change came about with Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top (1958), which treated class and sex with a refreshing frankness. There followed a series of “kitchen sink” films of workingclass life, outstanding among them were Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960, see page 450), Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1961), Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life (1963), and John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving (1962). These soon gave way to more escapist “Swinging London” films, and the cycle of James Bond movies, beginning with Dr. No (1962).
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Jamie Bell plays the title role in Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot (2000), a boy torn between his love of ballet and the prejudices of his father.
American-born directors, Richard Lester (two Beatles films: A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, and Help!, 1965) and Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1963, and Accident, 1967), also made an impact. Quality began to decline in the 1970s, to be revived in the 1980s by Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire (1981) and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), both of which won Best Picture Oscars, Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl (1980), Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). The huge success of Poster for the film, Trainspotting (1996). Mike Newell’s romantic-comedy, Four Weddings and a Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams trains for the Funeral (1996), Danny Boyle’s 1924 Paris Olympics in Trainspotting (1996), Peter Cattaneo’s Chariots of Fire (1981), Hugh Hudson’s hymn to social-comedy The Full Monty (1997), physical endeavor. and Guy Ritchie’s gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), generated a string of lesser imitations.
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London became the most fashionable capital in the world and a number of foreign directors made films there, such as Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow Up, 1966), Roman Polanski (Repulsion, 1965), François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966) and Stanley Kubrick, who settled in England. Two other
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Spain For 36 years, under Franco’s repressive regime, it was almost impossible for Spain to create a vibrant film industry and for talented film-makers to express themselves freely. However, after Franco, Spanish films became among the best in the world. Any chance that Spain would have area of Spain was so effective in had in developing its small film revealing this social evil that it was industry in the early 20th century was promptly banned by the government. When the Nationalists came to dashed by the military dictatorship of power after the Spanish Civil War, Primo de Rivera from 1923–30. The arrival of sound they immediately coincided with the brought the film election of a democratic industry under government in 1931 government control, and an attempt was imposing strict moral made to build up a and political film industry. Several guidelines. The fact that José Luis Sáenz studios were built and the first big production de Heredia’s fascistic and distribution Raza (1942), which company, CIFESA, is based on an was founded in 1934. autobiographical However, many gifted novel by General Elderly but fit, Don Anselmo (José Isbert) film-makers, most Franco, is regarded wants to own a motorized wheelchair to go notably Luis Buñuel, as one of the on outings in The Wheelchair (1960), Marco went to Hollywood to Ferreri’s black comedy. outstanding Spanish work on Spanishfilms of the 1940s, language versions of American films. says a lot about Spanish cinema of the Before that, Buñuel made Land Without period. However, in the next decade, Bread (1932), the first of only three despite restrictions, a distinctive films he was to make in his native Spanish cinema emerged, led by Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García country. This stark documentary on the poverty of peasants in a barren Berlanga. They co-directed This Happy Pair (1953) about a young couple’s financial struggles. Berlanga’s Welcome Mr. Marshall (1953) is a sardonic look at the effect on a small Spanish town of the possibility of American aid, and, despite cuts, Luis Buñuel’s third and last film made in Spain, Tristana (1970) starred Catherine Deneuve, and was set in the Spain of the 1920s.
El Verdugo (Not on Your Life, 1964) contains social criticism spiked with gallows humor. Bardem’s Death of a Cyclist (1955), in which the milieu of the rich and the contrasting poor districts of Madrid are well caught in this bitter comment on contemporary Spain, won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Bardem also bravely produced Viridiana (1961), which marked Buñuel’s return to Spain after 29 years. The film’s savage attack on the mentality and rituals of the Catholic church led to it being banned outright in Spain. Buñuel returned to Spain in slightly more liberal times to make Tristaña (1970). The Italian Marco Ferreri directed three films in Spain in the 1960s, the best being The Wheelchair (1960) a black comedy in the Buñuel vein. Carlos Saura was the first Spanish director to deal with the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. Saura’s films contain an oblique criticism of Franco’s regime and analyse the bourgeoisie, the church, the army,
In The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Ana (Ana Torent) hands an apple to a fugitive who she relates to the monster in the film Frankenstein.
and sexual taboos. The Hunt (1966) was the first film of many to feature his future wife, Geraldine Chaplin. Saura’s later films such as Cria Cuervos (1976) and Elisa, My Life (1977) have a shifting chronology and an obsession with childhood. The remarkable child actress Ana Torrent appeared in the latter two films after making her mark in Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) about an 8-year-old girl who becomes obsessed with Boris Karloff ’s goodbad monster in James Whale’s what to watch 1953 Welcome Mr. Marshall (Luis García Berlanga) 1955 Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem) 1961 Viridiana (Luis Buñuel) 1973 The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice) 1976 Cria Cuervos (Carlos Saura) 1996 Tierra (Julio Medem) 2002 Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar) 2004 The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar)
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Frankenstein. This impressive debut came on the scene in the 1980s with feature can be read partly as an his outrageously campy melodramas. allegorical account of a country living Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (1999) under the shadow of an authoritarian won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, as did regime. Erice has completed only three Fernando Trueba’s Belle Epoque (1992) and Alejandro films in a career Amenábar’s The spanning nearly three decades, the Sea Inside (2004). Other first-class other two being El Sur (1983), directors are Bigas Luna about a young girl’s relationship (Jamón, Jamón, with her father, 1992, and The and Quince Tree Tit and The Moon, of the Sun (1992), 1994), Julio Medem (Tierra, one of the very best films on the 1996, Sex and creative process. Lucia, 2001), and José Luis Borau’s Javier Bardem is a paraplegic who wants to die, but the Mexican-born is shown he has reasons to live, in Alejandro Amenábar’s Guillermo del Furtivos (1975), The Sea Inside (2004). which exposes the Toro (The Devil’s harsh reality of Franco’s Spain, Backbone, 2001). Trueba (Two Much, 1995) and Amenábar (The Others, 2001) opened two months before the death of the Generalissimo. It was the first have made the trip to Hollywood, film to be distributed in Spain without while stars such as Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Antonio Banderas a license from the censors. But the expected burst of creativity in the new have become famous. Veteran era had to wait until Pedro Almodóvar directors such as Carlos Saura and Mario Camus, whose The Holy Innocents Fernando (Jorge Sanz), a deserter from the army (1984) is one of the best Spanish films during the Spanish Civil War, has to decide between of the last few decades, continue to three women, daughters of his best friend, in Belle remain active. Epoque (1992).
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Portugal Portugal has never had a large indigenous film industry, making only an average of 10 films annually. But the country has attracted foreign film-makers and produced a great film director in Manoel de Oliveira, who has put Portuguese cinema on the map.
João César Monteiro, as a manager of an ice cream In the late 1920s, Portugal produced parlour, fantasizes about his young female employees in a number of remarkable films under God’s Comedy (1995), which he also directed. the influence of various European avant-garde movements: José Leitão year into his 90s, creating a synthesis de Barros’s Maria do Mar (1930), of literary, theatrical, musical, and Jorge Brum do Canto’s beautiful visual material. Perhaps his most documentaries and especially Manoel accessible film is Abraham’s Valley de Oliveira’s Working on (1993), a sensual and the Douro River (1931), understated variation a series of images of on Madame Bovary. Other Portuguese the fishermen and assorted workers of directors of stature include António de the director’s home Macedo (A Sunday town of Oporto. In 1942, Oliveira made Afternoon, 1966), his first feature, the Leonor Silveira plays the sensuous Ema in Fernando Lopes neorealistic Aniki Bóbó, Manoel de Oliveira’s Abraham Valley (1993), (On The Edge of the from the novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís. following the Horizon, 1993), João adventures of street urchins growing Botelho (A Portuguese Goodbye, 1986; up in the slums of Oporto. He was not Hard Times, 1988), Paulo Rocha (River to make another feature for 21 years, Of Gold, 1998; The Heart’s Root, 2000), after which he would make one film a and Teresa Villaverde (Três Irmãos, 1994). Another notable figure was what to watch João César Monteiro, who starred 1988 Hard Times (João Botelho) in and directed God’s Comedy (1995), 1993 Abraham’s Valley (Manoel de Oliveira) which won the Special Jury Prize in 1995 God’s Comedy (João César Monteiro) Venice. Monteiro himself appeared 1998 River of Gold (Paulo Rocha) in many of his own long, observant, 2002 O Delfim (Fernando Lopes) and often bizarre films.
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Canada Despite its close proximity to the US, and the cultural gulf between the French and the English speaking populations, a Canadian film industry and identity took shape, especially in animation, and has developed over the decades, particularly since the 1970s. The Canadian Pacific railway set up a film unit as early as 1900, but it was only in 1939, when the National Film Board of Canada was established under John Grierson to counteract the dominance of Hollywood, that Canadian films began to make some impression worldwide. The NFB built up a strong animation department, where Norman McLaren was able to experiment with the art form. Michael Marie-Josée Croze is among a group of people trying to offer comfort to a man dying of cancer in Denys Arcand’s bleak and funny The Barbarian Invasions (2003).
Snow was prominent in avant-garde circles with his “abstract” films. After World War II, Francophone Canadians began making films, many of them cinema-verité documentaries influenced by French director Jean Rouch. Among the leading figures in Canada were Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault. Gradually, French Canadian directors became the prime force in the Canadian film industry.
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Nick Stahl (left) plays Dodge and Joshua Close plays Oliver in Jacob Tierney’s Twist (2003), a gay take on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist set in the hustler district of Toronto.
Claude Jutra (My Uncle Antoine, 1971), Gilles Carle (The True Nature of Bernadette, 1972) and especially Denys Arcand, made their marks in the 1970s. The elder Arcand, known as “the Godfather of the New Canadian cinema,” has continued to make
trenchant satires on Quebec society, which include Jesus of Montreal (1989) and The Barbarian Invasions (2003). It was easier and more likely that Anglophone directors, like Ted Kotcheff and Norman Jewison, could work in Hollywood. However, two English Canadian directors, David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, although they have worked abroad, remain resolutely Canadian in their different idiosyncratic ways. what to watch 1971 My Uncle Antoine (Claude Jutra) 1972 The True Nature of Bernadette (Gilles Carle) 1974 The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Ted Kotcheff) 1986 The Decline of the American Empire (Denys Arcand) 1987 I’ve heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema) 1988 Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg) 1989 Jesus of Montreal (Denys Arcand) 1994 Exotica (Atom Egoyan) 1997 The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan) 2003 The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand)
Mia Kirshner is a sensitive stripper and Bruce Greenwood is an obsessive client in Atom Egoyan’s erotic thriller, Exotica (1994).
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Central America Mexico has always been the leading producer of feature films in Latin America. Post-revolutionary Cuba, which once produced more than 10 features a year, has gradually turned to digital film-making, the only solution for poor film-producing countries in Central America. Until Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico (1931), Mexican audiences were exposed to popular melodramas, crude comedies, as well as Spanish-language versions of Hollywood movies. Eisenstein’s visit to Mexico inspired directors like Emilio Fernández and cameraman Gabriel Figuero, and the number of Mexican-made films increased and improved. Maria Candelaria (1944), which was directed by Fernández and shot by Figuero, and starred prestigious Hollywood actor Dolores del Rio, won the best film at Cannes. The Spanish exile Luis Buñuel made most of his films in Mexico from 1946 to 1960, perhaps the best being Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned, 1950) about slum kids in Mexico City. Figuera, who shot most of Buñuel’s Mexican films, also worked for John Ford (The Fugitive, 1947) and John Huston (Night of the In Lucía (1969), Raquel Revuelta is one of three women called Lucía from different epochs, each demonstrating women’s changing role in a macho society.
A poor couple, Pedro Armendáriz and Maria Elena Marqués, find a very valuable pearl in Emilio Fernandez’s La Perla (1947), based on the John Steinbeck story.
Iguana, 1964). During World War II, movie production in Mexico tripled. The fact that Argentina and Spain had fascist governments made the Mexican movie industry the world’s largest producer of Spanish-language films in the 1940s. Although the Mexican government was reactionary, it
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encouraged the production of films that would help articulate a true Mexican identity, in contrast to the view often seen in Hollywood movies. Indigenous cinema suffered through the 1960s and 1970s, until government sponsorship of the industry and the creation of statesupported film helped create Nuevo Cine Mexicano (New Mexican Cinema) in the 1990s. Alfonso Arau’s Like Water For Chocolate (1992) led the way for Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2001) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mamá También (2001). In prerevolutionary Cuba, films were mostly light musicals and comedies. Shortly after Castro took power in 1959, the Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry (ICAIC) was set up to control the country’s production and distribution. One of its founders was Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, who made some of Cuba’s finest films. Humberto Solás reinvented the historical epic with Lucía (1969) and Santiago Álvarez, imprisoned more than once under Batista’s regime, made weekly newsreels. In the 1960s, using newsreel footage, stills, cartoons, and various other devices, Alvarez made a name as a leading exponent of short agit-prop documentaries. The Vietnam war provided him with the material for Hanoi, Tuesday 13th (1967) and LBJ (1968). The Cuban Revolution attracted foreign directors such as French filmWhat to Watch 1943 Maria Candelaria (Emilio Fernández) 1947 The Pearl (Emilio Fernández) 1950 Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel) 1964 I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov) 1968 Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea) 1969 Lucia (Humberto Solás) 1992 Like Water For Chocolate (Alfonso Arau) 2001 Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón) 2001 Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu)
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Marco Leonardi as Pedro and Lumi Cavazos as Tita, lovers forbidden to marry, in Alfonso Arau’s landmark film, Like Water For Chocolate (1992), all about love, desire, rebellion...and food.
makers Chris Marker (¡Cuba Si!, 1961) and Agnès Varda (Salut les Cubains, 1963) to Cuba. One of the most remarkable films made in Cuba was a Soviet-Cuban co-production, I Am Cuba (1964), a propagandist piece flamboyantly directed by Mikheil Kalatozishvili. Wim Wenders’ colorful Oscar-nominated documentary, Buena Vista Social Club (1999) about the aging, home-grown musicians of the title was shot in Havana, Cuba. Haiti, although it does not have a film industry to speak of, has been the subject of a number of documentaries. It is also the setting for several feature films, from Jacques Tourner’s fanciful I Walked with a Zombie (1943) to Laurence Cantet’s Vers le Sud (2005), which is about sexual tourism.
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South America Politics have never been far away from South American cinema. The 1960s saw a new wave of political protest movies and, by the end of the 20th century, this had broadened into mainstream success, particularly for Argentinean and Brazilian directors. Film-making in South America was extremely parochial and unsophisticated during the silent era when local products were eclipsed by foreign films. Sound helped to advance the Argentinean and Brazilian film industries. During the 1930s, Argentina rivalled Mexico in the Latin-American market with its “gaucho” and tango movies, the most successful being directed by José A. Ferreya and starring the tango singer Libertad Lamarque. In Brazil, the large number of illiterate people led the studios to quickly equip themselves to make sound films. One of the earliest was Alô, Alô, Brazil? (1935), a musical which launched Carmen Miranda’s career. The most important figure in early Brazilian cinema was Humberto Mauro, who tried to elevate the poor quality of local production with such serious films as Ganga Bruta (1933), probably the first great Brazilian film.
In the 1940s, film production in Brazil was down to its lowest level. At this time, Alberto Cavalcanti returned to his native land after a successful cosmopolitan career (particularly at Ealing Studios in England) to become head of production of the Vera Cruz film company. The first Brazilian film to become internationally known, Lima Barreto’s O Cangaceiro (The Bandit, 1953), a poetic Robin Hood-type adventure, was made under Cavalcanti’s aegis. Cinema languished in Argentina during the Peronist era (1946–55), until Leopoldo Torre Nilsson emerged as the most famous of all Argentinean directors. The son of the prolific director Leopoldo Torres Rios, he began working with his father at the age of 15, and was scriptwriter and assistant on many of his father’s films. His own A self-styled black saint gains a following in Glauber Rocha’s Black God White Devil (1964) set in the sertão, the parched land of north-east Brazil.
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films, most of them adaptations from the novels of his wife, Beatriz Guido, broke away from the staple Argentinean product of superficial comedies and melodramas. House of the Angel (1957), The Fall (1959), and The Hand in the Trap (1961) are studies of a bourgeoisie repressed by a suffocating Catholic Church and its effect on adolescents. The gothic claustrophobia of these films echoes the work of Spanish director Luis Buñuel without the biting irony. Summerskin (1961) and The Terrace (1963) show teenagers creating a world of their own away from the stifling mansions of their parents. Unfortunately, by the mid1960s, Torre Nilsson found it increasingly difficult to make the films he wanted because of the political and economic climate of his country. new wave and liberation
Brazilian film finally matured in the 1960s with Cinema Nôvo, a New Wave movement of young political filmmakers. The main figures were Glauber Rocha (Black God White Devil, 1964), Ruy Guerra (The Guns, 1963), Carlos Diegues (Ganga Zumba, 1963) and Nelson Pereira Dos Santos (Barren Lives, 1963). Made under repressive
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A hired killer (Mauricio do Valle) in Glauber Rocha’s political allegory, Antonio Das Mortes (1969), ends up siding with the peasants against the brutal landowners.
conditions following the military coup in 1964, Antonio Das Mortes (1969) was Rocha’s last radical cry from Brazil before almost 10 years in exile. In Argentina, a group of filmmakers set up the independent Cine Liberacion. A leading figure was Fernando Solanas. His The Hour of the Furnaces (1968), a three part masterpiece co-directed with Octavio Getino, presents a dazzling array of interviews, intertitles, songs, poems, footage from other films, and new material bearing witness to the negative effects of neo-colonialism. This devastating film, made clandestinely, ends with a two-minute what to watch 1961 The Hand in the Trap (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Argentina) 1963 Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, Brazil) 1969 Antonio Das Mortes (Glauber Rocha, Brazil) 1968 The Hour of the Furnaces (Fernando Solanas, Argentina) 1975/79 The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, Chile) 1985 The Official Version (Luis Puenzo, Argentina) 1998 Central Station (Walter Salles, Brazil) 2002 City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Brazil)
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close-up of the dead Che Guevara to whom the film is dedicated along with “all who died fighting to liberate Latin America.” The film was partly responsible for new and rigorous censorship laws. In the same year, Miguel Littin’s The Jackal of Nahueltoro (1969) was released. It was one of the best films to come from Chile in the creative period just before and during the presidency of Salvador Allende. Based on a real case, it tells the story of an illiterate peasant murderer, who is taught to read and to understand social values in prison, only to be executed by firing squad. Patricio Guzmán’s The Battle of Chile (1975–79), a powerful documentary on the events leading
A former teacher, Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), waits with Josué (Vinícius de Oliveira) during a quest for the boy’s father in Central Station (1998).
up to the overthrow of the Allende government by the CIA and the forces of General Pinochet, was smuggled out of the country into Cuba, where it took over four years to edit. The events of the bloody military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, are seen through the eyes of two young boys in Andrés Wood’s Machuca (2004). latin resurgence
The 1980s saw a renaissance of Argentinean cinema. Funny Dirty Little War (1983), Hector Olivera’s black comedy of Peronist militants in the early 1970s, was a fast, furious, and
funny political satire. Luis Puenzo’s moving The Official Version (1985) was about the fate of the children of the Disappeared — when thousands of Argentinain citizens vanished during the “Dirty War” (1976–83). This courageous film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The next year, María Luisa Bemberg’s Camila, an indictment of oppression during the dictatorship of 1847, was read as a criticism of modern Argentina. Carlos Sorin made the fascinating A King and His Movie (1986), about the difficulties of a director trying to make an historical film in Argentina. He followed this with the gently humorous road movie Historias Minimas (2002), and the canine comedy, Bombon, the Dog (2004). Among the other first-rate Argentinean films of this later period were Fabián Bielinsky’s Nine Queens (2000) and Pablo Trapero’s cop thriller El Bonaerense (2002). Other recent successes included the semi-documentary Familia Rodante (2005) and Lucrecia Juan Villegas plays an out-of-work mechanic whose life is transformed when he is given a pedigree dog in Carlos Sorin’s Bombon, the Dog (2004).
Gael García Bernal (front) as the young Che Guevara with Rodrigo De la Serna as Alberto Granado in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).
Germán Jaramillo (right) and Anderson Ballesteros in Barbet Schroeder’s Our Lady of the Assassins (2000).
Martel’s The Holy Girl (2004). In Brazil, Hector Babenco, who had made Pixote (1981), a searing exposure of homeless children, directed the prison drama Carandiru (2003). The other well-known Brazilian director, Walter Salles, had hits with Central Station (1998) and The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), while Fernando Meirelles triumphed with City of God (2002). In a lighter vein was Andrucha Waddington’s Me, You, Them (E Tu Eles, 2000), about a strong woman with three husbands, all living in the same house. Other countries not known for film production had successes, such as Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s 25 Watts (2001) and Whisky (2004), from Uruguay; Barbet Schroeder’s Our Lady of the Assassins (2000), from Columbia, and Rodrigo Bellott’s Sexual Dependency (2003), from Bolivia, which uses a split screen throughout.
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Australia and New Zealand Since the 1970s, Australian films have increasingly come to the world’s attention, while Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, put New Zealand on the map as a country in which popular big-budget fims could be made.
Australia has been making homegrown movies ever since The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), believed to be the world’s first feature-length film at 66 minutes. However, at first there was little incentive to make Australian movies because of the American and British exports, until World War I cut Australia off from European film imports. It began to turn out its own cheap productions, melodramas, and what were called “blackblocks farces,” broad comedies of rural families. nicole kidman Actor Box Nicole Kidman (born 1967) made her US screen debut in Dead Calm (1989). She then co-starred with Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (1990). The two stars were married the same year, becoming one of Hollywood’s most celebrated couples. Together they made Far and Away (1992) and Stanley Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut (1999) before they divorced in 2001. Kidman showed her acting range in To Die For (1995), Moulin Rouge! (2001), The Hours (2002), and Dogville (2003).
Mel Gibson continues in his role as a vengeful futuristic cop in Mad Max 2 (1981).
There was little attempt at art cinema, an exception being Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke (1919), an adaptation of a popular series of poems and Australian cinema’s first international success. Most other films transplanted Hollywood formulas, particularly the Western, to Australia. By 1936, only four countries in the world were entirely “wired for sound”: the USA, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The best-known director from the early sound era was Charles Chauvel (1897–1959), who made two successful war films: 40,000 Horsemen (1940), based on the exploits of the Australian Light Horsemen in World War I, and The Rats of Tobruk (1944). The wartime documentary Kokoda Front Line! (1942) brought Australia its first Oscar. But until the 1970s, Australian films meant films made in Australia by foreigners. For Ealing Studios, Harry Watt made Aussie Westerns such as The Overlanders (1946) and Eureka Stockade (1948), which
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started a vogue for filming British films in Australia. Among the directors who made films there were Stanley Kramer (On the Beach, 1959), Fred Zinnemann (The Sundowners, 1960), and Tony Richardson (Ned Kelly, 1970). In 1973, the Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC) came into being and quickly bore fruit. The directors who emerged were Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom, 1977), Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975), Fred Schepisi (The Devil’s Playground, 1976), Phillip Noyce (Newsfront, 1978), Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, 1979), and George Miller (Mad Max, 1979), all of whom went on to have parallel careers in Hollywood. Of the next generation, Baz Luhrmann is the most celebrated. His first feature, Strictly Ballroom (1992), won awards and became one the most profitable films ever in Australia. Perhaps the first well-known New Phillip Noyce’s RabbitProof Fence (2002) follows three young aboriginal girls in 1931 attempting to make a 1,500-mile trek home.
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Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice win the Australian Pan Pacific Ballroom Dancing Championship in Baz Luhrmann’s hit, Strictly Ballroom (1992).
what to watch 1975
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir)
1977
The Getting of Wisdom (Bruce Beresford)
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Newsfront (Phillip Noyce)
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My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong)
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Mad Max (George Miller)
1986 Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman) 1990
An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion)
1994
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
Zealand director was the animator Len Lye, who invented the technique known as “direct film,” or painting designs on film stock without using a camera (although he worked mostly overseas). Jane Campion is another high profile New Zealand director. An Angel at My Table (1990) launched her international career. While Campion, Roger Donaldson, and Geoff Murphy used their first films to gain entry to Hollywood, Peter Jackson managed to lure Hollywood to Wellington to shoot The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, and 2003).
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China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Until the 1980s, China, the world’s most populous nation, produced relatively few internationally known films, whereas its neighbors, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were renowned for their martial arts movies. Today, China has become a cinematic force to be reckoned with. China was one of the slowest countries in Asia to develop its own film industry. Many of the first films were derived from staged opera productions or light comedies. Although they attracted large local audiences, they were rarely more widely distributed. One problem was language. The main studios were in Shanghai, and when talking pictures arrived the films were made in Mandarin rather than the local dialect, and few members of the audience could understand them. Small companies in Hong Kong then started making films in Cantonese, which were distributed in China. The first Chinese film to be acclaimed internationally was Chusheng Tsai’s The Song of the Fishermen (1934), about the daily hardships faced by the fishermen on the Yangste river. When the Japanese invaded Shanghai in 1937, many film-makers left for Hong Kong or Taiwan. Others followed the government into exile in Chungking. The Japanese took over the studios in order to produce propaganda films, and very few Chinese films were made. After the war, left-wing groups produced the best films, such as Cheng Chun Li’s Crows and Sparrows (1949), about a what to watch 1965 Two Stage Sisters (Jin Xie, China) 1969 A Touch of Zen (King Hu, Taiwan) 1972 Return of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, Hong Kong) 1984 Yellow Earth (Kaige Chen, China) 1989 City of Sadness (Hsiou-hsien Hou, Taiwan) 1990 Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou, Japan/China) 2000 Yi yi… (Edward Yang, Taiwan)
Kaige Chen’s landmark film, Yellow Earth (1984), set in 1939, tells of a soldier’s attempts to change the superstitious ways of a rural family.
corrupt landlord and his tenants, who fight for their rights. One of the last fruits of a fertile period in the cinema of pre-Communist China, it was a landmark in its move toward a style not far from Italian neorealism. films of the cultural revolution
The first film to be made after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 was the SovietChinese documentary Victory of the Chinese People (1950), directed by Sergei Gerasimov. Jin Xie emerged as the brightest of the Chinese directors in the early 1960s with Red Detachment of Women (1960), based on the classic Chinese ballet, and Two Stage Sisters (1965). Both films revealed a vivid sense of color, composition, and inventive camera angles. The finely crafted Two Stage Sisters, although anti-Capitalist and pro-Feminist,
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The young Gong Li studies the barrels in her middle-aged husband’s wine distillery in Red Sorghum (1987), Zhang Yimou’s story of passion and murder.
contained many elements of Hollywood melodrama. It was one of the last films made before the Cultural Revolution. Jin Xie was accused of “bourgeois humanism” and imprisoned for some years, and could only return to film-making in the late 1970s. A mere six films were made during the Cultural Revolution, all of them crudely propagandistic, but visually striking, most of them revised versions of previously filmed Peking operas. The White-Haired Girl (1970) and Red Detachment of Women (1971) were supervised by Mao Tse-Tung’s wife, the former film actress and dancer Chiang Ching. After the Cultural Revolution, film production picked up, and films made Three heroes (Hsu Feng, Shih Chun, and Tien Peng) await their enemies in King Hu’s martial arts classic A Touch of Zen (1969).
were highly critical of that period. Jin Xie’s Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1980), presented a bleak picture of a young girl pressured by the Red Guard to leave her intellectual lover for political reasons. Tian-ming Wu’s Life (1984) was the first in a series of films that depicted a person’s struggle to retain some individuality. Wu belonged to The Fifth Generation, those directors who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1970s. The most
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wor l d c i n e m a Bruce Lee, in his first starring role, displays his karate skills in The Big Boss (1971), the film which literally kick-started kung fu mania.
famous of these were Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, whose first films, respectively Yellow Earth (1984) and Red Sorghum (1987), made them into the most widely known mainland Chinese directors ever. Chen’s Farewell my Concubine (1993) was the first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Notable films from other Fifth Generation directors were Huang Jianxin’s The Black Cannon Incident (1985), a witty satire on bureaucracy, and Zhuangzhuang Tian’s Horse Thief (1986), filmed in Tibet. hong kong
In Hong Kong, where most of the population spoke Cantonese, film production reached its peak in 1960 with over 200 films being produced, and the former British colony claimed to be “The Hollywood of the East.” The mixture of musicals, detective films, and soft porn gave way in the late 1960s to new-style martial arts films, which brought huge profits from abroad, especially to the Shaw Brothers’ film company. taiwan
The first big sword-play hit was the Taiwanese production of Dragon Gate Inn (1966). The director King Hu, who worked in Taiwan, went on to make A Touch of Zen (1969). This was an
exciting three-hour epic, set during the Ming dynasty, and one of the finest examples of the genre. The first kung fu (simply meaning “technique” or “skill”) film to be given general release in the west was Five Fingers of Death (1972), directed by Changhwa Jeong. Cheh Chang reinvented the swordplay film with a trilogy: OneArmed Swordsman (1967), Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (1969), and The New One-Armed Swordsman (1971)—all three were quintessential tales of
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heroic bloodshed. Meanwhile, Golden Harvest, a production company started by Raymond Chow, broke the Shaw Brothers monopoly with Bruce Lee “chop-socky” hits, starting with The Big Boss (1971). After Lee’s premature death at the age of 32, the prolific director Chang Cheh continued the tradition, taking fight choreography to new heights. Chang’s films influenced other directors, such as John Woo and Liu Chiau Liang, and made famous Hong Kong stars, such as Lung Ti. Although Taiwan was associated with kung-fu movies, several directors made political and social dramas in a more cryptic style, the best known being Hsiao-Hsien Hou (see page 309), whose work was close to the Japanese Yi yi: A One and a Two... (2000) by Edward Yang, a leading auteur of the New Cinema in Taiwan, is an epic story of a family seen from different perspectives.
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Chen Chang and Lisa Yang in Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (1991), young lovers living in the shadow of gang warfare.
master Yasujiro Ozu. The most internationally celebrated Taiwanese director of the 1990s and beyond is Ang Lee (see page 322), whose work ranges from an updated version of the Chinese wu xia (samurai-style) tradition of storytelling involving myth, swords and magic with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) to Hollywood hits such as Brokeback Mountain (2005).
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Bamboo canes are chopped down with brilliance to form palisade-cages and improvized spears, one of the many dazzling, gravity-defying stunts in Zhang Yimou’s House of the Flying Daggers (2004).
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Japan Although Japan had been making films of high quality since the beginning of cinema, Japanese films remained virtually unknown in the west for over half a century. Since the 1950s, however, Japanese cinema has become very successful, both critically and commercially. For most of its history, Japanese cinema was divided into two categories, gendai-geki—films in a contemporary setting—and jidai-geki— period films usually set in the Togukawa era (1616–1868), before the opening of Japan to western influence. A sub-genre was shomin-geki (“home dramas”), films about families, of which directors Yasujiro Ozu and Youjiro Shimazu were the most consistent practitioners. At first, two theatrical traditions were carried over to the cinema: the onnagata (males in female roles), and the benshi (an actor who stood at the side of the screen and narrated the film). However, as films became more A Page of Madness (1926, Teinosuke Kingasa), one of the more radical and shocking early Japanese films, in which the main character works in a mental asylum where his wife is an inmate.
The Seven Samurai (1954) remade in Hollywood as The Magnificent Seven (1960), is still seen by many as a masterpiece for its characterization and skillful action scenes directed by Akira Kurosawa.
realistic, the onnagata looked out of place and, with the coming of sound, the benshi became redundant. After an earthquake in 1923, which devastated Tokyo and destroyed its film studios, Japan had to rely upon foreign imports for some years. Slowly the industry recovered, though foreign audiences were still largely unaware of
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Members of an audience watch the performance of an onnagata (female impersonator) in Kon Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge (1963), a study of opposites—love/ hate, illustion/reality, masculinity/femininity.
Japanese films. An exception was Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Crossways (1928). Fragmentary close-ups, claustrophobic atmosphere of angst, and dark stylized décor are reminiscent of German expressionism, although the director had apparently not seen any German films up to that time. The first Japanese talkie was Heinosuke Gosho’s The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (1931), a delightful slice-of-life comedy. But as Japan became increasingly militaristic, more and more right-wing propaganda films were being made. Humanists such as Kenji Mizoguchi avoided government propaganda and, in his mature stage, delivered twin masterpieces, Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion (both 1936), stories of exploited women in contemporary Japan. wartime japan
All Japanese cinema came under state control in 1939 and film production slowed down. However, some of the great directors continued to make films in their own way. Ozu made There Was A Father (1942), one of his most affecting films. The most popular war film was Kosaburo Yoshimura’s what to watch 1952 Life of O’Haru (Kenji Mizoguchi) 1954 The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa) 1958 Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu) 1963 An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa) 1969 Boy (Nagisa Oshima) 1979 Vengeance Is Mine (Shohei Imamura) 1985 Tampopo (Juzo Itami) 1997 Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano) 1998 After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda) 2001 Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi (1940), which was not afraid to show the weakness and hardships that were associated with war. american occupation
Under American occupation, there were a number of jidai-geki films made to avoid censorship of contemporary issues. Despite the flood of American films, the problems of industrial disputes with Toho, the largest studio and relatively new directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Keisuke Kinoshita—who directed Carmen Comes Home (1951), the first Japanese color film—became established. The breakthrough came when Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950, see page 435) won the Grand Prix at Venice in 1950, thus opening up the floodgate of Japanese films to the west. Among the most celebrated films of that time were: The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954), Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) and Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953). Others were Kon Ichikawa’s anti-war films, The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), and Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition (1959–61), an impressive and harrowing socially conscious trilogy. At the same time Ishirô Honda created Godzilla (1954), which led to a whole stream of movies featuring
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expensive Japanese films up to that date, tells four tales of the supernatural using haunting imagery derived from threatening prehistoric monsters and Japanese art. Among the new wave of Japanese mutants formed as a result of radioactivity caused by nuclear bombs. directors, many of whom have The dubbing in the west was atrocious, explored eroticism and violence, were but the special effects were spectacular. Shohei Imamura (The Insect Woman, The 1960s was an even richer 1963; The Pornographer, 1966); Hiroshi creative time for Japanese cinema, Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes, beginning with Kaneto Shindo’s The 1964), Yoshishige Yoshida (Eros plus Island (1960), a tale—told beautifully on the wide screen without dialogue— about the hard life of a peasant family. Masaki Kobayashi’s Hara-Kiri (1962) remained true to the traditions of the period film, while managing to criticize the rigid codes of honor that are basic to their subject. Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964), one of the most Koji Yakusho as a gangster who invades the ramen (noodle) bar owned by Nobuko Miyamoto in Juzo Itami’s gastronomic comedy, Tampopo (1985).
Eihi Shiiha as a woman who seeks to wreak vengeance on all men, especially on one particular middle-aged widower, in Audition (1999), Takashi Miike’s psychological horror film.
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Massacre, 1969) and Nagisa Oshima (Death by Hanging, 1968). It was Oshima who took the sexual revolution still further with his Ai No Corrida (1976, see page 462). 1980 and beyond
Old hands like Kurosawa, who made his two great spectacles Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), and Imamura, whose The Ballad of Narayama (1983) won the Best Film at Cannes, continued to have success. Of the younger generation, Juzo Itami was the bright new meteor of Japanese cinema in the 1980s with his comic satires of Japanese culture, Tampopo (1985), A Taxing Woman (1987), and A Taxing Woman Returns (1988), all starring his wife Nobuko Miyamoto. At the turn of the 21st century, Japanese films continued to win prizes at festivals and to attact large audiences. A dominant figure is Takeshi Kitano, whose films vary from violent yakuza (gangster) movies (Hana-Bi, 1997; Brother, 2000), to period films (Zatoichi, 2003) and sentimental comedies (Kikujiro, 1999). Credited as “Beat” Takeshi, he has also acted in many films, including his own. In Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale
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(2000), where a school forces its pupils to slaughter one another on an island, Takeshi plays the sadistic headmaster. Japan has also produced some of the most effective horror films, many of which have been adapted by Hollywood. Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998), Japan’s most successful horror film to date, led to a sequel, a prequel, and an American remake in 2002. Another Hollywood remake was The Grudge (2004), made by the same director, Takashi Shimizu, as the original chiller, Ju-On (2000). Also frightening, but more subtle, are the supernatural crime movies directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira), such as Pulse (2001). Other violent films included Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999). In a different vein are Hirokazu Koreeda’s films, which explore memory and loss, such as Nobody Knows (2004), and Hayao Miyazaki’s charming Spirited Away (2001), which won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature, a reflection of the rise in the huge popularity of Japanese anime films, first awoken in the west by Akira. Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988) features breathtaking animation; it shows a world in which biker gangs are at war, awaiting the arrival of a legend called Akira.
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Korea Although Korean films now loom large in the world cinema landscape with international hits such as Park Chan-wook‘s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), they have only established a distinctive character and been truly visible since the mid-1990s. The fact that Korea was under Japanese rule from 1903 to 1945 did not help the establishment of a film industry, although a number of silent Korean films were made. In 1937, when Japan invaded China, the Korean Chihwaseon (2002) traces the life of an artist (Choi Min-Sik) known for his addiction to alcohol and women.
film industry was converted into a propaganda machine. However, after World War II, despite Korea regaining its independence, it was soon divided into the Communist North Korea and the Capitalist South. Two of the most important Korean movies appeared in 1960: Kim Kiyoung’s The Housemaid, and Yu Hyunmok’s Aimless Bullet, both dark domestic melodramas dealing with family life and survival in the years following the end of the Korean War (1950–53). In 1962, the Motion Picture Law mandated that film companies must produce at least 15 films per year. This resulted in an increase in films being made although few were seen outside Korea. The leading director of the period was Shin Sang-Ok, whose My Mother and Her Guest (1961), told through the eyes of a young girl who wants her widowed mother to marry again, is considered his masterpiece. Shin and his wife were kidnapped from their
what to watch 1996 The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong Sang-soo) 1999 Shiri (Kang Je-Gyu) 2002 Chihwaseon (Im Kwon-taek) 2002 The Way Home (Jeong-hyang Lee) 2002 Oasis (Lee Chang-dong) 2003 Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (Kim Ki-duk)
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native South Korea in the late 1970s and a girl with cerebral palsy, won a and held for several years in North number of awards. Korea to make movies for Kim Jong Il, Previously, Hong Sang-soo made son of the North Korean leader. They his debut with the award-winning were granted asylum in the United The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996), States in 1986. which weaves the After a fallow period, experience of four there were some signs characters into a single of revival in the 1980s story. The year 1996 when the first films of also saw the debut Im Kwon-taek began of controversial to appear at festivals. filmmaker Kim KiIm had made dozens duk, whose extremely of films since 1962. His violent films such as breakthrough came The Isle (2000) and with Mandala (1981), a Oldboy (2003), part of the “Vengeance” Address Unknown (2001) trilogy by Chan-wook Park, has taken film about Buddhist were counterbalanced Korean film to a new worldwide audience. monks. Another film of by the serene Spring, Im’s, Adada (1987), reflects the Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (2003). Other huge successes for marginalized position of women in traditional Korean society. Seopyonje Korean cinema in recent years have (1993), the story of a family of been Kang Je-Gyu’s espionage thriller roaming pansori (a sort of Korean folk Shiri (1999), Chan-wook Park’s soopera) singers’ struggles in postwar called “Vengeance” trilogy—Sympathy Korea, became an unexpectedly huge for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) hit in Korea. In 2002, Im won the Best and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005). Director award at Cannes for his Two films by women directors, Jeonghyang Lee’s touching The Way Home magnificent Chihwaseon, about the life of a 19th-century Korean painter. In (2002) and Jae-eun Jeong’s bittersweet the same year, Lee Chang-dong’s comedy Take Care of My Cat (2001), astonishing Oasis (2002), about a love have also been at the forefront of affair between a mentally retarded boy Korean film. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring, 2003, is a beautifully told multilayered fable about the Buddhist beliefs of life and reincarnation.
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India India is the world’s largest manufacturer of films—in the 1990s the country produced over 800 films annually. It is the only country that has a bigger audience for indigenous films than imported ones. It also boasts one of the biggest international audiences. Indian films mean different things to different people. For the majority they mean Bollywood, and for others they mean exquisite art movies as exemplified by the work of Satyajit Ray. The films of “Bollywood,” a conflation of Bombay, the old name for Mumbai, and Hollywood, are generally rigidly formulaic Hindilanguage musicals, comedies, or melodramas. In the 1990s, Bollywood musicals, the staple of the Indian film industry, became more and more popular among non-Indians in the west, mainly for their kitsch qualities. Although Bollywood musicals came into being with the coming of sound, some of the plots were already apparent in the popular silent films. The most prominent of the early, silent director-producers was Dadasaheb Phalke, who introduced the mythological film, peopled by gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. All the roles were played by men, as women were forbidden to act at the time. But Phalke was ruined by the introduction of sound which, in a country with 18 major languages and more than 800 different dialects, inevitably resulted in the fragmentation of the industry and its dispersal into different language markets. Bombay, the original center of the industry, continued to dominate by concentrating on films in Hindi, the most widely spoken Indian language. In the south, Madras developed its own massive industry with films in Tamil. The Hindi film in the north and the Tamil in the south constituted
Sunil Dutt as the rebellious son in Mother India (1957), Mehboob Khan’s classic tragic epic of rural life, known as India’s Gone With The Wind.
the mainstream of Indian cinema, both dominated by a Hollywood-style star system. Among minority language cinema the only one of importance is Jean Renoir’s The River (1951) opens and closes with shots of the Ganges, which runs through the film as a symbol of life, death, and renewal.
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Bengali, thanks mainly to Satyajit Ray’s influence in the 1950s. The first talkie was Alam Ara (1931), directed by Ardeshir Irani with dialogue in both Urdu and Hindi. It contained several song and dance numbers and its huge financial success led to the formula of films being built around songs. At the same time, Hindi cinema had also almost imperceptibly developed a tradition of socially aware films. Founded in 1934, the Bombay Talkies Studio produced a number of such pictures. However, it was only in the 1950s that Indian films began to be shown around the world. Among the first were Aan (1952), the first Indian feature in Technicolor, and Mother India (1957), both directed by Mehboob Khan and the latter starring Nargis, the supreme Bollywood star, who was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Bimal Roy’s Two Acres of Land
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(1953), about the bitter issue of caste, won the Prix International at the Cannes Film Festival. influence on world cinema
When Jean Renoir came to Calcutta in 1950 to shoot The River (1951), he was assisted by the 29-year-old Satyajit Ray. Renoir encouraged Ray to fulfill his dream of making a film based on the popular autobiographical novel by Bhibuti Bashan Bannerjee, dealing with Bengali village life, called Pather Panchali. With the majority of money coming from the West Bengal government, Ray was able to make Pather Panchali (1955), the first in his “Apu Trilogy” five years later. Aside from Renoir’s importance to Ray, the influence of The River cannot be overestimated. It was one of the first films from the west to bring back images of Satyajit Ray (behind the camera), the dominant figure of Bengali cinema, and Subrata Mitra, the brilliant cinematographer on ten of Ray’s films.
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what to watch 1955 Devdas (Bimal Roy) 1955 Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray) 1957 Mother India (Mehboob Khan) 1964 Charulata (Satyajit Ray) 1969 Bhuvan Shome (Mrinal Sen) 1975 Sholay (Ramesh Sippy) 1988 Salaam Bombay! (Mira Nair) 1994 Bandit Queen (Shekhar Kapur) 2002 The Clay Bird (Tareque Masud)
India, other than as an exotic background to Kipling-style colonial adventures. It was only after The River that Fritz Lang visited India in 1956 to make Taj-Mahal, although the project was later abandoned. Roberto Rossellini also went there to direct India (1959). The River was a further inspiration to James Ivory who later made several films in India including
Shakespeare-Wallah (1965) and Heat and Dust (1983). Another European director to be influenced was Louis Malle (Phantom India, 1969). The success of Satyajit Ray’s films proved that it was possible to work outside the commercial system. Those that benefited from this newly independent cinema, situated mainly in Calcutta, were Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, both Marxists, who developed a new kind of social cinema in opposition to Ray’s European humanism. Sen, who has been called the “Bengali Godard,” attacked the poverty and exploitation in Indian society in his films. “I wanted to make Chanda Sharma as Sweet Sixteen, a beautiful Nepalese virgin who has been sold into prostitution in Mira Nair’s realistic drama Salaam Bombay! (1988)
india
Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapur’s exciting Bandit Queen (1994), based on the real-life experiences of a modern Indian folk hero.
disturbing and annoying films, not artistic ones,” he claimed. Sen’s The Royal Hunt (1976) and And Quiet Flows the Dawn (1979) are powerful unsentimentalized political parables which try to come to terms with the complexities of the country. Ghatak’s best known films, The Cloud-capped Star (1960), Komal Ghandhar (1961), and Subarnarekha (1962), make up a trilogy based in Calcutta which address the subject of refugees. In contrast, in Bombay, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand (1970) laid the foundation of a genuine middle-class cinema. It tells of a terminally ill man who, determined to remain cheerful, brings about positive changes in the lives of those people around him. Meanwhile, Bollywood movies were improving in quality, both technically and artistically. Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975), starring one of the great Bollywood heroes, Amitabh Bachchan, is one of the most successful Hindi films of the 1970s. In the 1980s, with Satyajit Ray’s films becoming less frequent and of lower quality, Indian “art cinema” was not as visible. However, in 1988, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay!, became a huge
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international success. Made in record time and for little money, it was an impressively assembled mosaic of Bombay’s street life, its harsh cruelties and fleeting pleasures. Other critically acclaimed Indian films in recent years have been Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen (1994), an examination of caste discrimination, human suffering, and the role of women in India’s changing culture; Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996), which references Indian mysticism and the epic poetry of the Ramayana as well as late-20th-century feminism, and Tareque Masud’s The Clay Bird (2002), a touching picture of childhood in the 1950s and the first Bangladeshi film to win an award at Cannes. India is the world’s largest producer of feature films, most of them musicals, the soundtracks of which are released before the movie is released. Since the 1980s, the sale of music rights has generated income for the film industry equivalent to the distribution revenues. Amitabh bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan (born 1942) is India’s greatest superstar. With his deep baritone voice and brooding personality, Bachchan was the archetypal “Angry Young Man” of the 1970s, replacing the blander heroes of the 1960s. His breakthrough came with Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973), in which he starred opposite his future wife Jaya Bhaduri. He continued to express his anger in such major hits as Deewar (1975) and Don (1978). He was as active and popular as ever when past middle age in Khakee (2004) and Black (2005).
a-z of directors
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A - Z o f d i r e c to r s
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The definition of a director’s function has been accepted only comparatively recently. For many years, he or she was considered just an anonymous member of a team, generally subordinate to the producer. This has all changed. The director is preeminent in the perception of a film. Nowadays, most film lovers have an idea of the role of the director and know the names of the directors of many of the films they see. In the early days, the general public was unaware of a director’s name. People went to see movies on the strength of the stars and the subject. Gradually, certain directors became known because they made themselves visible. For instance, Cecil B. DeMille often introduced his films in trailers and Alfred Hitchcock made brief appearances in his films. This made them recognizable, and also encouraged the public to associate them with a certain genre, in this case, the epic and the thriller respectively. It was the influential French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, which formulated the so-called auteur theory in the mid1950s. Its writers argued that the film, though a collective medium, always had the signature of the director on it, and that directors should be considered in the light of thematic consistency. This formulation shed light on those directors, especially in the Hollywood studio system, who had never been considered within the “cinema as art” school of criticism, such as Vincente Minnelli, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, and Otto Preminger. The theory was taken up by critics all over the world and the director was finally given his due as Expressing the isolation of a great director, John Ford seeks inspiration from the sea for the next shot of Donovan’s Reef (1963).
the principal creator of the film, if not the “onlie begetter.” With the growth of film studies faculties in universities and the increased sophistication of audiences, many keen movie-goers are familiar with the names of such great directors of the past as Sergei Eisenstein, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa. Nowadays, it is possible to hear nonspecialist audiences referring to the latest Steven Spielberg movie rather than the latest Tom Hanks. At the moment, there are directors emerging from obscurity, renowned ones adding to their filmographies, and new talent being discovered. This A–Z of Directors has tried to be as up-to-date as possible. It includes the young, the old, the quick, and the dead, international independent geniuses, Hollywood greats, cult figures, Developing World film-makers, underground, and experimental filmmakers. The main criterion has been to include directors whose work has been widely shown internationally, either in commercial cinemas or art houses. The profiles are an attempt to give readers enough objective information to be able to assess the type, quality, content, and style of each director’s work and then to discover or rediscover them for themselves.
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Chantal Akerman
what to watch
31950– 2BELGIAN 41968–
1975 Jeanne Dielman
120 5Avant-garde, Documentary
1977 News From Home
The essence of Chantal Akerman’s minimalist style is a static camera, medium long shots, and monologues, as well as silences that get close to the heart of her alienated characters.
The most characteristic film by Akerman is Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which reveals the minutiae of three days (225 minutes of film time) in
1978 The Meetings of Anna 1982 All Through the Night 2000 The Captive
the life of a Belgian housewife and part-time prostitute (Delphine Seyrig). In The Meetings of Anna (Les Rendezvous d’Anna, 1978), the heroine is a Belgian film director in her twenties (like Akerman at the time), who travels to several European cities to publicize her latest film. All Night Long (Toute une Nuit, 1982) is a series of amorous fragments, its dislocated characters existing in impersonal hotel rooms and railway stations. More conventional but less effective was The Captive (La Captive, 2000), adapted from a novel by Marcel Proust. Sylvie Testud plays Ariane in The Captive, a film that is woven around the obsessive love a young man feels for a woman.
Robert Aldrich 31918–1983 2AMERICAN 41953–1981 129 5 Melodrama, War, Western
The forceful, often bludgeoning style of Robert Aldrich — overhead shots, vast close-ups, and shock cuts — was most effective in genres like Westerns and war films.
A maverick in Hollywood terms, Robert Aldrich was his own producer in 1955 with Kiss Me Deadly, a classic multi-level film noir that uses a Mickey Spillane story to form a gripping allegory of America in the 1950s. Its portrayal of an immoral hero, use of real locations, and low-key photography influenced the French New Wave. Aldrich’s characters tend towards the hysterical and his direction often matches them, such as the histrionics of film people in The Big Knife (1955), an adaptation of Clifford Odets’ play about what to watch 1954 Apache 1955 Kiss Me Deadly 1956 Attack! 1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1967 The Dirty Dozen
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis play elderly sisters, "Baby Jane" and Blanche, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, a black comedy and psychological thriller.
Hollywood; the Gothic extravagances of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962); and lesbian rivalries in The Killing of Sister George (1968). Attack! (1956), about an infantry company led by a cowardly commander, and The Dirty Dozen (1967), an action drama in which 12 American military prisoners are sent on a suicide mission, are bitter war films. Equally powerful are his pro-Native American films, such as Apache (1954), which follows a warrior fighting against white oppression, and the stark Ulzana’s Raid (1972), about a band of Apaches on a rampage.
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
Woody Allen
what to watch
31935– 2AMERICAN 41969–
1972 Play It Again Sam
136 5Comedy, Drama
1973 Sleeper
Films directed by the prolific Woody Allen have amused adult audiences over many years. In the best of them, however, there is pain lurking beneath the comic surface.
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1977 Annie Hall 1979 Manhattan 1984 Broadway Danny Rose 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo 1986 Hannah and Her Sisters
Before directing films, Woody Allen was a 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors stand-up comic whose subject matter was 1992 Husbands and Wives his own obsessions — his relationships with 2005 Match Point women and his analyst, and death — which he elaborated on in his films. His first five movies were constructed as closely and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Allen’s admiration for Ingmar Bergman linked revue sketches, although in Love and Death (1976), a witty satire of 19th-century became clear in Interiors (1978), his first Russian literature, he paid more “serious” movie. Other attention to form. Annie Hall homages to Bergman include (1977) was a breakthrough film, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy successfully showing a complex (1982) and Deconstructing relationship (based on his own Harry (1997). He also with Diane Keaton), while used Bergman’s favorite cameraman Sven Nykvist on Manhattan (1979) is a stunning black-and-white tribute to New Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) York, the city he loves. There is and cast actor Max von Sydow an autobiographical element in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). in many of his films, most Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and intensely in Husbands and Stardust Memories (1980) were inspired by Federico Fellini. Wives (1992), during the filming of which he broke up Match Point (2005) was a boxFilm poster, 1986 with Mia Farrow, his real-life office hit and for Allen “arguably partner. Among his wittiest comedies are maybe the best film I’ve made.” Although Take the Money and Run (1969), in the 1990s, his work lost some of its resonance, Allen has managed to speak to a Bananas (1971), Play It Again Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), small but loyal audience of intelligent fans. Scarlett Johansson plays the seductive Nola Rice, here with director Woody Allen on the set of Match Point (2005), the first film Allen made in the UK.
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Pedro Almodóvar 31949– 2SPANISH 41974– 116 5Underground, Melodrama
Cecilia Roth as the stage actress in All About My Mother (a reference to All About Eve), seen against a poster advertising A Streetcar Named Desire.
what to watch
Pedro Almodóvar’s outrageous and provocative films have made him the most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since the death of Franco in 1975.
1984 What Have I Done to Deserve This?
“My films represent the new mentality... in Spain after Franco died...because now it is possible to make a film like Law of Desire.” Despite its homoerotic sex scenes, Law of Desire (La Ley del Deseo, 1987) was heralded as a model for Spain’s future cinema. Almodóvar’s forté is in incorporating elements of underground and gay culture into mainstream forms
1999 All About My Mother
1987 Law of Desire 1986 Matador 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 2002 Talk to Her 2004 Bad Education
with wide crossover appeal, thus redefining perceptions of Spanish cinema and Spain. His first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Lots of Other Girls (Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón 1980), was made in 16mm and blown-up to 35mm for public release. Although his breakthrough export success was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios, 1988), he hit his stride in Spain with What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Qué he Hecho yo Para Merecer Esto, 1984). In Matador (1986), he made the link between violence and eroticism, while in All About My Mother (Todo Sobre mi Madre 1999), Talk to Her (Hable con Ella, 2002), and Bad Education (La Mala Educación, 2004) he shows a warmth towards his characters. Victoria Abril, one of Pedro Almodóvar‘s favorite leading actresses, on the set of What Have I Done to Deserve This? with the director.
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Robert Altman 31925– 2AMERICAN 41955– 135 5Satirical comedies, Drama
With an individualism that has gained him the reputation of being a difficult man for producers to work with, Altman tries something different with each film. An unusual director, he has refused to make formulaic pictures.
After four forgettable movies, Robert Altman was offered M*A*S*H (1970) when 14 other directors turned it down. Its iconoclasm struck a chord in a U.S. disenchanted with the Vietnam War. He later subverted traditional Hollywood genres with revisionist Westerns: McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971), in which the hero (Warren Beatty) is a pimp, while Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) reveals William S. Cody (Paul Newman) as a phony. The Long Goodbye (1973) presents private eye Philip Marlowe (Eliott Gould) as a shambling coward. Altman likes to use the same actors, often getting performers to improvize their dialogues. He adeptly maps out areas in which a group of people are brought together for a purpose, allowing him to manipulate 24 characters in Nashville (1975), 40 in A Wedding (1978), and a huge cast in Short Cuts (1993), a mosaic of Raymond Carver stories, and Gosford Park (2001). The experimental use of sound is an important feature of Altman’s films. It Robert Altman directs Emily Watson on the set of Gosford Park, a sumptuous, old-fashioned British murder-mystery that weaves an elaborate tapestry of intrigue, satire, and brittle social commentary.
Tim Robbins as a hotshot studio executive in The Player, Altman’s clever, sardonic satire on Hollywood, the dream factory that he never wholly embraced.
what to watch 1970 M*A*S*H 1971 McCabe and Mrs Miller 1975 Nashville 1992 The Player 1993 Short Cuts 2001 Gosford Park 2006 A Prairie Home Companion
includes the simultaneous conversations and loudspeaker announcements in M*A*S*H, the 8-track sound system in California Split (1974), and the absence of a music score in Thieves Like Us (1973). After the relative failure of Popeye (1980), and being fired from Ragtime (1981), Altman was forced to work mostly in television, but became the darling of Hollywood again with The Player (1992).
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Alejandro Amenábar 31972– 2spanish 41991– 16 5Horror, Thriller, Psychological drama
With only four feature films — each with a chilling story — behind him, the Chilean-born director-screenwriter-composer Alejandro Amenábar has justified his reputation as one of the most talented contemporary film-makers.
At 25, Amenábar gained international fame with his dazzling second feature Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos, 1997), remade as Vanilla Sky (2001) starring Tom Cruise. The Spanish film, unlike the pale Hollywood copy, is an audacious mixture of romance, thriller, and science fiction, with Eduardo Noriega as the handsome what to watch 1997 Open Your Eyes 2001 The Others 2004 The Sea Inside
Penélope Cruz and Eduardo Noriega star in Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), in which Amenábar masterfully juxtaposes fantasy and reality in a multilayered plot.
playboy who is disfigured in an accident. Noriega also appears in Amenábar’s first feature, Thesis (Tesis, 1996), a gripping horror movie about the media’s fascination with violence, while Javier Bardem in The Sea Inside (Mar adentro, 2004), a passionate plea for euthanasia, is a quadriplegic struggling to have his life ended. The Others (2001), Amenábar’s first film in English, starring Nicole Kidman, is an atmospheric ghost story made with authority.
Lindsay Anderson 31923–1994 2BRITISH 41952–1987 16 5Drama, Satire
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Lindsay Anderson never made transatlantic blockbusters but remained English to the core, gaining a reputation as the keeper of British cinema’s conscience.
Malcolm McDowell and Christine Noonan star in If..., an exposure of hypocrisy in British society that proved to be a commercial success.
what to watch 1963 This Sporting Life 1968 If... 1972 O Lucky Man 1982 Britannia Hospital 1987 The Whales of August
Known as a harsh film critic, Lindsay Anderson became part of the Free Cinema movement, shifting from middle-class dominated British films to more naturalistic films about the working class. Anderson’s excellent documentaries include Every Day Except Christmas (1957) about London’s Covent Garden market. This Sporting Life (1963), his first feature, is set in the industrial north with Richard Harris providing an emotional power rarely attained in British films. If (1968) — inspired by Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduit (1933) — is a pungent critique of the British public school ethos, of which Anderson himself was a product. O Lucky Man! (1972) and Britannia Hospital (1982) are ambitious satires on the state of the British nation, while The Whales of August (1987) is a gentler story about old age.
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
Paul Thomas Anderson
what to watch
31970– 2american 41997–
1997 Boogie Nights
14 5Drama
1999 Magnolia
Perhaps the most ambitious American filmmaker of his generation, Paul Thomas Anderson grew up around movies and worked as a production assistant from a young age.
Anderson’s father was a voice artist and presented horror movies on late night cable television. Influenced above all by Robert Altman, Anderson has two wildly ambitious, panoramic ensemble movies to his name; Boogie Nights (1997) is a requiem for the 1970s refracted through the story of porn star Dirk Diggler, and Magnolia (1999) is a three-hour epic, both pretentious and inspired, about a group of dysfunctional people over the course of one day and night. Punch Drunk Love (2002) is a change of pace, an expressionistic romantic comedy, with Adam Sandler as the quiet, awkwardly
Theo Angelopoulos 31935– 2GREEK 41970– 111 5 Historical, Political, Epic, Drama
In 1975, after the seven-year military dictatorship in his country ended, Theo Angelopoulos emerged on the international scene with the most ambitious Greek films to date.
A portrayal of official incompetence that subtly undermines the “Colonels’ regime,” Days of 36 (Meres Tou 36, 1972) is the first of an impressive trilogy, followed by The Travelling Players (O Thiassos, 1975) and The Huntsman (Oi Kynighoi, 1977), all what to watch 1975 The Travelling Players 1988 Landscape in the Mist 1998 Eternity and a Day 2004 The Weeping Meadow
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2002 Punch Drunk Love
Heather Graham plays Brandy “Rollergirl,” a school dropout who aspires to be a film star, in Boogie Nights, Anderson‘s darkly comic look at the porn industry.
shy owner of a small business, who is terrorized by his seven sisters but finds love when a mysterious woman enters his life and transforms him. allegories of Greek politics of the 20th century. Later, Angelopoulos used widely known actors — Marcello Mastrioanni in The Beekeeper (O Melissokomos, 1986), Harvey Keitel in Ulysses’ Gaze (To Vlemma tou Odyssea, 1995), and Bruno Ganz in Eternity and a Day (Mia aioniotita kai mia mera, 1998). With the masterful use of slow pans and long takes, the films are rewarding metaphysical road movies. Other films of note are Landscape in the Mist (Topio stin omichli, 1988) and The Weeping Meadow (Trilogia I: To Livadi pou dakryzei, 2004), the first of a projected trilogy, which is stylistically breathtaking and vividly descriptive. An exploration of an inner journey, Eternity and a Day shows how time becomes a central concern for terminally ill Alexandre (Bruno Ganz).
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Michelangelo Antonioni 31912– 2ITALIAN 41950– 117 5Psychological drama
The long tracking shots, set pieces, attention to design and architecture, and the relationship between the characters and their environment are hallmarks of Michelangelo Antonioni’s meditations on contemporary angst.
A personal stamp was already noticeable in the elegance of Antonioni’s first feature, Chronicle of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un Amore, 1950), but his style reached its maturity with L’Avventura (1960), which realigned the perception of time and space in cinema. L’Avventura was followed by La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962) to form a trilogy that examined themes of alienation. In Il Deserto Rosso (1964), Monica Vitti portrays a housewife, Giuliana, who is driven mad by the industrial landscape that surrounds her. Antonioni uses deep reds and greens to reflect the woman’s neurosis, while brighter colours appear during her flights of fantasy. In his next four films, Antonioni cast his eye outside Italy: on China with a documentary, Chung Kuo (1972); on what to watch 1960 L'Avventura 1961 La Notte 1962 L'Eclisse 1964 Il Deserto Rosso 1966 Blow-Up 1975 The Passenger
Alain Delon and Monica Vitti as the doomed lovers Piero and Vittoria in The Eclipse.
“Swinging Sixties” London in Blow-Up (1966), with a fashionable photographer at the film’s centre; on liberated American youth in Zabriskie Point (1969), which ends spectacularly with a materialistic civilization exploding, and on arid North Africa in The Passenger (Professione: Reporter, 1975). Back in Italy and reuniting with Vitti, his lover with whom he made four films, Antonioni made The Oberwald Mystery (Il Mistero di Oberwald, 1980), one of the first major films to be shot on video. He worked on video for the next few years, although Identification of a Woman (Identificazione di una Donna, 1982) was shot on film. In 1985, Antonioni had a stroke that partially paralysed him. Despite this setback, he made Beyond the Clouds (Al di là Delle Nuvole, 1995), which is based on his short stories. Jack Nicholson plays a reporter in The Passenger, a film that questions notions of reality and illusion.
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
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Gillian Armstrong 31950– 2AUSTRALIAN 41979– 112 5Drama
Part of the “Australian New Wave,” which emerged in the late 1970s, Gillian Armstrong places women at the center of her films, exploring the conflict they face between career, creativity, and marriage.
Armstrong directed the stylish and subtly feminist drama My Brilliant Career (1979), starring Judy Davis as a headstrong woman in Australia’s outback at the start of the 20th century, who goes on to have an international career. In Hollywood, Armstrong made Mrs Soffel (1985) and Little Women (1994), again period tales of women who broke with convention. Back in Australia, with The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997), she continued her examination of women who subvert their traditional roles to redefine their lives.
The March family is portrayed by Winona Ryder, Trini Alvarado, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, and Claire Danes in Armstrong's adaptation of the 1868 novel Little Women.
Richard Attenborough
Bille August
31923– 2BRITISH 41969–
31948– 2DANISH 41978–
111 5Biopics, War
112 5Drama
After establishing a reputation as an actor, Richard Attenborough had a second career as a director, mostly of lavish biographical films.
Bille August’s refusal of US money and the suggestion he make Pelle the Conqueror (Pelle Erobreren, 1988) in English paid off when the film won the Foreign Film Oscar at Cannes.
A film based on World War I, Oh! What a Lovely War! (1969) was Attenborough’s first directorial venture, but it was Gandhi (1982) that won him acclaim. It took him over 20 years to finance the film, which had Ben Kingsley in the title role and went on to win eight Oscars. He was able to express his anger at apartheid in South Africa in Cry Freedom (1987), about the black activist Steve Biko, and turned to another of his idols Film poster, 1982 in Chaplin (1992).
what to watch 1979 My Brilliant Career 1994 Little Women 1997 Oscar and Lucinda
A renowned cinematographer, August made his directorial debut with In My Life (Honning Måne, 1978). He made an international impact with Twist and Shout (1978) and Pelle the Conqueror, an unsentimental but moving epic of social exploitation in early 20th-century Denmark. It remains his best film, although The Best Intentions (Den Goda Viljan, 1992), with Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographical script about his parents’ marriage; Les Misérables based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name; and A Song For Martin (2001), which treats the tragedy of Alzheimer’s, are laudable successors.
what to watch
what to watch
1969 Oh! What a Lovely War
1988 Pelle the Conqueror
1982 Gandhi
1992 The Best Intentions
1987 Cry Freedom
1998 Les Misérables
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Ingmar Bergman 31918– 2SWEDISH 41946– 140 5Psychological, Metaphysical drama
The son of a pastor, Ingmar Bergman made films filled with religious imagery, which paradoxically express a godless, loveless universe. Bergman’s entire oeuvre can be seen as the autobiography of his psyche.
Dividing his directing between the stage and screen, Bergman often introduced the theater into his films as a metaphor for the duality of the personality. At least five of his films take place on an island, a circumscribed area like the stage. The subject of his early work is the struggle of adolescents against an unfeeling adult world. The transient, sun-soaked Swedish summer days, the only period of happiness before the encroachment of a winter of discontent, are captured glowingly in Summer Interlude (Sommarlek, 1950 and Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika, 1952). The operetta-like comedy of manners, what to watch 1950 Summer Interlude 1955 Smiles of a Summer Night 1957 The Seventh Seal 1957 Wild Strawberries 1958 The Face 1972 Cries and Whispers 1978 Autumn Sonata 1982 Fanny and Alexander
Isak (Erland Josephson) and Helena Ekdahl (Gunn Wallgren) share a moment of intimacy in Fanny and Alexander, Bergman’s most autobiographical film.
Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955), was the culmination of this first period. The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet), set in cruel medieval times, and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, both 1957) consolidated Bergman’s international reputation, as did The Face (Ansiktet, 1958), a Gothic tale. The trilogy on the silence of God: Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel, 1961), Winter Light (Nattvardsgästern, 1963), and The Silence (Tystnaden, 1963), moved Bergman into a more angst-ridden world. With Persona (1966), the female face in close-up became his field of vision, although women have always been central to his work. A succession of psychodramas followed, including the emotionally charged Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1972). In Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978) the director points an accusing finger at parental neglect, while Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1982) is a magical evocation of childhood. He announced this film as his final feature and, although he would continue to direct for television and the theater, it was a superlative climax to his 36 years as one of Scenes From a Marriage cinema’s most profound artists. (1973), German poster.
A - Z o f d i r e c to r s
Busby Berkeley
what to watch
31895–1976 2AMERICAN 41930–1970
1933 42nd Street (dance director)
121 5Musical
1935 Gold Diggers of 1935
Although he directed 21 features, it is Berkeley’s creation of spectacular dance sequences that singles him out as an auteur.
When Broadway dance director Busby Berkeley came to Hollywood to stage production numbers for the Eddie Cantor musical Whoopee (1930), he concentrated on only one mobile camera. At Warner Bros. from 1933 to 1937, using a single dancing camera, Berkeley dollied in on the lines of identically dressed dream girls, forming erotic, kaleidoscopic effects with overhead shots from a mobile crane. There were also great narrative numbers such as “My Forgotten Man” (Gold Diggers of 1933) and “Shanghai Lil” (Footlight Parade, 1933). At MGM, he created fantastic aqua ballets for Hollywood’s mermaid, Esther Williams.
1939 Babes in Arms 1943 The Gang’s All Here
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney star in the lively musical, Babes on Broadway (1941).
Claude Berri
what to watch
31934– 2FRENCH 41967–
1966 The Two of Us
119 5Drama, Comedy, Period
1986 Jean de Florette
Although many of Claude Berri’s films were based on his own life and times, his greatest success was with his compelling works, Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (Manon of the Spring), which were set in rural France, far from his own world.
Berri’s first feature was the amusing and touching The Two of Us (Le Vieil homme et l’enfant, 1966), based on his own experiences as the Jewish foster child of an anti-Semitic old man during the war. Also autobiographical were The First Time (La
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1986 Manon des Sources 1993 Germinal
Première fois, 1976) about adolescence, Marry Me! Marry Me! (Mazel Tov ou le mariage, 1968) about marriage, and The Man with Connections (Le Pistoné, 1970) about military service in Algeria. Berri also returned to the war period of occupied France in Uranus (1990) and Lucie Aubrac (1997), which is based on a French Resistant’s autobiography. Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (both 1986), adapted from Marcel Pagnol’s 1953 film, feature towering performances from Daniel Auteuil, Yves Montand, and Gérard Depardieu. The two films are linked in theme and narrative, with multidimensional characters enacting a tragic story of greed and revenge. Berri’s version of Emile Zola’s novel Germinal (1993) is epic in scale, telling the grim story of the struggle for the rights of coal miners. Berri’s powerful masterpiece Manon des Sources, featuring Daniel Auteuil (left) and Yves Montand, explores the complexity of human relationships.
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Bernardo Bertolucci 31940– 2ITALIAN 41962– 115 5Epic, Political, Psychological drama
The son of a well-known poet, and winner of a prestigious poetry prize himself, Bernardo Bertolucci believes that “cinema is the true poetic language,” a claim that many of his wide-ranging films justify.
Bertolucci directed his first film The Grim Reaper (La Commare Secca, 1962) at the age of 22. In his second film, Before the Revolution (Prima della Rivoluzione, 1964), he began to explore some important themes of his work — father-son relationships and the politicalpersonal conflict, themes also evident in The Spider’s Stratagem (Strategia del Ragno, 1969). The Conformist (Il Conformista, 1970) successfully brought together his Freudian and political preoccupations in pre-war Italy. But it was Last Tango in Paris (1972) that gained the director worldwide notoriety, mainly because of the loveless sex scenes between Paul, a middle-aged American (Marlon Brando), and Jeanne, a young Frenchwoman (Maria Schneider). With 1900 (1976), a film about class struggle, Bertolucci turned away from the introspection of his previous films. Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (La Tragedia di
Bertolucci directs Debra Winger and John Malkovich in The Sheltering Sky, in which an American couple travel across North Africa to find meaning in their relationship.
un uomo ridicolo, 1981), an ambiguous view of terrorism, failed to please the public and the critics. But The Last Emperor (1987), the first western film to be made entirely in China and covering 60 years of China’s history (1906–1967), won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. The Sheltering Sky (1990), set in North Africa; Little Buddha (1994); and The Dreamers (I Sognatori, 2003) are other Bertolucci films of note. what to watch 1964 Before the Revolution 1970 The Conformist 1972 Last Tango in Paris 1976 1900
Louis Garrel, Eva Green, and Michael Pitt star in The Dreamers, a story of troubled friendships set against the backdrop of the 1968 student riots in Paris.
1987 The Last Emperor 2003 The Dreamers
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Luc Besson
what to watch
31959– 2FRENCH 41983–
1988 The Big Blue
19 5Thriller, Science Fiction
1990 Nikita
Even into his forties, Luc Besson was the enfant terrible of French cinema, looking towards comic books, Hollywood blockbusters, and pop videos for inspiration.
Besson’s first contribution to the French “Cinema du Look” movement, in which style overrides content, was the flashy Subway (1985), set in a vividly imagined Paris metro that is inhabited by social misfits. The breathtaking The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu, 1988), about two deep-sea divers, was a more personal project — Besson’s parents were diving instructors. Both Nikita (1990), an homage to the American action movie, and Léon (1995), set in New York, are thrillers but also
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1995 Léon 1997 The Fifth Element
explore the themes of personal growth and morality. Besson’s work reached its climax in the stylish science fiction The Fifth Element (1997), featuring spectacular special effects, about evil aliens out to destroy mankind. In contrast, the exquisite black-and-white film Angel-A (2005) is set in a hauntingly vacant Paris.
Maiwen LeBesco as Diva Plavalaguna, an alien opera singer performing in a concert on a spaceship, in the futuristic thriller The Fifth Element.
Peter Bogdanovich
what to watch
31939– 2AMERICAN 41967–1977
1968 Targets
117 5Comedy, Drama, Pastiche
1971 The Last Picture Show
Although Peter Bogdanovich has probably had more flops than most, only some of these were merited. He has, unjustly, suffered from the reputation of being a curse on the box office.
Former critic and fanatical film buff, Peter Bogdanovich made an impressive debut with the suspense thriller Targets (1968), featuring Boris Karloff as a horror film star (one of Karloff ’s last films). Both The Last Picture Show (1971), which won two Academy Awards — Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) and Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman), and Paper Moon (1973) lovingly evoke in black-andwhite the spirit of John Ford and William Wyler. What’s Up, Doc? (1972) is an homage to Howard Hawks’ screwball comedies. All these pastiches were extremely successful. Bogdanovich later made a sequel to The Last Picture Show, called Texasville (1990), in which the characters, now middle-aged, review their The Last Picture Show, starring Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges, is an evocative and bittersweet film about growing up in an American small town in the early 1950s.
1972 What’s Up, Doc? 1973 Paper Moon 1985 Mask 1992 Noises Off
lives. Daisy Miller (1974), an adaptation of the novel by Henry James, was, however, poorly received, as was a musical, At Long Last Love (1975), and a slapstick comedy, Nickelodeon (1976). Mask (1985) and Noises Off (1992) redeemed his reputation somewhat, but he never returned to his former glory.
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John Boorman
what to watch
31933– 2BRITISH 41965–
1967 Point Blank
116 5Action, Thriller, Crime
1968 Hell in the Pacific
In over 40 years as a film director, John Boorman has made only 16 feature films, demonstrating a taste for the allegorical, and revealing a strength for visually distinctive story-telling.
Different genres have been taken on by John Boorman: war (Hell in the Pacific, 1968); science fiction (Zardoz, 1973); horror (The Exorcist II — The Heretic, 1977); the epic Excalibur (1981); the political (Beyond Rangoon, 1985; The General, 1998); and the spy thriller (The Tailor of Panama, 2001). Point Blank (1967) is a powerful crime thriller set in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles; Deliverance (1972) follows four urban men on a canoe trip who are terrorized by mountain men, while The Emerald Forest (1985) tells the story of a man seeking his kidnapped son in the Amazon jungle.
1972 Deliverance 1981 Excalibur 1987 Hope and Glory 1998 The General 2001 The Tailor of Panama
Sebastian Rice-Edwards and Geraldine Muir in a scene from Hope and Glory (1987), which draws on Boorman's childhood experiences during World War II.
Frank Borzage
what to watch
31893–1962 2AMERICAN 41916–1959
1927 Seventh Heaven
1100 5Melodrama
1929 The River
With his penchant for sentimental love stories, Frank Borzage created films in which lovers battle with adversity in some form.
Three beautifully photographed silent romances with Janet Gaynor, who was the embodiment of sweetness on screen, were Borzage’s triumphs. One of them, Seventh Heaven (1927), was the very first film to win Academy Awards (Best Direction, Best Actress). A Farewell to Arms (1932) was much softer than Ernest Hemingway’s
1932 A Farewell To Arms 1933 Man’s Castle 1934 Little Man, What Now? 1936 Desire 1937 History Is Made at Night 1940 The Mortal Storm
tough novel set in World War I. Better suited to Borzage’s gentle gifts were the urban poetry of Man’s Castle (1933), about a young couple looking for a ray of hope during the Depression; the pacifist Desire (1936); and History Is Made at Night (1937). His best work was with Margaret Sullavan: Little Man, What Now? (1934), Three Comrades (1938) and The Mortal Storm (1940) were all poignant and prescient love stories set against the growing threat of Nazism. Frederic (Gary Cooper) and Catherine (Helen Hayes) in Borzage’s romantic recreation of Hemingway’s classic novel, A Farewell to Arms.
A – Z of directors
Robert Bresson 31907–1999 2FRENCH 41943–1983 113 5Metaphysical drama
Although Robert Bresson made only 13 films in 40 years, his oeuvre is impressively consistent: austere, uncompromising, and elliptical.
Of his insistence on using only nonactors in his films, Bresson declared: “Art is transformation. Acting can only get in the way.” However, his first two films, Angels of the Streets (Les Anges du Péché, 1943) and Ladies of the Park (Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, 1945), about the redemption of women, both used professional actors. A Man Escaped (Le Vent Souffle où il Veut, 1956), a testament to courage, is about a French
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resistance fighter while Balthazar (Au Hasard Balthazar, 1966), about the life of a donkey, is one of Bresson’s most lyrical films. Many of his films, such as The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, 1962), end in death. In 1969, with A Gentle Creature (Une Femme Douce), he started using color, and a more overt sensuality was noticeable. The Devil, Probably (Le Diable Probablement, 1977) brought the theme of pollution, literal and figurative, into Bresson’s enclosed world. Claude Laydu and Nicole L’Admiral in Diary of a Country Priest (1950), the first truly Bressonian film in its use of non-actors, natural sound, and pared-down images.
what to watch 1945 Ladies of the Park 1950 Diary of a Country Priest (Journal D’un Cure de) 1956 A Man Escaped 1966 Balthazar 1983 L’Argent
Mel Brooks
what to watch
31926– 2AMERICAN 41968–
1968 The Producers
111 5Comedy
1974 Blazing Saddles
In 2001, with the Broadway musical The Producers, the career of Mel Brooks (Melvin Kaminsky), came almost full circle, from his greatest film triumph, the 1968 movie of the same name, to the hit show that had been inspired by it.
The Producers plays fast and loose with “bad taste” and the ingenious idea of a producer (Zero Mostel) and his hysterical accountant (Gene Wilder) hoping to make more money out of a flop than a hit. After it, Brooks embarked on a series of movie pastiches, often with startling accuracy. These include the Western (Blazing Saddles, 1974); horror (Young Frankenstein, 1974, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 1995); Alfred Hitchcock Zero Mostel as the scheming producer and Gene Wilder as the wideeyed accountant in The Producers.
1974 Young Frankenstein 1976 Silent Movie 1977 High Anxiety
(High Anxiety, 1977); Frank Capra (Life Stinks!, 1991); the epic (History of the World-Part I, 1981); sci-fi (Spaceballs, 1987); and swashbucklers (Robin Hood: Men in Tights, 1993). These energetic movies consist of so many hard-hitting jokes that some are bound to hit the target.
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Clarence Brown 31890–1987 2AMERICAN 41920–1952 150 5Melodrama, Drama
Typifying the MGM style of the 1930s and 40s, Brown‘s films are glossy entertainments, staying on the right side of sentimentality.
Clarence Brown carried over the pictorial qualities he had learned in silent cinema into his sound films, which were elegant dramas set in plush surroundings, shot in soft focus and high-key lighting. He directed what to watch
seven of Greta Garbo’s films, including the silent-film classics Flesh and the Devil (1926), Anna Christie (1930), and Anna Karenina (1935), and made idealistic and warmhearted films for MGM, three of them with Mickey Rooney: Ah Wilderness! (1935), The Human Comedy (1943), and National Velvet (1944). Brown also directed The Yearling (1946), a lyrical boy-loves-deer tale, and Intruder in the Dust (1949), one of the first Hollywood films to deal with racism. National Velvet, tells the story of Velvet Brown, a young girl who enters the Grand National, England‘s great racing event. The film made 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor a star.
1926 Flesh and the Devil 1930 Anna Christie 1935 Ah Wilderness! 1935 Anna Karenina 1940 Edison the Man 1944 National Velvet 1946 The Yearling 1949 Intruder in the Dust
Tod Browning 31880–1962 2AMERICAN 41915–1939 164 5Horror
The eerily atmospheric horror movies Tod Browning made with actors Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi are his hallmark.
In 1918, Browning signed with Universal and made 17 films for them, including two in which Chaney had small roles. After Chaney became a star, the actor persuaded MGM to hire Browning. Together, the pair made eight horror movies, great vehicles for the “man with a thousand faces.” After Chaney’s death in 1930, Browning moved back to Universal to make Dracula (1931) with Lugosi. In the same genre are the campy Mark of the Vampire (1935) and the inventive The Devil-Doll (1936). In a way, Freaks (1932) is an antihorror movie because it urges audiences not to be repulsed by the parade of monsters. This masterpiece was withdrawn from distribution for 30 years until it was rehabilitated at the Venice Film Festival only a few weeks before Browning’s death.
Tod Browning on the set of Freaks with Olga Baclanova (wearing a chicken skin) as Cleopatra, who is persecuted by "freaks" until she becomes one of them.
what to watch 1925 The Unholy Three 1926 The Blackbird 1927 The Unknown 1928 West of Zanzibar 1931 Dracula 1932 Freaks 1936 The Devil-Doll
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
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Luis Buñuel 31900–1983 2spanish 41929–1977 132 5Surrealist drama, Comedy
Born with the 20th century, Luis Buñuel never wavered in his ideas and vision, establishing himself as perhaps the most mordantly comic and subversive of all the great directors.
In response to a bourgeois family upbringing and a Jesuit school education, Buñuel entered adulthood fervently antimiddle class and anti-clerical. His first two films, An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou, 1928) and The Golden Age (L’Age d’Or, 1930), both made under the influence of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, contained many themes — Catholicism, the bourgeosie, and rationality — that would reappear in his later films. After Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes, 1932) — a stark documentary about the contrast between peasant poverty and the wealth of the Church — was banned in Spain, Buñuel did not make another film for 15 years. In 1947, he moved to Mexico and made The Young and the Damned (Los Olvidados, 1950), a powerful, detached view of the cruel world of juvenile delinquents. He also made about a dozen cheap films for the home market, but still managed gems such as Torments (El, 1952), Robinson Crusoe (1952), in which he overturns Daniel Defoe’s Christian message, and Wuthering Heights (Abismos de pasión, 1953). Viridiana (1961), the first film he made in his native land for 29 years, is a savage comedy about Catholic mentality and rituals, which was banned in Spain. Regardless,
Silvia Pinal as the novice nun Viridiana, who fights a losing battle to remain true to her moral ideals and faith in Viridiana, which won the Best Film award at Cannes.
what to watch 1928 An Andalusian Dog 1930 The Golden Age 1950 The Young and the Damned 1958 Nazarin 1961 Viridiana 1962 The Exterminating Angel 1964 Diary of a Chambermaid 1967 Belle de Jour 1970 Tristana 1972 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
because of the film’s critical success, Buñuel was welcomed back to the center of world cinema. The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel exterminador, 1962), made in Mexico, is a parable about guests at a sumptuous party who find it physically impossible to leave. In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), the wealthy characters are unable to get anything to eat. Two other superb French films are Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d’une femme de chambre, 1964), a cynical take on Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel, and the witty, erotic, and subversive Belle de Jour. Catherine Deneuve with Michel Piccoli in Belle de Jour, in which a middle-class wife leads a double life, playing out the fantasies of the rich.
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Tim Burton
idolized Vincent Price, whom he cast in the film and about whom he made a short 31958– 2AMERICAN 41985– animated film (Vincent, 1982). Ed Wood is a sympathetic portrait of an outsider 111 5Fantasy, Animation who is cheerfully unaware that as a film The offbeat, yet mainstream films of Tim director he has no talent at all. Burton depict a highly stylized visual Burton became famous with Beetlejuice evocative of cartoons, a consequence of (1988), a landmark in supernatural comedy his beginnings as a Walt Disney animator. with zany, sometimes overwhelming, special effects. Its success enabled him to Tim Burton’s first feature, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), an episodic live-action direct the first two Batman films, Batman cartoon of a nine-year-old boy in (1989) and Batman a grown up’s body, relates to Returns (1992), which his later works such as Edward are much darker than Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood previous screen versions of the comic strip. This (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and Charlie and the Chocolate time, however, it is the Factory (2005), in which he hero who represents spins fantastic tales of a misfit “normal society” while suspended between the adult his various foes are world and one of childlike the outcasts. As the dreams. All these later films Penguin, a character in were built around the gentle the film, tells Batman and strange persona of Johnny in Batman Returns, Depp, in whom Burton found “You’re just jealous because I’m a real his perfect interpreter. Edward Scissorhands — part freak, and you have Film poster, 2005 fairytale, part suburban satire — to wear a costume.” is one of Burton’s most personal Burton’s films films. A product of suburbia himself, he are distinguished by their art direction, mostly derived from the wry and bizarre what to watch drawings of Edward Gory, who also influenced the two animation films, The 1989 Batman Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), produced 1990 Edward Scissorhands and co-written by Burton, and The Corpse 1994 Ed Wood Bride (2005), with the voices of Depp and 1999 Sleepy Hollow Helena Bonham Carter. One film title, 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Believe It or Not (2006), sums up his work. Johnny Depp brings alive the passion, enthusiasm, and quirkiness of film-maker Edward D. Wood, Jr. in Ed Wood, Burton’s biographical account of a man considered one of the worst directors in history.
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
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James Cameron 31954– 2canadian 41984– 18 5Action, Adventure, Thriller
A hugely successful Hollywood director, James Cameron virtually dropped out of movie-making at the height of his career to pursue his passion for deep-sea exploration.
A graduate of the Roger Corman school, James Cameron made one of the least auspicious directorial debuts ever with Piranha Part II (1981). Three years later, the sci-fi thriller The Terminator (1984) transformed his career (and that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who portrays an iconic cyborg assasssin). Aliens (1986) what to watch 1984 The Terminator 1986 Aliens 1991 Terminator 2 1997 Titanic
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack and Kate Winslet as Rose enact the fictional love story in Titanic; excellent cinematography and dazzling special effects made Cameron’s film a fantastic visual treat.
consolidated his reputation as an action director, and The Abyss (1989) eschewed his usual apocalyptic nightmares in favour of imaginary benign alien life forms. By the time of True Lies (1994), the strain of constantly upping the ante on his own action sequences was beginning to tell. He bounced back with Titanic (1997), derided by the critics but becoming a smash hit on the scale of Gone With the Wind.
Jane Campion
what to watch
31954– 2NEW ZEALANDER 41989–
1989 Sweetie
17 5Costume drama, Drama, Thriller
1990 An Angel at My Table
Almost without exception, Jane Campion’s films depict the lives of young women who, for one reason or another, find themselves outsiders within a society.
Jane Campion became the first woman director to win the Best Film award at Cannes with her third feature, The Piano (1993). This hauntingly beautiful tale of
1993 The Piano 1996 The Portrait of a Lady
passion is about a mute, 19th-century Scottish woman (Holly Hunter), who is only able to communicate through her daughter (Anna Paquin) and finds liberation by playing the piano. Both Hunter and Paquin won Academy Awards for their performances, as did Campion for her screenplay. It consolidated her position as a leading director following Sweetie (1989), a black comedy about the problems of an overweight, overemotional girl, and An Angel at My Table (1990), a portrait of Janet Frame, a plump, repressed child who became one of New Zealand’s greatest writers. Campion’s further depictions of women at the mercy of insensitive, predatory males who assault them physically and emotionally, such as The Portrait of a Lady (1996) have been less successful. Ada (Holly Hunter), with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), on her way from Scotland to New Zealand to marry a man she has never seen, in The Piano.
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a–z o f d i r e c to r s
Frank Capra 31897–1991 2AMERICAN 41926–1961 137 5Comedy, Melodrama, Drama
From 1936 onwards, Frank Capra’s films evoked the American Dream, through which any honest, decent, and patriotic American could overcome corruption and disappointment to prove the power of the individual.
Frank Capra began his movie career as a gag writer for comedian Harry Langdon. After directing movies at First National, he went to Columbia, where he made madcap comedies such as Platinum Blonde (1931), American Madness (1932), and It Happened One Night (1934), which won five Academy Awards and turned Columbia from a “Poverty Row” studio into a major one. Capra also made Barbara Stanwyck a star at Columbia with four movies, including The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). An early masterpiece was Lady for a Day (1933), filled with wonderful New York street characters. Capra’s autobiography states Film poster, 1937
what to watch 1931 Platinum Blonde 1933 The Bitter Tea of General Yen 1933 Lady for a Day 1934 It Happened One Night 1936 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 1938 You Can’t Take It with You 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life
A scene from Capra’s highly acclaimed series of documentaries entitled Why We Fight (1943–45), which explained the US’s participation in World War II.
that an unknown man came to him in 1935 and told him to use his gifts for God’s purpose. Following this advice, Capra lost the sensuality and anarchy in his films and replaced his central female characters with idealistic boy-scout heroes. The result was sentimental social comedies that were deemed “Capraesque.” Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Meet John Doe (1941) with Gary Cooper, and You Can’t Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), with James Stewart, glorify the little man’s fight for what is right and decent. Politically naïve as they are, the films have comic pace and invention, splendid sets, as in Lost Horizon (1937), and outstanding performances. James Stewart plays the eponymous hero in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The quintessential everyman is seen here with Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur).
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Marcel Carné 31909–1996 2FRENCH 41936–1974
269
Jean (Jean Gabin) and Nelly (Michèle Morgan), the doomed lovers who meet in a misty French port city, in Port of Shadows (1938).
realist films, made memorable use of the dark set and small room in which In Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord (1938), Arletty, Gabin, wanted for murder, has barricaded looking at her dingy surroundings, cries, himself. The Nazi Occupation of France “Atmosphere! Atmosphere!” There is plenty forced Carné to make “escapist” films such of it in his best films, which, mostly written by as The Devil’s Envoys (Les Visiteurs du Soir, Jacques Prévert and shot by Alexandre Trauner, 1942) — a medieval fairy tale — and were beautifully crafted, written, and played. Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis, After assisting Belgian director 1945), a richly entertaining Jacques Feyder on four of his evocation of 19th-century best films between 1933 and Paris. Gates of the Night (Les 1935, Marcel Carné directed Portes de la Nuit, 1946), which Feyder’s wife, Françoise Rosay, marked the end of the Carnéin Jenny (1936). This was coPrévert partnership, failed to scripted by the poet Jacques take into account the optimistic Prévert, with whom Carné post-war mood in France, and flopped at the box office. Carné was to collaborate on six further films over the next tried to capture old glory with decade. Bizarre Bizarre (Drôle Jean Gabin in La Marie du Port de Drame, 1937), an eccentric (1949), and The Adultress (Thérèse Film poster, 1938 comedy thriller set in an Raquin, 1953), but he was a spent imaginary Victorian London, was followed force and his reputation, despite some youth by Port of Shadows (Le Quai des Brumes, films, like The Cheaters (Les Tricheurs, 1958), 1938), the film that created the melancholic was swept away by the French New Wave. “poetic realism” associated with the director what to watch and his screenwriters. The slant-eyed Michèle Morgan together with the doomed 1937 Bizarre Bizarre Jean Gabin trying to grab happiness in a 1938 Port of Shadows fog-bound port are typical images associated 1939 Daybreak with the world-weariness in pre-war France. 1942 The Devil’s Envoys Daybreak (Le Jour se Lève, 1939), one of the 1945 Children of Paradise most celebrated of the Carné-Prévert poetic 120 5Poetic realism, Costume drama
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A–z o f d i r e c to r s
John Cassavetes
what to watch
31929–1989 2american 41959–1989
1959 Shadows
117 5Drama
1968 Faces
Actor-director John Cassavetes is remembered as the godfather of American independent film-makers. Although Shadows (1959), his breakthrough film, was not the first American movie made outside the system, it became a rallying point for future generations.
The searing domestic drama Faces (1968), which was self-financed, had a great impact when first released. It played for a year in New York and earned Academy Award nominations for its cast of unknowns. Cassavetes was often labelled an improvisational film-maker, but his films were almost entirely scripted. Yet he had a preference for documentary-style camerawork and was obsessed with human
1971 Minnie and Moskowitz 1980 Gloria
interaction. His wife Gena Rowlands became his muse, appearing in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), and Love Streams (1984).
A gangster’s moll (Gena Rowlands) and six year-old Phil (John Adames) are chased across New York by crooks in Gloria, an action-packed, character-based film.
Claude Chabrol
what to watch
31930– 2FRENCH 41958–
1959 The Cousins (Les Cousins)
153 5Crime
1960 The Good Time Girls (Les Bonnes Femmes)
The prolific Claude Chabrol has created an impressive oeuvre of ironic black comedies, and endless variations on the theme of infidelity leading to murder.
Murder, often seen as an inevitable act, is at the heart of most of Claude Chabrol’s films. Chabrol mocks the complacency of bourgeois marriage with the added spice of Stephane Audran (his wife from 1964 to 1980) in the role of the victim or the
1969 The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme Infidele) 1982 The Hatter's Ghost (Les Fantômes du Chapelier) 1995 The Ceremony (La Cérémonie) 2000 Nightcap (Merci pour le chocolat)
cause of murder. Whatever is seething under the surface of his characters — guilt, jealousy, or crime — the niceties of life go on. Large meals at home or in a restaurant have become his signature scenes. Although Chabrol has always been happy in the mainstream, it was his Le Beau Serge (1958), made on location in his own village, that is considered the first film of the New Wave. After Audran, Chabrol found, in Isabelle Huppert, the ideal actress to portray his perverse heroines with murder on their minds. Stephane Audran (right) and Bernadette Lafont (left) are the bored Parisian shopgirls longing for better lives in Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes.
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Charlie Chaplin 31889–1977 2BRITISH 41921–1967 111 5Comedy, Drama
Born in the Victorian slums of Lambeth in London, Charlie Chaplin died in Switzerland as the wealthy Sir Charles. He became one of the most famous men in the world on the strength of over 60 silent shorts made before 1920, and only a handful of unforgettable features.
In 1913, Chaplin, the son of music-hall performers, went to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Hollywood where he featured in dozens of short slapstick comedies. In Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), he appeared for the first time as the Little Tramp, a character he was to play until 1936. Chaplin was soon directing and writing all his own films, gradually breaking away from the crude techniques of the Sennett comedies. He introduced pathos and what to watch 1921 The Kid 1923 A Woman of Paris 1925 The Gold Rush 1931 City Lights 1936 Modern Times 1940 The Great Dictator
271
Artist extraordinaire Chaplin behind the camera for The Gold Rush. Said to be his favourite film, one famous scene shows the poor hero reduced to eating his shoes.
a detailed social background into more structured and ambitious farces such as Easy Street (1917) and The Immigrant (1917). His first feature, The Kid (1921) was set in the London slums. A Woman of Paris (1923) starred Edna Purviance — his leading lady in almost 30 comedies — as a high-class prostitute. Critically acclaimed and an influence on German director Ernst Lubitsch, it failed at the box-office. The next three films were Chaplin’s greatest: The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), and City Lights (1931) all manage to shift Dickens-like from satire to pathos to comedy. Feeling that talkies would weaken his international appeal, Chaplin resisted dialogue for 13 years. In Modern Times (1936), his voice is heard for the first time — singing gibberish. The Great Dictator (1940), his first film to use sound fully, has many comic set-pieces as well as being an attack on Hitler. He continued to experiment with styles in Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952), which contains a stunning music-hall sequence. Film poster, 1921
272
A–Z O F D I R E C TO R S
Kaige Chen 31952– 2chinese 41984– 18 5Costume drama
Chen was a leading exponent of the “Fifth Generation” of film-makers, whose work after the Chinese Cultural Revolution earned a deserved international reputation.
When Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (Huang tu di, 1984) was first shown in the west, it altered western perceptions about Chinese cinema. This heady mixture of music, poetry, dance, and drama told the tale of a soldier in a remote village trying to change traditional superstitious ways. This beautifully photographed film is also notable for its cinematography by Zhang Yimou. Chen continued with further wellconceived meditations on recent Chinese history in The Big Parade (Da yue bing, 1986), a film about young people preparing to take part in the National Day parade, and King of the Children The director at work on location for The Empire and the Assassin (Jing ke ci qin wang,1999); the film’s battle scenes were shot at Bashan plateau near Inner Mongolia.
what to watch 1984 Yellow Earth 1986 The Big Parade 1987 King of the Children 1993 Farewell My Concubine
Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung), one of the male opera stars, plays a concubine in Farewell My Concubine, a film that discusses homosexuality and the plight of the individual, against a panorama of Chinese history.
(Hai zi wang, 1987), on a teacher in a remote district trying to get his pupils to understand the world around them. His most famous film is Farewell My Concubine (Ba wang bie ji, 1993), about the friendship of two Beijing Opera stars over 50 years of turbulent Chinese history. Chen is one of a new wave of Chinese film-makers; the often strong political statements in his films have caused the communist regime to ban some of his work.
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Michael Cimino 31939– 2american 41974– 17 5War, Action
There are few more striking examples of a fall from grace in Hollywood than that of Michael Cimino, whose career plunged from universal acclaim with The Deer Hunter (1978) to total condemnation with Heaven’s Gate (1980).
Cimino’s second film, The Deer Hunter, won five Academy Awards, and caught the mood of the time — the need for the US to come to terms with the Vietnam War. Heaven’s Gate (1980), made for $40 million, turned out to be the most expensive flop of the time. After critics trashed it, United Artists cut the film from 225 to 148 minutes, which made this sprawling Western even more incoherent. In 1983, it was released at its original length, and was greeted more favorably. “Since then,” Cimino has said, “I’ve been unable to make any movie that I’ve wanted to make.”
René Clair 31898–1981 2french 41923–1965 124 5Comedy, Fantasy, Musical
The films of René Clair have the same reputation for gaiety as Paris, the city in which he was born. In the 1920s, he created some of the most original films of early French cinema.
Entr’acte (1924), a 20-minute surrealistic, but playful film shot in Paris and featuring modernist artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, earned Clair the reputation of being a member of the avant-garde. His adaptation of Eugène Labiche’s 19th-century farce, The Italian Straw Hat (Un Chapeau de Paille d’Italie, 1927), in which he substituted many of the play’s verbal jokes with visual ones, was what to watch 1927 The Italian Straw Hat 1930 Under the Roofs of Paris 1931 The Million 1931 Freedom for Us 1934 The Last Millionaire (Le Dernier Millairdaire) 1935 The Ghost Goes West 1943 It Happened Tomorrow 1952 Night Beauties (Les Belles de Nuit) 1955 Summer Manoeuvres
Heaven’s Gate, Cimino’s sprawling epic set in 1890s Wyoming, was infamous for the extravagance of its vast sets. Compounded with United Artists’ other losses at the time, the film’s cost led to MGM buying out the studio.
what to watch 1974 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1978 The Deer Hunter 1980 Heaven’s Gate
made with clockwork precision. His first sound film, Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les Toits de Paris, 1930) — one of the very first French talkies — uses songs, sound effects, and street noises (created in the studio). The musical comedies The Million (Le Million, 1931) and Freedom for Us (À Nous la Liberté, 1931) influenced Hollywood musicals in the use of related action and songs, while the latter’s satire on the dehumanizing effects of mass production inspired Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). Just before the war, Clair left France to work abroad. Whether in Britain (The Ghost Goes West, 1935) or in the US (I Married a Witch, 1942), he continued in his carefree way. His postwar films include Beauty and the Devil (La Beauté du Diable, 1950) and, his first film in France for over a decade, Silence is Golden (Le Silence est d’Or (1947) — a regretful look at silent cinema. Clair’s gentle irony is evident in the comedy Summer Maneuvers (Les Grandes Manoeuvres, 1955), his first film in color. Film poster, 1932
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Henri-Georges Clouzot 31907–1977 2french 41942–1968 111 5Thriller
Mainly because of ill health, Henri-Georges Clouzot only made 11 films, most of them exceptionally dark in character with a fine observation of human frailty.
Clouzot’s second film, The Raven (Le Corbeau, 1943), about the effect poison pen letters have on a French village, took a bleak view of provincial life. In 1953, he made the hugely successful The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur), about four truck drivers transporting highly dangerous nitroglycerine. Diabolique (Les Diaboliques, 1955) is a chilling tale of murder set in a private school. The Picasso Mystery (Le Mystère Picasso, 1956), which brilliantly captures the painter at work, is an intriguing documentary, while The Truth (La Verité, 1960) is an awkward coming together of the New Wave Brigitte Bardot with the “old guard.”
Christina (Véra Clouzot) looks on as Nicole (Simone Signoret) prepares to kill her husband by mixing poison in his whisky bottle in Diabolique.
what to watch 1943 The Raven 1947 Quay of the Goldsmiths 1953 The Wages of Fear 1955 Diabolique 1956 The Picasso Mystery
Jean Cocteau
what to watch
31889–1963 2french 41930–1960
1930 The Blood of a Poet
16 5Avant-garde, Fantasy
1945 Beauty and the Beast
Poet, novelist, playwright, film director, designer, painter, stage director, and ballet producer, Jean Cocteau directed six films that form part of his work in other art forms.
For Cocteau, films were another form of poetry, and the poet is at the center of his oeuvre. Cocteau made his first film when he was 41 and already famous. The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang D’un Poète,
1950 Orpheus 1960 The Testament of Orpheus
1930) contains all the signs and symbols of his personal mythology evident in his novels, poems, and drawings, such as the death and resurrection of a poet, the link between death and youth, the bullfight, and the living statues. The haunting, witty Orpheus (Orphée, 1950) is a perfect marriage between Greek myth and Cocteau’s own ideas. It elaborates on the theme of the poet caught between the worlds of the real and the imaginary, as is the heroine in Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête, 1945). The Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament d’Orphée, 1960) is a poetic, semiautobiographical evocation of the director’s work. Josette Day plays Beauty and Jean Marais stars as the Beast in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.
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Joel and Ethan Coen 31955– (Joel) 1957– (Ethan) 2american 41984– 111 5Film noir, Comedy
When Joel and Ethan Coen first burst onto the film scene with Blood Simple in 1984, they immediately established their credentials as true descendents of the masters of the American film noir, while putting their own distinctive, often quirky stamp on their films.
The film Blood Simple helped ignite the indie film movement from the mid-1980s, representing the opposite of commercial studio film-making. Despite having their movies financed and distributed by major studios, the Coen brothers manage to remain true independents. Nominally, Joel directs and Ethan produces, but as Joel has explained, “We really co-direct the movies. We could just as easily take the credit ‘produced, written and directed’ by the two of us.” From the start, they showed how profoundly they were imbued with the spirit of the hardboiled school of writers such as James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. However, their films can be appreciated what to watch 1984 Blood Simple 1987 Raising Arizona 1991 Barton Fink 1996 Fargo 1998 The Big Lebowski
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John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, and George Clooney star in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, an easy-going comedy about escaped convicts.
by those who get the references to the novels by these authors, as well as those who enjoy them on a less cerebral level. Crime is the core of their screenplays, but intrinsically they are fables of good versus evil. Most are films noirs disguised as horror (Blood Simple), farce (Raising Arizona, 1987), gangster movie (Miller’s Crossing, 1990), psychological drama (Barton Fink, 1991), police thriller (Fargo, 1996), black comedy (The Big Lebowski, 1998), and social drama (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000). The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), shot in black and white, is their most direct homage to 1940s film noir. However different they are on the surface, each film contains elements of the other: horror edging into comic-strip farce, violence into slapstick, and vice versa. Not content with the tools of conventional narrative, in film after film they have found the appropriate visual style for the subject. Nicolas Cage plays Hi, a hapless reformed convict who has to steal a baby for his wife in Raising Arizona, which features a cast of amusingly dim characters.
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Francis Ford Coppola 31939– 2american 41962– 123 5Gangster, War, Drama
In a career that has been a rollercoaster affair, not only has Francis Ford Coppola always been torn between two extremes of film-making — the massive epic form, and the small, intimate film — but he has fluctuated between mammoth and modest hits as well as failures.
It was Francis Ford Coppola who led the way for other “movie brat” directors, such as Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, to emerge from film schools and storm into Hollywood in the 1970s. Coppola first worked as writer and assistant director to Roger Corman, who enabled him to direct his first movie, a gruesome cheapie called Dementia 13 (1963). You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), a lively comedy about a young man’s sexual education, was very much a movie by a 26-year-old of the mid-1960s. In 1969, Coppola opened his own studio, American Zoetrope, after the unhappy experience of making the musical Finian’s Rainbow (1968) Film poster, 1979
what to watch 1972 The Godfather 1974 The Conversation 1974 The Godfather: Part II 1979 Apocalypse Now 1983 The Outsiders 1988 Tucker: The Man and His Dream 1990 The Godfather: Part III
Francis Ford Coppola (right) pictured with Joe Mantegna on the set of The Godfather III, in which Mantegna plays Joey Zasa, a rival of the Corleones.
for Warner Bros. The Conversation (1974), made for Zoetrope, is a post-Watergate thriller about a professional eavesdropper (Gene Hackman) being under surveillance himself. The Godfather (1972) made Coppola one of the world’s most bankable directors, while The Godfather: Part II (1974) won six Oscars, and is one of the few sequels that is considered better than the original. With Apocalypse Now (1979), Coppola succeeded in his desire to “give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam War.” The film, costing $31 million, took three-and-a-half years to complete and five years to break even. The failure of One From the Heart (1982), a $27 million-dollar musical romance filmed on a gigantic set, led Coppola to scale down his ambitions with two teen films, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both 1983), the casts of which now read like a Who’s Who for the Brat Pack. Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), about an entrepreneur’s pursuit of a dream, then followed. Coppola returned to familiar territory with The Godfather: Part III (1990), concluding a saga that started off as “just another gangster picture” and ended up being one of the great achievements of postwar American cinema.
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Roger Corman
what to watch
31926– 2american 41954–
1959 A Bucket of Blood
146 5Horror, Youth, Crime
1960 The Fall of the House of Usher
The self-styled “Orson Welles of the Z movie,” Roger Corman became a symbol of independent, low-budget movie-making.
In 1953, Corman started his own production company, and for some time produced and directed sensational movies, such as She-Gods of Shark Reef (1956) and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). In the early 1960s, he made adaptations of works by Edgar Allan Poe — stylish, garish, and amusing shockers in wide-screen and color. The best of these was The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Corman also started trends in comic-horror with A Bucket of Blood (1959) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), the latter with Jack Nicholson (his
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1960 The Little Shop of Horrors 1961 The Pit and the Pendulum 1963 The Raven
first break) as a masochistic dental patient. He made profitable “youth” movies, such as Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967), but The Intruder (1962) — his only “message” film (about racism in the Deep South) — lost money.
In the climactic scene in The Fall of the House of Usher, Madeline (Myrna Fahey) rises from her “death” to kill her brother Roderick (Vincent Price).
Constantin Costa-Gavras
what to watch
31933– 2french 41966–
1969 Z
115 5Political thriller
Drawn to political subjects — not so much by the ideas behind them, but by the effect those ideas have on people — Constantin Costa-Gavras believes that enlightenment comes with entertainment.
One of Costa-Gavras’ first movies, The Sleeping Car Murders (Compartiment Tueurs, 1965) is a hypnotic thriller using breathtaking CinemaScope and blackand-white photography. However, his international success came with Z (1969), an exciting and effective condemnation of the right-wing regime in Greece, the country of his birth; it won the 1970
1965 The Sleeping Car Murders 1970 The Confession 1972 State of Siege 1975 Special Section 1982 Missing 1988 Betrayed 2002 Amen
Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film. Because of the film’s worldwide success, he was able to continue to make political thrillers. Yves Montand, who had been assassinated in Z, is tortured by the Czech police in The Confession (L’Aveu, 1970), and kidnapped in Uruguay in State of Siege (État de Siège, 1972). Costa-Gavras’ first American film won him the Best Director award at Cannes — Missing (1982) depicts a father’s anguish when he goes looking for his son who is arrested by the military junta in Chile. He took on another large subject in Amen (2002), which dealt with the silence of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII on the mass extermination of Jews. In this chilling scene from Missing, Beth (Sissy Spacek) and her father-in-law Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) search for her missing husband among the dead in a morgue.
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Wes Craven
what to watch
31939– 2American 41972–
1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street
124 5Horror
1994 Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
A former humanities professor with a masters degree in philosophy, Wes Craven is one of the more articulate and thoughtful of American directors. Surprisingly, perhaps, with only a couple of minor deviations, he has specialized in the horror genre.
1996 Scream 2005 Red Eye
many of his subsequent movies, most obviously in the mutant Western The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Most of Craven’s output from the 1980s is disposable, with the Craven was a film editor in a postimportant exception of A Nightmare on Elm production company before breaking into Street (1984), which features the bogeyman film-making through sex films, most notably character Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a murdered child Together (1971), co-directed with Sean S. Cunningham, who would abductor who returns in go on to create the Friday the 13th the dreams of his killers’ series. Craven’s independently teenage offspring. It was financed Last House on the Left the most original horror movie of the decade. Craven (1972) was a grotesque but fiercely intelligent horror scorned the sequels, save for movie loosely based on Ingmar the smartly self-reflexive Wes Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. Craven’s New Nightmare (1994). A gang of sadists rape, torture, Further in that vein, Scream 1, and murder two 17-year-old 2, and 3 (1996, 1997, and girls, then through a series of 2000), worked post-modern coincidences find themselves variations on done-to-death at the mercy of one of the slasher movies, and Red Eye girl’s middle-class parents, (2005) is a psychological Film poster, 1984 who pays them back in kind. suspense thriller that follows The divide between rich and poor, city and a young woman who is terrorized by a country, and young and old, and Craven’s co-passenger on a late-night flight. insistence on the brutalizing effects of In Scream, reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), and violence, reflect the social turmoil of the college students Randy (Jamie Kennedy) and Sidney (Neve Campbell) are terrorized by a killer in a ghost mask. period and are themes that are echoed in
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David Cronenberg 31943– 2Canadian 41969– 118 5Horror, Drama
There is nothing warm or feel-good about David Cronenberg’s films, which delight in stomach-churning imagery and voyeurism, linking sex with violence.
They Came from Within (1975), the first Cronenberg horror film to gain wide notice, is about sex-obsessed zombies. Rabid (1977) concerns a plague-carrying woman with a taste for human blood; Scanners (1981) is a combination of horror, sci-fi, and conspiracy thriller; and Videodrome (1982) deals with the effects of on-screen violence. Crash (1996), which turns car accidents into sado-masochistic turn-ons, and A History of Violence (2005) also explore themes of violence. Cronenberg combines phobias about aging, disease, and deformity, and the potential horrors of technology in The Fly (1986) and Dead Ringers (1988).
Alfonso Cuarón 31961– 2Mexican 42001– 15 5Drama
After a stint in Mexican television, Cuarón made the break into Hollywood with his comedy, Love in the Time of Hysteria (1991), about a lothario misdiagnosed with AIDS by an ex-lover.
Cuarón’s sensitive treatment of the Victorian children’s story A Little Princess (1995) was widely admired in the industry (Warner Bros. gave the film a second release after it failed the first time). A modern Great Expectations (1998) with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert De Niro was a misjudgement. But its failure
“Be afraid. Be very afraid” is the tagline for The Fly, where a science experiment gone horribly wrong transforms eccentric scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) into a fly.
what to watch 1981 Scanners 1982 Videodrome 1986 The Fly 1988 Dead Ringers 1996 Crash 2005 A History of Violence
Luisa (Ana Lopez Mercado) and two teenagers (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) learn about life, friendship, and love in the entertaining road movie, Y Tu Mamá También.
what to watch 1995 A Little Princess 2001 Y Tu Mamá También 2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
may have been the best thing to happen to him. Cuarón returned to Mexico and came out with the earthy and liberating Y Tu Mamá También (2001), his first international box-office hit. Such versatility led Warner Bros. to entrust him with filming the third book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).
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George Cukor
what to watch
31899–1983 2AMERICAN 41930–1981
1933 Dinner at Eight
155 5Comedy, Musical, Drama
1933 Little Women
The name George Cukor on movie titles conjures up the image of a sophisticated dinner party where elegant people meet, and the conversation is pitched at exactly the right level — neither vulgar nor highbrow.
1935 Sylvia Scarlett 1935 David Copperfield 1936 Camille 1938 Holiday 1939 The Women 1940 The Philadelphia Story
George Cukor’s career got off to a shaky 1949 Adam’s Rib start when he was taken off an early film 1954 A Star is Born (the musical One Hour with You, 1932) and 1964 My Fair Lady replaced by Ernst Lubitsch. Seven years later, Cukor was also taken off Gone With the Wind. At MGM, however, he at her most radiant in Holiday (1938), her distinguished himself with glossy, literate wittiest in The Philadelphia Story (1940), and productions such as Dinner at Eight (1933), her most affecting in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Later, Cukor moved into harder-edged David Copperfield (1935), and Romeo and Juliet (1936). It was not comedies such as Adam’s long before he gained a Rib (1949), Pat and Mike reputation as a “woman’s (1952), and three Judy director,” and even the titles Holliday movies, the best of many of his films reflect of which was Born Yesterday (1950). Cukor reached his this: Little Women (1933) and The Women (1939), with an peak in the 1950s with all-female cast; Camille A Star is Born (1954) starring (1936) and Two-Faced Judy Garland and James Film poster, 1964 Woman (1941) with Greta Mason, in which his use Garbo; A Woman’s Face (1941) starring of lighting, color, and costumes Joan Crawford; Les Girls (1957), and My surpassed all other musicals on the CinemaScope screen. Fair Lady (1964), which won him his only Academy Award. His favorite actress, Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor are directed by Cukor Katharine Hepburn, whom he directed in (standing behind the stool) on the set of Camille. her first film A Bill of Divorcement (1932), was At the camera is lensman William Daniels.
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Michael Curtiz 31888–1962 2HUNGARIAN (american) 41912–62 1160 5Drama
Representing the archetypal studio director of Hollywood’s golden era, Michael Curtiz, under contract to Warner Bros. for 27 years, turned out more than 150 films of every genre.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Curtiz, who had made many films in Hungary and Austria, was the ideal Warner Brothers director, filming with economy, fluency, and pace. He made over a dozen pictures with Errol Flynn, including some of the star’s best swashbucklers, such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He directed James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), for which Cagney won his only Academy Award. Joan Crawford, too, won her sole Academy Award under Curtiz’s guidance in Mildred Pierce (1945), a superb film noir. His touch was unmistakable in Casablanca (1942).
Clarence (William Powell) and Vinnie (Irene Dunne), with their sons played by Johnny Calkins, Martin Milner, Jimmy Lydon, and Derek Scott in Life With Father (1947).
what to watch 1937 Kid Galahad 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938 Angels with Dirty Faces 1942 Casablanca
Jules Dassin 31911– 2AMERICAN 41942–1980 124 5Film noir, Drama
The reputation of Jules Dassin rests on five crime thrillers, three of which were made in Hollywood before he was forced to leave the United States for political reasons.
An ineffectual mixture of comedies and dramas characterized Jules Dassin’s early films until he made Brute Force (1947), a tough prison drama. Realizing his talent lay in film noir, Dassin made The Naked City (1948) and Thieves’ Highway (1949), both distinguished by their dramatic use of locations, as was Night and the City (1950), set in a sleazy London milieu. After Dassin settled in France, he directed what to watch 1947 Brute Force 1948 The Naked City 1949 Thieves’ Highway 1950 Night and the City 1956 Rififi 1957 He Who Must Die 1960 Never on Sunday 1964 Topkapi
Richard Widmark in a scene from Night and the City (1950). Considered one of Dassin’s best films, it shows a seamy side of London neglected by British directors.
Rififi (1956), a much-imitated heist movie celebrated for its tense, meticulously enacted 22-minute robbery sequence without dialogue. When he married Greek actress Melina Mercouri, his career changed direction. She was his star, in the role of a prostitute in both He Who Must Die (1957) and Never on Sunday (1960) — the latter remembered for its bouzouki music — and in updated Greek classics such as Phaedra (1962). In Topkapi (1964), a comedy-thriller about a hold-up in the Istanbul museum, he revisited the heist theme with great success.
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Cecil B. DeMille
what to watch
31881–1959 2AMERICAN 41914–1956
1915 The Cheat
172 5Epic, Western, Comedy, Melodrama
1923 The Ten Commandments
A name that evokes the image of a largerthan-life showman is Cecil B. DeMille, who made grandiose Biblical epics. However, his films covered much wider ground during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”
After a few Westerns, including The Squaw Man (1913), one of the first major films produced in Hollywood, Cecil Blount DeMille brought Metropolitan Opera soprano Geraldine Farrar from New York to play Carmen (1915). In 1918, he made a series of risqué domestic comedies, six of them starring Gloria Swanson. These were followed by The Ten Commandments (1923), which parallels the biblical story with a modern one. Sex and religion were bedfellows in King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), and The Crusades (1935). His only musical, Madam Satan (1930), featured a bizarre party sequence on a Zeppelin. The milk bath in Cleopatra (1934) with Claudette Colbert highlighted his obsession with bathtub scenes. DeMille’s best period was from 1937 to 1947, during which he directed The Plainsman (1937), North West Mounted Police (1940), and Unconquered (1947), all starring Gary Cooper. Lively, unsubtle, patriotic celebrations of the pioneers of America, they extolled strength, perseverance, and forthright
1934 Cleopatra 1937 The Plainsman 1939 Union Pacific 1942 Reap the Wild Wind 1947 Unconquered 1949 Samson and Delilah 1952 The Greatest Show on Earth 1956 The Ten Commandments
manliness. DeMille saw himself as a pioneer too, and he would narrate many of his films in a grandiloquent manner. He returned to the Bible with Samson and Delilah (1949). When receiving praise for the Film poster, 1938 climactic destruction of the temple, DeMille claimed modestly, “Credit is due to the Book of Judges, not me.” He was attracted to the circus, and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) was his first film set in contemporary times since 1934. Before he died, he was planning Be Prepared, an epic story of the boy-scout movement. Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments; DeMille’s grandiose remake featured a cast of thousands and gigantic sets.
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Jonathan Demme
what to watch
31944– 2AMERICAN 41974–
1980 Melvin and Howard
122 5Thriller
1988 Married to the Mob
A promising director for many years, Jonathan Demme finally broke into the big time with The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Demme directed three low-budget movies before Citizens Band (1977) gained attention. He had successes with Melvin and Howard (1980), about the friendship between multi-millionaire Howard Hughes and a gas-station attendant, and Married to the Mob (1988), but nothing prepared the film world for The Silence of the Lambs, an eerie psychological thriller that manages, despite its gruesome subjects of serial killing and cannibalism, to avoid sensationalism. It gained five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Demme followed this with Philadelphia (1993), the first mainstream movie to deal specifically with AIDS.
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1991 The Silence of the Lambs 1993 Philadelphia 1998 Beloved
Anthony Hopkins delivers an Academy Award-winning performance as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist turned psychopath, who helps a female FBI trainee track a notorious serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs.
Jacques Demy 31931–1990 2FRENCH 41961–1988 112 5Fantasy, Musical
A whimsical purveyor of modern fairytales, Jacques Demy was one of the rare French directors to make musicals.
Demy was brought up in Nantes (see his widow Agnès Varda’s film, Jacquot de Nantes, 1991), where his first film, Lola (1961), was set. Its circular construction, frothiness, and long tracking shots are reminiscent of Max Ophüls, the film’s dedicatee. It owes as much to Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s musical comedy On The Town (1949), with its sailors on leave, chance meetings, and fleeting love. The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, 1967) was a direct homage to the MGM musical, a fact that was underlined by the casting of Gene Kelly. In his enchanting musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964), the dialogue is sung to Michel Legrand’s music. In contrast, Bay of Angels (La Baie des Anges, 1963), a love story set on the French Riviera, is one of the most vivid evocations of gambling fever on film, while Model Shop (1969), Demy’s only US film, continues the story of Lola.
Catherine Deneuve and Anne Vernon in a scene from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy’s colorful musical, which catapulted Deneuve to stardom.
what to watch 1961 Lola 1963 Bay of Angels 1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1969 Model Shop 1971 Donkey Skin
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Brian De Palma 31940– 2AMERICAN 41967– 128 5Gangster, Thriller, Action
Early in his career, Brian De Palma gained a reputation as a “Hitchcock imitator,” a description he gradually shook off with his own violent, kinetic thrillers.
The films Sisters (1973), Carrie (1976), Obsession (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981), and Body Double (1984), all contain aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window — girls in showers, voyeuristic killers, sexual obsessions, and women in peril. The films demonstrate a mature command of manipulative cinema, particularly cross-cutting and split-screen techniques. Among these, Carrie, which launched Sissy Spacek to stardom, was one of De Palma’s greatest hits. Less Hitchcockian were his gangster movies, The Untouchables (1987), which won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Sean Connery, Scarface (1983), and Carlito’s Way (1993). These films showed a personal stamp, what to watch 1973 Sisters 1976 Carrie 1983 Scarface 1987 The Untouchables 1993 Carlito’s Way 1996 Mission: Impossible
The eponymous heroine Carrie (Sissy Spacek) unleashes horrifying revenge in the final scene of Carrie, adapted from Stephen King’s novel.
being full of tour-de-force sequences, and allowing actors like Al Pacino (in the latter two movies) to be at their most compelling. Mission: Impossible (1996), adapted from the 1960s television series by De Palma, was a huge success. Typical of his flamboyant camera work is the opening scene from Snake Eyes (1998), in which a politician is assassinated in full view of the huge crowd at a boxing match. Lobby card, 1993 A publicity still from The Untouchables, with Charles Martin Smith, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia as the men who hunt down gangster Al Capone, played to perfection by Robert De Niro.
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Vittorio De Sica 31901–1974 2ITALIAN 41940–1974 126 5Neoralist drama, Melodrama, Comedy
The neorealist films of Vittorio De Sica changed the face of Italian cinema, and the director claimed that, “my films are a word in favour of the poor and unhappy and against the indifference of society towards suffering.”
A successful stage and film actor throughout the 1920s and 1930s, De Sica directed four light comedies before making a sudden breakthrough with the dramatic, humane, and sharply realistic The Children Are Watching Us (I Bambini ci Guardano, 1942), one of the first Italian neorealist films. It was De Sica’s first important collaboration with the writer Cesare Zavattini, who worked on many of his films. Together they believed in the responsibility of the camera to observe real life as it is lived without the traditional compromises of entertaining narratives. De Sica proved himself a sensitive director of children again in Shoeshine (Sciuscià, 1946), set in Rome during the Allied Occupation and dealing with the main theme of the neorealist — poverty in post-war Italy. Using non-actors in real locations, it was an international sensation, and the first non-English language film to win an honorary Academy Award (until
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The director standing behind his cameraman at an outdoor shoot of Umberto D., a poignant, lyrical tale about an old man’s struggle to retain his dignity in the face of poverty.
what to watch 1946 Shoeshine 1948 Bicycle Thieves 1951 Miracle in Milan 1952 Umberto D. 1960 Two Women 1970 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
1956, foreign films were given noncompetitive awards). Yet, De Sica had to raise the money himself for Bicycle Thief (Ladri di Biciclette, 1948), his most famous film. Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano, 1951), set in a shanty town where the poor get all they desire, prefigured the work of Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Following Umberto D. (1952), an ode to his father, De Sica returned to comedy. However, Two Women (La Ciociara, 1960), which gained Sophia Loren a Best Actress Academy Award, was a stark tale of a mother and her daughter trying to survive in Italy in 1943. His next notable film was The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, 1970), about Italy’s involvement in the Holocaust — it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
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Stanley Donen 31924– 2AMERICAN 41949– 127 5Musical, Thriller, Comedy
A dancer and choreographer on Broadway, Stanley Donen came to Hollywood and made a spectacular success of staging numbers for MGM musicals, working with Gene Kelly on four films.
Having been given the chance to direct a film together, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly came up with the joyous and innovative On the Town (1949). Conceived balletically, it follows three sailors on leave for 24 hours in New York — the opening number was actually shot in that “wonderful town.” This was followed by one of the greatest Hollywood musicals; Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and a third collaboration with Kelly, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), about three GIs who reunite after World War II, only to find they have nothing in common. His solo work includes the exuberant Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Funny Face (1957), notable for their visual quality. With the demise of the Hollywood Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn sizzle as a married couple in Two for the Road, one of Stanley Donen’s finest films.
Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen hammer out the details on the set of Singin’in the Rain; Kelly not only played one of the leads but also co-directed the film with Donen.
musical, Donen made two chic, effective Hitchcockian thrillers, Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966), as well as entertaining comedies, such as Indiscreet (1958), Surprise Package (1960), and the comedy-drama Two for the Road (1967), which follows the marital ups and downs of a British couple.
Film poster, 1954
what to watch 1949 On the Town (with Gene Kelly) 1952 Singin’ in the Rain (with Gene Kelly) 1954 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers 1955 It’s Always Fair Weather (with Gene Kelly) 1957 Funny Face 1963 Charade 1967 Two for the Road
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
Alexander Dovzhenko
what to watch
31894–1956 2UKRAiNIAN 41926–1948
1927 Zvenigora
113 5Drama
1929 Arsenal
The films of Alexander Dovzhenko, who was brought up on a farm in Ukraine, are lyrical panegyrics to the life and history of the area.
The first of Alexander Dovzhenko’s films on which he had total freedom was Zvenigora (1927), an allegory, which was the last flowering of the exciting avant-
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1930 Earth 1932 Ivan 1935 Frontier (Aerograd)
garde Russian cinema. His next three films were political poems dedicated to his homeland. Arsenal (1929), about collectivization, greatly influenced movements abroad; Earth (Zemlya, 1930) a pastoral symphony, creates the indelible vision of a rural paradise gained with the blood of the peasants; and Ivan (1932), his first sound film, describes the building of a hydroelectric project. Despite bureaucratic interference, his later films still retain a brisk pace and luminous photography. Earth, Dovzhenko’s masterpiece, in which the director lingers lovingly on the land and its people, bringing together lyrical images of birth, life, and death.
Carl Dreyer
what to watch
31889–1968 2DANISH 41919–1964
1925 Master of the House
124 5Drama
1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc
In the relatively few films he made over half a century, Carl Dreyer used deceptively simple means to achieve powerful effects and a restrained emotional intensity.
One of the first of Dreyer’s mature works, Chained (1924), is close to German Expressionism, while the feminist Master of the House (Du skal ære din hustru, 1925) is more naturalistic — yet they both have a formal beauty. This quality is clear in The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928), his ground-breaking silent film, made in France. The Vampire (Vampyr, 1932) makes most other horror films pale into insignificance, and Day of Wrath (Vredens dag, 1943) follows a witch hunt in 17th-century Denmark, when a parson’s wife is denounced for witchcraft. The film was thought to be an allegory for occupied Denmark, and Dreyer had to seek refuge in Sweden until after the war. The Word (Ordet, 1955), about a miraculous resurrection in a rural household, is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism.
1932 The Vampire 1943 Day of Wrath 1955 The Word 1964 Gertrud
Gertrud (1964), which tells the story of an opera singer and her relationships with several lovers, was made after a ten-year break from directing. Dreyer’s last film, it radiates a deep and affecting atmosphere of serenity. In The Vampire, Dreyer’s brilliant use of shadow, light, camera movement, and settings creates an unnerving and chilling atmosphere of suspense.
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Clint Eastwood 31930– 2american 41971– 125 5Western, Thriller, Action, Drama
After making his name as an actor in the 1950s and 1960s, Clint Eastwood emerged as a director in the early 1970s, gradually gaining admiration and awards for his range of movies, particularly his personal Westerns.
In Italy in the mid-1960s, three Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns launched Clint Clint Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, an aging trainer, and Hillary Swank plays Maggie, a waitress who takes Eastwood’s film-acting career. Back in up boxing to escape her past, in Million Dollar Baby. the United States, he made five films for Don Siegel in which often revealing flaws in he continued to play loners, his macho image. The notably the diffident detective Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry Bronco Billy (1980), Pale Rider (1971). There are elements of (1985), his most classic Leone and Siegel in his own Western, and the Academy films as actor-director. Siegel’s Award-winning Unforgiven influence is evident in his first (1992), are the summation feature, Play Misty for Me of his career as director and star of the genre. Along the (1971), a chilling misogynistic thriller, and Leone’s in High way, he showed his versatility Plains Drifter (1973), a moody, by making cop movies: Sudden stylishly self-conscious Impact (1983), in which he Western, in which Eastwood returned to his Dirty Harry Film poster, 1976 protects a town from outlaws. character, The Rookie (1990), But Eastwood soon came into his own and Mystic River (2003); biopics: Bird (1987) about jazzman Charlie Parker, in Westerns with a vein of self-mockery, and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) what to watch about film director John Huston (played by Eastwood); love stories: The Bridges of 1971 Play Misty for Me Madison County (1995); and a boxing 1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales drama, Million Dollar Baby (2004), another 1987 Bird Academy Award winner. 1992 Unforgiven 2003 Mystic River 2004 Million Dollar Baby
A devastated Jimmy (Sean Penn) learns of his daughter’s murder in Mystic River; Eastwood’s standout direction makes this multi-layered film hauntingly real.
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Blake Edwards 31922– 2american 41955– 137 5Comedy, Drama
Almost the whole of Blake Edwards’ career is built on the Pink Panther movies and a number of bittersweet comedies starring his wife, Julie Andrews.
Among the first films Blake Edwards directed was This Happy Feeling (1958), a title that sums up much of his work. The Pink Panther (1964) started a series of eight films, six starring Peter Sellers as the clumsy Inspector Clouseau. Edwards also featured Julie Andrews in seven films, including 10 (1979) and Victor/Victoria (1982), one of the best gay comedies in both senses of the word. But it was Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), a tender version of the Truman Capote short story, with an enchanting Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, that made his name in cinema. A departure from comedy, Days of Wine and Roses (1963) is a surprisingly bleak, realistic portrayal of alcoholism, with Jack Lemmon in one of his meatiest roles. what to watch 1959 Operation Petticoat 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1963 Days of Wine and Roses 1964 The Pink Panther 1982 Victor/Victoria
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Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and his wife (Capucine) in The Pink Panther. Sellers’ portrayal of the simple-minded French police inspector who speaks in a ridiculous accent was his most famous comic character.
Audrey hepburn Actor Box The elfin-featured Audrey Hepburn (1929–93) provided an antidote to the trend for the fuller figure of the 1950s. In her first American film, Roman Holiday (1953), she received the Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the incognito princess who finds romance with a newspaperman. As an innocent, she was often courted by older men such as Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina (1954), Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (1957), and Fred Astaire in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face (1957). She was also perfectly cast as the childlike Natasha in War and Peace (1956) opposite her first husband, Mel Ferrer, and was effective as the Belgian nun who questions her faith in The Nun’s Story (1959). She sang “Moon River” touchingly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), but was dubbed for the songs in My Fair Lady (1964), although she was still ravishing in the role. Hepburn is remembered today for her sense of style as much as for her acting.
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Sergei Eisenstein 31898–1948 2russian 41925–1944 17 5Propaganda, Avant-garde, Epic
One of the undisputed geniuses of cinema, Sergei Eisenstein was not only a leading practitioner of his art, but its principal theorist. Despite strict Soviet government guidelines, he was able to set his personal stamp on the seven features he was allowed to complete.
In Eisenstein’s first film, Strike (Stachka, 1924), many of his stylistic devices were already in evidence: caricature, visual metaphors, and shock cutting — a factory boss uses a lemon squeezer as police move in on striking workers and shots of a slaughterhouse are cut in as the police mow them down. What Eisenstein defined as “dynamic montage” (rapid cutting) is used to devastating effect in the “Odessa Steps” sequence in The Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925). The “intellectual montage,” based on Eisenstein’s editing technique, at which the audience must not only react emotionally but be shocked into thinking, was perfected in October (Oktyabr, 1927). The number of
The face of a factory owner, who refuses workers’ demands, is juxtaposed with that of a monkey in Strike, illustrating Eisenstein’s use of visual metaphors.
shots — 3,200 — was more than double those of Potemkin and more than probably any other film. The emotional and rhythmic composition shows the storming of the Winter Palace, the dismemberment of the Tsar’s statue, and a dead white horse sliding off a drawbridge into the river. It completed Eisenstein’s trilogy of the Russian Revolution through which several motifs reappear, especially that of turning wheels representing change, Strike ending in defeat, The Battleship Potemkin in partial triumph, and October in ultimate victory. However, October displeased those in power who felt that Eisenstein was unwise to allow himself to experiment with a film whose subject matter was as sensitive as that of the revolution. Eisenstein tried to appease
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291
montage In 1920, The Birth of a Nation was shown in Moscow and, according to Eisenstein, “It played a massive role in the development of montage in the Soviet film.” Later, he went far beyond D.W. Griffith’s use of cross-cutting and parallel action. Yet several years before Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov was articulating what seems basic to us today — that the arrangement of individual shots in the cutting room (montage) is central to cinema. Kuleshov arrived at montage almost by accident because a shortage of film during the Civil War years led him to experiment with making new movies by cutting up and rearranging parts of old ones. A woman shot in the face by Cossacks after protesting against the soldiers during the massacre on the Odessa Steps in The Battleship Potemkin.
the party with The General Line (Staroye i Novoye, 1928), but could not restrain his ironic humor, such as in the mock marriage of a cow and a bull, and when the milk hovers for a moment in a creamseparator before it orgasmically splatters onto a woman’s face. In 1931, the left-wing American novelist Upton Sinclair agreed to finance Que Viva Mexico (1931), intended as a fourpart semi-documentary on Mexican life and history, but Eisenstein overran the time and the budget. The money was withdrawn, and he never got to edit the material he had shot. Today it exists in various re-edited forms and its baroque images tinged with eroticism make one regret the loss. Charged with “formalism” in the unfinished Bezhin Meadow (Bezhin Lug, 1936), Eisenstein recanted by making the patriotic spectacle Alexander Nevsky (Aleksandr Nevskiy, 1938), a richly enjoyable epic with stirring images and a dramatic use of Prokofiev’s music, especially in the famous “Battle of the Ice” sequence. Eisenstein (third left) directs the cast of Ivan the Terrible Part II during the winter of 1943 in Kazakhstan.
Taking his imagery from grand opera, kabuki theater, and Shakespearean and Russian icons, Eisenstein embarked on the three parts of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Groznyy I, II, 1944–1946), but only two were completed. Stalin approved Part I, but as Ivan’s character became more complex, he turned against it, perhaps recognizing something of himself in it. Part II was not shown until 10 years after both Eisenstein’s and Stalin’s deaths. Ivan the Terrible is the peak of Eisenstein’s achievement, fulfilling his ambitions of achieving a synthesis of all the arts.
Soviet leader Lenin (Vasili Nikandrov) sits in conference with his comrades in October. Shot in documentary style, the film celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Revolution.
what to watch 1924 Strike 1925 The Battleship Potemkin 1927 October 1928 The General Line (or The Old and the New) 1938 Alexander Nevsky 1944 Ivan the Terrible Part I 1946 Ivan the Terrible Part II (released 1958)
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder 31946–1982 2german 41969–1982 130 5Melodrama
Almost a one-man film industry, Rainer Werner Fassbinder made dozens of films in about 12 years: a surprising, consistent, entertaining, probing, and lively output.
With friends from the Munich Action Theatre Group, Rainer Werner Fassbinder began making films in 1969, rapidly becoming a part of the new generation of young directors who put German cinema back on the map after 30 years. Often starring his favorite actress Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder’s films reveal a heartless, avaricious postwar Germany. The characters tend to be frustrated by the barrenness of urban existence, sometimes turning to violence, as in The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation, 1979), which focuses on a Berlin terrorist group. One of the many Fassbinder films to use Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodramas as its prime model, Fear Eats the Soul (Angst what to watch 1971 The Merchant of Four Seasons 1972 The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant 1973 Fear Eats the Soul 1974 Effi Briest 1975 Fox 1975 Mother Küsters’ Trip To Heaven 1978 The Marriage of Maria Braun 1978 In a Year of Thirteen Moons 1981 Lola 1982 Veronika Voss
Schygulla (Karin) and Margit Cartensen (Petra) star in the beautifully visualized The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, based on Fassbinder’s own play about desire and power.
essen Seele auf, 1973) borrows the plot from All That Heaven Allows (1955), showing a lonely ageing woman having an affair with a younger Arab man. Women are generally at the center of his films, and The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun, 1978), Lola (1981), and Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, 1982) all present women trying to survive in an ironically evoked Germany. A more flamboyant style is used in these recreations of an era than the static camera set-ups of his Film poster, 1979 earlier films. Sexuality as a means for the strong to manipulate the weak is a frequent motif, whether showing heterosexuality — Effi Briest (1974) and Lili Marleen (1980) — or homosexuality — The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, 1972), and Fox (Faustrecht der Freiheit, 1975). In his brief life, Fassbinder directed more than 40 productions, including television and stage work. He also wrote, edited, photographed, and produced many of his films.
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Federico Fellini 31920–1993 2italian 41950–1990 119 5Comedy, Drama
Fellini directs Richard Basehart as “The Fool” who walks the tightrope in La Strada, a film the director called “the complete catalogue of my entire mythological world.” Anthony Quinn was the other American in the film.
A magnificent ringmaster, Federico Fellini created a world that was rather like a circus, peopled by grotesque or innocent clowns.
what to watch
For 12 years, after he came to Rome from his home town of Rimini, Fellini wrote film scripts, many for Roberto Rossellini. But unlike Rossellini, Fellini was never a neorealist, and established his own mythology when he started directing. He commented, “If the cinema didn’t exist I might have become a circus director,” and it could also be said that if the circus did not exist, he might not have become a film director. The circus as metaphor (and reality) plays an important role in his films. In La Strada (1954), Giulietta Masina (Fellini’s wife) plays an innocent white-faced
1959 La Dolce Vita
Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a film director with a creative block in 8½, in which Fellini creates a complex narrative, interspersing fantasy with reality.
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1953 I Vitelloni 1954 La Strada 1963 8½ 1965 Julietta of the Spirits (Giulietta degli Spiriti) 1972 Roma 1973 Amarcord 1976 Casanova
clown, brutally mistreated by a traveling strongman (Anthony Quinn), who realizes he loves her only when she dies. The film, the first to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, made Fellini internationally known. Fellini used Masina’s Chaplinesque persona as the “innocent” prostitute once again in Nights of Cabiria, (Le Notti di Cabiria, 1956). Marcello Mastroianni plays Fellini’s alter ego in La Dolce Vita (1959) and in 8½ (1963), the title referring to the number of Fellini’s films (including collaborations). This calculated self-portrait remains a compendium of every Fellini theme and stylistic device. An autobiographical aspect was also evident in I Vitelloni (1953), set in the seaside town of his birth; Roma (1972); and Amarcord (1973), an affectionate, dreamlike view of the past.
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David Fincher
what to watch
31962– 2American 41995–
1995 Se7en
16 5Thriller
1999 Fight Club
In Fight Club (1999), David Fincher made arguably the most subversive mainstream movie of its time — an all-out anarchic assault on consumerism, capitalism, and even civilization itself.
If the themes for Fight Club were already in Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, there is no doubt that Fincher (a very successful commercials director) heartily embraced the material. There is a similar morbid misanthropy in the ill-starred Alien 3 (which Fincher disowned) and the dark serial killer thriller Se7en (1995), a singularly bleak and macabre film, with a “noir” twist reminiscent of the shocking endings of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories. Borges might also have appreciated The Game (1997), about a live-action game taken too far, although
2002 Panic Room 2006 Zodiac
he would have been in a minority. Fincher seemed surprised and stung by the hostile reception to Fight Club, which was released at a time when there was concern about movie violence, Film poster, 1995 following shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Panic Room (2002) was a retreat, a purely formal exercise in locked room suspense, but Fincher returned to the serial killer theme with Zodiac (2006).
Robert Flaherty
what to watch
31884–1951 2AMERICAN 41922–1949
1922 Nanook of the North
18 5Documentary
1926 Moana
Considered by many to be the father of the documentary film, Robert Flaherty expressed his view of the importance of primitive societies and the balance between man and nature in his silent era films.
Flaherty made his first full documentary feature, Nanook of the North (1922), by living with the Inuit for 16 months. Because of the film’s huge success, Paramount asked Flaherty to make a “Nanook” of the South Seas. He spent two years in the Samoan Islands making Moana (1926) and filmed an Eden, unlike
1934 Man of Aran 1948 Louisiana Story
the cold hell of the Arctic, where noble savages hunt, fish, and cook. Gainsborough Studios gave him a free hand on Man of Aran (1934), and he spent a further two years living with the Aran islanders off the coast of Ireland, documenting their harsh daily lives. Although uncompleted, The Land (1942) marked Flaherty’s aesthetic departure from depicting exotic communities to documenting more known landscapes. It prepared the ground for Louisiana Story (1948), a poetic slice of Americana that describes the drilling for oil in the Louisiana swamplands as seen through the eyes of a young boy. Joseph Boudreaux plays a young Cajun boy, with his pet raccoon, in Louisiana Story, which explores man’s relationship with the environment.
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Victor Fleming 31883–1949 2AMERICAN 41920–1948 145 5Various
A first-rate craftsman, and part of an expert team, Victor Fleming happened to be at MGM at the right time to direct Gone With the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Although Fleming is credited as director of two of the most popular films ever, they are seldom cited as his movies. The reason for this is that they are perceived as producer and studio-dominated creations: much of Gone With the Wind was conceived by producer David O. Selznick, George Cukor shot at least three long sequences, and Sam Wood completed it when Fleming fell ill during shooting. King Vidor directed the black-and-white sequences in The Wizard of Oz, but Fleming made an excellent job of the rest. Actors liked working with him, and he secured inspired performances from Gary Cooper in The Virginian (1929), Clark Gable in Red Dust (1932), and Spencer Tracy, who won an Academy Award for Captains Courageous (1937), as well as his leading actresses, such as Jean Harlow in Red Dust and Bombshell (1933). Dorothy (Judy Garland) follows the Yellow Brick Road with the Tin Man (Jack Haley), the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) in The Wizard of Oz.
Clark Gable and the sultry Jean Harlow star in Red Dust, a steamy romance set in Indo-China. Gable became one of MGM’s hottest properties.
what to watch 1925 Lord Jim 1929 The Virginian 1932 Red Dust 1933 Bombshell 1934 Treasure Island 1937 Captains Courageous 1939 Gone With the Wind 1939 The Wizard of Oz
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John Ford
what to watch
31895–1973 2AMERICAN 41917–1966
1939 Stagecoach
1122 5Western, Drama
1939 Young Mr. Lincoln
It was John Ford (Sean Aloysius O’Feeney) who, more than anyone else, gave the Western an epic stature, and raised it to artistic status. He created a personal, recognizable world that is an essential part of American culture.
The Westerns made by John Ford are romantic visions of the Old West. They are mythical views of America’s past, where men are heroes, defending the lives of women and children in the fort, community, or homestead. The births, deaths, funerals, weddings, and dances are punctuated by songs (often sung by cavalry officers as they ride out against Indians) and drunken brawls. It was from 1939, with Stagecoach, that the true Ford Western emerged. His relatively few ventures out of America included two films set in Ireland: The Informer (1935), an atmospheric drama that takes place during the Irish Rebellion, and The Quiet Man (1952), a romance. These, and How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in Wales, won John Ford the Academy Award for Best Director. At the climax of The Searchers, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) leaves his relatives’ home to return to his lonely life in the great outdoors.
1940 The Grapes of Wrath 1948 Fort Apache 1956 The Searchers 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
In the 1930s, Ford used Henry Fonda’s noble, youthful character to excellent effect as the epitome of American idealism, especially as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). During World War II, Ford made a series of morale-boosting documentaries, then returned to Westerns. Among the best were My Darling Clementine (1946), with Fonda, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), with John Wayne, the leading light of the Ford Stock Company (as the group of actors most used by Ford was known). The Searchers (1956) was the culmination of Ford’s frontier movies, with a vein of bitterness evident in Wayne’s disillusioned officer searching for his niece who is captured by Indians. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) was the last Western Ford made with John Wayne. Despite the substantial budget he had for it, he shot the film in black-and-white, probably to evoke a sense of nostalgia.
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297
Milos Forman 31932– 2CZECH, American 41963– 112 5Biopic, Comedy, Costume drama
The Czech films of Milos Forman reveal a gently mocking humour and a keen eye for the minutiae of human behavior, qualities he brought to bear on his American movies.
Using mostly non-actors, and a cinemaverité technique, Forman gave Black Peter (Cerný Petr, 1963) and Loves of a Blonde (Lásky jedné plavovlásky, 1965), both about young people in conflict with their elders, a comic freshness. The Fireman’s Ball (Horí, má panenko, 1967), a satire on petty bureaucracy, brought him into conflict with the Czech authorities. Before the Russian invasion, he left for America, where he triumphed with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). It won five major Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, as did Amadeus (1984), a sumptuous visual and aural treat, much of it shot in the Czech Republic.
Tom Hulce plays Mozart in Amadeus; Forman's compelling portrait of the legendary composer is filled with rich details, powerful drama, and a wonderful score.
what to watch 1965 Loves of a Blonde 1967 The Fireman’s Ball 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1984 Amadeus 1999 Man on the Moon
John Frankenheimer 31930–2002 2AMERICAN 41957–2000 129 5Thriller, Drama
One of the first generation of television directors to make it to the big screen, John Frankenheimer brought realism and a liking for strong plots and situations to cinema.
The first two features directed by John Frankenheimer, The Young Stranger (1957) and The Young Savages (1961), dealt with juvenile delinquency, a popular subject at the time. Another aspect of youth was evident in All Fall Down (1961), which starred 24-year-old Warren Beatty, whose seduction of an older woman has tragic results. Most of Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) takes place in a prison cell, but the intensity of the direction and Burt Lancaster’s mesmeric performance, brilliantly sustain it. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) what to watch 1962 The Manchurian Candidate 1962 Birdman of Alcatraz 1964 The Train 1966 Seconds 1975 French Connection II
Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) is smitten by a fledgling sparrow in the Birdman of Alcatraz, a true story of a prison inmate who becomes a renowned bird expert.
incorporated social and political satire into a thriller plot, while Seven Days to May (1964) entered similar territory, with the imminent military takeover of the United States government. Lancaster starred again in The Train (1964), an intelligent and gripping war drama, which details the efforts of the French Resistance to prevent a trainload of French art from reaching Germany. French Connection II (1975) was, in many ways, a better film than its predecessor (William Friedkin’s 1971 The French Connection), proving Frankenheimer’s credentials as a first-class action director.
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Stephen Frears 31941– 2BRITISH 41971– 116 5Various
The films of Stephen Frears are brilliant studies of modern Britain. With the exception of Dangerous Liaisons (1988), the best screen version of Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel, he has been happiest on home ground.
After a start in television and a 13-year gap between Gumshoe (1971), his first feature, and The Hit (1984), Stephen Frears’ breakthrough came with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), which deals with sexual, class, and racial prejudices in Thatcherite Britain. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) continues the theme, while Prick Up Your Ears (1987) is about gay playwright Joe Orton in the 1960s. Frears’ greatest successes have been his films made in Britain such as Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), about the history of the “naughty” Windmill Theatre in London.
Sam Fuller
Judi Dench plays Laura Henderson, the daring widow who shocked pre-war Britain by featuring naked women on stage in her theater, in Mrs Henderson Presents.
what to watch 1985 My Beautiful Laundrette 1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid 1987 Prick Up Your Ears 1988 Dangerous Liaisons 2005 Mrs. Henderson Presents
what to watch
31911–1997 2AMERICAN 41948–1989
1957 Run of the Arrow
123 5War, Thriller, Western
1957 Forty Guns
Often using a moving camera as a blunt instrument, Sam Fuller created direct and raw films that reflect his experience in tabloid journalism and in the U.S. army.
Appearing as himself in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), Sam Fuller says, “film is like a battleground, love, hate, action, violence, death... in one word, Emotion.” Among his “emotion” pictures are Shock Corridor (1963) and
1961 Merrill’s Marauders 1963 Shock Corridor 1964 The Naked Kiss 1980 The Big Red One
The Naked Kiss (1964), both high-pitched melodramas that pack a punch. But it is Fuller’s war films that are his greatest achievement. The Steel Helmet (1950) and Fixed Bayonets (1951) were the first of his taut, tough, and truthful war films, which followed a group of multi-racial Americans fighting to survive. Merrill’s Marauders (1961) shows them wiping out Japanese soldiers in Burma in a “war is hell” manner, while World War II in Europe is reduced to its essentials in the stylized The Big Red One (1980), Fuller’s masterpiece. Lee Marvin plays a battlehardened sergeant (right), with Mark Hamill as a rookie in The Big Red One.
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
Abel Gance
what to watch
31889–1981 2FRENCH 41911–1971
1918 The Tenth Symphony
142 5Epic, Costume drama, Melodrama
1919 J’Accuse (I Accuse)
One of cinema’s great pioneers before the arrival of sound, Abel Gance reached his artistic climax with Napoléon (1927), a pyrotechnical display of almost every device of the silent screen.
At the start of his career, Abel Gance experimented with various techniques. In The Folly of Doctor Tube (La Folie Du Docteur Tube, 1915), he used a subjective camera and distorting mirrors for effect. J’Accuse (I Accuse, 1919; remake 1938), a pacifist statement in which a triangular relationship becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war, was actually shot during WWI with real soldiers under fire. It begins with infantrymen forming the letters of the title and ends with dead soldiers rising from their graves. This final scene is then contrasted, in a split-screen sequence, with a victory parade to the Arc de Triomphe. For The Wheel (La Roué, 1922), an ambitious production, he used rapid montage techniques — long before Sergei Eisenstein’s experiments with editing. His most impressive film was Napoléon (1927), first shown at the Paris
299
1922 The Wheel 1927 Napoléon 1936 The Life and Loves of Beethoven
Opéra in a five-hour version. It used hand-held cameras (one strapped to a horse’s back), wide-angle lenses, superimposition, rapid cutting, and a triple screen. Sadly, Gance’s romantic visual imagination was constrained with the coming of sound. Many of his later films are routine melodramas, although he sometimes used the same ideas and sequences from his silent films, such as the melodrama The Tenth Symphony (La Dixieme Symphony, 1918). Poignant and paradoxical is the sequence in The Life and Loves of Beethoven (Un Grand Amour de Beethoven, 1936) when the great composer loses his hearing, portrayed by silent shots of violins, birds, and bells. The loss of sound for Beethoven and the coming of sound for Gance were equally agonizing. In the first version of J’Accuse (1919), Gance’s antiwar film, wounded soldiers are welcomed home from the World War I battlefields by the civilian population.
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Jean-Luc Godard 31930– 2FRENCH 41959– 139 5Drama, Political drama, Satire
Always striving to go beyond films into other arts and politics, Jean-Luc Godard has formulated a truly revolutionary film language free from the dominant bourgeois culture in the west.
Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1960), Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature, established him as one of stars of the French New Wave. His second, The Little Soldier (Le Petit Soldat, 1960), presents an ambivalent view of the Algerian war. My Life to Live (Vivre sa Vie, 1962) uses a Brechtian device of episodes with texts, quotations, and interviews, giving it a documentary tone. Color is used symbolically in Pierrot le Fou (1965), a stunning study of violence and relationships. Two or Three Things I Know what to watch 1960 Breathless 1962 My Life to Live 1963 Contempt (Le Mépris) 1964 The Outsiders (Bande á Part) 1965 Alphaville 1967 Two or Three Things I Know About Her 1967 Weekend 1990 New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) 1999 In Praise of Love (Eloge de l’Amour) 2003 Our Music (Notre Musique)
Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes a break after a bizarre car chase, one among a series of wild adventures he shares with Marianne (Anna Karina) in Pierrot Le Fou.
About Her (Deux ou Trois Choses que Je sais d’Elle, 1967) refers to Paris, a city that has always inspired him, and Weekend (1967) is a devastating critique on modern French society. Godard broke away from commercial film-making to shoot a series of ciné-tracts in 16mm and video, but returned to more accessible film-making with Tout va Bien (1972). From 1980, a more mature Godard emerged, his films becoming contemplative poetic essays on contemporary issues, a challenge to audiences to think differently. Anna Karina plays Natascha Von Braun and Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, an American secret agent, in a sequence from Alphaville, set in a futuristic city, and shot with minimal lighting.
A – Z o f D i r e c to r s
Alejandro González Iñárritu
what to watch
31963– 2mexican 42000–
2003 21 Grams
16 5Drama
A disc jockey, film composer, and television producer before he became a leading figure in Mexico’s advertising world, Iñárritu made a splash at Critics’ Week in Cannes 2000 with his debut film, Amores Perros.
301
2000 Amores Perros 2006 Babel
Jorge Salinas plays the violent Luis in Amores Perros; each of the three tales revolves around dogs to varying degrees, as implied by the original title, “Love’s a Bitch”.
A collaboration with the writer Guillermo Arriaga, Amores Perros began as separate short films about the conflicting nature of life in Mexico City, but ended up as a triptych of loosely intertwined tales told with ferocity and compassion. The writerdirector duo stuck with overlapping tragedies and social inequities for 21 Grams (2003), but mixed up its structure, cutting between half a dozen major characters and time frames. Iñárritu goes for extreme contrasts and big emotions, but he has the talent to pull them off.
Peter Greenaway
Tomás Alea Gutiérrez
31942– 2british 41980–
31928–1996 2CUBAN 41962–1994
112 5Avant-garde
115 5Political drama
Displaying haunting images of strange worlds akin to those of writers Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka, Peter Greenaway’s films feature his fascination with numbers, maps, the English landscape, birds, nudity, and expanses of water.
Never afraid to be critical of his own country, Tomás Alea Gutiérrez is considered Cuba’s leading film director. His reputation is justified by his wide-ranging and inventive films.
Greenaway began making experimental films until The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), an elegant deconstruction of a costume drama, became a hit. Going beyond the restrictions of cinema, Greenaway creates an intertextual world, which draws heavily on the other arts and media. Those who are prepared to jettison their notions of conventional narrative will find his films rewarding. what to watch 1980 The Falls 1982 The Draughtsman’s Contract
Although he made a documentary about coal-miners in 1955, it was only after the 1959 Cuban revolution that Gutiérrez could begin to make “revolutionary” feature films. After making Death of a Bureaucrat (La Muerte de un Burócrata, 1966), an amusing satire on red-tape, Gutiérrez directed his masterpiece, Memories of Underdevelopment (Memorias del Subdesarrollo, 1968), which subtly and ironically examines the role of the intellectual in the new Cuba. Strawberries and Chocolate (Fresa y Chocolate, 1993) bravely tackles Cuba’s treatment of homosexuals in a non-didactic manner.
1985 A Zed and Two Noughts 1987 The Belly of an Architect
what to watch
1988 Drowning by Numbers
1966 Death of a Bureaucrat
1989 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
1968 Memories of Underdevelopment
1996 The Pillow Book
1993 Strawberries and Chocolate
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D.W. Griffith 31875–1948 2american 41908–1932
On the set of Intolerance (1916), D.W. Griffith, loud hailer in hand, directs the cast in one of the film’s four tales—the modern American story.
133 5Epic, Melodrama, Costume drama
With his epic Civil War drama The Birth of a Nation (1915), David Wark Griffith did much to convince the world that cinema is as valid an art form as any other.
Griffith, the son of a Confederate soldier, started directing at Biograph Studios in 1908. Biograph was the first studio to shoot a movie in Hollywood—Griffith’s In Old California (1910). With Billy Bitzer (the photographer of nearly all his films), Griffith turned out hundreds of one- and two-reelers, learning his craft as he went along. By 1911, he had used close-ups, changed the camera setups within one scene, and developed cross-cutting. Despite its reactionary attitudes, The Birth of a Nation remains a remarkable film in which all the technical innovations of his early work reached maturity. In order to answer critics of the racist elements in the film, Griffith’s next project was the epic Intolerance (1916), containing four separate stories to illustrate his theme. Throughout this period, Griffith struggled to
what to watch 1915 The Birth of a Nation 1916 Intolerance 1919 True Heart Susie 1919 Broken Blossoms 1920 Way Down East 1921 Orphans of the Storm
free himself from studio control, and a result of this was United Artists, which he co-founded in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford. He made some of his most endearing movies with the waiflike Lillian Gish, his favorite actress, notably Broken Blossoms (1919), True Heart Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920), and Orphans of the Storm (1921). But due to his narrow views, and the emergence of new directors and of sound, Griffith lost his popular appeal and his influence. His first talkie, Abraham Lincoln (1930), failed, and until his death in 1948, he led an obscure existence. Film poster, 1930
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Lasse Hallström
what to watch
31946– 2swedish 41977–
1985 My Life as a Dog
117 5Drama
1993 What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
On the strength of My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund, 1985), which was an international success, Lasse Hallström was invited to make films in Hollywood, where he made his mark with his gentle talent.
My Life as a Dog is an enchanting tale of childhood set in a small country village in Sweden. Despite the lead being a charming 12-year-old boy dealing with his mother’s death and separated from his dog, the film avoided cuteness and sentimentality. Some of its tone was present in his second Hollywood feature What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), with Johnny Depp in the title role and an impressive young Leonardo DiCaprio as his autistic brother. Both this film and The Cider House Rules (1999), his adaptation of John Irving’s novel starring Michael Caine, received critical acclaim.
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1999 The Cider House Rules 2000 Chocolat 2005 Casanova
Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) and the pet he loves in My Life as a Dog. Hallström received Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for the film.
Michael Haneke
Curtis Hanson
31942– 2Austrian 41989–
31945– 2american 41987–
19 5Psychological drama
19 5Thriller, Drama
Most of Michael Haneke’s films shock, not so much with their violence, but with the cold and ambivalent depiction of that violence.
A former film critic, Curtis Hanson came to directing like so many others—through the auspices of Roger Corman.
Haneke, one of Austria’s most celebrated directors (although he works in France), intends his films to be critiques of European society and of American cinema. Benny’s Video (1992) and Funny Games (1997) analyzed the cause and effect of violence on youth seemingly immune to sadistic practices. He attacked bourgeois behavior in The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, 2001) and Hidden (Caché, 2005), expounding the philosophy that nothing we do in society is private.
Starting out with B-grade movies, by the late 1980s Hanson was capable of fashioning tight, smart, unpretentious suspense pictures like Bad Influence (1987), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), and The River Wild (1994). Yet it was a big step up when he pulled off a streamlined but still authentic adaptation of James Ellroy’s labyrinthine L.A. Confidential (1997), coaxing a host of star-making performances out of Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey. Since then Hanson has charted an unpredictable, but often rewarding, course with Wonder Boys (2000), 8 Mile (2002), and In Her Shoes (2005).
Film poster, 1997
what to watch what to watch
1992 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
1997 Funny Games
1997 L.A. Confidential
2001 The Piano Teacher
2000 Wonder Boys
2005 Hidden
2002 8 Mile
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A–Z O F D I R E C TO R S
Howard Hawks 31896–1977 2american 41926–1970 141 5Western, Comedy, Action
Since Howard Hawks’ assured narrative style and handling of most genres was not immediately obvious as “art,” he was not appreciated as a true auteur and a candidate for Hollywood immortality until years after his death.
Many of Howard Hawks’ own personal interests feature in his films. A pilot in World War I, he brought authenticity to his four films about flying: The Dawn Patrol (1930), Ceiling Zero (1936), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), and Air Force (1943). A former designer and driver of racing cars, he recreated the excitement of the track in The Crowd Roars (1932) and Red Line 7000 (1965). Energetic sportsmanship also what to watch 1932 Scarface 1934 Twentieth Century 1938 Bringing Up Baby 1939 Only Angels Have Wings 1940 His Girl Friday 1944 To Have and Have Not 1946 The Big Sleep 1948 Red River 1959 Rio Bravo
John Wayne, Hawks’ favorite actor, plays Colonel Cord McNally, a Union Army officer who travels with his men to Texas in search of justice in Rio Lobo (1970).
inspired him to make Hatari! (1962) and Man’s Favorite Sport (1963). Some of these films reflect the theme of the camaraderie of men who risk their lives, but it was the battle of the sexes and gender roleswapping that preoccupied him in his screwball comedies, Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), and later in I Was a Male War Bride (1949). Particularly remarkable was the sublime sexual byplay between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), and the stunning opening number of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Notable among his films is the pairing of John Wayne with Montgomery Clift in Red River (1948), with Dean Martin in Rio Bravo (1959), and with Robert Mitchum in El Dorado (1967). Lauren Bacall plays Vivien and Humphrey Bogart stars as private detective Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, a hard-boiled thriller adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel.
A – Z O F D I R E C TO R S
Werner Herzog 31942– 2german 41967– 119 5Epic, Documentary
Known for going to any lengths to make a film, Werner Herzog (Werner Stipetic) is drawn to bizarre characters and situations set in stunningly photographed exotic surroundings.
Herzog’s first feature, Signs of Life (Lebenszeichen, 1967), takes place during World War II on a Greek island where a German soldier recovering from wounds refuses to obey orders. This theme foreshadowed later preoccupations with outsiders refusing or unable to conform to society. Fata Morgana (1971), shot in the desolate Sahara desert, is an “outsider” film par excellence, while Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen, 1970) is set on an island populated by dwarfs, and depicts the problematic nature of the liberation of the spirit. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, 1974), about a wild boy who appeared from nowhere in the early 19th century, also appealed to Herzog’s fascination with social misfits. Herzog’s greatest success was Aguirre, Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes,
305
The manual hauling of a 320-ton steamship over steep hills in the jungles of Peru in Fitzcarraldo was a feat accomplished without special effects, and is one of cinema’s most astonishing scenes.
1972). Shot in the Peruvian Andes, it was the first of several films about obsessive heroes played by the manic actor Klaus Kinski. The odd relationship between Kinski and Herzog became the subject of the director’s documentary, My Best Fiend (Mein liebster Feind, 1999), and Fitzcarraldo (1982) is about a turbulent trip by Kinski and Herzog into more untamed regions, this time the Amazonian jungle where Brian, the main character, is determined to build an opera house. “If I should abandon this film,” Herzog said when conditions became difficult, “I should be a man without dreams... I live my life or end my life with this project.” Film poster, Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979
what to watch 1967 Signs of Life 1971 Fata Morgana 1972 Aguirre, Wrath of God 1974 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser 1982 Fitzcarraldo 1999 My Best Fiend
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A–Z o f d i r e c to r s
Alfred Hitchcock 31899–1980 2british 41926–1976 158 5Thriller, Horror, Film Noir
For decades, Alfred Hitchcock was the only film director whose name and face were as famous as those of a film star. ”Hitch” was dubbed the “Master of Suspense,” putting his own unique stamp on the thriller genre.
Born in London’s East End, Hitchcock was educated by Jesuits. He entered the film industry in 1920 as a designer of silent-film titles, but soon rose to become an art director, scriptwriter, and assistant director. Hitchcock directed nine silent films, including The Lodger (1926), in which he first explored his favorite theme of the innocent in danger. The film marked his first appearance in front of the camera, in one of the fleeting cameos that became a feature of all his subsequent films. the lure of hollywood In 1929, while Blackmail was in production, sound was introduced to cinema. The 30-year-old Hitchcock quickly demonstrated his understanding of this new technology. At one point in the film, he created a sound montage in which the word “knife” echoes over and over again in the guilty girl’s mind the morning after the murder. Hitchcock followed Blackmail with a number of superb comedy-thrillers including The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). In 1940 David O. Selznick invited Hitchcock to Hollywood to direct the film of Daphne du Maurier’s novel
Rebecca. Hitchcock’s first American film had a British cast that was headed by Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Rebecca was a triumph, winning the Oscar for Best Picture and launching Hitchcock’s long career in the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. psychology, plot, and pursuit Hitchcock claimed not to care about the morality, the subject, or the message of his films, only the manner in which the story was told. The obvious Catholicism in films such as I Confess (1953) and the blatant psychology of Spellbound (1945), Psycho (1960), and Marnie (1964) were no more than plot devices. The pleasure of Hitchcock’s films lies elsewhere, for example, in the picaresque pursuit of Saboteur (1942), in which a hapless bystander becomes involved in a crime and must prove his innocence while being chased by both police and criminals. Then there’s the underlying sense of menace that emanates from unexpected places, evident in The Birds (1963). Hitchcock also had the remarkable ability
“I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.” alfred hitchcock, 1965
the hitchcock blonde Hitchcock’s ideal heroine was a “cool blonde,” a woman who seems outwardly prim and proper, but responds in a more sensual way when aroused by passion or peril. In Hitchcock’s own words his heroines were, “real ladies, who become whores once they’re in the bedroom.” Their appeal contrasted with the Marilyn-Monroe style of glamour, which was openly sexual. Grace Kelly plays Lisa in Rear Window, one of Hitchcock’s best thrillers; her co-star in the film was a wheelchair-bound James Stewart.
Paul Newman discusses direction with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Torn Curtain (1966).
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
307
what to watch 1936 The 39 Steps 1938 The Lady Vanishes 1943 Shadow of a Doubt 1951 Strangers on a Train 1954 Rear Window 1958 Vertigo 1959 North by Northwest 1960 Psycho
In Hitchcock’s horror The Birds, Tippi Hedren finds herself under a sustained and vicious attack from the most innocuous of sources.
to surprise his audiences, for example, audaciously killing off his leading lady (Janet Leigh) halfway through Psycho. He demonstrated an extravagant sense of location, as shown with the shooting that coincides with a clash of cymbals during a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956); the climactic chase on Mount Rushmore in North By
1963 The Birds 1964 Marnie
Northwest (1959); and the strangulation in London’s Covent Garden market in Frenzy (1972). From 1956 to 1966, all Hitchcock’s films were set to Bernard Herrmann’s distinctive pulsating music, which was particularly effective in Vertigo (1958), which many critics consider his masterpiece.
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a–z o f d i r e c to r s
Mike Hodges 31932– 2BRITISH 41971– 110 5Gangster, Science fiction
With his first feature, Get Carter (1971), Mike Hodges started the trend of hard-boiled and cold-blooded British crime movies set in seedy locations.
Michael Caine plays Jack Carter, a London gangster investigating the death of his brother in bleak Newcastle, in the gripping cult film Get Carter.
what to watch 1971 Get Carter 1974 The Terminal Man 1980 Flash Gordon 1989 Black Rainbow 1998 Croupier
A familiar name in television, Mike Hodges has, in over three decades, made only nine feature films and a documentary about serial-killer movies, Murder By Numbers (2001). His debut feature Get Carter had a gritty reality rare in British gangster films of the time. After the pastiche thriller, Pulp (1972), Hodges made two vastly different science-fiction movies, The Terminal Man (1974), a downbeat film about a man causing violence due to computers in his brain, and the tongue-in-the-cheek Flash Gordon (1980). Hodges returned to thriller and gangster movies with Croupier (1998) and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003).
Ron Howard
what to watch
31954– 2AMERICAN 41969–
1984 Splash
117 5Various
1989 Parenthood
One of the most successful Hollywood directors for over 20 years, Ron Howard turns out wellmade genre films that have wide audience appeal, yet no real personal signature.
To many people, Ron Howard will forever remain the lanky, ineffectual teenager Richie Cunningham in television’s Happy Days. Howard once said that he became a director to avoid being typecast as an actor. He has also refused to be typecast as a director and, like the character Richie, he seems to be able to turn his hand to any subject. Howard has won plaudits for rather earnest features, such as Apollo 13 (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001), an exploration of the inner world of a genius that won him Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and Cinderella Man (2005). However, he has also shown a light touch in comedies, such as Splash (1984), Cocoon (1985), Parenthood (1989), and Ed TV (1999). John Nash (Russell Crowe), the mathematical genius and paranoid schizophrenic, is caught in his own delusional world, in A Beautiful Mind.
1995 Apollo 13 1999 Ed TV 2001 A Beautiful Mind 2006 The Da Vinci Code
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Hou Hsiao-Hsien 31947– 2Taiwanese 41979–
309
Hajime (Tadanobu Asano), a bookseller who records train sounds as a pastime in Cafe Lumiere (Kohi Jiko, 2005), Hou's tribute to Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu.
117 5Drama
The films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the most internationally renowned director associated with Taiwan’s 1980s New Cinema movement, are subtle and beautifully composed.
Most of Hou’s films of the 1980s are semi-autobiographical. They depict the frustrations of growing up in rural Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s, and the complex intertwining of different strands that shape individual lives, particularly within a family. The Boys from Fengkuei (Fengkuei-lai-te Jen, 1983), Hou’s fourth feature, was not only a rite-of-passage piece but the coming-of-age of the Taiwanese film industry. The film, about three youths who leave a small fishing village to try to survive in the big city, had a more modern and universal approach than many previous Taiwanese movies. This was followed up by A Summer at Grandpa’s (Dongdong de Jiaqi, 1984), where children have both amusing and frightening experiences, as seen through
what to watch 1983 The Boys from Fengkuei 1984 A Summer at Grandpa’s 1985 A Time to Live, a Time to Die 1989 City of Sadness 1998 Flowers of Shanghai 2005 Cafe Lumiere
Hou’s clear, unflinching eyes. In A Time to Live, a Time to Die (Tong nien wang shi, 1985), another family drama revolving around a child, Hou began to perfect his simplicity of style, building up a rich tapestry from small details. From City of Sadness (Beiqing Chengshi, 1989), a complex panorama of Taiwanese life, Hou further experimented with scrupulously composed master shots, long takes, and elliptical narratives. Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua, 1998), set in a brothel in the 1880s, was Hou’s first period film. Perhaps his most accessible, it is emotionally charged without ever becoming melodramatic or sentimental.
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John Huston
what to watch
31906–1987 2AMERICAN 41941–1987
1941 The Maltese Falcon
138 5Various
1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The films of John Huston express his wide masculine interests but, beneath the tough exterior, a tenderness and a romantic idealism is revealed.
Son of actor Walter Huston and father of Angelica and Danny — both actors too — John Huston led a varied life as painter, boxer, horseman, hunter, actor, and writer before becoming a director. The Maltese Falcon (1941), considered the first film noir, was his assured debut, starring his favorite actor Humphrey Bogart. He directed his father and Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), a saga of human greed. Greed is also the theme of Key Largo (1948) with Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and of Beat the Devil (1954), which parodies The Maltese Falcon and Bogart’s persona. Most of his heroes are fiercely independent loners such as Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge, 1953), Captain Ahab (Moby Dick, 1956), Freud (in the film of the same name, 1962), the defeated boxers in Fat City (1972), and the preacher in Wise Blood (1979). The Misfits (1961), starring Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Marilyn Monroe, among others, was actually a film about losers. Fatalism and irony pervade his best
1948 Key Largo 1950 The Asphalt Jungle 1952 The African Queen 1954 Beat the Devil 1961 The Misfits 1967 Reflections in a Golden Eye 1972 Fat City 1987 The Dead
films, which are rich in character and plot, and told in an incisive narrative style, one of the best examples being The Asphalt Jungle (1950). He made two excursions into the African jungle with The African Queen (1952), with Bogart and Film poster, 1950 Katharine Hepburn making an unlikely pair, and The Roots of Heaven (1958), about doomed elephants. Huston’s final film The Dead (1987), based on a James Joyce short story and filmed in Ireland where he had made his home, was a poignant valediction. Tim Holt, Walter Huston, and Bogart are the prospectors brought together by greed in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, for which Huston won the Best Director Oscar.
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Kon Ichikawa 31915– 2japanese 41947– 180 5Various
A consistent critic of Japanese society, Kon Ichikawa is noted for the visual beauty of his films: “I began as a painter and I think like one.”
Although Kon Ichikawa’s first features were mostly satirical comedies, there is nothing comic about the films that made his reputation in the west. Both The Burmese Harp (Biruma no Tategoto, 1956) and Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959) depict the anguish of the Japanese army’s defeat in visionary blackand-white images; in Conflagration (Enjo, 1958), a man burns down a temple he feels has been polluted. Ichikawa used the widescreen to magnificent effect in Odd Obsession (Kagi, 1959), Alone in the Pacific (Taiheiyo Hitori-botchi, 1963), An Actor’s Revenge (Yukinojo Henge, 1963), and Tokyo Olympiad (Tokyo Orimpikku, 1965), a triumph of technical wizardry and creative genius.
James Ivory 31928– 2American 41963– 121 5Costume drama
The films of James Ivory are made by his own company set up with Indian producer Ismail Merchant, and mostly written by Ruth Prawar Jhabvala. Each film is literate, ironic, subtly intellectual, refined, and beautifully designed.
Ivory’s first four features were made in India, showing the influence of E.M. Forster, Satyajit Ray, and Jean Renoir’s The River (1951). The first, Shakespeare-Wallah (1965), follows an English theater company around India and is gently satirical about Emma Thompson plays the housekeeper and Anthony Hopkins plays the head butler — both vestiges of another era — in The Remains of the Day.
what to watch 1965 Shakespeare-Wallah 1979 The Europeans 1983 Heat and Dust 1984 The Bostonians 1986 A Room with a View 1990 Mr. and Mrs. Bridge 1992 Howards End 1993 The Remains of the Day
Mizushima (Shoji Yasui, extreme left) is a Japanese soldier in Burma who tries to bring the battalion to terms with the Japanese surrender in 1945 in The Burmese Harp.
what to watch 1956 The Burmese Harp 1958 Conflagration 1959 Fires on the Plain 1959 Odd Obsession 1963 An Actor’s Revenge 1963 Alone in the Pacific 1965 Tokyo Olympiad
the cultural pretensions of both the British and the Indians. As the major theme of Ivory’s films is the encounter between two cultures and the corruption of innocence, it was inevitable that Ivory should go directly to Henry James and E.M. Forster for inspiration. The Europeans (1979) and The Bostonians (1984) were more Jamesian than any other attempt on film. Even more successful were Forster’s adaptations: A Room with a View (1986), Maurice (1987), and Howards End (1992). Ivory’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1993), about the withering away of past grandeur and illusions as seen through the eyes of a butler, also received acclaim.
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A–Z o f D i r e c to r s
Peter Jackson 31961– 2new zealander 41988–
Naomi Watts plays Ann Darrow, held for the last time by the computer-generated giant ape, King Kong, on top of the Empire State Building.
various horror movie franchises, Jackson persuaded Hollywood to come to him. With The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson He built a sophisticated special effects established himself as the natural successor studio in New Zealand to shoot the to fantasy film-makers Steven Spielberg and gothic horror The Frighteners (1996), then George Lucas — and all without leaving his convinced New Line Productions to native New Zealand. bankroll his epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. He The first feature that Peter Jackson directed was Bad Taste (1988), which he emerged triumphantly three years later shot at weekends with a few friends. It is with a dazzling ten-hour series and won a story of an extraAcademy Awards terrestrial fast-food for Best Picture, operation run by Best Director, and aliens prospecting for Best Adapted brain food on Earth, Screenplay in 2004 with only the Alien for The Lord of the Investigation Defence Rings: The Return Service to stop them. of the King (2003). Meet the Feebles (1989), King Kong (2005) is a vulgar parody of an audacious remake The Muppets, was his of the 1933 original. Peter Jackson, often nicknamed “The Hobbit” first film with writing after Tolkien’s fantasy creatures, directs with his Again, Jackson usual intensity, wearing his trademark purple T-shirt. demonstrated scale partner Fran Walsh. Braindead (1992) was and virtuosity but, another black comedy, and is regarded although hugely successful, this time the as one of the most gory films ever made. material did not strike quite the same Heavenly Creatures (1994) is a surprising chord with audiences. change of pace, and a sign that there was what to watch more to the mature Peter Jackson than mere gusto. Based on a notorious murder 1994 Heavenly Creatures case from the 1950s, it is the story of 1996 The Frighteners Juliet and Pauline, teenage girls whose 2001 The Fellowship of the Ring torrid fantasy life runs counter to the 2002 The Two Towers strict proprieties of the day, and ends 2003 The Return of the King in the murder of Pauline’s mother. 2005 King Kong Turning down offers to direct sequels to 19 5Fantasy
A – Z o f di r e c to r s
Jim Jarmusch
what to watch
31953– 2american 41984–
1984 Stranger Than Paradise
110 5Comedy
1986 Down By Law
A true American independent director, Jim Jarmusch’s off-beat, mocking, minimalist films have explored the American Dream through an interplay of outsiders, whether American or “strangers in a strange land.”
Jarmusch’s second feature Stranger Than Paradise (1984), winner of the Best First Film at Cannes, is a comic road movie in which two Hungarian émigrés are confronted with middle America. Down By Law (1986) tells the tale of two downand-out Americans who have to adjust their views of their native land when thrown into jail. Mystery Train (1989) shows Memphis as seen through the eyes of a Japanese couple and Night on Earth (1992) takes place in taxis in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. In Jarmusch’s movies, characters are always
1989 Mystery Train 1992 Night on Earth 1999 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 2005 Broken Flowers
on the move, including Don (Bill Murray) who goes on a cross-country search for the mother of his child (Broken Flowers, 2005). Youki Kudoh (Mitsuko) and Masatoshi Nagase (Jun) play a couple influenced by US popular culture in Mystery Train.
Miklós Jancsó
what to watch
31921– 2HUNGARIAN 41958–
1964 My Way Home
147 5Political drama
1965 The Round-Up
The films of Miklós Jancsó, from the mid1960s to the mid-1970s, are brilliantly choreographed dramas. Jancsó traces the fight for Hungarian independence and socialism by using emblem and symbolism.
Jancsó’s very personal style blossomed in The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), which contains many of the devices and themes of his later films. Set in a desolate plain in
313
1967 The Red and the White 1969 The Confrontation 1970 Agnus Dei 1972 Red Psalm 1974 Beloved Electra
Hungary, some time after the 1948 revolution against Austrian rule collapsed, the film powerfully depicts the conflict between the political oppressor and the oppressed. Jancsó’s films are subtly choreographed, with the camera fluidly tracking the movements of characters, emphasizing their relationship to the landscape. Color, especially red, is used symbolically in The Confrontation (Fényes Szelek, 1969), Agnus Dei (Égi Bárány, 1970), and Red Psalm (Még Kér a Nép, 1972). These are hymns of despair as well as celebrations of freedom, illustrated by Jancsó’s masterful long takes and extended sequence shots. Elektra (Mari Törocsik) in Beloved Electra, Jancsó’s take on the Greek myth, participates in a ritual with women in white, while awaiting her brother’s return.
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a–z o f d i r e c to r s
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
what to watch
31953– 2french 41991–
1991 Delicatessen
16 5Fantasy, Comedy
1995 The City of Lost Children
Audiences have come to expect an astonishingly inventive visual style and black humour from the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Jeunet and designer Marc Caro began film-making with several prize-winning short films. The weirdness of their films became more extreme in their first feature,
2001 Amélie
Delicatessen (1991), a bizarre comedy inspired by French comics and the films of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam. The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus, 1995) is even more eye-boggling than its predecessor. The film’s success led Jeunet to Hollywood and Alien: Resurrection (1997), in which he uses bold images to compensate for a weak storyline. Back in France, Jeunet made Amélie (2001) with Audrey Tautou. Whimsical and utterly delightful, it became a worldwide hit. Tautou also starred in A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles, 2004), which contains some extraordinary set pieces. The gamine Audrey Tautou plays Amélie, a waitress determined to bring cheer into others’ lives. Jeunet imbues the film with bright reds and greens.
Neil Jordan
what to watch
31950– 2Irish 41982–
1982 Angel
114 5Thriller, Drama
1984 The Company of Wolves
Proving himself to be a distinctive and visionary film-maker, Neil Jordan rose to prominence as part of the British cinema revival in the 1980s.
With a stunning directorial debut, the almost surreal Angel (1982), Jordan attracted attention. The film stars Stephen Rea (who has appeared in nine of the director’s films) as a jazz musician who swaps his saxophone for a machinegun in Northern Ireland. The Company of Wolves (1984), a nightmarish fairytale, also owes much to surrealism, and Mona Lisa (1986), an accomplished British film noir, revolves around a small-time gangster’s love for a prostitute. After unsuccessful excursions into Hollywood, Jordan Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore in The End of the Affair (1999), based on Graham Greene’s novel.
1986 Mona Lisa 1992 The Crying Game 1996 Michael Collins 1997 The Butcher Boy
returned happily to home ground with Irish subjects: the coming-of-age drama The Miracle (1991); The Crying Game (1992), a political drama with a sensational twist; Michael Collins (1996), a political biopic about the Irish rebel hero; and The Butcher Boy (1997), a dark view of childhood.
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Aki Kaurismäki
what to watch
31957– 2FINNISH 41981–
1988 Ariel
116 5Comedy
1989 Leningrad Cowboys Go America
The films of maverick Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki are mostly about taciturn losers in soulless jobs in bleak surroundings. However, their grimness is enlivened by his dry humor.
Kaurismäki’s unsentimental sympathy with outsiders was noticeable early in his career. Ariel (1988), about a sacked miner, is the second of his “working-class trilogy,” which
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1994 Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (Pidä Huivista Iiinni, Tatjana) 2002 The Man Without a Past 2006 Lights in the Dusk
also consists of Shadows in Paradise (Varjoja Paratiisissa, 1986) and The Match Factory Girl (Tulitikkutehtaan Tyttö, 1989) – tragi-comedies about proletarians. In Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), a group of inept musicians drive across the US. Drifting Clouds (Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat, 1996) and The Man Without a Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä, 2002) reveal a new warmth for his quirky characters. Kaurismäki’s philosophy is summed up in a line from Drifting Clouds: “Life is short and miserable. Be as merry as you can.” In A Man Without a Past, an outsider (Markku Peltola as “M” ) gets a fresh start in life in a new city after he is beaten up and loses his memory.
Elia Kazan 31909–2003 2american 41945–2003 1150 5Drama, Cult
All of Elia Kazan’s films have strong social themes, a keen sense of location, and superb performances. Despite his betrayal of his friends at the McCarthy hearings in 1952, Kazan’s reputation as one of the finest directors in the US has never wavered.
From his work in the theater and the Actors Studio, Kazan had great respect for actors, and he allowed them to develop their work during shooting. This trust inspired some Vivien Leigh plays the fragile and neurotic Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire — here with Marlon Brando.
what to watch 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire 1954 On the Waterfront 1955 East of Eden 1957 A Face in the Crowd 1960 Wild River 1961 Splendor in the Grass
outstanding performances, including those by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954) and Jo Van Fleet in Wild River (1960). Kazan made Brando a star with A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), “discovered” James Dean (East of Eden, 1955), and gave debut screen roles to Jack Palance (Panic in the Streets, 1950), Lee Remick (A Face in the Crowd, 1957), and Warren Beatty (Splendor in the Grass, 1961). He worked closely with Tennessee Williams (in A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll, 1956), and John Steinbeck (in Viva Zapata, 1952, and East of Eden).
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Buster Keaton 31895–1966 2AMERICAN 41920–1929 112 5Comedy
Whether Buster Keaton, the great silent film comedian, co-directed or got no director’s credit at all, he was responsible for the overall conception of his films, supreme examples of visual comedy allied to cinematic technique.
From 1920, Keaton was virtually his own director in dozens of shorts, before making features. The multitude of gags depended on cutting, camera set-ups, and brilliant timing. His first feature, The Three Ages (1923) parodied D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance; in fact, the pictorial splendor and feeling for landscape of Our Hospitality (1922), Go West (1925), and The General (1926) owe much to Griffith. In Sherlock Jr. (1924), Keaton is a projectionist who finds himself in the films he is working on. Keaton’s reputation declined with the coming of sound, but he was rediscovered in the 1960s.
Abbas Kiarostami
Buster Keaton as a brave, but foolish train engineer in pursuit of his passionately loved locomotive in The General, arguably his favorite movie.
what to watch 1922 Our Hospitality 1924 Sherlock Jr. 1924 The Navigator 1925 Seven Chances 1926 The General 1927 College 1928 Steamboat Bill Jr.
what to watch
31940– 2IRANIAN 41974–
1987 Where is the Friend’s House?
114 5Drama
1992 And Life Goes On
The fact that Iranian cinema is considered one of the best in the world is mainly due to Abbas Kiarostami, whose films play brilliantly with audiences’ perceptions of cinema.
Abbas Kiarostami had been making films for almost two decades before Where is the Friend’s House? (Khane-ye Doust Kodjast?, 1987), a gently humorous film on a child’s loyalty, became an international success. And Life Goes On (Zendegi va Digar Hich, 1992) follows a film director, after an earthquake, searching for the children who featured in one of his films, while Through the Olive Trees (Zire Darakhatan Zeyton, 1994), written and directed by
1994 Through the Olive Trees 1997 Taste of Cherry 1999 The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad ma ra Khahad Bord) 2002 Ten
Kiarostami, is about the filming of And Life Goes On. Kiarostami’s trademark of people driving over long roads reaches its perfection in Taste of Cherry (Ta’m e Guilass, 1997), about Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man, who is bent on suicide. Desperately seeking for people to help him, he drives up and down winding roads asking passers-by to bury him in the grave he has already dug for himself. The car motif recurs in Ten (2002), a road movie that follows 10 conversations that take place in a car as it is navigated through the streets of Teheran. Although Kiarostami has said, “I don’t invent material. I just watch and take it from the daily life of people around me,” his realism is carefully constructed. Set in Siah Dareh, a remote Kurdish village, The Wind Will Carry Us is a parable about outsiders who pretend to search for a treasure in the village cemetery.
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Krzysztof Kieslowski 31941–1996 2POLISH 41976–1993 110 5Drama
Through his rather sardonic examinations of the conflict between the state and its citizens, Krzysztof Kieslowski has come to represent the “cinema of moral unrest” in Poland.
Politically active in the struggle for a more democratic Poland, Kieslowski expresses many of his ideas obliquely in his features. Nevertheless, his ironic humanism was not appreciated by the authorities and two of his films were suppressed: Blind Chance (Przypadek, 1981), which examines the effect of arbitrary fate on the life of a medical student, and No End (Bez Konca, 1984), which involves the ghost of a dead lawyer watching his family survive without him. It was on their release in 1986, followed by two short films made as part of a television series based on The Ten Commandments (The Dekalog), that Kieslowski was extolled abroad. A Short Film About Killing (Krótki Film o Zabijaniu, 1988) is a powerful anti-capital punishment film, which shows authorized killing is as disturbing as the murder of a taxi driver by a young drifter. In A Short Film About Love (Krótki Film o Milosci, 1988), Irene Jacob is Veronika, a Polish singer in The Double Life of Véronique, which follows the parallel lives of two young women in Poland and France, both played by Jacob.
Krzysztof (Henryk Baranowski) is a university professor who believes in logic but is confronted with the unpredictability of fate, in The Dekalog.
a 19-year-old postal worker is obsessed with a woman in the apartment facing his own. With the fall of communism, Kieslowski chose to work in France where he directed The Double Life of Véronique (La Double Vie de Véronique, 1991) and the trilogy Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu, 1993), Three Colors: White (Trois Couleurs: Bialy, 1994), and Three Colors: Red (Trois Couleurs: Rouge, 1994). what to watch 1981 Blind Chance 1988 A Short Film About Killing 1988 A Short Film About Love 1991 The Double Life of Veronique 1993 Three Colors: Blue 1994 Three Colors: White; Three Colors: Red
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Stanley Kubrick 31928–1999 2AMERICAN 41953–1999 113 5Various
The scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, and his reclusive personality created a rare expectancy every time Stanley Kubrick made a film.
Deeply pessimistic and claustrophobic, Kubrick’s films deal brilliantly with technical and textual complexities. Lolita (1962), based on Nabokov’s novel about a pedophile, was an acerbic comedy full of “perverse passion.” Kubrick’s anti-militarism first revealed itself in the bitterly ironic and moving World War I drama Paths of Glory (1957) and continued in the black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1963). In Full Metal Jacket (1987), he powerfully depicts the brutal military training for a pointless war Film poster, 1987
what to watch 1957 Paths of Glory 1962 Lolita 1963 Dr. Strangelove 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey 1971 A Clockwork Orange 1975 Barry Lyndon 1987 Full Metal Jacket
Malcolm McDowell plays Alex, head of a violent gang of teenagers, the Droods, in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s bleak view of a futuristic Britain.
(Vietnam). His futuristic movies develop the theme of dehumanization. In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) man is merely a machine controlled by a machine, while in A Clockwork Orange (1971) alienated youths are brainwashed into conformity. Madness is manifest in The Shining (1980), and sexual fantasies are explored in his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In contrast, Barry Lyndon (1975), inspired by the English landscape and portrait paintings of the 18th century, lovingly recreates the sensibilities of the time. Kirk Douglas produced and starred in Kubrick’s epic Spartacus (1958).
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Akira Kurosawa
what to watch
31912–1998 2JAPANESE 41943–1993
1950 Rashomon
131 5Epic
1952 To Live
The best-known Japanese director in the west, Akira Kurosawa has achieved an international popularity that comes from making films with a strong similarity to American movies as well as a deep fidelity to the Japanese tradition.
There has seldom been more crossfertilization in the cinema than in the work of Akira Kurosawa. Three of his films have transferred easily into Hollywood Westerns. Rashomon (1950), the first Japanese film to be shown widely in the west, became The Outrage (1964); The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai, 1954) was turned into The Magnificent Seven (1960); and The Bodyguard (Yojimbo, 1961) into A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Some of Kurosawa’s films are homages to American cinema, while others have literary sources: Hakuchi (1951) is based on Dostoevsky’s The Idiot; Donzoko (1957) on Gorky’s The Lower Depths; Kumonosu Jô (1957) on Shakespeare’s Macbeth; and Ran (1985) on King Lear. The films work well on an extrovert level, although tragic contemporary tales like To Live (Ikiru, 1952), about a man dying of cancer, and I Live in Fear (Ikimono no Kiroku, 1955), a family drama, delve much deeper. Kurosawa’s flamboyant samurai adventures mix comedy and rich imagery, such as The Hidden Fortress (Kakushitoride no San-akunin, 1958), and Sanjuro (Tsubaki Sanjûrô,
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1954 The Seven Samurai 1957 Throne of Blood (Kumonosu Jô) 1958 The Hidden Fortress 1961 The Bodyguard 1962 Sanjuro 1975 Derzu Uzala 1980 Kagemusha 1985 Ran
1962). Widescreen and color are used magnificently to frame the epic grandeur of Derzu Film poster, 1950 Uzala (1975), as well as Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), with their glorious red sunsets, vivid rainbows, and multicolored flags. A magnificent battle scene in Ran, Kurosawa’s cinematic ode to Shakespeare’s King Lear, in which a warlord’s lack of judgement leads to death and disaster.
In The Seven Samurai, a veteran samurai (Takashi Shimura, far right) gathers six out-ofwork men to rescue a village from bandits.
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Fritz Lang 31890–1976 2german-American 41919–1960 146 5Film noir
Looking upon the world with grim detachment and a strong moral sense, Fritz Lang worked through two careers: in Germany (1919 to 1932) and Hollywood (1936 to 1956).
Lang’s reputation grew in Germany with serials such as Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, 1922), which is a masterly study of a decadent society. The Nibelungen (1924), a German saga in two parts, makes impressive use of stylized studio sets, while the huge sets of Metropolis (1927) represent the futuristic city-factory, where workers slave for rich masters. In his first sound film, M (1931), based on a real child-killer, an ironic social comment is made on justice, what to watch 1922 Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler 1927 Metropolis 1931 M 1936 Fury 1943 Hangmen Also Die 1944 The Woman in the Window 1945 Scarlet Street 1952 Clash by Night
The extraordinary Peter Lorre in one of cinema’s most compelling performances, as Hans Beckert, the psychopathic child killer, both frightening and pathetic, in Lang’s M (for “murderer”).
capital punishment, and mob rule — themes Lang took up in his first American film, Fury (1936). Hangmen Also Die (1943) was a fictionalized account of the assassination of Nazi Gestapo leader, Reinhard Heydrich — nicknamed the “Hangman” — in which Lang projected increasing public reaction against Nazi atrocities. Having fled Nazi Germany, Lang had to deal with dictatorial producers in Hollywood. MGM tacked on a happy ending to Fury and Warner Bros. did the same to Cloak and Dagger (1946). Yet, he managed to make splendidly dark films of murder, revenge, and seduction such as The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945); Clash by Night (1952), dealing with postwar dissipation; The Big Heat (1953) and Human Desire (1954), both film noirs, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) — all of which have a spare, uncompromising visual style reminiscent of German expressionism.
1953 The Big Heat 1954 Human Desire
Film poster, The Spies, 1927
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David Lean 31908–1991 2british 41942–1984 116 5Epic, Costume drama
After making several splendid films in the 1940s that epitomized the best of British cinema, David Lean directed five international blockbusters. From then on, his name became inseparable from gargantuan film-making.
David Lean co-directed his first film, In Which We Serve (1942), with Noël Coward, before going on to make three further films with Coward: This Happy Breed (1944), a saga of the doughty English lower middle-classe; Blithe Spirit (1945), a skilful adaptation of the supernatural farce; and Brief Encounter (1945). The last, based on a one-act play by Coward (who wrote the screenplay) must be one of the most telling juxtapositions of the romantic and the mundane in cinema. The script, beautifully balanced between the passionate narration and clipped dialogue, the performances of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, and fluid camerawork, make it Lean’s greatest film. He followed this with two of the finest screen adaptations of Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), both with brilliant photography (by Guy Green), design, and acting. Lean’s expertise was apparent what to watch 1942 In Which We Serve 1945 Brief Encounter 1946 Great Expectations 1948 Oliver Twist 1954 Hobson’s Choice 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai 1962 Lawrence of Arabia 1965 Doctor Zhivago
Lean’s epic Doctor Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak’s novel, traces the life of surgeon-poet Yury Zhivago (Omar Sharif) before and during the Russian Revolution.
Judy Davis plays Adela Quested riding on an elephant with Dr Aziz (Victor Banerjee) on a fateful visit to the Malabar caves in A Passage to India.
in the three films he made with his wife Ann Todd, especially The Sound Barrier (1952). His films on a larger scale — The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984) — won a total of 23 Academy Awards. Because of the magnitude of these enterprises, Lean made only five films in the last 27 years of his life.
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Ang Lee 31954– 2taiwanese 41991– 18 5Various
From being an art-house favorite, Ang Lee made an extraordinary leap to become a major studio director after only three films. He has demonstrated the crowd-pleasing touch in his character-driven studies of human nature.
The first two films of Ang Lee’s trilogy of charming generation-gap family dramas are set in New York where Lee studied. Pushing Hands (Tui shou, 1991) is about an elderly man living with his son’s family in America, and The Wedding Banquet (Hsi yen, 1993) deals with the farcical situation of a homosexual man making a marriage of convenience, but trying to convince his parents that his relationship is a genuine one. The third film is Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin Shi Nan Nu, 1994), which revolves around a widowed chef ’s relationship with his three daughters. Lee’s only film to date shot entirely in Taiwan, it confirms his ability to create distinctive and believable characters who interact with emotion what to watch 1994 Eat Drink Man Woman 1997 The Ice Storm 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2005 Brokeback Mountain
In The Ice Storm, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, and Christina Ricci play the dysfunctional Hood family, whose lives are upturned when bad weather hits town.
and humor. This led to his first mainstream Hollywood film, an elegant adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), which surprised many who held stereotypes of the themes that Asian directors could tackle. This myth was further exploded by The Ice Storm (1997), which examines wealthy middle-class New Englanders in 1973 and a Western, Ride with the Devil (1999). He returned to an Asian subject with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long, 2000), renowned for its spectacular martial arts sequences. Lee’s innate sensitivity was never more evident than in Brokeback Mountain (2005), which gently subverts the macho cowboy genre, making a case against sexual conformity. Heath Ledger as Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack are doomed lovers who face challenges posed by social intolerance of homosexuality in Brokeback Mountain.
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Spike Lee 31957– 2american 41983–
323
In Jungle Fever, Spike Lee’s searing study of attitudes to race and the drug culture, Halle Berry makes her bigscreen debut as a crack addict.
of mainstream cinema. Lee’s first feature, She’s Gotta Have It (1986), was influenced The most significant turning point in black by the French New Wave directors, and cinema was the emergence of Spike Lee, is about a sexually liberated young woman’s whose films explored a hitherto unknown relationship with her three lovers. range of themes from a black perspective. Costing only $170,000, the film was a It was black directors like Melvin Van phenomenal box-office success. Lee’s Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Sidney Poitier preoccupation with cultural identity was in the 1970s who manifest in Do the Right paved the way for Thing (1989), a story Spike Lee in the set in an Italian pizza following decade. parlor on a sweltering But whereas their day in Brooklyn, where films catered mainly racial tensions are about to explode. In for black audiences, Lee’s appealed to one controversial scene, a wider spectrum characters shout racial of society, tackling and ethnic epithets Denzel Washington shone in his Oscarpotentially explosive nominated perfomance in Malcolm X, Lee’s directly to the camera. biopic on the controversial nationalist leader. subjects such as With the radical interracial sexual approach to the material, relations and drugs (Jungle Fever, 1991), the brilliantly constructed set, the vibrant black music (Mo’ Better Blues, 1990), and cinematography, and the complex (and black politics (Malcolm X, 1992), in terms loud) sound design, Lee showed full mastery of the medium. The film’s what to watch succcess gave Lee the chance to direct Malcolm X after he condemned Warner 1986 She’s Gotta Have It Bros.’ initial decision to hire Norman 1989 Do the Right Thing Jewison to do the job. This film, about 1991 Jungle Fever the iconic African-American political 1992 Malcolm X activist, proved that Lee could fuse a 1994 Crooklyn popular form with significant social 1995 Clockers commentary on a large scale. 117 5Political drama
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Mike Leigh
what to watch
31943– 2BRITISH 41971–
1988 High Hopes
19 5Comedy
1990 Life is Sweet
One of the most independent directors, Mike Leigh has developed individualistic working methods that produce hilarious and realistic critiques of mundane existences.
In the 17 years between his first feature, Bleak Moments (1971), and the second, High Hopes (1988), Mike Leigh built up a body of excellent television work. When he returned to cinema, Leigh worked
1993 Naked 1996 Secrets and Lies 1999 Topsy-Turvy 2004 Vera Drake
with a group of actors, getting them to improvise and build up their characters, not knowing exactly where the film would go. The films, in which the characters are mostly sad losers, contain heightened language and imagery. They are also socially conscious without being didactic, when dealing with subjects such as racism (Secrets and Lies, 1996) and abortion (Vera Drake, 2004). His true period piece Topsy-Turvy (1999) is a celebration of the theatre. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, as Hortense, and Brenda Blethyn, as Cynthia, confront the past in Secrets and Lies, a compelling story of family and reconciliation.
Sergio Leone 31929–1989 2ITALIAN 41961–1984 18 5Western
The Italian Sergio Leone had the audacity to take on the sacrosanct American genre of the Western, branding it with his own ritualistic style in films of amoral mythic grandeur.
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), based on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), and his For a Few Dollars More (1965) were among a string of Italian-made movies known as Spaghetti Westerns. Recurring features of these films are: a taciturn hero patiently waiting for revenge, snarling faces in large, silent close-ups, circular tracking shots, and the Kabuki-like interruptions of Ennio Morricone’s Clint Eastwood plays Manco, a hardened bounty hunter in pursuit of a sadistic killer and his band of outlaws in For a Few Dollars More.
what to watch 1964 A Fistful of Dollars 1965 For a Few Dollars More 1966 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West 1984 Once Upon a Time in America
music. “When you have to shoot, shoot — don’t talk,” a line from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), which ends with an explosive showdown, seems to be the philosophy behind the films. After the success of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) — a perfect example of Leone’s style — he used a similarly grandiose approach to tackle crime in the drama Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Ken Loach
what to watch
31937– 2BRITISH 41967–
1967 Poor Cow
118 5Social drama
1969 Kes
One of the foremost international film directors of his time, Ken Loach has never compromised on his socialist or aesthetic principles.
Loach made a name for himself in the 1960s, with social-realist television dramas, particularly Cathy Come Home (1966).
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1990 Riff Raff 1993 Raining Stones 1998 My Name is Joe 2006 The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Despite the relative commercial success of Kes (1969), he then found it difficult to get financing. His comeback in the 1990s showed confidence and maturity. Raining Stones (1993), Ladybird Ladybird (1994), My Name is Joe (1998), and Sweet Sixteen (2003) reveal Loach’s understanding of and respect for his working-class characters, although he never sentimentalizes them. As he says, “I think it’s a very important function to let those people speak, who are usually disqualified from speaking or who’ve become non-persons.” Film poster, 1969
Joseph Losey
what to watch
31909–1984 2AMERICAN 41949–1984
1951 The Prowler
131 5Various
1962 Eve
A victim of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Joseph Losey, who made several taut movies in Hollywood, was forced into exile in England, where he became a sharp observer of the social mores of his new home.
Before being blacklisted for his leftist sympathies, Joseph Losey made five features in Hollywood, among them three low-budget thrillers, The Prowler (1951), The Big Night (1951), and M (1951), a worthy remake of Fritz Lang’s classic. In England, he became part of the “new realism” movement of British cinema, although he developed a more baroque visual style using elaborate camera movements, shock angles, and dramatic set designs. Rather more restrained were his collaborations with playwright Harold Pinter on three pictures, The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1970), all keen analyses of the English class structure. Based on Peter O’Donnell’s comic strip, the pop-art Modesty Blaise (1966) is Losey’s most enjoyable and relaxed movie.
1963 The Servant 1966 Modesty Blaise 1967 Accident 1970 The Go-Between 1977 Mr. Klein
Dominic Guard as Leo, a school boy, and Alan Bates as Ted, a tenant farmer, in The Go-Between, which deals with class distinction and its effect on a young boy.
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Ernst Lubitsch 31892–1947 2GERMAN (American) 41918–1947 146 5Comedy
Ernst Lubitsch brought continental manners and hedonism into puritan America. He established his own style of elegance, wit, incisiveness, and cynicism, perfectly suited to the varied themes he worked on, which came to be called the “Lubitsch Touch.”
Lubitsch’s features in Germany included a number of ironic historical romances such as Madame Dubarry (1919) with Pola Negri. His Hollywood career began with scintillating silent comedies, including Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925). His musicals with Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette greta Actor garbo Box The love affair between Greta Garbo’s (1905–1990) extraordinary face and the camera remains unsurpassed, making her perhaps the greatest of all female screen legends. Her private life and public persona became inseparable; she was the enigmatic goddess who supposedly said, “I want to be alone.” Garbo was famous for her classic tragic roles in Queen Cristina (1933), Anna Karenina (1935), and Camille (1937), so when she made Ninotchka (1939) MGM trumpeted, “Garbo Laughs!”
Emil Jannings plays Louis XV and Pola Negri plays the king’s mistress in Madame Dubarry, the film that launched both the director and actress into stardom.
McDonald, as well as comedies Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933), treated the audience as sophisticates — rare in commercial cinema. At the end of the 1930s, Lubitsch came up with a number of very entertaining romantic comedies: Angel (1937), starring a sparkling Marlene Dietrich; Ninotchka (1939), a witty tale of how a stern Russian commisar (Greta Garbo) is seduced by wicked, capitalist ways; and The Shop Around the Corner (1940), a charming comedy of errors starring James Stewart. Under the shadow of war, Lubitsch came up with one of Hollywood’s great comedies, To Be or Not to Be (1942), which took on the Nazi occupation of Poland — of all subjects. Film poster, 1937
what to watch 1932 Trouble in Paradise 1933 Design for Living 1934 The Merry Widow 1936 Desire 1937 Angel 1939 Ninotchka 1940 The Shop Around the Corner 1942 To Be or Not to Be
A – Z o f d i r e c to r s
George Lucas
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determined to film his dream project, a sci-fi adventure film, in the spirit of the 31944– 2American 41977– Saturday morning Flash Gordon serials he had loved as a child. The shoot was hard: 16 5Science fiction Lucas reputedly has no affinity for actors, Star Wars (1977) changed everything, not least and the film’s innovative special effects for the 33-year-old who wrote and directed it. He came through trial and error. It was a was George Lucas — among the first generation surprise to everyone when Star Wars broke of film-makers to learn their trade at film school. open the blockbuster era. Lucas, who Lucas entered Hollywood through his had retained merchandizing rights to friendship with Francis Ford Coppola, the series, became the richest man in documenting the shooting of Coppola’s Hollywood. He devoted his energies to The Rain People (1969). the special effects When Coppola set up company he founded, Industrial Light and the American Zoetrope Magic (ILM), and studio, Lucas was part of it. One of their first turned producer. During the 1980s, his productions was a sci-fi film developed from output varied from Lucas’s college project, Raiders of the Lost Ark THX-1138 (1971), but (1981) to Howard the the film’s austerity Duck (1986). Although Charles Martin Smith plays a nerdy, 20alienated audiences. there were two more year-old, known as “The Toad,” in American Graffiti; the character represents Lucas. With the war being Star Wars films in 1980 waged in Vietnam, and 1983, Lucas did Lucas talked about going there to shoot a not direct again until he revived the documentary-style feature film inspired by franchise in 1999 with three widely Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Instead, disparaged, but still popular, prequels. he made American Graffiti (1973), a nostalgic what to watch evocation of California teen life in the early 1971 THX-1138 1960s: cars, girls, and rock‘n’roll. Where THX-1138 had been cold and cerebral, 1973 American Graffiti Graffiti was warm and emotional, the first 1977 Star Wars substantial box-office hit to come out of 1980 The Empire Strikes Back “young Hollywood” since Easy Rider. 1983 Return of the Jedi Empowered by this success, Lucas 1999 Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace Anthony Daniels as the golden droid C-3PO, locked in a metal suit, is directed by George Lucas in Tunisia for Star Wars; Daniels appeared in all six of the Star Wars films.
2002 Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones 2005 Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
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Baz Luhrmann 31962– 2Australian 41992– 13 5Musical, Drama
This flamboyant director defied prevailing fashions to produce three highly artificial romances, which he retrospectively dubbed his “Red Curtain Trilogy” (a reference to their overt theatricality).
The first film in Luhrmann’s trilogy is Strictly Ballroom (1992), a love story set against the background of amateur ballroom dancing. In the climax, lovers Scott (Paul Mercurio) and Fran (Tara Morice) break from the rigidly regimented steps to create a thrillingly original routine. An iconoclast himself, Luhrmann went to Hollywood and pulled off perhaps the most unorthodox Shakespeare adaptation in cinema: his what to watch 1992 Strictly Ballroom 1996 Romeo + Juliet 2001 Moulin Rouge!
Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the leads in Romeo + Juliet; the film’s retro-modern style combines castles and armour, with bulletproof vests and boom-boxes.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) retained the original verse, but relocated the action to a contemporary Mexican gang war. Luhrmann’s first musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001), was a kitsch celebration of bohemian Paris in the late 19th century. Stars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman perform some of the film’s musical selections themselves; for others, they lipsynch to a selection of karaoke classics by Elton John, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan. Luhrmann is likely to produce further work that reflects his talent for reinvention.
Sidney Lumet
what to watch
31924– 2AMERICAN 41957–
1957 12 Angry Men
142 5Crime, Drama
1962 Long Day’s Journey into Night
Part of the first generation of television directors who transferred successfully to cinema, Sidney Lumet creates powerful films marked by naturalism and theatricality.
Seven of Lumet’s first nine features were shot in black and white, the first, and best, being 12 Angry Men (1957). Although confined to a jury room, the film is never
1965 The Pawnbroker 1973 Serpico 1975 Dog Day Afternoon 1981 Prince of the City 1988 Running on Empty 1990 Q and A
static, due to Lumet’s clever use of cutting and camera angles. There followed a trio of films adapted from plays by America’s finest playwrights: Tennessee Williams (The Fugitive Kind, 1959), Arthur Miller (A View From The Bridge, 1961), and Eugene O’Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night, 1962). Always a New York director, however, Lumet is at his best among the cops, crooks, and corruption of the city, as with Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and Prince of the City (1981), all told against vividly realized New York settings. Al Pacino plays a NYC cop in Serpico, which is based on a true story. He is seen here with Barbara Eda-Young as his girlfriend, Laurie.
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David Lynch
what to watch
31946– 2AMERICAN 41977–
1977 Eraserhead
111 5Horror, Thriller
1980 The Elephant Man
David Lynch has accumulated a huge following of audiences willing to enter his bizarre and labyrinthine dream world.
The first feature by David Lynch, Eraserhead (1977) was shot in black and white, almost entirely at night. A disturbing nightmare of a movie, ripped from the womb of Surrealist art and German Expressionist cinema, it appeals both to intellectuals and horror-movie fans as does much of his work. The Elephant Man (1980), a far more conventional film, evokes pity for the hideously deformed Victorian man, John Merrick (played by John Hurt, who wears layers of makeup).
Leo McCarey 31898–1969 2AMERICAN 41929–1961 124 5Comedy, Drama
There were three phases to Leo McCarey’s brilliant career as director: Laurel and Hardy shorts, zany wisecracking comedies, and sentimental romantic comedies.
Among the Laurel and Hardy shorts Leo McCarey directed from 1927 to 1931 is Putting Pants on Philip (1927), the first film the comedians made together as a real duo. Between 1932 and 1937, McCarey directed comedians Eddie Cantor (The Kid From Spain, 1932), W.C. Fields (Six of A Kind, what to watch 1933 Duck Soup 1934 Ruggles of Red Gap 1937 Make Way for Tomorrow 1937 The Awful Truth 1939 Love Affair 1940 My Favourite Wife 1944 Going My Way 1945 The Bells of St Mary’s 1957 An Affair to Remember
1986 Blue Velvet 1992 Twin Peaks 1999 The Straight Story 2001 Mulholland Drive
Perhaps his most representative film is Blue Velvet (1986), which contains elements of satire, crime, and horror — features that are even more evident in the cryptic Mulholland Drive (2001). Lynch’s most uncharacteristic film is The Straight Story (1999), which traces the slow progress of a man traveling hundreds of miles on a lawnmower. Film poster, 1977
1934), the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, 1933), and Harold Lloyd (The Milky Way, 1936), as well as Cary Grant in The Awful Truth (1937), one of the best screwball comedies ever made. The third phase of McCarey’s career, after 1937, includes Love Affair (1939), remade as An Affair to Remember (1957), a shipboard romance. Bing Crosby appeared as a lovable priest in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St Mary’s (1945), both handled with enough manipulative skill to bring an atheist to his knees. Film poster, 1957 Cary Grant stars as Nickie, a wealthy bachelor who falls in love with Terry, an ex-nightclub singer (Deborah Kerr) during a sea voyage in An Affair to Remember.
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Alexander Mackendrick 31912–1993 2american (BRITISH) 41949–1967 19 5Comedy
American-born Alexander Mackendrick joined Ealing Studios in London after World War II. He helped form their particular comedy style, whose effectiveness was rooted in realistic observation.
Mackendrick’s first feature, Tight Little Island (1949), is set in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, on an island deprived of its lifeblood — whisky. The Ladykillers (1955), a black comedy about a gang of crooks
trying to murder an old lady, was the last Ealing comedy. Mackendrick then made Sweet Smell of Success (1957), his first film in the country of his birth. A huge contrast to his previous work, it was a biting drama involving Burt Lancaster’s powerful newspaper columnist and Tony Curtis’s obsequious press agent, played out against dazzling black-and-white images of New York by night, set off with a jazzy score. Alec Guinness (centre) plays Sidney Stratton in The Man in the White Suit; Stratton invents a fabric that will never wear out, thus incurring the clothing industry's wrath.
what to watch 1949 Whisky Galore 1951 The Man in the White Suit 1954 The Maggie 1955 The Ladykillers 1957 Sweet Smell of Success
Dusan Makavejev
what to watch
31932– 2serbian 41966–
1965 Man is Not a Bird
111 5Experimental
1967 The Switchboard Operator
An independent, anarchic, and ironic spirit, Dusan Makavejev creates films that are paradoxical essays. He uses collage methods, often juxtaposing a series of images in a humorous but dramatic manner.
For many years, Makavejev, who was virtually the only director from former Yugoslavia to be known internationally, met with disapproval from the authorities in that country. His first films, Man is Not a Bird (Covek nije tica, 1965) and The
1968 Innocence Unprotected 1971 W.R. – Mysteries of the Organism 1974 Sweet Movie
Switchboard Operator (Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T., 1967) use clips from documentaries, lectures, and animal films to comment on the lives of fictional characters. W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (W.R. — Misterije organizma,1971) refers to psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and his sexually liberating practices and represents a fusion of styles. Makavejev’s exploration of eroticism continued in Sweet Movie (1974) and Montenegro (1981). For Innocent Unprotected (Nevinost bez zastite, 1968), he recut the first Serbian feature ever made (1942). Montenegro is a story about a community of former Yugoslav eccentrics living in Stockholm.
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Terrence Malick 31943– 2american 41973– 14 5Drama, War, Epic
Since he made only four movies in 30 years, Terrence Malick’s filmography is one of the slimmest in cinema history — yet each film is considered among the finest of its genre.
All four films directed by the enigmatic Malick are concerned with the corruption of innocence, the mythic expulsion from Eden, and the American propensity to violence. Each is a different genre and each is set in the past: the crime movie Badlands (1973), in the Midwest of the 1950s; the rural epic Days of Heaven (1978), in Texas just before the entry of the US into World War I; the war movie The Thin Red Line (1998) during the Pacific campaign of World War II; and the costume drama, The New World (2005), in early 17th-century Virginia, with the arrival of the first English colonizers. Each of these ravishing, meticulously crafted films is ironic, fatalistic, and
Louis Malle
Colin Farrell, as Captain John Smith, falls in love with Q'Orianka Kilcher, as Pocahontas, in The New World, Malick's tale of the early colonization of the US.
allusive, with a variety of narrative strands, all dealing with the same situations from different viewpoints. what to watch 1973 Badlands 1978 Days of Heaven 1998 The Thin Red Line 2005 The New World
minutes of two people having a dinner conversation. Lacombe Lucien (1973) was 31932–1995 2french 41956–1994 one of the first French films to reveal some of the least savoury aspects of life 121 5Drama in France under the German Occupation Moving from France to the US with ease, Louis — its “hero” is a young laborer who turns Malle was a “will o’ the wisp” director, like Nazi collaborator. Au Revoir, Les Enfants the title of one of his films, Le Feu Follet (1963). (1987) is the culmination of Malle’s He specialized in difficult or taboo subjects. themes — French collaboration with the “I’m always interested in exposing a Nazis, close mother-son relationships, theme, a character, or situation which and an unsentimental view of children. seems to be unacceptable,” explained Gaspard Manesse and Louis Malle. His subjects included Raphael Fejto star in Au adultery in The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958), Revoir Les Enfants, based on Malle’s own childhood. incest in Murmur of the Heart (Le Souffle au Coeur, 1971), and child prostitution in Pretty Baby (1978). In My Dinner with André (1981), he filmed 110 what to watch 1958 The Lovers 1971 Murmur of the Heart 1973 Lacombe Lucien 1978 Pretty Baby 1980 Atlantic City 1987 Au Revoir, Les Enfants
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz 31909–1993 2american 41946–1972 119 5Comedy, Drama
People Will Talk (1951) is one of the most appropriate titles in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s filmography. The screen was mostly a vehicle for his literate, witty, and satirical screenplays.
Although Mankiewicz’s films are dialoguedriven, they are not filmed plays. They have an elegant visual style, and many experiment with narrative form, being told from different points of view with an effective use of flashbacks. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) is a cleverly constructed story set in suburban America where three wives, Deborah (Jeanne Crain), Lora (Linda Darnell), and Rita (Ann Sothern) wonder which of their husbands is going off with the local vamp. The terse comedy is derived as much from the dialogue and acting as the meticulously Film poster, 1959
what to watch 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 1949 A Letter to Three Wives 1950 All About Eve 1952 Five Fingers 1953 Julius Caesar 1954 The Barefoot Contessa 1955 Guys and Dolls 1959 Suddenly Last Summer
eLizabeth Actor Box taylor The ravishing raven-haired, sapphire-eyed English-born Elizabeth Taylor (born 1932) was one of the last stars to come out of the studio system in Hollywood. When she was 11, MGM signed her to a 20-year contract. After her triumph in National Velvet (1944), she never looked back. She went on to reveal her dramatic talents, winning two Oscars, as well as keeping the gossip columnists busy.
observed milieu. All About Eve (1950), a poison-pen letter to the New York theatrical world, is a high comedy played to the hilt by Bette Davis as the bitching faded idol Margo Channing. The Barefoot Contessa (1954) is equally acerbic about the film industry. Five Fingers (1952) is an absorbing espionage tale told in a semi-documentary style. It stars James Mason, who also made a fine Brutus to Marlon Brando’s powerful Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), an intelligent reading of Shakespeare that avoids the temptation towards Hollywood spectacle, unlike the 45-million-dollar budget of Cleopatra (1963). Brando was also excellent in Guys and Dolls (1955), both his and Mankiewicz’s only musical. Gambler Sky Masterson (Brando) “corrupts” Save-a-Soul missionary Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) in the stylish musical Guys and Dolls.
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Anthony Mann 31907–1967 2american 41942–1967 139 5Western, Epic
Between 1950 and 1960, Anthony Mann directed 11 Westerns, full of tense love-hate relationships, violence, pain, revenge, and honor, and set against brooding landscapes.
Mann revealed a tougher and more bitter James Stewart in his Westerns than seen in other films, including his own The Glenn what to watch 1950 Winchester ’73 1951 The Tall Target 1952 Bend of the River 1953 The Naked Spur 1954 The Glenn Miller Story 1954 The Far Country 1955 The Man from Laramie 1958 Man of the West 1961 El Cid
Legendary Spanish warrior, El Cid (Charlton Heston), is comforted by his fiancée, Jimena (Sophia Loren), in El Cid, Mann’s spectacular epic.
Miller Story (1954). Along with Man of the West (1958) starring Gary Cooper, the Westerns Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954), and The Man from Laramie (1955) are key films of the genre. The solemn rituals of the Western are not far from the chivalric tradition of El Cid (1961), which towers above most historical epics.
Michael Mann 31943– 2AMERICAN 41995– 110 5Adventure, Romance, Thriller
With the glossy 1980s TV series Miami Vice, Mann made his fortune. His career bears a superficial resemblance to those of directors of commercials who switched to feature films during that time.
Like contemporaries Tony Scott and Adrian Lyne, Michael Mann is a visual stylist with a penchant for modernist design. But while Scott and Lyne seem content to admire their reflections on the gleaming surface they create, Mann reveals himself as an old-fashioned existentialist, expressing an obsessive male social alienation in neo-noir thrillers like Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986), and his masterpiece, Heat (1995). The Last of the Mohicans (1992), the epic tale of adopted Mohican, Hawkeye (Daniel what to watch 1981 Thief 1986 Manhunter 1992 The Last of the Mohicans 1995 Heat 1999 The Insider
Will Graham (William Petersen), a young retired police officer, hunts down a serial killer in Manhunter, adapted from Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon.
Day-Lewis), and his love affair with British colonel’s daughter, Cora (Madeleine Stowe), is a realistic depiction of 18th-century colonialism and war in America. Looking to expand his reach, Mann took on a true-life whistleblower story, The Insider (1999), and invested it with his own preoccupations. Ali (2001) and Collateral (2004) struggle to match the excitement of the real-life situations on which they are based, but Mann remains a compelling contemporary film-maker.
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Chris Marker
what to watch
31921– 2french 41956–
1958 Letter from Siberia
118 5Documentary
1961 Cuba Sí!
The creative use of sound, images, and text has made Chris Marker into one of the most inventive film-makers with his poetic, political, and philosophical documentaries.
In Letter from Siberia (Lettre de Sibérie,1958), Chris Marker (born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve) questions the objectivity of documentaries by repeating one sequence three times, each time with a different commentary. The passionate and influential Cuba Sí! (1961) contains two long interviews with Fidel Castro.
1963 Le Joli Mai 1962 La Jetée 1977 The Base of the Air Is Red (Le Fond de l’air est rouge) 1983 Sunless 1997 Level Five
In Sunless (Sans soleil, 1983), Marker tries to make sense of the cultural dislocation he feels in Japan, West Africa, and Iceland. He brings the same foreigner’seye view to bear on his own city in Le Joli Mai (1963), which was compiled from 55 hours of interviews with the people of Paris. His only fiction film, La Jetée (1962), a 30-minute nuclear war story, is made up entirely of stills. In Level Five (1997), Marker extends the limits of the “documentary,” making use of new video technology. Helene Chatelain in La Jetée, about an apocalyptic disaster; the brilliant use of still images and a sparse narrative make this film both compelling and haunting.
Jean-Pierre Melville
what to watch
31917–1973 2french 41948–1972
1950 The Strange Ones (Les Enfants Terribles)
112 5Gangster, Film noir
1956 Bob the Gambler
It was his enthusiasm for the works of Herman Melville that made Jean-Pierre Melville change his name (from Grumbach). But it was the American gangster novel and film noir that were the greatest influences on his films, which, in turn, were to inspire several American independent directors.
Fever Heat (Bob le Flambeur, 1956) and Two Men in Manhattan (Deux Hommes dans Manhattan, 1959), Melville’s first independent low-budget films, were shot on location in Paris and New York, respectively. His gritty freewheeling style brought something new to the crime thriller, and the eight made by him inhabit a world of sleazy bars, hotels, and nightclubs where double-crossings and killings are commonplace. Le Samurai (1967) follows the last day of a coldRoger Duchesne plans to rob a casino with his associates in Fever Heat; Melville’s film is considered to be a precursor of the French New Wave.
1963 Doulos – The Finger Man (Le Doulos) 1963 Magnet of Doom (L’Ainé des Ferchaux) 1966 The Second Breath (Le Deuxième Souffle) 1967 Le Samurai 1969 Army in the Shadows
blooded killer (Alain Delon) with a code of honor. Melville was in the French Resistance, and three of his films, including the tragic Army in the Shadows (L’Armée des Ombres, 1969), are about France under occupation.
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Sam Mendes
what to watch
31965– 2british 41999–
1999 American Beauty
13 5Drama
2002 Road To Perdition
After rising rapidly in theater, Sam Mendes carried off the rare feat of winning the Academy Award for Best Director for his first film American Beauty (1999), which also won the award for Best Picture.
It was Steven Spielberg who offered Sam Mendes his chance to make American Beauty for his company Dreamworks after he saw Mendes’ Tony-winning production of Cabaret in New York in 1998. Mendes’ assured film debut was a bittersweet vision of suburban malaise revolving around dysfunctional family life, midlife crises, and teenage alienation. With the help of veteran cinematographer Conrad Hall, he used three distinct styles — tightly composed scenes for the narrative, fluid movements for the fantasy sequences, and hand-held video footage for the films shot
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2005 Jarhead
Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, who learns to liberate himself from his “silly little life” in American Beauty, which explores themes of love, freedom, and family.
by one of the characters. Hall also shot Road To Perdition (2002), Mendes’ dark celebration of the Hollywood gangster movie of the 1930s. Jarhead (2005), an ironic view of the first Gulf War, further revealed Mendes’ visual sense.
Fernando Mereilles 31955– 2brazilian 41998– 14 5Drama, Comedy, Thriller
Part of a remarkable resurgence of Latin American movies, Mereilles' City of God (Cidade de Deus, 2002) represented a stunning solo directorial debut that immediately placed him in demand outside his native Brazil.
After co-directing two features for an independent company he helped found — a children’s movie, The Nutty Boy 2 (Menino Maluquinho 2: A Aventura, 1998) and a comedy Maids (Domésticas, 2001) — Mereilles adapted a novel about violent gang warfare waged by young boys in one of the most deprived favelas of Rio de Janeiro (City of God, 2002). With harsh lighting, fast cutting, speeded-up action, jump cuts, and much use of a fluid hand-held camera, the film moves with lightning speed, capturing the fever-pitch life in the slums where life is precarious. Some of the same what to watch 2002 City of God 2005 The Constant Gardener
Alexandre Rodrigues as Rocket, a photographer who enjoys unrestricted access in the favelas to cover the brutal gang wars in City of God.
agitated style, in which Mereilles seems almost afraid to linger on any one thing, was carried over into the British-made The Constant Gardener (2005). The film, an effective depiction of drug companies and their ruthless pursuit of profit, is a social and political thriller based on the bestselling novel by John Le Carré. Film poster, 2005
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Lewis Milestone
what to watch
31895–1980 2american 41925–1962
1930 All Quiet on the Western Front
137 5Various
1931 The Front Page
Although Lewis Milestone directed a vast range of films, he will always be associated with war movies because of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), his most celebrated film.
Milestone was never to equal the Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the most devastating anti-war movies ever made, although his later war films A Walk in the Sun (1946), about World War II, and Pork Chop Hill (1959), about the Korean War, were also
1932 Rain 1936 The General Died at Dawn 1940 Of Mice and Men 1946 A Walk in the Sun 1946 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1959 Pork Chop Hill
powerful. Among his best “peace” movies were The Front Page (1931), one of the first rapid-fire comedies; Hallelujah I’m a Bum (1933), an early musical about the Depression; and Of Mice and Men (1940), a great adaptation of John Steinbeck’s story. Other notable films are Rain (1932) and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) — melodramas with strong performances by Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck — and The General Died at Dawn (1936), an atmospheric thriller set in China. George (Burgess Meredith) and Mae (Betty Field) listen to the simple-minded Lenny (Lon Chaney, Jr.) in Of Mice and Men, a tale about unrealizable dreams.
Anthony Minghella
what to watch
31954– 2british 41991–
1991 Truly Madly Deeply
16 5Drama
1996 The English Patient
A talented playwright (and, briefly, an academic), Anthony Minghella spent several years writing for television before getting behind the cameras to direct films.
The first film made by Minghella for the BBC, Truly Madly Deeply (1991), was a very English riposte to the Demi Moore vehicle Ghost: cute and sentimental, but with recognizable heartache. His first Hollywood movie was the fluffy Mr. Wonderful (1993). He next teamed up with producer Saul Zaentz to take on Michael Ondaatje’s World War II epic The English Patient (1996), a considerable leap in scale and ambition, but one he handled with great composure. Since then A thriller about identity theft, The Talented Mr. Ripley stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Matt Damon.
1999 The Talented Mr. Ripley 2003 Cold Mountain 2006 Breaking and Entering
Minghella has carved out a niche for himself at the literary end of the middlebrow with The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold Mountain (2003). All three movies earned Academy Award attention.
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Vincente Minnelli 31910–1986 2american 41942–1976
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Judy Garland sings “The Trolley Song” with Tom Drake and a host of others in Meet Me in St Louis — an early Technicolor extravaganza.
settings, but the performances by Garland and Gene Kelly prevent the film from being The world of Vincente Minnelli is one of beauty, “stagey.” Kelly (with Leslie Caron) shines fantasy, brilliant colors, stylish set designs, and in An American in Paris (1951), which ends elaborate costumes, in which Fred Astaire, Judy with an audacious 18-minute ballet. The Garland, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, and Leslie Band Wagon (1953), with Astaire in his finest Caron dance and sing entertainingly. screen role, which includes a number that sums up Minnelli’s musicals: “That’s Seven of the screen’s Entertainment.” Of the later finest musicals were CinemaScope movies, only made by Vincente Minnelli for MGM. Gigi (1958) is in the same league. Two of Minnelli’s His film debut was the all-black musical Cabin “straight” films, The Bad and in the Sky (1943), The Beautiful (1953) and Lust for showcasing many of Life (1956), star Kirk Douglas, the era’s legendary as a megalomaniac movie performers. Using producer in the former, and as Film poster, 1958 Technicolor for the first Vincent Van Gogh in the latter. time in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Minnelli Some Came Running (1959) was a lush, smalltown melodrama, featuring Shirley portrays the life of a family in 1903 with a MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. loving eye for period detail. The film highlights the songs of a radiant Judy Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron sing and dance elegantly Garland (who married Minnelli in 1945). in a Paris setting created in Hollywood, in An American in Paris; the film won six Academy Awards. The Pirate (1948) has stylized theatrical 133 5Musical, Melodrama
what to watch 1944 Meet Me In St. Louis 1948 The Pirate 1951 An American in Paris 1953 The Bad and the Beautiful 1953 The Band Wagon 1956 Lust for Life 1958 Gigi 1959 Some Came Running
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Kenji Mizoguchi 31898–1956 2japanese 41923–1956 189 5Costume drama
Out of more than 80 films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, only about a dozen have been seen in the west, but these are enough to establish him as one of the greatest directors of all time.
From 1922 to 1936, Kenji Mizoguchi was forced to make many films in which he had no interest, but he gradually developed his
own style and themes. His humanist view of the brutality of feudal Japan is mainly concerned with the sufferings of women. Mizoguchi’s style is one of long takes, long shots, and gentle camera movements, delicately avoiding the need for cutting by using slow dissolves and a minimum of close-ups. At moments of crisis or violence, the effect of moving away to a medium or long shot deepens the sympathy for the characters. His best-known films are The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna, 1952), Tales of Ugestsu (Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953), and Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshô dayû, 1954), all poignant tales told in beautiful images. what to watch 1936 Osaka Elegy 1936 Sisters of the Gion 1939 The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums 1946 Utamaro and his Five Women 1952 The Life of Oharu 1953 Ugetsu Monogatari 1954 Sansho the Bailiff 1956 Street of Shame
Women of the Night (Yoru No Onnatachi, 1948) is an emotional drama about a drug dealer’s mistress who learns that her lover is having an affair with her sister.
Michael Moore 31954– 2american 41989– 18 5Documentary
Ever since he began making his personal documentaries, Michael Moore has been a thorn in the flesh of uncaring business corporations, rabid right-wingers, and unscrupulous politicians.
Moore has single-handedly taken documentaries out of the ghetto and placed them firmly in the mainstream. He usually puts himself at the center of his angry serio-comic investigations into social ills. In Roger and Me (1989), Moore is the “me” referred to in the title and Roger Smith is the chairman of General Motors, who was responsible for the closure of a what to watch 1989 Roger and Me 2002 Bowling for Columbine 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11
plant in Flint, Michigan, the director’s home town. In Bowling For Columbine (2002), Moore relentlessly pursues members of the gun lobby whom he almost accuses of being directly responsibile for the massacre at the high school in Colorado. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) is another subjective attack, this time on “Stupid White Men,” which is also the title of Moore’s irreverent book on the 2000 US presidential elections. Michael Moore (right) in a scene from the controversial Fahrenheit 9/11, his scathing take on the Bush administration and its much touted “War on Terror.”
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F.W. Murnau 31888–1931 2german 41919–1931 121 5Drama, Fantasy
F.W. Murnau (Frederich Wilhelm Plumpe), with the very dissimilar Ernst Lubitsch, was one of the two great German directors in Hollywood. He was killed in a car crash on his way to Paramount Studios, leaving five masterpieces behind him.
Murnau’s first features were supernatural tales, culminating in Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, 1922), the first Dracula film and one of the eeriest. The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann, 1924), although expressionistic in manner, moved nearer the Kammerspielfilm (chamber film), which dealt with ordinary people and events with an element of social criticism. The whole touching story of how an old hotel doorman (Emil Jannings) is reduced to a lavatory attendant is told without any intertitles. The camera tracking through the hotel corridors, the subjective shots, and the drunken dream sequences all make words superfluous. Jannings was also the imposing star of Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff, 1925) and Faust
Emil Jannings as Mephisto tempts Gosta Ekman’s Faust in order to settle a wager between God and Satan over the earth, in Murnau’s 1926 film Faust.
what to watch 1922 Nosferatu 1924 The Last Laugh 1926 Faust 1927 Sunrise 1931 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
(1926), both studio productions with imagery derived from the Old Masters. In Hollywood, Murnau directed Sunrise (1927), a simple story of a farmer who tries to kill his devoted wife because of another woman. The blend of German and Hollywood techniques, the lighting, and the fluidity of the camera combine to make it a poetic masterpiece. However, a happy ending was imposed on it, and two more of his Hollywood films suffered from studio interference. As a reaction to this, Murnau (with Robert Flaherty) formed his own company and went to the South Seas to make Tabu (1931), the story of a young fisherman in love with a virgin dedicated to the gods, set in a Tahitian paradise. The film won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. George O’Brien plays Anses, a farmer, and Janet Gaynor is his wife Indre, in Sunrise; the farmer falls in love with a city woman, who suggests that he kills his wife.
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Mike Nichols
what to watch
31931– 2AMERICAN 41966–
1966 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
119 5Comedy, Drama
1967 The Graduate
Mike Nichols (Michael Igor Peschkowsky) triumphantly straddles both Broadway and Hollywood with sleek stage productions and streamlined movies, which are more thoughtprovoking and better crafted than most.
Nothing in Mike Nichols’ career equalled the impact of his 1967 movie The Graduate, for which he won a Best Director Oscar.
1983 Silkwood 1988 Working Girl 1990 Postcards from the Edge 1996 The Birdcage 1998 Primary Colors
The film, which made Dustin Hoffman a star, appealed to a young audience, and the songs by Simon and Garfunkel added to its attraction. After a number of flops, Nichols made a comeback with Working Girl (1988), a feel-good romantic comedy which also looks incisively at working women. Postcards from the Edge (1990) deals with the relationship between a Hollywood star and her unstable daughter, while Primary Colors (1998) is about a Clinton-esque politician. Nichols started his film career with his debut Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a multi-Oscar winner, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as a bitter middle-aged couple.
Manoel de Oliveira
what to watch
31908– 2PORTUGUESE 41942–
1942 Aniki Bóbó
131 5Costume drama, Documentary
1979 Doomed Love
Manoel de Oliveira is among the most original and profound artists working in the medium, and was never more prolific than after he turned 80, writing and directing one film a year until well into his 90s.
While Portugal was under the dictatorial Salazar regime (1932–68), Oliveira was condemned to years of silence and inactivity. As a result, it was only in his 70s that he was able to fully explore his principal interests of desire, fear, guilt and perdition, underscored by the very Portuguese sentiment of the “consolation of melancholy.” Many of his films are adaptations of literary works, which, while assuming the literary nature of the text, destroy conventional narrative with long and fixed shots or the repetition of such shots in beautifully composed colour images. Oliveira tantalizingly stipulated that Memories and Confessions (Visita ou Memórias e Confissões, 1982) is only to be released after his death.
1981 Francisca 1988 The Cannibals 1993 Abraham Valley 1995 The Convent 2001 I’m Going Home 2003 A Talking Picture
Ema (Leonor Silveira) is a sensual beauty who enters into a marriage of convenience in Abraham's Valley, a haunting portrait of privilege, passion, and loneliness.
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Max Ophüls 31902–1957 2GERMAN 41930–1955 121 5Costume drama, Melodrama
Lola Montès tells the story of the daring but ruined Lola (Martine Carol), seen here with a circus ringmaster, brilliantly played by Peter Ustinov.
what to watch
Max Ophüls’ main preoccupation was the transitory nature of love; his bittersweet, nostalgic films are set in the past with a tracking, circling camera suggesting the passage of time.
1932 Leiberlei
At the beginning of La Ronde (1950), the title being a clue to Ophüls’ films, the Master of Ceremonies walks through a film studio onto a fin-de-siécle set, changes into an opera cloak, and spins a merry-go-round. He is Ophüls’ alter ego and the films are merrygo-rounds moving to the sound of a waltz. A masked dancer sweeps into a dancehall in House of Pleasure (Le Plaisir, 1952), the camera moving with him, and he keeps whirling as the music gets livelier until he falls. In Lola Montès (1955), the ringmaster cracks his whip at the center of a huge circus ring as the heroine reminisces, and the camera revolves 360 degrees to reveal her past. Everything comes full circle as multiple couples keep changing partners in La Ronde and after the earrings of Madame de... (1953) are passed from hand to hand. After five films in Germany including Leiberlei (1932), a story about doomed love, Ophüls went to the US. The only
1953 Madame de...
Anton Walbrook, the worldly-wise raconteur, and Simone Signoret, the prostitute Leocadie, in La Ronde — a circular tale of relationships in Vienna set in 1900.
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1940 Mayerling to Sarajevo 1948 Letter From an Unknown Woman 1950 La Ronde 1952 House of Pleasure 1955 Lola Montès
film he made there that suggests the European period was Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948). Returning to Paris in 1949, he made La Ronde with a terrific French cast; House of Pleasure, based on three Guy de Maupassant stories; Madame de..., a witty confection; and his final film, Lola Montès, the only one in colour and with an extraordinary treatment of space on the CinemaScope screen.
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Nagisa Oshima
what to watch
31932– 2JAPANESE 41959–
1960 The Sun’s Burial (Taiyo no hakaba)
126 5Drama
1968 Death by Hanging
The influence of the French New Wave is felt in Nagisa Oshima’s films, which are mostly stimulating, disconcerting, and provocative metaphors of Japanese social values.
Both Death by Hanging (Koshikei, 1968), which earned international renown, and Boy (Shonen, 1969) critically dissect Japanese social life. The former deals with a condemned man, whose body refuses
1969 Diary of a Shinjuku Thief 1969 Boy 1971 The Ceremony (Gishiki) 1976 In the Realm of the Senses 1978 Empire of Passion 1999 Taboo (Gohatto)
to die, while the latter relates how a boy’s parents train him to get knocked down by cars so they can sue the drivers. Oshima equates sexual liberation with rebellion in Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobo nikki, 1969), but his most notorious film is In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida, 1976), focusing on obsessive sex between a gangster and a prostitute. Empire of Passion (Ai no borei, 1978) is equally steamy. In an eerie scene from Oshima’s moody period piece Empire of Passion, Gisaburo (Takahiro Tamura), a murdered rickshaw driver, returns as a ghost.
Yasujiro Ozu 31903–1963 2JAPANESE 41927–1962 154 5Drama, Comedy
It is difficult to describe Ozu's work without making it sound trivial but, within their chosen parameters, his films are rich in humor, emotion, and psychological and social insight.
The work of Yasujiro Ozu is marked by a certain consistency. He never married, yet, apart from his early films which were light, ironic comedies influenced by Hollywood cinema, he deals with middleclass family relationships, particularly the parent-child generation gap. He worked with the same actors and technicians throughout his career. Stylistically and thematically too, the movies of his mature period are very alike — even the titles are confusingly similar — and it was the interplay of characters that absorbed him rather than the plot. After 1930, he never used a dissolve and seldom moved the camera, which remained fixed a little lower than waist level. Each of his sequences is of great formal beauty, often punctuated by short external shots and intensified by music.
Keiji Sada and Yoshiko Kuga take tea in Good Morning, which Ozu remade from his own first feature I Was Born, But ... (1932); both are moving portrayals of childhood.
what to watch 1947 The Record of a Tenement Gentleman 1949 Late Spring (Banshun) 1951 Early Summer (Bakushû) 1953 Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari) 1956 Early Spring (Soshun) 1958 Equinox Flower (Higanbana) 1959 Good Morning (Ohayo) 1960 Late Autumn (Akibiyori) 1961 The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki) 1962 An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji)
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Georg Wilhelm Pabst 31885–1967 2german 41923–1956 131 5Drama, War
Compelling depictions of human degradation in a corrupt society, Pabst's films came out of a Germany defined by rapid inflation and the rise of Nazism, and went on to inspire a major shift from expressionism to realism in the German cinema.
Despite the obvious unfairness to Pabst, it is temping to observe that in all his best films, the actresses, rather than the director, stand out: the 20-year-old Greta Garbo on the brink of prostitution in Joyless Street (Die Freudlose Gasse, 1925); Brigitte Helm as the lonely blind girl in The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney, 1927); Lotte Lenya in The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper, 1931) and, above all, the American Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (Büchse der Pandora, 1928) and The Diary of a Lost Girl (Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, 1929). Pandora’s Box is a star vehicle for Louise Brooks, with her black bobbed hair framing her pale kittenish face, and her every gesture and expression imbued with eroticism. The character she created — Lulu, the woman who destroys men — became one of the icons of cinema, and inspired Pabst to produce his finest work, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). what to watch 1927 The Love of Jeanne Ney 1928 Pandora’s Box 1929 Diary of a Lost Girl 1931 The Threepenny Opera 1931 Comradeship
The enigmatic Greta Garbo plays Greta Rumfort, her second leading role, in Joyless Street (1925), a depiction of the dark side of life in Vienna after World War I.
This film again explores the social and economic breakdown of post-war Germany, with its brutal depiction of a girls’ reform school. Both Westfront 1918 (1930), Pabst’s sound film debut, and Comradeship (Kameradschaft, 1931) plead the cause of international brotherhood. The former ends with the hand of a French soldier clutching a dead German’s hand; the latter tells of German miners rescuing their French comrades trapped in a shaft. Though Pabst's The Threepenny Opera is a slightly softened adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical, it retains plenty of anti-bourgeois bite. Pabst made three historical films under the Nazis, including Paracelsus (1943). As a form of atonement, his later films, notably The Trial (Der Prozeß, 1948), are attacks on anti-Semitism. Pabst's Westfront 1918 gives a bitter, realistic view of the barbed wire and trenches of World War I, seen through the eyes of four young German recruits.
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Sergei Paradjanov 31924–1990 2GEORGIAN 41954–1988 111 5Costume drama
Sergei Paradjanov’s poetic, pictorially breathtaking films explore not only the history and folklore of the great Georgian director’s native land, but also his personal and idiosyncratic universe.
Born in Georgia to Armenian parents, Paradjanov was imprisoned for three years in the Soviet Union in 1974 for various “crimes.” His first film to be shown in the west, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Tini Zabutykh Predkiv, 1964), reveals his remarkable talent for lyricism and opulence. what to watch 1963 The Stone Flower 1964 Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 1969 The Color of Pomegranates 1988 Ashik Kerib
In Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Ivan Mikolajchuk (centre), here wearing the traditional costume of the Ukrainian Hutsuls, plays a tragic hero.
His love of music, dance, and costumes reached its peak in The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova, 1969), its eloquent imagery illustrating — in a series of tableaux — the poems of the 18th-century Georgian poet Sayat Nova. In his final film Ashik Kerib (Ashugi Qaribi, 1988), each kaleidoscopic episode is ravishing; at the end, a white dove alights on a black camera, fluttering out of the past and into the present.
Alan Parker
what to watch
31944– 2BRITISH 41976–
1976 Bugsy Malone
114 5Musical, Thriller, Drama
1978 Midnight Express
The films of Alan Parker display technical bravura, strong, often contentious, stories, and an admitted preference for a “theatrical edge.”
In the early 1970s, Alan Parker, a workingclass Londoner, ran a successful advertising film company. His films reveal his training in attention-grabbing, and his talent for new and bold ideas. Parker’s first film, Bugsy Malone (1976), featuring children playing Chicago gangsters of the 1920s, has wellstaged numbers and a talented, appealing cast. The controversial Midnight Express (1978), Parker’s biggest hit, is a brilliantly staged movie based on the true story of a young American jailed for drug smuggling in Istanbul. Also powerful, but more politically liberal, are Birdy (1985), set in an army hospital during the Vietnam War, and Mississippi Madonna plays the title role of Eva Peron in Evita, Parker’s biopic. The film is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.
1985 Birdy 1988 Mississippi Burning 1991 The Commitments 1996 Evita
Burning (1988), a civil rights drama. Balancing these is Fame (1980), a lively musical that follows eight young people at the American Academy of Performing Arts, and Evita (1996), a lavish adaptation of the stage musical. Curiously, only Pink Floyd — The Wall (1982) and The Commitments (1991) are set in the British Isles.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini 31922–1975 2ITALIAN 41961–1975
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Street urchin Perkins (Ninetto Davoli) is an object of ridicule in Pasolini’s sexually explicit rendition of The Canterbury Tales. The film was shot in Canterbury, UK.
112 5Satire, Drama
what to watch
Although the uncompromising films of Pier Paolo Pasolini have their roots in Italian neorealism they are permeated in ideology and myth.
1961 Accatone
Pasolini was a well-known novelist, poet, and screenwriter before directing his first film, Accatone (1961). He drew on his knowledge of Rome for this realistic depiction of a derelict urban landscape, revealing his fascination with social outcasts. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo, 1964) is a poetic attempt to present Jesus Christ as an ordinary Italian peasant. Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re, 1967), while faithful to Sophocles, has a prologue and epilogue set in modern Rome. Pasolini
1968 Theorem
1964 The Gospel According to St. Matthew 1967 Oedipus Rex 1971 The Decameron 1972 The Canterbury Tales 1974 The Arabian Nights 1975 Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
deals with the middle classes for the first time in Theorem (Teorema, 1968), which shows each member of a bourgeois family liberated sexually by a stranger (Terence Stamp). The Decameron (Il Decameron, 1971), The Canterbury Tales (Il Racconti di Canterbury, 1972), and The Arabian Nights (Il Fiore Delle Mille e Una Notte, 1974) form a trilogy of satires, which capture the free spirit of the classic original. The final 10 minutes of his last film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1975), an updating of a de Sade novel, are among the most memorable in cinema. Jesus Christ (Enrique Irazoqui) is kissed by Judas (Otello Sestilli) in The Gospel According to St. Matthew.
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Sam Peckinpah 31925–1984 2AMERICAN 41961–1983 115 5Western
Associated with the rise of graphic screen violence in 1960s’ Hollywood, Sam Peckinpah’s lyrical films portray disenchantment. His Westerns, in particular, are explorations into moral ambiguities.
Born and brought up on a ranch in California, Sam Peckinpah attended military school and went through a spell in the Marines. His films reflect his background — a masculine world where one’s manhood and independence are often expressed through violence. Hence the nostalgia for the Old West where men were heroes and women were subordinate. The recurring theme of “unchanged men in a changing land” is introduced in his second feature, Ride the High Country (1962), with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea as aging gunfighters against an autumnal landscape. William Holden and his gang in The Wild Bunch (1969), set in 1914, try to live as outlaws from another age, although the scenes of what to watch 1962 Ride the High Country 1965 Major Dundee 1969 The Wild Bunch 1970 The Ballad of Cable Hogue 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 1974 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Controversial and intense, Peckinpah achieved the dubious distinction of being the cinematic poet of violence and earned the epithet “Bloody Sam.”
carnage reflect the year the film was made. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) is another elegy for the Old West, but with more of Peckinpah’s edgy sense of humor. Steve McQueen as the title character in Junior Bonner (1972), rather touchingly, feels anachronistic (rather like the director himself) in the new-style West and follows his own moral code, living at the edge of society. Peckinpah continued a running battle with producers whom he saw as the bad guys. For example, he disowned Major Dundee (1965) when it was recut by others (a longer version, nearer the director’s cut, was released in 2005). Away from the controlling mythology of the Western, his blood-dimmed vision was less coherent. Billy (Kris Kristofferson) and Pat (James Coburn), play old friends turned adversaries in the 1973 Western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
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Wolfgang Petersen 31941– 2Germany 41981– 113 5Drama
More than competent when it comes to engineering suspense, but rarely inspired when choosing scripts, Wolfgang Petersen will do the best with what he is given.
Peterson’s Hollywood work includes the absorbing Clint Eastwood vehicle In the Line of Fire (1993), the Homeric epic Troy, with Brad Pitt and Eric Bana (2004), and the mystery thriller Shattered (1991), which he also wrote. But The Perfect Storm (2000) was a disappointment, and Air Force One (1997) was inane. However, Petersen will always be remembered for one film, Das what to watch 1981 Das Boot 1993 In the Line of Fire 2004 Troy
Das Boot, originally a German TV mini-series, changed the direction of Petersen’s career and propelled him into the world of Hollywood blockbusters.
Boot (The Boat, 1981), which is a tense, gritty, claustrophobic U-boat drama that caused a sensation in Germany with its sympathetic portrayal of pragmatic mariners doing their job. Perhaps surprisingly, it was equally popular in the US, where it was nominated for six Academy Awards (Petersen was nominated for his direction and his screenplay). The film’s reputation as a modern classic remains strong to this day.
Roman Polanski
what to watch
31933– 2POLISH 41962–
1962 Knife in the Water
117 5Drama
1965 Repulsion
The turbulent life of Roman Polanski has influenced many of the subjects of his films. They offer a rather bleak view of humanity, but the stories are narrated with absurdist humor.
Born of Polish parents who were sent to concentration camp, Polanski revisited 1940s’ Poland in the Academy Awardwinning film The Pianist (2002), his first in his native country since Knife in the Water (1962). There is little distinction between nightmare and reality in many of his films. Mia Farrow screams “This is not a dream. It is reality” in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) on believing that she has been impregnated by the devil. We witness the “reality” of Catherine Deneuve’s breakdown as the walls of her room come alive in Repulsion (1965). Sex is a theme that runs through Polanski’s films: sexual Adrian Brody plays Wladyslaw, a Polish Jewish pianist who witnesses Nazi persecution in The Pianist.
1965 Cul-de-Sac 1968 Rosemary’s Baby 1974 Chinatown 1976 The Tenant 2002 The Pianist
rivalry (A Knife in The Water), sexual disgust (Repulsion), sexual humiliation (Cul-de-Sac, 1965), and incest (Chinatown). The brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate in 1969 was followed by his depiction of gruesome murders in Macbeth (1971), the most bloodsoaked of all Shakespeare’s plays.
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Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
what to watch
31905–1990 (Powell), 1902–1988 (Pressburger)
1944 A Canterbury Tale
2BRITISH (Powell), Hungarian (british) (Pressburger) 41939–1972 (Powell), 1942–1956 (Pressburger) 150 (Powell), 16 (Pressburger)
1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1945 I Know Where I’m Going 1946 A Matter of Life and Death 1947 Black Narcissus 1948 The Red Shoes
5Fantasy, Musical, War
1948 The Small Back Room
The films that carry the unusual credit of “Produced, Written and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger” are eccentric, extravagant, witty fantasies. They contrast sharply with the realistic approach typical of British cinema of their period.
1951 The Tales of Hoffman
In 1939, Michael Powell (as director) collaborated with the Hungarian Emeric Pressburger (as scriptwriter) for the first time on U-Boat 29, thus beginning one of the closest creative partnerships in cinema history. So close was their working relationship that, although Pressburger’s contribution was mostly writing and Powell was in charge on the studio floor, they received joint directorial credit on their films from 1939 to 1956. This may account for their curious blend of the very British and the very Middle European. There is a mystical love for England in A Canterbury Tale (1944) and for Scotland in I Know Where I’m Going (1945), and British
Film poster, 1959
patriotism and courage in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and Hour of Glory (1948). However, the most sympathetic characters, enacted by different actors, are Germans in U-Boat 29 (Conrad Veidt, 1939), Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956, Peter Finch) and, most controversially, Colonel Blimp (1943, Anton Walbrook). Winston Churchill tried to ban the latter for “ridiculing the army” during wartime. Stairway to Heaven (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), The Tales of Hoffman (1951), and Oh! Rosalinda (1955) are closer to the world of Vincente Minnelli’s Hollywood musicals (influenced in turn by European design) than to any other British film. Each, however, examines the nature of cinema and its links with theatre, painting, and music. The Red Shoes, perhaps the duo’s most popular film, is also an allegory of the artist’s unswerving dedication to art in the person of Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the ballet-dancer impresario in the film. Out of the twelve films they made between 1943 and 1956, nine were in sensuous Technicolor (photography by Jack Cardiff John Justin, June Duprez, and Sabu in The Thief of Baghdad, an early Powell-Berger-Whelan film.
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or Christopher Challis) with flamboyant sets and designs (Hein Heckroth and Alfred Junge). Junge’s studio sets for Black Narcissus (1947) create the atmosphere of a Himalayan convent, where nuns struggle against desire. A heady mixture of religion and eroticism also runs through the wondrously strange A Canterbury Tale, in which a man pours glue on the heads of girls who date servicemen. The team broke up after the World War II adventure film Night Ambush (1956). Powell never had the same success alone, although the perverse Peeping Tom (1959), about a psychopathic murderer who photographs victims at the moment of death, is rich in levels of interpretation and has gained in reputation over the years. In the 1970s, Powell was “rediscovered” by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola who set up projects with him. In 1981, he was appointed as advisor at Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, and he married Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker in 1984.
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Moira Shearer plays Victoria, a young dancer torn between love and her career, with Leonide Massine, in The Red Shoes, a romance set in the world of ballet. In One of Our Aircraft is Missing, Robert Beatty, Emrys Jones, and Bernard Miles play bomber crew members desperate to survive.
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Otto Preminger
what to watch
31905–1986 2AUSTRIAN (American) 41931–1980
1944 Laura
137 5Film noir, Thriller
1945 Fallen Angel
The best films of Otto Preminger, made in the US from 1935, are moody crime melodramas, using a cool, interrogatory method.
As a young man, Preminger got to watch many trials because his father was a public prosecutor in Vienna. Many of his films are put together like pieces of evidence in a trial where the characters reveal themselves through their obsessions. In Laura (1944), a
1947 Daisy Kenyon 1956 The Man with the Golden Arm 1959 Anatomy of a Murder 1960 Exodus 1962 Advise and Consent
detective falls in love with a “dead” woman; murders and trials also occur in Fallen Angel (1945) and Whirlpool (1950). A whole town is put on trial in The Thirteenth Letter (1951), and trials are central to The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), Saint Joan (1957), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). These are considered the essential Preminger movies, along with Daisy Kenyon (1947), starring Joan Crawford. Preminger battled censorship for The Moon is Blue (1953) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1956). In the 1960s, he shifted to making blockbusters like Exodus (1960) and Advise and Consent (1962). James Stewart, Ben Gazarra, and Arthur O’Connell discuss the defense in Anatomy of a Murder.
Vsevolod Pudovkin 31893–1953 2RUSSIAN 41926–1953 113 5Epic, Costume drama
At the forefront of the exciting experimental period in Soviet silent cinema, Vsevolod Pudovkin was, like others, forced to toe the Communist party line later in his career.
Pudovkin and his contemporary, Eisenstein, were among the first great theorists of cinema, who put their theories of dynamic montage into practise. A comparison was made when they both directed films on the same subject in the same location at the same time. Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (Konets SanktPeterburga, 1927) is more human and less stylized than Eisenstein’s October, showing the effects of the what to watch 1926 Mother 1927 The End of St. Petersburg 1928 Storm Over Asia
revolution of 1917 on an uneducated peasant boy. Pudovkin’s first feature, Mother, 1905 (Mat, 1926), adapts Maxim Gorky’s rambling novel into a tightly constructed narrative. His last great silent film, the passionate Storm Over Asia (Potomok Chingis-Khana, 1928) tells the tale of Bair (Valeri Inkizhinov), a Mongolian nomad, who leads his people against the British occupying forces. In this dramatic scene in Storm Over Asia, Bair, the Mongol trapper, is captured by British soldiers.
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Nicholas Ray 31911–1979 2AMERICAN 41948–1963 120 5Film noir, Western, Epic
Even within the context of the Hollywood studio, Nicholas Ray (Raymond Nicholas Kienzle) managed to make a number of off-beat movies, focusing on alienated characters, and using dynamic framing and dramatic colors.
A pre-credit sequence in They Live By Night (1948), Ray’s first feature, introduces us to Cathy and Farley, doomed outlaw lovers, with the subtitle: “This boy, this girl were never properly introduced to the world we live in.” This statement is applicable to most of Ray’s characters. Among them are Nick (John Derek), the boy from the slums on trial for murder in Knock on Any Door (1949), Dixon (Humphrey Bogart), the isolated screenwriter with sadistic tendencies in In a Lonely Place (1950), and misanthropic cop Jim (Robert Ryan) in On Dangerous Ground (1951). They, with Jim, Judy, and Plato (James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and Ed (James Mason) hooked on cortisone in Bigger Than Life (1956), are all loners, trying to make contact with
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Joan Crawford, here with Ben Cooper and Scott Brady, was one of two women starring in Johnny Guitar — the other was Mercedes McCambridge. The film is also a psychological study and a penetrating social commentary.
what to watch 1948 They Live By Night 1950 In a Lonely Place 1953 Johnny Guitar 1955 Rebel Without a Cause 1956 Bigger Than Life 1958 Wind Across the Everglades
the world, caught in extreme situations. As Johnny (Sterling Hayden) says in Johnny Guitar (1953), “I’m a stranger here myself.” Ray’s use of color and choreographed action sequences suggest a musical form, although he never made a musical. The anthropology in The Savage Innocents (1960), the ecology in Wind Across the Everglades (1958), and the neuroses of male leads, such as Jeff (Robert Mitchum), the lonely rodeo rider in The Lusty Men (1952), are all features that make these films unusual for the time. Ray’s brooding romantic side was stifled in the epics, King of Kings (1961) and 55 Days at Peking (1963). His final work Lightning Over Water (1980) is an account of his illness with brain cancer.
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Satyajit Ray 31921–1992 2INDIAN 41955–1991 131 5Drama
The films of Satyajit Ray, which mainly deal with the collision between traditional and modern beliefs, offer no easy answers, but reveal the human face of his vast country.
Pather Panchali (Song of the Road, 1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956), and The World of Apu (Apur Sansar, 1959), known to the world as the Apu trilogy, established Ray’s international renown. Most of his work’s themes are in the trilogy, notably the effect of change on individuals. The Music Room (Jalsaghar, 1958) focuses on an ageing aristocrat trying to cling to bygone days, while in The Chess Players (Shatranj ke Khilari, 1977), a 19th-century nawab tries to stem the tide of change. The Lonely Wife (Charulata, 1964) and Days and Nights in the Forest (Aranyer Din Ratri, 1969), both subtle masterpieces, show the influence of Jean Renoir and Anton Chekhov, but the deceptively simple cinematic effects are the master Indian director’s own.
Carol Reed 31906–1976 2BRITISH 41933–1972 128 5Thriller
Directing a number of skilful dramas with excellent actors, Carol Reed created films that are rich in atmosphere and milieu.
Most of Carol Reed’s successes were literary adaptations with complex lead characters. He brilliantly sustains the tension in Odd Man Out (1947), his first hit, which tells of the last hours of a wounded IRA gunman on the run. Reed reached the peak of his
In The Chess Players, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan) confers with his prime minister (Victor Banerjee) before being ousted from his throne by the British.
what to watch 1955 Pather Panchali 1956 The Unvanquished 1958 The Music Room 1959 The World of Apu 1963 The Big City 1964 The Lonely Wife 1969 Days and Nights in the Forest 1973 Distant Thunder 1975 The Middle Man 1977 The Chess Players
career in two films scripted by Graham Greene: The Fallen Idol (1948), an intensely claustrophobic drama with a child’s perspective of the adult world, and The Third Man (1949), an atmospheric thriller set in the shadowy world of post-war Vienna. He made an attempt to recapture the atmosphere of his earlier films in The Man Between (1953), and returned to Greene with Our Man in Havana (1959). Some of his larger projects include the Academy Awardwinning musical Oliver! (1968). Reed once commented: “I give the public what I like, and hope they will like it too.” Noël Coward, Alec Guinness, and Burl Ives take instruction on the set of Our Man in Havana, a satirical comedy about espionage in Cuba.
what to watch 1940 Night Train to Munich 1941 Kipps 1947 Odd Man Out 1948 The Fallen Idol 1949 The Third Man 1959 Our Man in Havana 1968 Oliver!
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Jean Renoir
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what to watch
31894–1979 2FRENCH 41925–1970
1932 Boudu Saved from Drowning
137 5Drama, Farce, Musical
1936 The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Le Crime de Monsieur Lange)
The career of Jean Renoir spans almost the history of cinema from expressionism to Neo-Realism. His films range from film noir to Hollywood studio productions, and from Technicolor period spectacles to fast television techniques.
1937 The Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion)
Son of Pierre-August Renoir, the impressionist painter, Jean Renoir entered films in order to make his wife (Catherine Hessling, one of his father’s models) a star. He displayed her strange stylized acting in his first five silent films. But Renoir only blossomed as a director with sound, which he used brilliantly. He directed the extraordinary Michel Simon in three of his first talkies, including Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu Sauvé des Eaux, 1932), where Simon, playing a tramp, is the spirit of anarchy trapped in a bourgeois marriage. Renoir’s cinema is egalitarian: there are no heroes or villains. The three prisoners of war in The Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion, 1937) are working class, middle class, and aristocratic, united in brotherhood. In The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu, 1939), the servants are as important as their masters. “The terrible thing about this world is that everybody has his reasons,” says a character in the
1956 Elena and Her Men
1938 The Human Beast (La Bête Humaine) 1939 The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu) 1945 The Southerner 1953 The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d’Or) 1955 French Can-Can
film. In the US during World War II, Renoir managed to preserve his style, even persuading the studios to shoot The Southerner (1945) on location. On his return to Europe, he made three Film poster, 1937 stylish operetta-like romances about the choice between the theater and life: The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d’Or, 1953) with Anna Magnani; French Can-Can (1955) with Jean Gabin; and Elena and Her Men (1956) with Ingrid Bergman. Renoir’s films are a unique blend of emotions and moods, realism, fantasy, tragedy, and farce. Jean Gabin and Simone Simon star in La Bête Humaine, a psychological thriller about a homicidal engine driver, based on the novel by Émile Zola.
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Alain Resnais
what to watch
31922– 2french 41959–
1959 Hiroshima Mon Amour
115 5Drama, Romance, War
1961 Last Year at Marienbad
Alain Resnais’ best films mingle memory, imagination, past and present, and desire and fulfilment. They treat sound, words, music, and images on an equal basis.
In Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), a French actress has an affair with a Japanese architect. Set in a rebuilt Hiroshima that is still traumatized by the horror of the atom bomb, images of the actress’s past in wartime France flash into her mind. Last Year at Marienbad (L’ Année Dernière à
1963 Muriel 1966 The War is Over 1974 Stavisky 1977 Providence 1997 Same Old Song
Marienbad, 1961) changed the concept of subjective time in cinema. Muriel (1963) seems more realistic on the surface, but it is as stylized and metaphysical as Resnais’ previous films. These three masterpieces were never equalled, although The War is Over (La Guerre est finie, 1966), a portrait of an aging exile from Franco’s Spain now living in France, and Providence (1977), a nightmare lived by a dying novelist, come close. In the 1980s, Resnais made a number of film adaptations of stage works with his own company of actors. Elle (Emmanuele Riva) and Lui (Eiji Okada), tormented by their past, console each other in Hiroshima Mon Amour; the film evokes Resnais’ fixation with memory, history, and time.
Tony Richardson 31928–1991 2british 41959–1990 121 5Adventure, Drama, Romance
At the start of his career, Tony Richardson was perhaps the most representative director of the new British realist “kitchen sink” drama. He later moved on to a number of literary adaptations.
As part of a group of playwrights, novelists, and film-makers labelled “angry young men,” Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz, and John Osborne set up Woodfall Films in 1958 to produce movies concerned with social realism. Richardson’s first two features were pungent versions of Osborne’s plays, Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960). what to watch 1959 Look Back in Anger 1960 The Entertainer 1961 A Taste of Honey 1962 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner 1963 Tom Jones 1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade
Albert Finney plays Tom, an 18th-century Englishman who loves women, food, and wild adventures in Tom Jones; he’s seen here wooing Sophie (Susannah York).
Richardson blended French New Wave techniques with his own for A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) — probably his best films. In vast contrast, Tom Jones (1963) turned Henry Fielding’s mock heroic 18th-century novel into a freewheeling bawdy romp full of cinematic tricks. Richardson’s last few films, made in the US, lacked that certain British stamp he brought to his earlier ones.
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Leni Riefenstahl
what to watch
31902–2003 2german 41932–1944
1932 The Blue Light
15 5Documentary, Propaganda
1935 Triumph of the Will
Despite Leni Riefenstahl’s protestations that her documentaries celebrating the Nazi Party and the Berlin Olympic Games were merely records of historic events, she shaped them brilliantly into great propaganda spectacles.
Riefenstahl starred in her first feature, The Blue Light (Das Blaue Licht, 1932), a “mountain film” in which nature, especially dramatic mountains, played a key role. Hitler was impressed and supplied her with more than 40 cameramen to shoot the 1934 Nuremberg Rally under the title of Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935). In the film, Hitler is seen as a Wagnerian
Jacques Rivette 31928– 2french 41960– 120 5Avant-garde, Fantasy
The films of Jacques Rivette are challenging, intellectually enquiring, and uncompromisingly long. They are probably the most under-appreciated among the works of the French New Wave directors.
Ironically, for a director so steeped in cinema, theater dominates much of Jacques Rivette’s work, one of the principal themes being the “play-withina-film,” which he explored in his first feature, Paris Belongs to Us (Paris Nous Appartient, 1961), where a group of amateur actors come together in a deserted Paris in summer to stage a what to watch 1961 Paris Belongs to Us 1966 The Nun (La Religieuse) 1968 Mad Love (L’Amour Fou) 1974 Céline and Julie Go Boating 1991 La Belle Noiseuse 1994 Jeanne la Pucelle 2001 Va Savoir
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1938 Olympia 1944 Lowlands
hero descending upon the medieval town, the sun shining on his head like a halo while ecstatic faces stare up at him. Riefenstahl was then commissioned to film the 1936 Berlin Games, which emerged as Olympia (1938) after two years of editing. Blacklisted by the Allies in 1945, she could not work for seven years, after which she completed Lowlands (Tiefland, 1944), begun in 1935, starring herself as a gypsy dancer. Original German poster for Triumph of the Will. Riefenstahl’s innovative camera techniques and revolutionary approach to music and cinematography make this one of the greatest propaganda films.
performance of Shakespeare’s Pericles. Paris is the constant background to his films, seen as realistically as possible, but where fantastic things take place. One of his most accessible films is Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau, 1974), a brilliantly comic meditation on the nature of fiction. Rivette’s exploration of the act of creation reaches its apex in La Belle Noiseuse (1991), which captures with painful lucidity the anguish of an artist struggling to express himself on canvas. Camille (Jeanne Balibar), a stage actress, hunts for a missing ring in Va Savoir, a witty comedy, which, like many of Rivette’s films, is located in a theatrical setting.
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Glauber Rocha
what to watch
31938–1981 2brazilian 41962–1980
1962 The Turning Wind
110 5Drama
1964 Black God, White Devil
The radical films of Glauber Rocha draw on the cultural traditions of Brazil. Often contrasting primitive and modern facets of his country, Rocha uses ritualized theatrical techniques and political texts.
Rocha was the leader of the group Cinema Novo, a cooperative set up in the late 1950s, whose aim was to free Brazilian films of American influence. Black God, White Devil (Deus E o Diabo na Terra do Sol, 1964)
1969 Antonio Das Mortes 1970 The Lion Has Seven Heads
and Antonio Das Mortes (O Dragão da Maldade Contra o Santo Guerreiro, 1969) are set in the arid north-east of Brazil where the starving peasants are exploited by bandits, multinational companies, and the church. Forced into a ten-year exile by the military junta, Rocha made The Lion Has Seven Heads (Der Leone have Sept Cabeças, 1970) in Africa, its cry for international revolution represented by the five languages that make up the film’s original title. Often evoking directors as diverse as John Ford, Sergei Eisenstein, and Luis Buñuel, Rocha’s films moved increasingly into anarchy and madness. Geraldo Del Ray is the peasant Manuel in Black God, White Devil, about a killer hired by the church and landowners in Brazil's impoverished hinterland.
Nicolas Roeg 31928– 2british 41970– 114 5Cult, Thriller
It is not surprising that the complex and elusive films of Nicolas Roeg, one of the very few great cinematographers to make a successful transition to film directing, should be visually stunning.
Roeg worked in the film industry as a cameraman for 12 years before co-directing (with Donald Cammell) his first feature, Performance (1970). The film is a bizarre psycho-sexual psychedelic drama with Mick Jagger as a faded rockstar and James Fox as a hitman on the run. Horrified by the kaleidoscope of sex and violence in the film, Warner Bros. delayed its release for two years. The film immediately made Roeg a cult director, and his followers were seldom disappointed by further offbeat films such as the supernatural thriller Don’t Look Now (1973), the oddball sci-fi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and Bad Timing (1980), about a sado-masochistic affair between Alex (Art Garfunkel), a psychoanalyst, and Milena, (Roeg’s wife Theresa Russell), a young woman in Vienna.
John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) recovers his daughter’s drowned body in Don’t Look Now, Roeg’s powerful and puzzling thriller.
what to watch 1970 Performance 1970 Walkabout 1973 Don’t Look Now 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth 1980 Bad Timing
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Eric Rohmer 31920– 2french 41959–
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In this scene from Claire’s Knee, Aurora (Aurora Cornu), a novelist, chats with sultry teenager Claire (Laurence de Monaghan), whose knees are objects of fantasy.
122 5Comedy
In Eric Rohmer’s words, “I’m less concerned with what people do than what is going on in their minds while they’re doing it.” Although most of his films are dialogue-centric, they are far from being conversation pieces.
what to watch
The characters in Rohmer’s delicious comedies of error are largely defined by their relationships with the opposite sex. The sumptuous, hedonistic settings and seductive characters are essentially what the conversations, narrations, and diary extracts in the plots are all about. For films that deal to a large extent with resistance to temptation, they are tantalizingly erotic. In each of the “Six Moral Tales” series, a man renounces sex with a woman for ethical reasons. In The Collector (La Collectioneuse, 1966), an intellectual rejects the advances of a promiscuous bikini-clad nymphet. (Young girls were to appear with increasing frequency in Rohmer’s films as he got older.) In My Night at Maud (Ma Nuit chez Maud, 1969), a man spends a chaste night in bed with Maud, a beautiful woman. Jerome, a diplomat (Jean-Claude Brialy) spending summer in a lake resort, permits himself the
1986 The Green Ray (Le Rayon Vert)
Étienne (Didier Sandre), a professor, and the young Rosine (Alexia Portal) pictured in An Autumn Tale, a bittersweet look at love and relationships in midlife.
1969 My Night with Maud (Ma Nuit chez Maude) 1970 Claire’s Knee (Le Genou de Claire) 1980 The Aviator’s Wife (La Femme de l’Aviateur) 1983 Pauline at the Beach (Pauline à la Plage) 1989 A Tale of Springtime (Conte de printemps) 1992 A Tale of Winter (Conte d’hiver) 1996 A Summer’s Tale (Conte d’été) 1998 An Autumn Tale (Conte d’automne)
exquisite pleasure of embracing a teenager’s knee in Claire’s Knee (Le Genou de Claire, 1970), as erotic a moment as any bedroom scene. In Rohmer’s second series called “Comedies and Proverbs,” characters are less articulate, but still analyze all their actions. His witty investigations into the illusions of love continued with “Tales of Four Seasons.”
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Roberto Rossellini 31906–1977 2italian 41940–1977 130 5Cult, Drama, Horror
Passion and humanity resonate through the films of Roberto Rossellini in the three phases of his career: neorealism, the Ingrid Bergman melodramas, and the films on saints and historical figures.
Although the term “Neo-Realist” was first applied to Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1942), it was Rossellini’s three films on the Resistance: Rome, Open City (Roma, Città Aperta, 1945); the Liberation: Paisan (Païsà, 1946); and postwar turmoil: Germany Year Zero (Germania Anno Zero, 1947), which established the style. Shot with minimum resources in natural surroundings, the films depict historic events in human terms with a striking immediacy. Children emerge as
In Stromboli, Karen (Bergman) realizes she has escaped a POW camp only to be imprisoned in marriage. The theme of displacement in Rossellini’s war films is revisited here.
the nucleus of suffering: in Germany Year Zero, a young boy in occupied post-war Germany, who is unable to feed his family, throws himself off a ruined building. In 1950, Rossellini married Ingrid Bergman and instead of glamorous roles, cast her in intense ones. Bergman seeks salvation on top of a volcano in Stromboli (1950), tends the poor and the sick in The Greatest Love (Europa ’51, 1952), witnesses a miracle in Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1953), and is driven to suicide in Fear (La Paura, 1954) — all films about marriage in crisis. The sequence was interrupted by The Flowers of St. Francis (Francesco, Giullare di Dio, 1950), which illustrates the life of the saint. After his divorce from Bergman, Rossellini made historical and religious features, mainly for television. Among these were biopics on Socrates, Augustine of Hippo, the Medicis, and Alcide de Gasperi, Italy’s first postwar president. The Rise of Louis XIV (La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV, 1966), also released on the large screen, reveals how power resides in routine and ritual. The Messiah (Il Messia, 1976), on Christ, was his last film. Edmund (Edmund Meschke), in Germany Year Zero, faces a burnt out Berlin where he must eke out a living. The lowangle shot points to the insurmountable task ahead of him.
what to watch 1945 Rome, Open City 1946 Paisan 1947 Germany Year Zero 1950 Stromboli 1952 The Greatest Love 1953 Voyage to Italy 1959 General della Rovere (Il Generale della Rovere) 1966 The Rise of Louis XIV
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John Sayles
what to watch
31950– 2american 41980–1996
1980 Return of the Secaucus Seven
115 5Drama
1987 Matewan
A pioneer independent, John Sayles is one of the few directors who define “independent” film-making in a political sense.
Sayles has ploughed his own furrow, making low-budget films for which he writes the scripts himself and casts from a committed support group of friends and allies (including Chris Cooper,
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1991 City of Hope 1996 Lone Star
Angela Bassett, David Straithairn, and Kris Kristofferson). A novelist before he became a film-maker (he rewrote scripts for Roger Corman), Sayles rarely achieves the lifelike immediacy of, say, John Cassavetes. The dialogue can feel overly clever, while the visuals can seem like an afterthought. Nevertheless Sayles’ intelligence is obvious, and his dedication to filming low-key blue-collar stories is admirable. His landmark films include Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980); Matewan (1987); City of Hope (1991); and Lone Star (1996). Chris Cooper, with Mary McDonnell as Elma, plays Joe, a union organizer in Matewan. Set in a 1920s West Virginian mining community, the film is beautifully conceptualized.
John Schlesinger 31926–2003 2british 41962–2000 117 5Thriller, Drama
Moving as he did between America and Britain, John Schlesinger regarded himself as a “mid-Atlantic” director. His films reflects this cross-fertilization.
Schlesinger’s first two films introduced young players, such as Alan Bates (A Kind of Loving, 1962), and Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie (Billy Liar, 1963), set in accurately depicted working-class surroundings. He replaced “kitchen sink” settings with those of “swinging London,” and moved up in society with Darling (1965), a cynical morality play. Midnight Cowboy (1969), the first of his many American movies, is an insightful view of New York and American life. After the success of Marathon Man (1976), starring Dustin Hoffman — here pitted against a Nazi war criminal in New York — Schlesinger was encouraged to make further American thrillers. His British films, such as Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), a drama about a love triangle, are rather more personal and show a deep understanding of human behavior.
Dustin Hoffman as conman Ratzo Rizzo and Jon Voight as “cowboy” stud Joe Buck enact memorable roles of amoral anti-heroes in New York’s underbelly, in Midnight Cowboy.
what to watch 1962 A Kind of Loving 1963 Billy Liar 1965 Darling 1969 Midnight Cowboy 1971 Sunday, Bloody Sunday 1976 Marathon Man
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Martin Scorsese 31942– 2AMERICAN 41968– 120 5Gangster, Thriller
The exciting, dark, and obsessive talent of Martin Scorsese is seen at its best in his explorations into the Italian-American identity. He looks into its endemic machismo and violence that often manifests itself in crime.
Scorsese’s inventiveness was first noticed as editor and virtual director of Woodstock (1970), the rockumentary. Roger Corman helped him to make his first feature, Boxcar Bertha (1972), an excellent apprentice work with a fine sense of locale. A restless, nervy man, Scorsese spent a bedridden asthmatic childhood in a SicilianCatholic family in Little Italy, New York. He gives the impression of being what to watch 1973 Mean Streets 1976 Taxi Driver 1977 New York, New York 1980 Raging Bull 1985 After Hours 1986 The Colour of Money 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ 1990 GoodFellas 1993 The Age of Innocence 2002 Gangs of New York
obsessed with his background, although he claims to have exorcised the demons of his childhood by making Mean Streets (1973). Filmed in dark tones, the film inhabits the twilight world of poolrooms, bars, and nightclubs, where two small-time crooks, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his sidekick “Johnny Boy,” (Robert De Niro) try to survive. The smooth bonhomie between members of the Mafia, the pasta meals, Italian arias, religious and family rituals camouflaging the violence, and gun lore seething beneath, were to become familiar elements in Scorsese’s thrillers. This milieu was revisited in GoodFellas (1990), where he expands and refines the examination of these dubious, ironically glamorized, members of the Mob, seen through the eyes of a young man, Henry (Ray Liotta), attracted to the false aura of power and success. In Gangs of New York (2002), Scorsese recreates the Manhattan of the mid-19th century on an epic scale, An unusual film from Scorcese, The Age of Innocence nevertheless depicts his welltraversed theme of a man (Daniel DayLewis as Newland) caught between desire (for Ellen, played by Michelle Pfeiffer) and reality.
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where the predecessors of the “goodfellas” operated. Raging Bull (1980), the story of Jake La Motta — world middleweight boxing champion from 1949 to 1951 — which alternates between professional fights and domestic ones, is another of Scorsese’s powerful explorations into the close-knit Italian-American community with underlying codes of masculinity. Virtually an anti-biopic — unlike the more conventional one of Howard Hughes, The Aviator (2004) — it tells us nothing of La Motta’s past, nor is there much use of narrative techniques. Rather, it presents us, in splendid black-and-white images, with the male animal’s primitive emotions. Scorsese’s favourite actor, Robert de Niro, won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the raw energy of his performance. If the New York of Taxi Driver (1976) is the city of the 1940s film noir, then New York, New York (1977) is the wonderful town of 1940s musicals. After playing a jazz Robert de niro Actor Box Intensity and relentless professionalism are key to the earlier part of the career of Robert de Niro (born 1943), the true heir to Marlon Brando. He excelled in the portrayal of outsiders, especially in the many films of Martin Scorsese, like Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), and The King of Comedy (1983). After making these films he could easily have made his living as a cab driver, a saxophone player, a boxer, or a stand-up comic. De Niro was also superb as the younger Don Corleone in Godfather II (1974) and a Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter (1978).
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Ray Liotta (center) sizzles as “wiseguy” Henry Hill, who longs to be a gangster in Goodfellas, a hard-hitting, fastpaced, true-life mobster story set in 1970s New York.
musician in the latter, De Niro convincingly enacted the role of a disturbed would-be comedian in Scorsese’s brilliant black comedy about show business fame, The King of Comedy (1983). Away from the violence that dominates many of his movies, he successfully entered MerchantIvory country with The Age of Innocence (1993) and courted controversy with The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). In response to the criticism that his films contain pointless violence, Scorsese says: “There is no such thing as pointless violence. It’s reality, it’s real life, it has to do with the human condition. Being involved in Christianity and Catholicism when I was very young, you have that innocence, the teachings of Christ. Deep down you want to think that people are really good — but the reality outweighs that.”
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Ridley Scott 31937– 2British 41985– 117 5Science fiction, Thriller
One of the supreme visual stylists, Ridley Scott is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, and came up through the British advertising industry along with his younger brother Tony, Alan Parker, and Hugh Hudson.
If his decorative pictorial style can produce breathtaking images, on a bad day Ridley Scott is also capable of virtually a parody of the over-designed advertising aesthetic, such as the blossom-strewn fantasy Legend (1985), which at times resembles a commercial for toilet paper. With Alien (1979), he redefined what space travel might look like, and Blade Runner (1982) went one better, imagining a dismal retro-fitted, dystopian future so authoritatively, it has become a cliché.
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver as one of cinema’s first female action heroes) is the sole survivor of the spaceship crew attacked by homicidal creatures in Alien.
what to watch 1979 Alien 1982 Blade Runner 1991 Thelma and Louise 2000 Gladiator
Scott’s best films have strong dramatic situations underpinned with either a mythic or broad political subtext, but he rarely delves very deep. Sometimes praised for his strong heroines (Alien; Thelma and Louise, 1991; GI Jane, 1997; and Hannibal, 2001), he seems to subscribe to sexual equality but reveals barely any interest in psychology. He is not a natural action director, but has the visual bombast to camouflage such deficiencies. An up and down career hit a nadir with the Christopher Columbus movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but peaked with a costume epic, the Academy Award-winning spectacle Gladiator (2000). Surprisingly, his filmography consists of a few forgettable generic thrillers too: Black Rain (1989), Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), White Squall (1996), and Matchstick Men (2003). In Thelma and Louise, Susan Sarandon (Louise) and Geena Davis (Thelma) take their photograph before embarking on a weekend road trip that goes very wrong.
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Ousmane Sembene 31923– 2SENEGALESE 41963– 113 5Comedy-drama
The comedy-dramas of Ousmane Sembane dig deep into African society and its colonial past. The director thought of himself as the modern incarnation of the griot, the tribal storyteller.
The favourite theme of Ousmane Sembene is the effect on his country of nearly 400 years of colonial rule. He joined the Free French Forces fighting in Senegal
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in 1942, and his wartime experiences contributed to the authenticity of two of his films, God of Thunder (Emitai, 1971) and The Camp at Thiaroye (Camp Thiaroye, 1987), which reveal aspects of World War II through African eyes. His second film, The Money Order (Mandabi, 1968), was the first feature ever made by an all-African crew in a native African language — Wolof, a widely spoken language in Senegal. Most of Sembene’s intelligent and entertaining films are in Wolof, and they deliver social messages through wry humour and pathos.
Village women fetch water in Moolaadé (meaning protection); the film critically analyses the practice of female circumcision still performed in parts of Africa.
what to watch 1968 The Money Order 1971 God of Thunder 1974 Xala (The Curse) 1987 The Camp at Thiaroye 2004 Moolaadé
Bryan Singer
what to watch
31965– 2American 41993–
1995 The Usual Suspects
113 5Thriller, Adventure
2000 X-Men
A serious-minded film-maker whose bestknown work is derived from comic books, Bryan Singer appears well schooled in the rigours of popular entertainment.
Singer has a fluid, handsome camera style that was shown to best advantage in the teasingly atmospheric independent cult hit The Usual Suspects (1995). While borrowing from masters of film noir thrillers like Hitchcock and Scorsese, the
2006 Superman Returns
film retains an originality that is Singer’s own. Hardly the obvious choice for a director on the brink of a Hollywood career, Apt Pupil (1998) was a revealing follow-up, although in the end it was a rather ponderous adaptation of a Stephen King story about Todd (Brad Renfro), a teenager who becomes obsessed with a Nazi who lives next door. The film’s themes of fascism and repression shed an oblique light on Singer’s first two X-Men movies (X-Men, 2000 and X2, 2003), with their richly allegorical sympathies for myriad freaks and misfits. With the release of Superman Returns (2006), Singer returns to the comic book genre. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) bares his claws in X-Men, a stylish, witty sci-fi spectacle based on the 1960s Marvel comic book mutants.
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Douglas Sirk 31897–1987 2American 41934–1959 139 5Melodrama, Musical, Drama
Remembered, first and foremost, as the director of four rich Technicolor “women’s pictures” of the 1950s, Douglas Sirk (Claus Detlev Sierk) made comedies, musicals, war films, and Westerns.
Born in Germany of Danish parents, Sirk made ten films in Europe under his real name before going to the US. In Hollywood, he attempted a range of genres, all of them created with impeccable style, paying attention to lighting, sets, and costumes. Sirk directed the suave George Sanders in three atmospheric period pieces—Summer Storm (1944), A Scandal in Paris (1946), and Lured (1947). His strength in soap operatics was first evident in a Barbara Stanwyck film, All I Desire (1953), but it burgeoned in the melodramas he made in Technicolor for Universal Pictures, beginning with Magnificent Obsession (1954). what to watch 1952 Has Anybody Seen My Gal? 1953 Take Me to Town 1953 All I Desire 1954 Magnificent Obsession 1955 All That Heaven Allows 1956 Written on the Wind 1957 The Tarnished Angels 1959 Imitation of Life
Bob (Rock Hudson) comforts Helen (Jane Wyman) in Magnificent Obsession.
Film poster, 1956
In the film, Rock Hudson plays Bob Merrick, who becomes an eye-surgeon in order to restore the sight of Helen (Jane Wyman), whose blindness he had caused in an car accident. In All That Heaven Allows (1955), middle-aged widow Cary (Wyman) causes a scandal by marrying her much younger gardener Ron (Hudson). In Written on the Wind (1956), alcoholism, impotence, and disease are rife in the oil tycoon Hudley family. In Imitation of Life (1959), the close friendship between Annie (Juanita Moore), a black woman, and Lora (Lana Turner), a white woman, provides a weepy end to the golden age of Sirk’s Hollywood melodrama. His fluid camerawork and inventive use of color, a genuine compassion for his characters, and an implicit condemnation of a hypocritical society transcend his soap opera material.
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Victor Sjöström
what to watch
31879–1960 2SWEDISH 41912–1937
1917 The Outlaw and His Wife
154 5Melodrama, Costume drama
1917 The Girl from Stormy Croft
The most influential director of early Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström showed a preference for filming in natural settings, illustrating the relationship between the landscape and the psychology of his characters.
Sjöström became an international figure with The Girl from Stormy Croft (1917), the first of his adaptations of Selma Lagerlöf ’s novels, many about strong-willed women. The Phantom Carriage (1921), an eerie story shot mainly outdoors and starring himself, got him invited to Hollywood, where he directed nine films under the name of Victor Seastrom. He made his first MGM film, He Who Gets Slapped (1924), and directed Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (1928). Sjöström returned to Europe and acting, and is best remembered for his role in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957).
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1920 Karin, Daughter of Ingmar 1921 The Phantom Carriage 1924 He Who Gets Slapped 1926 The Scarlet Letter 1928 The Wind
In The Scarlet Letter, Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne, emerges from prison holding her illegitimate baby; the letter A (for adultress) has been embroidered on her front.
Steven Soderbergh
Aleksandr Sokurov
31963– 2AMERICAN 41989–
31951– 2RUSSIAN 41987–
115 5Drama
120 5Political drama
Although only 26 when his first feature, sex, lies and videotape (1989), unexpectedly won the Golden Palm at Cannes, Soderbergh had to wait until 2000 for an Academy Award.
Original and courageous, Aleksandr Sokurov is one of the most stylistically adventurous directors working at the beginning of the 21st century.
After the intelligent, intimate low-budget sex, lies and videotape, Soderbergh pursued an ambitious path with Kafka (1991), set in 1919 Prague; King of the Hill (1993), set during the Depression; and the neo-noir Underneath (1995). He then unashamedly entered the mainstream with Out of Sight (1998), an amusing crime caper; Erin Brockovich (2000), an exposé film; and Traffic (2000), a complex drama about drugdealing that won him the Academy Award for Best Director; and Ocean’s 11 (2001).
Sokurov first made his name with Mother and Son (1997), which was later followed by the equally brilliant Father and Son (2003). He also made an intriguing trilogy about three powerful political leaders of the 20th century: Hitler (Moloch, 1999), Lenin (Taurus, 2001), and Emperor Hirohito (The Sun, 2005). In 2002, he made the landmark film Russian Ark, a 96-minute film, which consists of a single take, shot using a specially designed steadycam.
what to watch
what to watch
1989 sex, lies and videotape
1997 Mother and Son
1998 Out of Sight
1999 Moloch
2000 Erin Brockovich
2001 Taurus
2000 Traffic
2002 Russian Ark
2001 Ocean’s 11
2003 Father and Son
2002 Solaris
2005 The Sun
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Steven Spielberg
what to watch
31946– 2AMERICAN 41975–
1975 Jaws
130 5Adventure, Drama, Science fiction
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind
One of the most famous Hollywood directors, Steven Spielberg has an intuitive sense of the hopes and fears of his audience. This quality and his showmanship have made him one of the greats, in the league of Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock.
Spielberg’s first films were influenced by Hitchcock’s mechanics of suspense. Duel (1971) is a superior psychological thriller about road paranoia, while Jaws (1975) terrified viewers about horrors lurking in the ocean. But Spielberg was not interested in becoming the “new Hitchcock.” Instead, the qualities repeatedly found in his films are those of childlike innocence and wonder. Two of these are about visitations from friendly aliens: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which were huge hits. In addition, the
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1982 ET: The Extra-Terrestrial 1993 Jurassic Park 1993 Schindler’s List 1998 Saving Private Ryan 2005 Munich
throwback action-adventure films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its two sequels made Spielberg one of the most successful directors ever. Clearly a prodigious talent, Spielberg is unencumbered by pretensions or politics. By the mid-1980s, after forming his own film studio, Dreamworks SKG, he was in a position to film anything he chose. He turned to books: The Color Purple (1985) by Alice Walker, with its tough subject matter of racism, sexism, and lesbianism in the US of the early 20th-century, provided meaningful themes to explore, although he veered towards sentimentality.
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Empire of the Sun (1987), based on J.G. Ballard’s wartime memoir, is a worthy film, but not a significant advance on the prisoner-of-war movies of previous decades. Spielberg explored the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany with conviction in Schindler’s List (1993), based on Thomas Keneally’s novel. A bleak, compelling account of the “Final Solution,” it is probably his most important film, although, again, it is undermined by a residue of sentimentality. Another stark account of war, Saving Private Ryan (1998), with Tom Hanks as a US platoon commander in Normandy during World War II, displays the most intense combat scenes Hollywood has produced. Made at virtually the same time as Schindler’s List (Spielberg edited one while shooting the other), Jurassic Park Spielberg heralded a special effects revolution with Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s The Lost World.
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Liam Neeson plays suave German businessman Oskar Schindler, whose conscience overcomes his greed during the Holocaust in Schindler’s List; the film was shot in luminous black-and-white.
(1993) looked like his insurance policy: a groundbreaking computer-generated imagery (CGI) spectacle with dinosaurs more lifelike than ever seen before. It was pure showmanship, and another colossal box-office hit, but also a reminder that for all his technique, Spielberg has yet to invest his entertainments with the complexity and depth that, for example, Capra managed in It’s a Wonderful Life, or that proved second nature to Hitchcock. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) is arguably the closest he has come to reconciling the two sides of his work — the cerebral side that wants to be respected and the entertainer who needs to be loved. tom hanks Actor Box With his Academy Award-winning performance as the AIDS-stricken lawyer in Philadelphia (1993), Tom Hanks (born 1956) displayed a talent for serious roles. After Spencer Tracy, he became the first actor to win two successive Best Actor Academy Awards — the second for the title role of the simpleton in Forrest Gump (1994). In movies since 1980, Hanks was known at one time as the king of romantic comedy, largely due to three hits: Splash (1984), Big (1988), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). He has continued to exploit his breezy personality in comedies, alternating them with meatier roles, as in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) and in Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code (2006).
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Josef von Sternberg
what to watch
31894–1969 2AUSTRIAN 41925–1957
1930 The Blue Angel
124 5Melodrama
1930 Morocco
The iconographic figure of Marlene Dietrich was created by Josef von Sternberg (Jonas Sternberg). She appeared as the eternal femme fatale in different guises in seven of his films, among the most sensuous, bizarre, exotic, and unnaturalistic films in cinema.
The partnership of Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich is as iconic as that of, say, Laurel and Hardy, or Gilbert and Sullivan. Sans Dietrich, Sternberg made Underworld (1927), one of the few silent films to deal with organized crime, and The Docks of New York (1928), which treated urban squalor with poetic realism, achieved by soft, shadowy lighting (Sternberg’s trademark). In The Salvation Hunters (1925), his first film, Sternberg states that “It Film poster, 1932 is not conditions, nor is it environment — our faith controls our lives!” This is certainly true of his own life. Born in an impoverished family of
1931 Dishonored 1932 Shanghai Express 1932 Blonde Venus 1934 The Scarlet Empress 1935 The Devil is a Woman 1953 The Saga of Anatahan
Orthodox Jews, he spent his childhood in hunger and most of his teens on the streets. This experience is reflected in his filmmaking, which explores the motivations and faith of his characters. The Last Command (1928), with Emil Jannings as exiled Russian General Dolgorucki forced to become an extra in a Hollywood film about the Russian Revolution, sets up a strange double image between the exotic Russian past and the present studio set. Jannings also had a masochistic role as Immanuel Rath, a schoolteacher caught in the clutches of cabaret singer Lola in The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel, 1930), the film in which the world discovered Dietrich. Conjured up by make-up, wigs, costumes, and the subtle play of light and shadow, Dietrich next appeared as Amy Lolly in Morocco (1930), as Spy X27 in Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express (1932), Helen Faraday in Blonde Venus (1932), Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress (1934), and as Concho Perez in The Devil is a Woman (1935), inhabiting imaginary and fantastic countries. Nothing he did after he worked with Dietrich equalled these films, though The Saga of Anatahan (1953) showed what Sternberg could do with just a simple studio set and lighting. Sternberg (right) on the set of Exquisite Sinner (1926), a film from which he was fired, with cameraman Max Fabian, and actors Conrad Nagel, Matthew Betz, and Renée Adorée.
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George Stevens
what to watch
31904–1975 2AMERICAN 41933–1970
1936 Swing Time
125 5Various
1939 Gunga Din
Mainly because of multiple takes and shooting from every possible angle, George Stevens took 22 years to make his last eight films.
In the 1920s, Stevens directed Laurel and Hardy two-reelers, and in the 1930s and early 1940s, a wide range of polished films including three comedies with Katharine Hepburn, a couple of Fred Astaire musicals,
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1942 Woman of the Year 1948 I Remember Mama 1951 A Place in the Sun 1953 Shane 1956 Giant
and a colonial adventure film, Gunga Din (1939). His later films were more personal, his working methods slower, and his style more deliberate. I Remember Mama (1948), his first post-war movie, is a warmhearted comedy-drama; A Place in the Sun (1951) contains luminous close-ups of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor; the classic Western, Shane (1953), is seen through the eyes of a hero-worshipping boy; and Giant (1956) is an epic Western. A sparkling Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift star in the haunting film on lost love, A Place in the Sun, for which Stevens won an Academy Award.
Oliver Stone
what to watch
31946– 2American 41986–
1986 Platoon
120 5Action, Political drama, War
1989 Born on the Fourth of July
A controversial figure who likes it that way, Oliver Stone studied film under Martin Scorsese and famously learned about life in Vietnam.
Combative in everything he touches, Stone aims for hot issues, and approaches them from an overtly leftist perspective. Both Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) draw from his experience in Vietnam and attack American foreign policy. Salvador (1986) is sympathetic to the
1991 JFK 1994 Natural Born Killers
rebel cause; Wall Street (1987) satirizes the trader mentality; and JFK (1991) theorizes that a military-industrial complex was behind the shooting of John F. Kennedy. The montage in an Oliver Stone movie is a battle zone of shock cuts and splintered frames. On a technical level, Natural Born Killers (1994) is as radical a merger of avant-garde and music television techniques as mainstream Hollywood has ever seen. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play an amoral couple on a cross-country killing spree in Natural Born Killers, Stone's lurid satire on the media, sex, and violence from a story by Quentin Tarantino.
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Erich von Stroheim 31885–1957 2austrian 41918–1933 19 5Costume drama
Only the first two films of the nine directed by Erich von Stroheim (Erich Oswald Stroheim) were released without studio interference. Yet, despite the vandalism committed on his art, he remains one of cinema’s great figures.
Born in Vienna of middle-class parents, Erich von Stroheim emigrated to the US and became an American citizen and an actor, adding the “von” to his name, and claiming to be an ex-army officer of noble descent. By playing a succession of brutal Prussian officers, he gained the title of “the man you love to hate.” As a director, he was profligate with studio money (for example, he rebuilt a large part of Monte Carlo on the Universal backlot) so that Irving Thalberg, Head of Production, called him a “footage fetishist.” But the luxury of the settings was essential to his vision of European decadence in his cynical, witty, erotic Ruritanian romances, rich in social and psychological detail. Queen Kelly (1928) is what to watch 1918 Blind Husbands 1921 Foolish Wives 1924 Greed 1925 The Merry Widow 1927 The Wedding March 1928 Queen Kelly
In Foolish Wives, von Stroheim plays Sergius Karamzin, a Don Juan who swindles rich women; Maud George plays Princess Olga, his mistress and partner in crime.
a truncated but nevertheless delirious sado-masochistic masterpiece, starring the silent movie diva Gloria Swanson. Even The Merry Widow (1925), based on the operetta, has a whiff of decay amidst the romanticism. Unlike his other silent films, Greed (1924) was filmed almost entirely on location. In its two-and-half-hour version (cut down from ten hours), it remains a masterpiece. Not long after being prevented from completing his only sound film, Walking Down Broadway (1933), he left for France where he spent the rest of his life, working as an actor. Returning briefly to Hollywood for Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), starring Gloria Swanson, he acted in his last role — as a faithful butler. The winner of a huge lottery, Trina (Zasu Pitts) becomes obsessive over the money in Greed, throwing her own life, and the lives of people around her, into turmoil.
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John Sturges
what to watch
31911–1992 2american 41946–1976
1953 Escape from Fort Bravo
143 5Western, Action
1955 Bad Day at Black Rock
Associated with action movies, particularly Westerns, John Sturges’ cool style and interest in the individual pitted against outside forces, were particularly suited to the genres.
Both John Sturges’ biggest hits, The Magnificent Seven (1960) — an invigorating Western transposition of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954) — and The Great Escape (1963), featured Steve McQueen in prominent roles played with effectively controlled aggression. Escape from Fort Bravo
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1957 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 1959 Last Train from Gun Hill 1960 The Magnificent Seven 1963 The Great Escape 1976 The Eagle Has Landed
(1953), with William Holden, has all the ingredients of a good Western, with intrigue, action, drama, and romance. Among his other robust Westerns are Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959), both with Kirk Douglas. One of Sturges’ best films, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), has Spencer Tracy as a one-armed stranger who descends on a small town to uncover its secrets. It is one of the few films to touch on the problems of Japanese-Americans during the war. Sturges’ final effort was the action-packed war film, The Eagle Has Landed (1976). A stranger in town, John Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), faces opposition from Hector David (Lee Marvin) and other residents in Bad Day at Black Rock.
Preston Sturges 31898–1959 2american 41940–1957 112 5Comedy
The USA of Preston Sturges is a giddy, corrupt, bustling country, full of eccentrics. The witty lines, visual gags, and comic timing form part of an acerbic view of American life, although his misanthropy is tempered with affection for his characters.
Sturges (Edmund P. Biden) worked as a screenwriter through the 1930s, and was one of the first directors to write his own scripts (he did so for all his films). Sturges was also the winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1941 for The Great McGinty (1940). In Sullivan’s Travels (1941), a director of what to watch 1941 The Lady Eve 1941 Sullivan’s Travels 1942 The Palm Beach Story 1944 The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 1944 Hail the Conquering Hero
Sullivan’s Travels, with Joel McCrea (as John Lloyd Sullivan) and Veronica Lake (as “The Girl”), has a clever script that sounds contemporary, even today.
comedies wants a firsthand experience of poverty in order to make a serious drama — but, over time, he realizes that making people laugh is his greatest achievement. Sturges’ own mission to make people laugh was achieved in the screwball comedies The Lady Eve (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942). His satires on American small towns, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), exploit motherhood and patriotism for laughs.
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Istvan Szabó 31938– 2hungarian 41964– 119 5Historical drama
The principal theme of Istvan Szabó has been the agonies suffered by Middle Europe in the 20th century, particularly during the Nazi period.
Istvan Szabó’s second feature, Father (Apa, 1966), is a masterful exploration of the younger generation’s relationship to the past, symbolized by a growing boy’s dreams of his dead father. Szabó’s key work is a trilogy of visually splendid films: Mephisto (1981), about an actor who sells his soul by continuing to practise his art under the Nazis; Colonel Redl (Oberst Redl, 1984), what to watch 1966 Father 1976 Budapest Tales 1981 Mephisto 1984 Colonel Redl 1988 Hanussen 1999 Sunshine 2001 Taking Sides
Quentin Tarantino 31963– 2american 41992– 15 5Crime
With his first two films, Quentin Tarantino’s rise to fame was meteoric. This can be put down not only to a growing film audience and taste for bloodshed, but to his intelligent and playful approach to the rhetoric of film violence.
Tarantino received his education working in down-market video stores that rented ultra-violent movies, spaghetti Westerns, and kung-fu epics — the inspiration behind his films. He also drew on the American Bcrime genre for Reservoir Dogs (1992), and
Klaus Maria Brandauer as the ambitious Alfred Redl in Colonel Redl, makes a dramatic entry in a masque, a metaphor for the deception and intrigue in the film.
in which the head of military intelligence in the Austro-Hungarian Empire has to hide the fact that he is both bisexual and Jewish; and Hanussen (1988), where an Austrian army corporal becomes a clairvoyant. All three feature the remarkable actor Klaus Maria Brandauer as a doomed character at odds with the powers that be. These films, along with Sunshine (1999), the intergenerational saga of a Jewish family, and Taking Sides (2001), on the life of Wilhelm Furtwängler during the Nazi era, reveal evil lurking beneath a glamorous surface. Jean-Luc Godard’s deconstructions of noir themes for Pulp Fiction (1994). In fact, he named his production company, A Band Apart, after Godard’s Bande à Part (1964). Four Rooms (1995), a set of four interlocking stories, one of which Tarantino conceptualized and directed, derived from slapstick, an interesting departure from his staple of violent movies. In a return to his earlier themes, he made Jackie Brown (1997), a crime caper which revived the career of 1970s blaxploitation queen Pam Grier. Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), two parts of a hyperactive revenge tale, are the culmination of all that Tarantino loves in movies. Violence is satirized in this scene from Pulp Fiction, where a digital butterfly appears between hitman Vincent (John Travolta) and partner Jules (Samuel L. Jackson).
what to watch 1992 Reservoir Dogs 1994 Pulp Fiction 1997 Jackie Brown 2003 Kill Bill: Volume 1 2004 Kill Bill: Volume 2
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Andrei Tarkovsky 31932–1986 2russian 41962–1986 17 5Drama
Some of the most intensely personal and visually powerful statements to have come out of Eastern Europe for many decades are made in Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven films.
The rich pictorial sense of Andrei Tarkovsky was already evident in his first feature, Ivan’s Childhood (Ivanovo detstvo, 1962), the story of an orphan boy working for the partisans during World War II. His mastery of the medium was further confirmed in Andrei Rublev (Andrey Rublyov, 1966), eight imaginary episodes in the life of the great 15th-century icon painter as he journeys through feudal Russia, gradually abandoning speech, his art, and his faith because of the cruelty he witnesses. This measured, impressive parable of the artist’s position in society was not allowed screening for some years by the Soviet authorities who felt it was too “dark.” Solaris (Solyaris, 1972) — remade by Steven Soderbergh in 2002 — what to watch 1962 Ivan’s Childhood 1966 Andrei Rublev 1972 Solaris 1975 The Mirror 1979 Stalker 1986 The Sacrifice
Ignat Daniltsev (Alexi) walks with his mother (Margarita Terekhova) in The Mirror; his reflections as a dying man are poetically juxtaposed with Russian history.
is a striking science-fiction film, which manages to be technologically convincing without relying on special effects. A different kind of science fiction was approached in Stalker (1979), which tells of a nightmarish journey through a forbidden wasteland undertaken by the shaven-headed stalker of the title and his two companions. Shot in eerie sepia colour, it haunts the mind long after it is over. The Mirror (Zerkalo, 1975) is full of dream-like images evoking memories and fantasies of Tarkovsky’s private and public life in the form of a visual poem. Tarkovsky’s last film was The Sacrifice (Offret, 1986), a post-apocalyptic drama, with an unbroken 10-minute take of a burning house as its climax. Tarkovsky directs Donatas Banionis who plays Kris Kelvin, a psychologist sent to examine bizarre events aboard a space station in Solaris.
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Jacques Tati
what to watch
31908–1982 2french 41949–1973
1948 Jour de fête
16 5Comedy
1953 Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
As a brilliant observer of the absurdities of modern life and the idiosyncrasies of people, Jacques Tati restored the art of visual comedy, taking it to a different plane.
Unlike the films of Chaplin and Keaton, Tati’s comedies are not built around himself. However, he is a memorable comic figure as the tall, socially awkward
1958 My Uncle 1967 Playtime
Monsieur Hulot, whose presence triggers off amusing incidents, as when he picks his way through a minefield of gadgets. Tati’s films have little dialogue, but humor manifests itself in the body language of ordinary people, as well as in meticulously organized sound effects. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 1953) shows people on holiday with comic realism, while My Uncle (Mon Oncle, 1958) and Playtime (1967) deal with the ridiculous aspects of the relationship of humans with machines and architecture. Jacques Tati, as Monsieur Hulot, saunters by beach huts in this scene from Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.
Jacques Tourneur 31904–1977 2FRENCH 41931–1965 136 5Horror, Western
The reputation of Jacques Tourneur was built on four horror pictures, in which the inventive use of light and shadow, as well as space and movement, suggested, rather than depicted, horror.
The son of the celebrated silent film director Maurice Tourneur, Jacques Tourneur went to Hollywood in 1934, subsequently becoming an American citizen. After turning out a few B-films for MGM, Val Lewton, a producer at RKO, hired him, and together they established a what to watch 1942 Cat People 1943 I Walked with a Zombie 1947 Out of the Past 1950 The Flame and the Arrow 1955 Wichita 1957 Night of the Demon
unique style of low-budget horror films. Without resorting to shock effects, a subtle evocation of the macabre gives Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943) a particular conviction. Tourneur returned to the genre 14 years later with Night of the Demon (1957). His other work consists of excellent Westerns and swashbucklers, and a classic film noir, Out of the Past (1947), with Robert Mitchum as the archetypal private eye ambling laconically through a murky atmosphere of double-cross and murder. Night of the Demon retained Tourneur’s suggestive approach to horror; the monster was allegedly inserted by the film’s producer.
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François Truffaut 31932–1984 2FRENCH 41959–1984 121 5Avant-garde
Enthusiasm, lucidity, and freedom of expression characterize the films of François Truffaut, a leading force in the French New Wave. They are obviously made by someone who wants to retain a certain innocence.
“Are films more important than life?” asks Jean-Pierre Léaud in Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine, 1973). For Truffaut the answer must be in the affirmative. The passion he feels for film-making communicates itself in his films, which are full of cinematic allusions: Shoot the Pianist (Tirez sur le Pianiste, 1960) is a homage to American film noir, Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim, 1961) makes references to Chaplin and Jean Renoir, and The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée Etait en Noir, 1967) is inspired by Hitchcock’s work. But for all that, Truffaut is no mere imitator and many of his films have an immediacy and freshness uncluttered by ciné culture. This is best seen in his semi-autobiographical series of five films with Jean-Pierre Léaud playing his alter ego Antoine Doinel. The 12-year-old Doinel is sent to reform school in The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959), as Truffaut himself was. The series follows Doinel as he grows older and falls what to watch 1959 The 400 Blows 1960 Shoot the Pianist 1961 Jules and Jim 1966 Fahrenheit 451 1967 The Bride Wore Black 1968 Stolen Kisses 1969 The Wild Child 1970 Bed and Board 1973 Day for Night 1978 The Green Room
On the sets of Love on the Run, the last in the Antoine Doinel series, Truffaut directs Claude Jade, who plays Doinel’s wife Christine.
Julie Christie performs a double role as Clarrise/Linda Montag in Fahrenheit 451; the science fiction parable set in a future dystopia was Truffaut’s first work in color. Original film poster, 1966
in love in Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés, 1968), marries and has a child in Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970), divorces and finally becomes a writer in Love on the Run (L’Amour en Fuite, 1978). These seemingly lightweight films hide Truffaut’s pain at the loss of youthful spontaneity and the difficulties of love. He demonstrates a wide range in terms of styles and subjects, from the futuristic nightmare of Fahrenheit 451 (1966), the 19th-century period of The Story of Adele H. (L’Histoire d’Adèle H., 1975) to France under Nazi occupation in The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro, 1980).
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Gus Van Sant 31952– 2american 41985– 111 5Drama
One of the leading independent directors to make his name in the 1990s, Gus Van Sant has flirted with the mainstream, but always returns to his “indie” roots, such as in Gerry (2002).
Gus Van Sant was able to force his way into world-wide distribution with his first two features, both refreshingly nonjudgemental treatments of potentially uncommercial subjects: junkies in Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and male hustlers in My Own Private Idaho (1991). These what to watch 1989 Drugstore Cowboy 1991 My Own Private Idaho 1997 Good Will Hunting 2002 Gerry 2003 Elephant 2005 Last Days
In My Own Private Idaho, Mike, an abandoned child (River Phoenix), walks long distances, searching for his mother and for some meaning in life.
movies immediately revealed his interest in doomed youth and misfits in American society. This interest manifested itself most forcefully in Elephant (2003), on the Columbine school massacre, in which two high-school students gun down their schoolmates; and Last Days (2005), about the troubled life of pop idol Kurt Cobain. Good Will Hunting (1997), about a mathematical genius who works as a janitor, again deals with an “outsider,” but is less dark in tone.
Agnès Varda
what to watch
31928– 2BELGIAN 41954–
1961 Cléo from 5 to 7
120 5Documentary
1965 Happiness
In 1956, Agnès Varda, a photographer, made La Pointe-Courte, although she claimed to have scarcely ever been to the cinema. The film gained her the reputation of being “the mother of the French New Wave.”
Agnès Varda wrote, produced, and directed all her films, both fiction and documentary. Cléo from 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1961) observes two hours in the life of a spoiled nightclub singer as she waits for the medical verdict
1977 One Sings, the Other Doesn’t 1985 Vagabond 1991 Jacquot de Nantes 2000 The Gleaners and I
on whether she is to live or die. Every trivial incident takes on a new significance for her, and Paris is seen as if for the last (or first) time. One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (L’Une Chante, l’Autre Pas, 1977) came out of Varda’s involvement with the women’s movement. Eight years later, she made Vagabond (Sans Toit ni Loi, 1985), one of her most successful features. In between her fiction films, Varda made imaginative documentaries, which were ciné-poetic essays, including tributes to her late husband, Jacques Demy. Sandrine Bonnaire is Mona, the outcast in Vagabond, which presents her as the epitome of the soul, free of social bondage.
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Dziga Vertov 31896–1954 2russian 41929–1954 14 5Documentary, Propaganda
Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) was part of the experimental art movement of the early Russian Revolution. His newsreels and documentaries echoed Lenin’s plea that the function of Soviet cinema was to reflect “reality.”
There were three Kaufman brothers: Denis, Mikhail, and Boris. Boris became a celebrated cinematographer in France (where he shot two of Jean Vigo’s films), and in the US (winning an Academy Award for On The Waterfront). Mikhail was a cameraman in Russia, and Denis, while working for the Revolutionary Cinema Committee, changed his name to Dziga Vertov — Ukrainian words that mean “spinning” and “turning.” He edited Cinema Truth (Kino-Pravda) and Cinema Eye (Kino Glaz), a series of documentary films created from newsreel sequences, between 1922 and 1925. To these, Vertov added slow, speeded up or reverse motion, split screens, animation, text, and still photographs. All these techniques and more were used in Vertov’s first full-length film, The Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom, 1929). The title refers to Vertov's brother, Mikhail Kaufman, seen This tilted shot shows Vertov at work behind the camera; he strongly believed in the primacy of the camera eye (kino-glaz) over the human eye.
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This shot of a spinning factory in The Man with the Movie Camera is a visual celebration of the integration of human and machine.
what to watch 1929 The Man with the Movie Camera 1931 Enthusiasm 1934 Three Songs about Lenin
in action in this spectacular depiction of everyday life in the Soviet Union. Vertov then experimented with sound in Enthusiasm (Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa, 1931), continuing to use mobile camerawork and unusual juxtapositions. The brilliance of his technique is also evident in Three Songs about Lenin (Tri pesni o Lenine, 1934). Vertov’s films influenced the British documentary movement of the 1930s. His ideas were taken up by cinéma-verité directors in France in the 1960s, and Jean-Luc Godard formed the Groupe Dziga Vertov to promote his movies from 1968 and 1972.
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King Vidor 31894–1982 2american 41919–1959 157 5Drama, Melodrama, Costume drama
The name of King Vidor is entered in the Guinness World Records as the film director with the longest career, spanning 67 years and over 50 films. His dominant personality, however, is stamped on many of them.
The Big Parade (1925) was one of the first films to deal with the horrors of World War I. It began “a series of films depicting episodes in the lives of the average American man and woman.” In The Crowd (1928), John and Mary (starring Eleanor Boardman and James Murray) are a couple newly arrived in New York, whose high hopes are soon dashed by unemployment and poverty. Hallelujah (1929), Vidor’s first sound film, was an innovative all-black musical, shot on location, that retained the visual poetry of silent cinema. His technical virtuosity is apparent in films as varied as Stella Dallas (1937), a melodrama with Barbara Stanwyck, the Western Duel in the Sun (1946), and the epic War and Peace (1956).
Jean Vigo 31905–1934 2french 41933–1934 13 5Drama
Few other directors with such a short filmography have had such a profound influence on other film-makers as Jean Vigo.
The son of an anarchist who died in prison in 1917, Jean Vigo (Jean Bonaventure de Vigo Almereyda) inherited his father’s anti-authoritarian ideas. In Zero for Conduct (Zéro de Conduite, 1933), set in a dreadful boarding school,
Barbara Stanwyck plays Stella, a factory-town girl who sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her daughter in Stella Dallas, a melodrama about class differences.
what to watch 1925 The Big Parade 1928 The Crowd 1929 Hallelujah 1931 The Champ 1934 Our Daily Bread 1937 Stella Dallas 1946 Duel in the Sun 1949 The Fountainhead 1956 War and Peace
four boys organize an uprising. The film, based on Vigo’s personal childhood experiences, presents a child’s-eye view of authority, with adults seen as perverse, hypocritical, and oppressive members of the Establishment. The most celebrated sequence is the dormitory pillow fight that becomes a snowy wonderland of feathers in which a mock Catholic procession is enacted. Its influence on Truffaut and Godard is noticeable and it was a direct inspiration of Lindsay Anderson’s If... (1968). Vigo died of tuberculosis aged 29 before completing L’Atalante (1934), an exquisite tale of a young man who takes his bride to live on a barge that travels the canals around Paris. The pillow fight sequence in Zero for Conduct is shot in slow motion; the film showcases Vigo’s talent for mixing social commentary with unique imagery.
what to watch 1930 À propos de Nice (short) 1933 Zero for Conduct 1934 L’Atalante
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Luchino Visconti 31906–1976 2italian 41942–1976 114 5Drama, Spectacle
Aristocrat, Marxist, Neo-Realist, theatre and opera director, and decadence-monger, Luchino Visconti was a man of contradictions, a fact that is reflected in his work.
Despite being a Marxist, Luchino Visconti was always attracted by European bourgeois art. “Art is ambiguous. It is ambiguity made science,” says the composer Aschenbach’s friend in Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia, 1971). Visconti is both repelled and drawn to a decaying society, depicting it in loving detail. In The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963), Prince Salina of Sicily reflects sadly on the death of the aristocratic world; Ludwig II of Bavaria (Helmut Berger) in Ludwig (1972) fights against the philistines who cannot appreciate Richard Wagner’s genius; and in Death in Venice, cholera threatens to sweep away the luxury of the Hotel des Bains on what to watch 1942 Ossessione 1948 La Terra Trema 1954 Senso 1960 Rocco and his Brothers 1963 The Leopard 1971 Death in Venice 1976 The Innocent (L’Innocente)
Dirk Bogarde delivers one of his finest performances as Gustav von Aschenbach, an ageing composer who is forced to take a convalescent holiday in Death in Venice.
the Lido. Although his reputation was gained as a Neo-Realist, only La Terra Trema (1948) actually comes close to the NeoRealist ideal in its picture of the wretched conditions of Sicilian fishermen, shot in real locations with local people enacting their stories. It is through the conventions of opera that Visconti worked best, as in the lush Verdian spectacle of Senso (1954). Rocco and his Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960), about a family who escape the poor South, is an attempt to return to NeoRealism, despite its operatic dimensions. Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi) and Angelica (Claudia Cardinale) star in the stunningly photographed, designed, and costumed The Leopard (set in Italy of the 1800s).
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Lars von Trier
what to watch
31956– 2DANISH 41984–
1987 Epidemic
110 5Drama
1991 Europa
The most famous Danish director since Carl Dreyer, Lars von Trier has as many fans as he has detractors. However, both would agree that he is an auteur with a strong personality.
Lars von Trier’s directorial debut was with The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens element, 1984), the first part of his “Europe in disintegration” trilogy, completed by Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991). All three
1996 Breaking the Waves 1998 The Idiots 2000 Dancer in the Dark 2003 Dogville
were shot in a mixture of black-and-white and color, with a post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Breaking the Waves (1996), his first English-language work — filmed like a home video — and Dancer in the Dark (2000) were unashamedly melodramatic. Von Trier’s films set in an imaginary US, Dogville (2003) and Mandalay (2005), were interesting experiments in using minimalist theatrical sets. The Idiots (Idioterne, 1998) set out successfully to shock people into accepting mentally challenged people. In Dogville, an allegory offering multiple readings, Grace (Nicole Kidman) is a fugitive who finds shelter in a small town with the help of Tom Edison (Paul Bettany).
Andrzej Wajda
what to watch
31926– 2POLISH 41954–
1954 A Generation
135 5Costume drama, War
1957 Canal
In the 1950s, Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy became the voice of disaffected post-war youth. A generation later, Wajda was once again the voice of a Poland struggling to survive political and economic turmoil.
Wajda’s war trilogy, A Generation (Pokolenie, 1954), Canal (Kanal, 1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i Diament, 1958), were bitter and anti-romantic World War II films. Due to censorship, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Wajda was driven to adapt
1958 Ashes and Diamonds 1960 Innocent Sorcerers 1961 Siberian Lady Macbeth 1970 Landscape After Battle 1976 Man of Marble 1981 Man of Iron 1983 Danton
Polish allegorical novels, but even in these he subtly and ironically alluded to contemporary Poland. When censorship was slightly relaxed, he returned to overt political subjects, reflecting on the immediate past. Man of Marble (Czlowiek z Marmuru, 1976) depicted the life of a worker-hero of the 1950s who falls from official favour. Its sequel, Man of Iron (Czlowiek z Zelaza, 1981), made under enormous pressure, was about the struggle for solidarity. Danton (with Gerard Depardieu in the title role) is set in the volatile Paris of the 1790s.
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Raoul Walsh 31887–1980 2AMERICAN 41912–1964 1134 5Action, War, Western
Loud, extrovert, unpretentious, and fast-paced adventure movies were Raoul Walsh’s forte, the best of which were vehicles for stars like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Errol Flynn.
Walsh’s career was almost as long as the history of cinema, dating back to 1910 when he became an actor and assistant to D.W. Griffith. His outstanding silent films as director are The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which features magical trick photography, and What Price Glory? (1926), a comedy that turns into an anti-war drama. He never let a scene go on longer than necessary and was much given to the long shot. His assignments at Warner Bros. included The Roaring Twenties (1939), a documentarystyle evocation of the gangster era with James Cagney as a bootlegger. High Sierra (1941) reveals a depth in Walsh’s work and what to watch 1924 The Thief of Bagdad 1926 What Price Glory? 1930 The Big Trail 1940 They Drive by Night 1941 High Sierra 1942 Gentleman Jim 1949 Colorado Territory 1949 White Heat
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Humphrey Bogart and George Raft as truckers Paul and Joe meet Ann Sheridan as Cassie, a sassy waitress, in They Drive By Night, a mix of intrigue, drama, and romance.
gave Humphrey Bogart his first threedimensional role. Walsh remade the film as Colorado Territory (1949), a genuinely tragic Western. Errol Flynn starred in seven of Walsh’s robust adventures, notably They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and Gentleman Jim (1942). Walsh’s best period ended with White Heat (1949), in which murderer Cagney famously screams atop a blazing oil tank, “Made it Ma! Top of the world!” A film noir co-written by John Huston, High Sierra stars Bogart as Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, a criminal on the run, with Ida Lupino as Marie Garson, the only woman he can trust.
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Peter Weir
what to watch
31944– 2Australian 41975–
1975 Picnic at Hanging Rock
115 5Action, Adventure, Historical
1981 Gallipoli
A natural film-maker, Peter Weir displays an uncanny command of mood, pace, and nuance, creating a symphony of moving images.
Although it was not his first film, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) was the movie which introduced Weir to critics and film-goers around the world. It was a spellbindingly atmospheric and enigmatic story about the disappearance of several girls on a school trip in 1900. Weir’s ability to imbue the film with an authentic sense of time and place caused many viewers to believe the plot was based on a true story (it was not). The film put Weir at the forefront of the Australian New Wave, and the moving but relatively conventional Gallipoli (1981), his last Australian picture to date, sealed his reputation at home as a national totem. The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) is the first of a series of Weir’s films that explore the clash between the modern western world and older cultures. In Witness (1985) Philadelphia cop Captain John Book (Harrison Ford) goes undercover Russell Crowe traverses rough seas as Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, in Master and Commander.
1985 Witness 1986 The Mosquito Coast 1989 Dead Poets Society 1993 Fearless 1998 The Truman Show 2003 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Film poster, 1975
in an Amish community. In The Mosquito Coast (1986), a self-styled inventor Allie Fox (Harrison Ford again) takes his family into the jungle to get back to nature, with disastrous results. Weir’s cinema arguably lacks the profundity (and certainly the solemnity) of Andrei Tarkovsky’s, but their films share an aura of spirituality. In Witness, the generic cop story is soon forgotten, but a wordless sequence in which the community comes together to build a barn lingers long in the memory. Fearless (1993) is a haunting film about the survivors of an air disaster, and The Truman Show (1998) satirizes reality television while at the same time imbuing it with an existential melancholy.
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Orson Welles 31916–1985 2AMERICAN 41941–1975 114 5Film noir, Drama
In the stunning “House of Mirrors“ sequence in The Lady from Shanghai, Michael (Orson Welles), having been falsely blamed for murder, confronts the beautiful Elsa (Rita Hayworth).
The idea that Orson Welles could never direct a film that could match the achievement of Citizen Kane (1941) persists. But few Hollywood directors can boast of a finer oeuvre.
what to watch
Had Welles been a conformist, he might have been more successful — but his greatness would have been diminished. Citizen Kane (1941), his first full-length feature, went against the conventions of chronological narratives and techniques of film-making. In F for Fake (1973), Welles tells anecdotes about art forgerers with relish, demonstrating that “Art is the lie that makes us see the truth.” Who, then, is a storyteller but a great liar? In the splendid comic poem and historical epic, Chimes at Midnight (1966), Falstaff — one of the magnificent liars of literature — is given dignity by Welles’ portrayal. In The Immortal Story (1968), a wealthy merchant wishes to make a popular sailor’s myth come true. Power is a sustaining motif of Welles’ work, as evidenced in the character of megalomaniac newspaper tycoon Charles Kane in Citizen Kane; Macbeth (1948); Othello (1952); and the character
1948 Macbeth
Orson Welles is Captain Hank Quinlan in the classic film noir Touch of Evil, with Janet Leigh as Susie Vargas and “Uncle” Joe, a gang leader (Akim Tamiroff).
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1941 Citizen Kane 1942 The Magnificent Ambersons 1947 The Lady from Shanghai 1952 Othello 1955 Confidential Report 1958 Touch of Evil 1966 Chimes at Midnight
of millionaire Gregory Arkadin in Mr. Arkadin (1955). A struggle for dominance is central to The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Touch of Evil (1958). RKO edited down The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), but it remains a haunting portrait of a declining family in the late 19th century.
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William Wellman 31896–1975 2AMERICAN 41923–1958 176 5Various
Although William Wellman’s name is most often associated with action pictures, gaining him a reputation for working mainly with men, he brought his expertise to bear on a range of genres in the best Hollywood manner.
Wellman earned the nickname “Wild Bill” for his impatience with actors, his devilmay-care personality, and his spell as a pilot in World War I. He drew upon his wartime experiences for Men With Wings (1938), a story of the pioneers of what to watch 1927 Wings 1931 The Public Enemy 1933 Wild Boys of the Road 1935 The Call of the Wild 1937 A Star is Born 1937 Nothing Sacred 1939 Beau Geste 1942 Roxie Hart 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident 1945 The Story of G.I. Joe 1954 The High and the Mighty
Jack (Charles Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) are two fighter pilots in love with the same nurse, Mary (Clara Bow), during World War I in Wings.
the air; Lafayette Escadrille (1958), with his son playing himself; and Wings (1927), the first movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and one of the best flying films ever. Other than the he-man epics, such as The Call of the Wild (1935), Beau Geste (1939), and Buffalo Bill (1944), there was also Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a deeply felt Depression story of young people hopping trains. His original A Star is Born (1937) says more about Hollywood than its two remakes; Nothing Sacred (1937) is a hilarious, fast-paced satire; Roxie Hart (1942) is a cynical 1920s spoof (remade as the stage and screen musical, Chicago); and Magic Film poster, 1937 Town (1947) is a Capraesque comedy about Grandview, a small town that represents all such towns in US. He also directed five movies with Barbara Stanwyck. It was thanks to Wellman that Robert Mitchum emerged as a star in the semi-documentary, The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and James Cagney found stardom in one of the first of the Warner’s gangster cycle, The Public Enemy (1931).
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Wim Wenders
what to watch
31945– 2GERMAN 41970–
1973 Alice in the Cities
128 5Drama, Musical
1976 Kings of the Road
Wim Wenders is more aware than most contemporary German directors of the American cultural influence on post-war Germany, and his films, whether made in the United States or Germany, reflect this.
“The Yanks have colonized our subconscious,” says one of the German friends in Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit, 1976), Wenders’ complex, subtly comic road movie. His films neither condemn nor wholly embrace this idea. His characters are isolated and emotionally stunted — but when they take to the road, change becomes inevitable. The superbly photographed, leisurely odysseys reach metaphysical dimensions, as in Paris, Texas (1984), his greatest international success. He returned to the theme in Don’t Come Knocking (2005).
1977 The American Friend 1984 Paris, Texas 1987 Wings of Desire 1999 Buena Vista Social Club 2005 Don’t Come Knocking
Eliades Ochoa and Ibrahim Ferrer perform in Buena Vista Social Club; Wenders’ documentary follows a group of “lost” Cuban jazz musicians reunited by guitarist Ry Cooder.
James Whale
what to watch
31889–1957 2BRITISH 41930–1941
1931 Frankenstein
120 5 Horror, Musical
1932 The Old Dark House
The name of James Whale is almost always linked with Frankenstein’s monster, which he brought to life in two horror film classics.
After staging R.C. Sheriff ’s play, Journey’s End on Broadway, Whale was invited to Hollywood in 1930 to depict this World War I drama on film. He triumphed with his third film, Frankenstein (1931), for which he chose his compatriot Boris Karloff to play the title role. On the whole, Whale preferred to work with British actors: Charles Laughton in The Old Dark House
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1933 The Invisible Man 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein 1936 Show Boat
(1932), Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (1933), and Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). It is perhaps his “Englishness” that frees his horror films, which are full of selfmocking humour, from the Germanic expressionism usually associated with early examples of the genre. He moved smoothly from Frankenstein to Hammerstein with the best of the three screen Film poster, 1935 versions of Show Boat (1936). Interest in Whale revived when his life story became the subject of Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters (1998). Margaret (Gloria Stuart) and her companions discover the dark secrets of an old mansion inhabited by an odd family in Whale’s Gothic pastiche, The Old Dark House.
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Billy Wilder 31906–2002 2American 41933–1981 126 5Comedy, Romance, Film noir
The films of Billy Wilder, which emphasize the importance of dialogue and the structuring of plots, derive from the satiric Viennese theatre, the witty elegance of Ernst Lubitsch, and the harsher screwball comedies of the 1930s.
Austrian-born Wilder began his Hollywood career writing films for Ernst Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen in the 1930s. Writer, director, and producer, he made highly successful films in varying genres over the course of his long Hollywood career, receiving an incredible eight Academy Award nominations as Best Director (second only to William Wyler who had 12). Wilder was also nominated 12 times for his screenplays, which he usually co-wrote, first with Charles Brackett, and, from 1957, with I.A.L. Diamond. Wilder’s critically acclaimed films often reveal a romantic’s bitterness that comes from disappointment — that life is not perfect, love is thwarted, people can be avaricious and cruel, and the world is not improving. Sunset Boulevard (1950) is the glorious swan song of the silent screen star Norma desmond (Gloria Swanson), dementedly thinking she is making a Barbara Stanwyck and Billy Wilder on the set of Double Indemnity, a film noir classic about adultery, corruption, and murder based on a novel by James M. Cain.
Film poster, 1955
comeback. “I’m still big, it’s the pictures that got small,” she tells Joe Gillis (Holden), a world-weary screenwriter. There are a number of heartless heroes in his work, such as the sensation-seeking reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) in Ace in the Hole (1951), the slick insurance agent Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944), and the weak exploitative businessman J.D. Sheldrake in The Apartment (1960), both played by Fred McMurray. Others are Dino, Dean Martin’s self-parodic crooner in Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), and Walter Matthau’s crooked lawyer Willie Gingrich in The Fortune Cookie (1966). Wilder’s attitude to them is condemnatory, and his tenderness is reserved for the female characters. Audrey Hepburn portrays all that is good in life as she tries to choose between the Larrabee brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) in Sabrina (1954), and when she is painfully smitten by middle-aged playboy Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper) in Love in the Afternoon (1957). Marilyn Monroe is depicted as alluring but innocent, saving Richard (Tom Ewell) from adultery in The Seven Year Itch (1955), and poignantly telling what to watch 1942 The Major and the Minor 1944 Double Indemnity 1945 The Lost Weekend 1950 Sunset Boulevard 1951 Ace in the Hole 1953 Stalag 17 1954 Sabrina 1959 Some Like It Hot 1960 The Apartment 1961 One, Two, Three
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“Josephine” (Tony Curtis in drag) how much she loves Joe (Curtis in trousers) in Some Like It Hot (1959). Shirley MacLaine is rescued by C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) in The Apartment (1960). Fedora (1978) explores a similar plot to that of Sunset Boulevard about a Garboesque star. Both films reflect and record a changing Hollywood. The Lubitsch Touch is at play in Wilder’s directorial debut The Major and the Minor (1942), in which working girl Susan (Ginger Rogers) pretends to be a 12 year old to save on train fare. The three acerbic comedies set in Germany: A Foreign Affair (1948) in a Berlin ravaged by war; Stalag 17 (1953) in a prisonerof-war camp; and One, Two, Three (1961) in a Berlin divided by the Wall, are also compassionate and extremely funny. A scene from Sunset Boulevard,Wilder’s hard-hitting, cynical take on the vagaries of show business, with Gloria Swanson as Norma and William Holden as Joe Gillis.
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Humphrey Bogart, in an unusual romantic role as the serious Linus, succumbs to the charms of Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) in Sabrina, Wilder’s sparkling comedy-romance.
Some Like It Hot is a Prohibition-era gangster spoof, widely considered one of the funniest films ever. Wilder moved into the newly emerging genre of film noir with Double Indemnity (1944), a dark and pessimistic thriller portrayed with acid humour. The Lost Weekend (1945), one of the first films to deal seriously with alcoholism, is another grim and gripping depiction.
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Robert Wise
what to watch
31914–2005 2AMERICAN 41944–1989
1944 The Curse of the Cat People
139 5Drama, Musical
1949 The Set-Up
Although Robert Wise’s most celebrated film was The Sound of Music (1965), shot in splendid Todd-AO and De Luxe Color, his forte was gritty, small-budget, black-and-white realistic dramas.
Robert Wise became one of Hollywood’s leading directors by moving from genre to genre, from style to style, in a workmanlike manner. Although he did so without imposing any discernible personal stamp on his films, he directed some of the finest boxing dramas (The Set-Up, 1949), sci-fi movies (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951 — an intelligent, anti-war classic), and horror films (The Haunting, 1963). Wise made his debut as a director making chilling horror films for Hollywood producer Val Lewton, such as the dreamy The Curse of the Cat People (1944). He then went on to make a number of tightly plotted suspenseful dramas, such as Born to Kill (1947), and an excellent Western In West Side Story, a New York teen gang, the Sharks, led by Bernardo (George Chakiris) perform a brilliant street dance.
1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still 1956 Somebody Up There Likes Me 1958 I Want to Live! 1961 West Side Story 1965 The Sound of Music
with Robert Mitchum, Blood on the Moon (1948). The Set-Up is a metaphysical contemplation well suited to the angst of boxing melodramas, while Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), a biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano (Paul Newman), is almost a direct riposte to it. Wise succeeded in combining realism and social commentary in the musical West Side Story (1961), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director. He won the same award for The Sound of Music (1965), a Broadway musical, which he brilliantly introduced to the screen. He was back to sci-fi with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which became the fourth biggest earner in Paramount’s history.
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Wong Kar-Wai 31958– 2CHINESE 41988– 18 5Avant-garde, Romance
Aboard a mysterious imaginary train in 2046 is an android played by Faye Wong. She also plays the part of Wang Jing Wen, the daughter of the landlord in whose building the protagonist (Chow Mow Wan) lives.
One of the most original directors to emerge at the end of the 20th century, Wong Kar-Wai belongs to the Second New Wave of Hong Kong film-makers who have developed an innovative, non-realistic approach to films.
what to watch
Wong’s cinema is made up of dazzling images (usually of Hong Kong), with multi-layered, intricately structured plots. Added to this is mood and atmosphere, with nostalgic popular music on the soundtrack and alienated love-lorn characters. Wong achieved most of his cinematic effects with the assistance of cinematographer Chris Doyle, and actors William Chang, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, and Tony Leung. He consistently employs parallel narratives, where characters arbitrarily cross paths, a technique seen at its most extreme in Chungking Express (Chung hing sam lam, 1994) in which Wong has exceptional control over two separate storylines. The first is of a jilted cop’s encounter with a heroin trafficker, and the second about a waitress’s obsession with another cop. The Hong Kong of the 1960s is Wong’s favourite setting. Days of Being Wild (A Fei jing juen,
2000 In the Mood for Love
Lovers Yiu-fai (Tony Leung) and Po-wing (Leslie Cheung) go on the road to Buenos Aires in Happy Together, a film about the nature of love.
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1994 Ashes of Time 1994 Chungking Express 1995 Fallen Angels 1997 Happy Together 2004 2046
1991), set in 1960, explores the fears of the territory’s handover to China; In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa, 2000), his most approachable film, also takes place in the 1960s; while 2046 (2004) alternates between the 1960s and an imagined future in 2046. In all these films, Wong asks audiences to abandon their customary ideas of time and space. The ironically titled Happy Together (Cheun gwong tsa sit, 1997), about the stormy affair of two men, uses both monochrome and color and is one of Wong’s few films shot outside China, in Buenos Aires.
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John Woo 31946– 2Chinese 41990– 136 5Action, Thriller
Hong Kong director John Woo moved to Hollywood in the early 1990s before the handover of the territory’s British sovereignty to the Chinese. By that time he had reached the height of his creative powers.
Woo had struggled to define himself in the Hong Kong film industry’s collection of martial arts quickies, but he virtually invented a whole new genre when he came up with A Better Tomorrow (Ying hung boon sik, 1986), a cops and robbers thriller in the style of the classical Hollywood gangster movie. The film merges hyperbolic violence with a floridly romantic — practically chivalric — take on male friendship and honor. Christened “Heroic Bloodshed” by fans, the genre would become a staple of Hong Kong cinema during the next 10 years, and Woo’s action films are its finest exemplars. Heavily influenced by JeanPierre Melville, Sam Peckinpah, and Vincente Minnelli, Woo creates highly choreographed what to watch 1989 The Killer 1990 Bullet in the Head 1992 Hard-Boiled 1997 Face/Off 2000 Mission: Impossible II
Agent Sean Archer (Travolta) fights terrorist Caster Troy (Cage) in the terse film Face/Off, which combines the action, sci-fi, and crime genres.
action set pieces that have nothing to do with realism. Following his most extreme and personal film, the Vietnam-era gangster movie Bullet in the Head (Die xue jie tou, 1990), and the virtuoso shoot-’emups The Killer (Die xue shuang xiong, 1989) and Hard-Boiled (Lashou shentan, 1992), Woo gained a cult reputation in Hollywood. His flamboyant cinematic style comprising swooping crane shots, multi-angle coverage, and slow-motion replays — along with his trademark two-gun shoot-outs — was much copied in the 1990s. His best American film, Face/Off (1997), is a double-take on two adversaries Caster and Sean (Nicholas Cage and John Travolta), who switch identities. The stars’ larger-than-life role-playing is typical of Woo’s work, but it does not preclude his philosophical seriousness. Jean-Claude Van Damme promoted Woo (right) as the “Martin Scorsese of Asia,” and thus Woo got to direct his first American film, Hard Target (1993).
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William Wyler
his deep-focus photography, gave Wyler’s films a definition they might not otherwise 31902–1981 2American 41926–1970 have had. Producer Sam Goldwyn also helped him with some of his best work 161 5Drama, Epic, Costume drama, Musical on Dodsworth (1936) and Wuthering Heights The films of William Wyler are usually (1939). Other Goldwyn productions are sturdy and tasteful Academy Award-winning Dead End (1937), a social drama about entertainments that probe ethical issues. juvenile crime in New York, and The Little Coming to Hollywood in 1924, GermanFoxes (1941), a lush Hellman drama with Bette Davis. Wyler also directed Davis born William Wyler worked his way up from prop boy to director of dozens of excellently in Jezebel (1938) and The Letter short Westerns, each made in a (1940). The Best Years of few days. Following these, he Our Lives (1946), a moving worked painstakingly, earning and revealing portrait of post-war America, follows the nickname “99-take Wyler.” His reputation as a the lives of three soldiers film-maker of quality dates on their return to civilian from his first encounter with life, each representing a cinematographer Gregg Toland different armed service and social class. It won on These Three (1936), Wyler’s Film poster, 1946 seven Academy Awards. first version of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour (He remade Wyler’s meticulous style filled the canvases it in 1962 when he was able to mention of Friendly Persuasion (1956), a gentle tale lesbianism). Toland’s camerawork, especially of a Quaker family forced to take up arms during the American Civil War; The Big what to watch Country (1958), a vast anti-Western; and the epic Ben-Hur (1959). 1938 Jezebel 1941 The Little Foxes 1942 Mrs. Miniver 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives 1953 Roman Holiday 1956 Friendly Persuasion 1958 The Big Country 1959 Ben-Hur 1968 Funny Girl
Bette Davis is the tempestuous heroine Julie and Henry Fonda is Preston — an engaged couple about to break up, in the compelling period drama Jezebel.
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Franco Zeffirelli 31923– 2ITALIAN 41957– 118 5Costume drama, Musical
Primarily a director of opulently mounted plays and operas, Franco Zeffirelli imbues his films with baroque imagery and sumptuous photography, sets, and costumes.
Maggie Smith as Lady Hester and Claudio Spadaro as Mussolini in Tea with Mussolini, in which five British and American women raise an abandoned child.
what to watch 1967 The Taming of the Shrew 1968 Romeo and Juliet 1979 The Champ 1982 La Traviata 1990 Hamlet 1999 Tea with Mussolini
“We have no guarantee for the present or the future. Therefore the only choice is to go back to the past...I am an enlightened conservative continuing the discourse of our grandfathers and fathers,” declared Zeffirelli, whose films are mostly set in the past or are adaptations of classical texts. His Shakespeare films are bustling and colorful: The Taming of the Shrew (1967) stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a raucous domestic duel; Romeo and Juliet (1968) has a youthful energy; and Mel Gibson makes a virile Hamlet (1990). The entertaining Tea with Mussolini (1999) is based on his own childhood.
Robert Zemeckis 31952– 2American 41984– 115 5Comedy
A protégé of Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis is among the most technically savvy directors in Hollywood. He has made his name with a series of witty, mildly satiric comedies.
Zemeckis hit a home run with Romancing the Stone (1984), starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito, and oversaw the hugely popular Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, 1990) with rare acumen. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), he combines live action seamlessly with traditional animation to groundbreaking effect. Regrettably, as he has gotten older, the human elements in his movies have been displaced by a greater emphasis on technology; in 2004’s The Polar Express, he uses digitalized motion-capture animation techniques that what to watch 1985 Back to the Future 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1994 Forrest Gump 2000 Cast Away
Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), a workaholic Federal Express inspector stranded on a remote Pacific island after a plane crash, re-examines his priorities in Cast Away.
result in creepy, rather than lifelike, figures. Two of his films with Tom Hanks stand out. Forrest Gump (1994) is a deeply reactionary gloss on late 20th-century US history (and another huge hit), which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director among others. Cast Away (2000), on the other hand, is a salient modern-day Robinson Crusoe story, which can be considered the director’s best work.
a – z o f d i r e c to r s
Zhang Yimou 31951– 2CHINESE 41987– 114 5Costume drama, Melodrama
Among the first post-Mao film school graduates, Zhang Yimou dares to express moral ambiguity and an implicit reaction against authority in his films.
Reacting against the propagandist films he was subjected to in his youth, former cameraman Zhang recalled that at film school, “we swore...we would never make films like that.” Red Sorghum (Hong Gaoliang, 1987), his first feature, lived up to that promise in its depiction of intricate
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relationships in rural China set in a beautiful landscape. Ju Dou (1990) is a passionate melodrama of adultery, recalling 1940s Hollywood film noir, although it takes place against the rich colors of a dye factory. Raise the Red Lantern (Dahong Denglong Gaogao Gua, 1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu Ju da guan si, 1992), and To Live (Huozhe, 1994) all deal with the position of women in Chinese society and star Zhang’s former lover Gong Li. After they parted, his films lost some of their impact.
Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Moon (Zhang Ziyi) battle amid autumn leaves in the spectacular Hero (2002).
what to watch 1987 Red Sorghum 1990 Ju Dou 1991 Raise the Red Lantern 1992 The Story of Qiu Ju 1994 To Live
Fred Zinnemann
what to watch
31907–1997 2AUSTRIAN (american)
1948 The Search
41942–1982 121 5Various
1948 Act of Violence
Zinnemann’s best features are humanistic and naturalistic movies. Although concerned with psychological, political, and social issues, they remain very entertaining.
Zinnemann was particularly sensitive to actors: Montgomery Clift (The Search, 1948), Pier Angeli and Rod Steiger (Teresa, 1950), Marlon Brando (The Men, 1950), Julie Harris (A Member of the Wedding, 1952), and Shirley Jones (Oklahoma! 1955) all made their debuts in his films. High Noon (1952), a classic Western, marks the apex of his career. From Here to Eternity (1953), a low-key film set in the days before Pearl Harbor, changed the images of Frank Sinatra and Deborah Kerr. Oklahoma!, the musical, the melodrama The Nun’s Story (1959), and the costume drama A Man for All Seasons (1966) bear his distinctive stamp.
1950 The Men 1952 High Noon 1953 From Here to Eternity 1955 Oklahoma!
Cowboy Curly McLane (Gordon MacRae) courts farmgirl, Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones) in Oklahoma!, Zinnemann’s adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
TOP 100 movies
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It is always a challenge to produce a definitive list of “mustsee” movies, because value judgments are, by definition, extremely subjective. However, the 100 handpicked films in this section have delighted, moved or educated audiences of all ages, all over the world. Over the last nine decades, these films have changed our perceptions of cinema, and most have left an indelible mark on film history. The choice of the 100 movies was guided by various criteria. Although there are a handful of relatively recent films — some up-to-date, instant classics, one might say — the majority of these movies have been included because they have stood the test of time. Besides those films that are part of what is perceived as “the canon” — films that appear regularly on film historians and critics’ all-time best lists and are an essential part of any Film Studies course — there are audience favorites as well. Among the films in this section, you will find silent masterpieces from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of Joan of Arc; comedies from City Lights to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; musicals from 42nd Street to The Sound of Music. There are horror movies, such as Nosferatu, cartoons — from the hand-drawn Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the computeranimated Toy Story — science fiction (Star Wars, naturally) and epics (The Lord of The Rings trilogy). Among the films that are automatically on any list of “greats” are those that, regardless of personal likes and dislikes, have had a seminal effect on film history for both Ziyi Zhang plays Jiao Long, an impetuous and physically skilled nobleman’s daughter in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee’s hit film of 2000.
technical and esthetic reasons, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nanook of the North, The Battleship Potemkin, Napoléon, Citizen Kane, Bicycle Thieves and Breathless. Others have been significant in less obvious ways like King Kong, His Girl Friday, L‘Avventura, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Taxi Driver and Annie Hall. The list has been limited to one film per director mainly because it would be easy to come up with 100 films that included only works by great directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, John Ford, Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa and Billy Wilder. Any of the films we have chosen to represent the directors above could be replaced by another title; North By Northwest, Psycho or Rear Window instead of Vertigo; Wild Strawberries, Persona or Fanny and Alexander, in place of The Seventh Seal. Why not Viridiana or Belle de Jour for Buñuel? Amarcord or 8½ for Fellini? John Ford, the maestro of the Western, is represented by The Grapes of Wrath, a non-Western. Is The Rules of the Game better than La Grande Illusion? Is Rashomon better than The Seven Samurai? Is Some Like It Hot better than The Apartment? One could make a strong case either way. It was from this embarrassment of riches that we have made a final selection of our top 100 movies.
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The Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith 1915 The Birth of a Nation was a landmark in the development of motion pictures and remains one of the most controversial films ever made. The epic story follows two families on opposite sides during and immediately after the American Civil War.
At over three hours long, nothing on the scale of The Birth of a Nation had ever been attempted before in American cinema. All of the innovations of Griffith’s earlier work — cross-cutting, close-ups, dissolves, and fades — reached maturity in The Birth of a Nation. One of its achievements was to integrate an intimate story within the progression of dramatically reconstructed historical events — for example the assassination of President Lincoln and the swirling mass of soldiers on the battlefields. Apparently, Griffith wrote no script, carrying the film’s complex structure in his head. However, much of the latter part of the film, in which slaves gain freedom, the hero forms the Ku Klux Klan, and a black man pursues a white virgin who kills herself rather than succumb to his attentions, was, even in 1915, considered by many to be racially offensive. As a result, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) picketed and boycotted the film. Despite its racism, the film is considered a technical masterpiece. Credits production
Epoch Producing Corporation
producer
D.W. Griffith
screenplay
D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods, Thomas Dixon Jr. Based on Dixon’s novels The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots.
cinematography G.W. “Billy” Bitzer
Film poster, 1915
lillian gish A delicate and beautiful actress, Lillian Gish (1893–1993) was the supreme actress of the silent cinema. She was D.W. Griffith’s ideal heroine— a combination of virginal purity and spiritual strength, helping to lighten the heavy Victorian sentimentality of the many self-sacrificing heroines she played. Gish continued to make films into her 90s. Notable works included Victor Sjöström’s The Wind (1928) and Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter (1955). Her last film, The Whales of August (1987), also starred Bette Davis.
In The Birth of a Nation, Lillian Gish plays the virginal heroine, Elsie Stoneman, who is rescued from a “fate worse than death” by the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, led by her lover.
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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Robert Wiene 1919
Adapting its style from painting and the theater, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari) was considered the first true example of expressionism in the cinema (see box). It had an important influence on German films in the decade that followed its release, and on horror movies in general.
Caligari (Werner Krauss), a fairground showman, hypnotizes his servant Cesare (Conrad Veidt) so that he will commit murder. The somnambulist carries off the girlfriend, Jane (Lil Dagover), of the young hero (Friedrich Feher). The film, intended as a metaphor for the Great War, has Caligari representing a government that controls the will of its people. However, the ending shows Caligari as a benign director of a lunatic asylum, with the hero a patient who has imagined the murderous story. The distorted sets and grotesquely angled photography create a nightmarish atmosphere, a style that became known
The deliberately distorted perspective of the sets have an almost hypnotic effect on the audience, reflecting Caligari’s control over his servant Cesare.
as “Caligarism.” The film had a direct impact on James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and influenced many later works, including those of Tim Burton, who modeled Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands on Veidt’s character of the mesmerized slave. german expressionism Expressionism was a movement in the graphic arts, literature, drama, and film, which flourished in Germany between 1903–33. In film, the movement was characterized by the extreme stylization of sets, acting, lighting, and camera angles. Most of the major German directors of the silent period were influenced by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Credits producer
Erich Pommer for Decla
screenplay
Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz
set design
Walter Röhrig, Hermann Warm, Walter Reiman
cinematography Willy Hameister
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the classic expressionist film in Germany. The style inspired a series of horror fantasies known as “shadow films.”
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Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror F.W. Murnau 1921 The film that marked the first appearance of Dracula the vampire on screen remains the eeriest and most magical of the multitude of film versions of this supernatural tale.
Credits production
Prana Film
producer
Albin Grau, Enrico Dieckmann
screenplay
Henrik Galeen, based on
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (uncredited) F.W. Murnau made his debut as a film cinematography Fritz Arno Wagner director in 1919, the same year that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (see page 399) was released. He was clearly much influenced by that seminal work. However, unlike the stylized sets of the earlier film, much of Nosferatu was shot on location, with chiaroscuro lighting — a technique taken from the field of painting, in which the contrast between dark and light areas in an image is heightened (see page 141) — creating its gothic atmosphere. Murnau also used special effects, speeding up the frames and also using negative film to evoke a ghostly carriage ride. Murnau plundered Stoker’s 1897 novel without permission and an action for breach of copyright was The film’s feeling of terror is centred on the spectral, brought against him, but Nosferatu is an gaunt figure of Max Schreck’s Vampire, who creeps acknowledged classic of the horror genre. through the film with menacing authority.
Nanook of the North Robert Flaherty 1922 Credits production
Revillon Frères
producer
Robert Flaherty
screenplay
Robert Flaherty
Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North had a great effect on the evolution of the documentary film. The film’s strength lies in its basis in reality and the unprecedented rapport between the work’s Inuit subjects and the man behind the camera.
In order to make this extraordinary document of hardship and endurance, Flaherty spent 16 months living with the Inuit of Canada’s Hudson Bay. He concentrated on a year in the everyday life of a family — Nanook, his Nyla, Nanook’s wife, carries wife Nyla, and their children — depicting activities such her son through the bleak Arctic landscape. Nanook died of starvation as trading, fishing, hunting, and the construction of an two years after Flaherty filmed him. igloo. However, Flaherty directed them to re-enact their roles for the camera, including a scene in which a walrus is hunted. To enable him to shoot inside an igloo, he had the dwelling built at twice the average size, with half of it cut away to permit sunlight to enter. Dubious as this sounds, such techniques allowed Flaherty to convey the drama and the struggle underlying the daily existence of these people, depicting a way of life threatened by encroaching civilization. It was a new approach to the presentation of reality on film, ennobling its subjects rather than exploiting them. cinematography Robert Flaherty
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The Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein 1925 Soviet cinema and Sergei Eisenstein were brought to international attention by this magnificent film. Although full of dramatic scenes, it swirls around a central denouement that is universally known as the “Odessa Steps” sequence — one of the most memorable and exciting pieces in all cinema.
Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution, The Battleship Potemkin focuses on an incident in which the crew of a battleship at Odessa mutinies rather than eat rotting food. The leader of the protest is fatally shot by an officer, prompting hundreds of civilians to pay homage to the dead man and lend their support to the mutiny. As many of them gather on the Odessa Steps to wave to the ship, they are mown down by the government troops. The soldiers march down a seemingly endless flight of steps, advancing on the fleeing citizens, the rhythm of their marching feet contrasting with the fall of injured and dying people, including a small boy trampled underfoot and an elderly woman shot The Odessa Steps sequence shows the horrifying moment when a pram hurtles down the steps towards certain destruction.
A Russian poster for the film is a fine example of the particular graphic style of the Soviet period, which was known as structuralism.
in the face. With its rhythmic collision and contrast of images, the film was a splendid demonstration of Eisenstein’s theory of montage (see page 291). What is sometimes forgotten, perhaps because of the film’s revolutionary style, is that The Battleship Potemkin tells an exciting narrative through well-rounded characters. Credits studio
Goskino
producer
Jacob Bliokh
screenplay
Sergei Eisenstein, Nina Agadzhanova
cinematography Vladimir Popov, Edouard Tissé
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Metropolis Fritz Lang 1926 The visual legacy of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis can be seen from The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) to the Batman movies via Modern Times (1936), the Star Wars cycle, and Blade Runner (1982). It contained technical innovations that influenced Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Metropolis is set in a futuristic city, where the downtrodden factory workers (living underground) are made to rebel against their masters by a malign robot created in the image of a saintly girl. Lang was given an unprecedented budget to create huge, realistic sets anticipating the 21st century, inspired by the New York skyline. To achieve futuristic effects, lighting cameraman Eugen Schüfftan introduced the Schüfftan process, which combined lifesize action with models or artwork. Despite its ending — “Capital” and “Labor” reconciled by the love of the factory owner’s son (Gustav Fröhlich) for a working girl (Brigitte Helm) — Metropolis can be seen as an allegory of totalitarianism. In 1984, composer Giorgio Moroder added a rock music score, tinted sequences, and optically enhanced several sequences, through which Lang’s masterly control continues to astonish. Credits studio
UFA
producer
Erich Pommer
screenplay
Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou
cinematography Karl Freund, Günther Rittaur design
Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht
special effects Eugen Schüfftan
A German poster shows the robot against the cityscape. Metropolis pioneered the use of science fiction to comment on contemporary society. The futuristic sets created for Metropolis are still impressive decades after the film was made. Mirrors were used to create illusions, including the flying machine that glided between the huge buildings.
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Napoléon Abel Gance 1927
Abel Gance’s most ambitious and personal film, Napoléon is a pyrotechnical display of almost every device of the silent screen and beyond. The use of a triple screen anticipates wide-screen techniques, such as Cinerama, which did not come into use for another 30 years.
Director Gance’s historical and historic film presents Napoléon Bonaparte in six episodes as a Nietzschean Superman, following his life from childhood, through his military schooling, his meeting with Josephine (Gina Manès), and his rise to power. With a dazzling use of visual metaphors, Gance shows the boy Napoléon as a brilliant budding military strategist during a snowball fight shot to resemble a military campaign, the split screen filling with snowballs in flight. The most famous set piece is the symbolic sequence in which Napoléon sails back to France from Corsica through stormy, rough seas that threaten to enter the boat, cut with scenes of a political storm raging Polyvision was a revolutionary projection technique that used multiple frames to show a panorama of separate but thematically linked images.
Albert Dieudonné plays Napoléon, here seen isolated after battle and surrounded by the dead and wounded. Such scenes typify Gance’s desire to create a “richer and more elevated form of cinema.”
in Paris. In order to gain his effects, Gance used hand-held cameras, wideangled lenses, superimposed images, and rapid cutting. Napoléon was first shown at the Paris Opéra, in a version that lasted five hours. However, it was poorly received and was released in various truncated forms thereafter. In 1980, British film restorer Kevin Brownlow reconstructed the film, keeping as close to the original as possible. Napoléon finally received the recognition it deserved, amazing audiences everywhere. Credits production
West/Société-Générale de Films
screenplay
Abel Gance
cinematography Jules Kruger music
Arthur Honegger
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An Andalucian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) Luis Buñuel 1928 A balcony at night. A man (Luis Buñuel) sharpens a razor blade. He observes a small cloud moving towards the full moon. Then the head of a girl comes into view, her eyes wide open. The cloud now moves across the moon. The razor blade slices open the girl’s eye.
Thus began An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) — the title is unrelated to anything in the film — and the career of Luis Buñuel. It has one of the most startling openings of any film, retaining the power to shock. According to the French film
Credits producer
Luis Buñuel
screenplay
Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali
cinematography Albert Duberverger
director Jean Vigo, “The prologue… tells us that in this film we must see with a different eye.” Made under the influence of André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto,” (1924) and co-conceived with the artist Salvador Dali, its series of unconnected incidents was intended to follow the logic of a dream: ants emerge from the palm of a disembodied hand (an archetypal Dali-esque image), priests are pulled along the ground, a woman’s eye is slit open, and dead donkeys lie on two pianos. Although the film defies explanation, its rich supply of images from the unconscious can be read as a study of repressed sexual impulses. The opening sequence, in which a girl’s eye appears to be slit by a razor, is the most memorable of 17 surrealistic images in the film that are designed to shock or provoke.
The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Dreyer 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc is an intense depiction of individual suffering, a soul in torment transformed into cinematic images. It is the purest expression of Carl Dreyer’s style, which he called “realized mysticism.”
Dreyer based his last silent film on transcripts of the 18-month trial of Joan of Arc (Renée Falconetti) before she was burned at the stake. By telescoping the events of the trial into one day, the screenplay provides the film with a formal intensity. Dreyer’s constant and unforgettable use of long-held close-ups has led some critics to describe The Passion of Joan of Arc as a film consisting entirely of examples of this type of shot. In fact, the film also includes tilts, pans, medium Credits production
Société Générale des Films
screenplay
Carl Dreyer, Joseph Delteil
cinematography Rudolph Maté costume design Valentine Hugo
Reneé Falconetti wore no make-up and had to crop her hair to play the lead role in Dreyer’s film. Here, Joan is seen shortly before she is burnt at the stake.
shots, and cross-cutting. The faces of the heroine’s judges, wearing no make-up, are cruelly exposed to Rudolph Maté’s camera. But it is the agonized face of Falconetti, in what was her only film, that burns itself into the mind. Dreyer fulfilled his intention to “move the audience so that they would themselves feel the suffering that Joan endured.” But despite the agony, the film remains an uplifting experience.
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All Quiet on the Western Front Lewis Milestone 1930 Based on Erich M. Remarque’s best-selling novel of the same name, this devastating film was a landmark in anti-war movies, particularly as the narrative is viewed from the German perspective. The stark message that war is hell for both sides resulted in Germany and France banning the film for many years for fear that it would have a demoralizing effect on their armed forces.
The powerful pacifist message of Lewis Milestone’s film, made at the dawn of the sound era, transcends cultures and generations. The film follows seven German boys who leave school in 1914, full of patriotic fervor, to fight for their country. Their enthusiasm is soon dampened when they are thrown into the horror of warfare and experience the brutality of life in the trenches. Particularly effective are the tracking shots, which show the attacks and counter-attacks of both sides, and the appalling deaths suffered. So realistic were these battle sequences that some of them have Film poster, 1930 been incorporated into documentaries about World War I. The famous climax, in which Credits Paul Baümer (Lew Ayres) — the only one of the seven boys still alive — is killed as he studio Universal Pictures stretches towards a butterfly, was shot some Carl Laemmle, Universal Studios producers months after the film’s completion. The Lewis Milestone, Maxwell Anderson, screenplay director used his own hand — later to take Del Andrews, George Abbott, Erich hold of the Oscar for Best Director. Maria Remarque
Paul Baümer (Lew Ayres) takes cover in a church cemetery under heavy shell fire from French forces counter-attacking a German bombardment.
cinematography Arthur Edeson, Karl Freund awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director
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The Blue Angel Josef von Sternberg 1930 The first sound film made in Germany, The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) was notable for introducing Marlene Dietrich, one of the screen’s greatest stars, to the world. The film also marked the start of one of the most remarkable collaborations between an actor (Dietrich) and film-maker (Sternberg) that the cinema has ever seen.
The film depicts the downfall of an ageing and puritanical teacher, Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), who becomes infatuated with a sultry nightclub entertainer named Lola Frohlich (Dietrich). She marries the hapless man, but goes on to deceive and humiliate him. The Blue Angel is an impressive tale of a decent man lured to his doom by un amour fou—exemplified in a startling scene that shows the cuckolded Rath crowing like a young rooster, while dressed as a clown. However, despite a moving performance by Jannings, The Blue Angel is Dietrich’s film. Josef von Sternberg saw a sensuous, mysterious, and glamorous star potential in her, and she gives a splendid portrayal
marlene dietrich Actor Box The career of Marlene Dietrich (1901–92) can be divided into three unequal parts. Her early film and theatre work in the 1920s, the five years with Sternberg, during which he directed her as a femme fatale in seven masterpieces, and the years from 1935 in which her talent was often misused. Later films were Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948) and Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952).
of an indolent, sluttish femme fatale. Sitting astride a chair and huskily singing “Falling in Love Again” while dressed scantily, Dietrich encapsulated an age and an impulse in German cinema. Shot concurrently in German and English, the film’s seedy atmosphere is conveyed by Sternberg’s masterful manipulation of lighting techniques. Credits studio
UFA
producer
Erich Pommerr
screenplay
Josef von Sternberg, Robert Liebmann, Karl Vollmöller and Carl Zuckmayer, from the novel Professor Unrath by Heinrich Mann.
cinematography Gunther Rittau music
Frederick Hollander
Dressed in top hat, stiletto heels, and black stockings, Marlene Dietrich’s Lola became one of cinema’s most iconic images; the role was to launch her international career.
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City Lights Charlie Chaplin 1931 Four years after talkies had become de rigeur, Charlie Chaplin had the presumption to present a new silent film to the public. Only Chaplin—who not only starred in it as the beloved “Little Tramp,” but also produced, directed, edited, and wrote the scenario, and composed the music—could have got away with it. Audiences loved City Lights and critics extolled it as his finest work.
Using his last cent, the Little Tramp (Chaplin) buys a flower from a blind girl (Virginia Cherill). Smitten, he determines to restore her sight, and is able to do so with money obtained from a drunken millionaire he saves from drowning. Seeing the rather ridiculous looking tramp for the first time, and unaware that he is her benefactor, the girl puts money in his hands, only to recognize his touch. Chaplin’s unique stamp is unmistakable in this film, which shows his unerring ability to shift from satire to pathos. One of the funniest set pieces is a brilliantly choreographed boxing sequence in which Chaplin dances around the ring, keeping the referee between himself and his adversary. Although it had sound effects and music, City Lights was primarily a tribute to the art of silent screen comedy.
The Little Tramp, Chaplin’s trademark character, seen here with Cherill’s blind flower girl, was inspired by Chaplin’s poverty-stricken childhood in Victorian London. The character appeared in many of his silent movies, combining pathos with the sort of slapstick comedy that was enjoyed by early cinema audiences.
Credits
Film poster, 1931
studio
United Artists
producer
Charles Chaplin
screenplay
Charles Chaplin
cinematography Gordon Pollock, Roland Totheroh, and Mark Marklatt
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42nd Street Lloyd Bacon 1933 Although it was the archetypal “backstage” musical of the early 1930s, 42nd Street added a new dimension to the genre with its hard-hitting references to the Depression, contrasting scenes of chorus girls slumming it in cheap apartments with Busby Berkeley’s lavish kaleidoscopic production numbers.
Credits studio
Warner Bros.
producers
Hal B. Wallis, Darryl F. Zanuck
screenplay
Rian James, James Seymour
cinematography Sol Polito choreography
Busby Berkeley
costume design Orry Kelly
This musical was the first of three that Warner Bros. released in 1933; the other two were Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade. Economical, fast-paced, and down-to-earth, these films revitalized the musical genre. While an advance on previous “backstage” musicals, such as On with the Show! (1929), and less escapist than its predecessors, 42nd Street still contains all the essential elements of the genre, depicting the trials and tribulations of putting on a Broadway show and ending with the successful opening night. In this case, ingénue Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) takes over the leading role from Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) at the last moment. The pep talk she gets from her director, Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter), just before Andy Lee (George E. Stone) rehearses a tap routine with the chorus line; Peggy (Ruby Keeler), the lucky understudy, is at the front.
musical numbers Harry Warren, Al Dubin
“And Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!” Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) to Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler)
going on stage has entered showbusiness lore. But what most people remember are Berkeley’s extraordinary dance routines: “Shuffle Off To Buffalo,” “Young and Healthy,” and the title number, which, like the film, is “naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty.”
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Duck Soup Leo McCarey 1933 In their fifth film, the four Marx Brothers — Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo – reached the height of their comic skills in this surreal satire that lampooned all authority and respectability, dictatorial leaders, war films (and war), and the Ruritarian musical romances of the period.
The year 1933 was a time of immense social and economic upheaval: Hitler had seized power in Germany and the Great Depression was at its height in the US. So an outrageous comedy that begins with a political crisis and ends with a war would have seemed appropriate for its time. However, Duck Soup was both a critical and commercial failure when it was first released. Audiences were looking for reassurance, not the cynicism and anarchic humor of the Marx Brothers, hilarious as it is. In the film, Groucho plays the President of Freedonia, Rufus T. Firefly, who declares war on neighboring Sylvania, because he’s “… already paid a month’s advance rent on the battlefield.” What follows is a series of lunatic set pieces, including the celebrated mirror routine during which Chico and Harpo, disguised as Groucho,
Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), charms Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), the rich widow of the former President, at a party organized to welcome him as the new leader of Freedonia.
all pretend to be each other’s reflections. Duck Soup contains the essence of the Marx Brothers’ comic genius (without the piano and harp solos that interrupted many of their other films). After this film, straight man Zeppo became an agent, and the three remaining Marx Brothers moved from Paramount to MGM, where they continued their lunacy, best seen in A Night at the Opera (1935). The Marx Brothers — Chico as Chicolini, Zeppo as Lieutenant Bob Roland, Harpo as Pinky, and Groucho as Firefly — pose for a promotional shot for their fourth feature Duck Soup.
Credits studio
Paramount
producer
Herman J. Mankiewicz
screenplay
Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby
cinematography Henry Sharp music
Burt Kalmar, John Leipold, Harry Ruby
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King Kong Merian Cooper/Ernest Schoedsack 1933 Despite two remakes in 1976 and 2005, and many imitations, the original black-and-white King Kong retains its ability to charm and astonish. It became the yardstick against which monster movies would be measured.
Credits studio
RKO
producers
Merian Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, David O. Selznick
screenplay
James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose, Edgar Wallace
Kong, a gargantuan ape, inhabits the cinematography Edward Linden, J.O. Taylor, Vernon prehistoric Skull Island. When he sees L. Walker, Kenneth Peach Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), who is part special effects Willis O’Brien of an expedition to the remote spot led by showman Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), his primal instincts are aroused and he goes on the rampage. He is eventually captured and taken to New York, where he meets a spectacular death — the image of Kong on top of the Empire State Building (holding a scantily dressed Wray moments before he is shot down) is one of the most iconic in cinema history. The film was made one frame at a time, using stopmotion photography (see box). Although he appears huge, Kong was a model made out of metal, rubber, cotton, and rabbit fur, only 46cm (18 inches) tall. Part of the movie’s wonder is that the model seems to be a real actor, expressing human emotions.
“It wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.” Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) on the death of kong.
Film poster, 1933
King Kong swats at the biplanes buzzing around him, while balancing on top of the Empire State Building in the final sequence of the film.
Stop-Motion Photography One of the first special effects techniques used, stop-motion photography allows an otherwise inanimate object to move and change position by exposing a single frame of film at a time. The object is moved very slightly between exposures so that when the film is projected an illusion of motion is created. Because it takes 24 frames to create one second of film, several minutes of footage can take months to complete. Willis O’Brien was a pioneer of this technology, his crowning achievement being King Kong. Stopmotion sequences using real scenes of buildings and people was a variation on this technique and can be seen most effectively in Jason and the Argonauts (1963). The process is still used in animated films, such as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Aardman Animation’s productions.
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L’Atalante Jean Vigo 1934 Any précis of this film’s seemingly simple story cannot do justice to the richness of director Jean Vigo’s only feature-length film. Much of it was shot along canals around Paris and in severe weather, contributing to Vigo’s tragic death from tuberculosis just weeks after the film’s premiere.
A young barge captain, Jean (Jean Dasté), takes his city-dwelling bride, Juliette (Dita Parlo), to live on his boat — L’Atalante — which plies the waterways around Paris. Everyday life on the vessel is filled with magical moments, such as a waltz on a phonograph, the newlywed searching for his estranged sweetheart in water, and the joy of reconciliation. The film also contains rich characterization in the character of Père Jules (Michel Simon at his eccentric best), the master of the boat, who tells fantastic stories of his travels. Although ostensibly realist in setting and plot, the film has a surreal spirit, with a commitment to Freudian theories of dreams and the unconscious as well as the overthrow of bourgeois social and moral codes. Poorly received on its first showing, the film was badly edited and even the title was changed to that of a popular song. Happily, L’Atalante was restored to its original form in 1945, and has since gained the classic status it richly deserves. Jean and Juliette stand at the prow of L’Atalante, the barge from which this haunting and beautifully visualized film takes its name.
Jean Dasté plays Jean, and Dita Parlo his young citydwelling bride, Juliette, who disappears after a quarrel but reunites with her husband in a moving final scene.
Credits production
Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert
producer
Jacques-Louis Nounez
screenplay
Jean Vigo, Albert Riéra, Jean Guineé
cinematography Boris Kaufman music
Maurice Jaubert
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Walt Disney 1937
Walt Disney took an enormous artistic and financial risk by making the first feature-length animation film in three-strip Technicolor. However, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs confirmed his position as the master of the cartoon movie.
Initially dubbed “Disney’s Folly,” Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was four years in the making and cost $1.5 million, a huge sum for the times. Many changes were needed to make a feature cartoon film rather than a short cartoon—the painted cells had to be enlarged to allow more detail in the images and about 750 artists worked on the two million drawings using drawing boards. The studio also devised a multi-plane camera, which enhanced the feeling of depth and could pan over each image without losing perspective. The result was possibly the most popular cartoon film ever, grossing over $8 million on its initial US release. The songs, such as “Whistle While You Work” and “Someday My Prince Will Come,” became immediate hits. The film tells of how Snow White, the lovely stepdaughter of a jealous queen, flees the palace and
Rotoscoped figures, such as Snow White, Prince Charming, and the Wicked Queen, appeared in a Disney film for the first time. The most lovable characters were the dwarfs, whose names were chosen by public poll.
takes refuge with seven dwarfs in their forest home. The queen changes into a wicked witch, and poisons Snow White, who falls into a deep sleep—until a prince finds her and wakens her with a kiss. In 1938, Disney won a Special Academy Award for “a significant screen innovation that has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon.” The success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was followed by other Disney films including Fantasia (1940) and Pinocchio (1940). Credits studio
Walt Disney Studios
producer
Walt Disney
screenplay
Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, adapted from the story by the Brothers Grimm
cinematography Maxwell Morgan supervising director
David Hand
award
Academy Award: Special Award
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Olympia Leni Riefenstahl 1938 Riefenstahl’s film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics is one of cinema’s finest achievements. Nevertheless, admiration for its visual beauty is tempered by the fact that it was made as “a song of praise to the ideals of National Socialism” under Hitler’s orders.
Realizing the immense potential for propaganda through the Olympics, and its dissemination by means of cinema, Hitler gave Riefenstahl all the time and resources she needed to make this four-hour documentary. She had planes, airships, and 30 cameramen at her disposal and spent two years in the cutting room. It is easy to be seduced by the technical brilliance and the beauty of the film’s images, including the slow and reverse motion used in the diving sequence; the marathon forming “an epic hymn to endurance”; and the yacht racing under a darkening sky. However, the film is clearly Nazi propaganda, and one cannot forget the horrific persecution of the Jews, which was taking place in Nazi Germany at the time.
Credits production
Tobis
producer
Leni Riefenstahl
screenplay
Leni Riefenstahl
awards
Venice: Mussolini Cup, Best Film
The lighting of the Olympic flame is the culmination of the prologue, which links the idea of beauty in Greek antiquity to those of the Third Reich.
The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir 1939 Made on the eve of World War II, The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu) is Jean Renoir’s most complete film and his most complex in style. Inspired by the classic theatrical comedies of Pierre Marivaux, Pierre de Beaumarchais, and Alfred de Musset, the film reveals French society of the time being disemboweled from within.
The film takes place during a lavish weekend shooting party organized by the Count and Countess La Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio and Nora Gregor). During the party, sexual tensions become apparent, as relationships between aristocrats and servants are revealed in scenes set both above and below stairs. The structure, setting, and plot create a dynamic juxtaposition of tragedy, melodrama, and farce that imbue the film with its uniqueness. Apart from memorable performances, particularly Renoir’s own as the lovable buffoon Octave, there are some outstanding set pieces, such as the rabbit and bird shoots and the after-dinner entertainment, which uses breathtaking tracking shots and deep focus. The film was a commercial disaster on its release and was banned because its exposure of class divisions in French society was “too demoralizing.” It was only in 1956 that it was acclaimed as the masterpiece it undoubtedly is.
Julien Carette, giving a sly, comic performance as the poacher, Marceau, displays his quarry.
Credits production
Les Nouvelles Editions Françaises
producer
Claude Renoir
screenplay
Jean Renoir, Carl Koch
cinematography Jean Bachelet editor
Marguerite Renoir
production design
Eugène Lourié
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Gone With the Wind Victor Fleming 1939 A film of superlatives, Gone With the Wind was, at the time, the most publicized and expensive film to date. It is probably the most popular, most seen and most successful film ever made.
When David O. Selznick voiced his intention to film Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel about the US Civil War, for which he had bought the rights in 1936, Victor Fleming told him, “This picture is going to be the biggest white Film poster, 1939 elephant of all time,” while the usually astute producer Irving Thalberg commented, “...no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” Spectacular set pieces — such as the burning of Atlanta, the party at Twelve Oaks, and the sight of thousands of wounded Confederate soldiers — superbly evoked the Old South. The film’s central relationship is between the roguish Rhett Butler and the willful Southern minx Scarlett O’Hara — a monument of passion brilliantly played by Clark Gable and British stage actress, Vivien Leigh.
clark gable One of the most well-loved movie stars of all time, Clark Gable (1901–60) made some of his best movies with MGM during the 1930s, including Red Dust (1932), remade as Mogambo in 1953 and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). The only film he made with Carole Lombard, whom he later married, was No Man of Her Own (1932). One of Gable’s earliest film successes was It Happened One Night (1934) for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He considered his final film, The Misfits (1961), with Marilyn Monroe, his best work since Gone With the Wind.
Credits production
Selznick International Pictures
producer
David O. Selznick
screenplay
Sidney Howard, from Margaret Mitchell’s novel
cinematography Ernest Haller production
William Cameron Menzies
music
Max Steiner
costume design Walter Plunkett awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Use of Colour, Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, Technical Achievement Award
Vivien Leigh, as the tempestuous Scarlett O’Hara, runs away from an afternoon house party in the first part of the film.
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The Philadelphia Story George Cukor 1940
Although The Philadelphia Story has many of the elements typical of screwball comedy, the elegant, witty script and George Cukor’s understated direction turned it into a sophisticated comedy of manners.
Katharine Hepburn scored a huge hit on Broadway as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, a role specially written for her by Philip Barry. She bought the film rights and chose her favorite director and costars. In a triumphant return to Hollywood, Hepburn plays a domineering, spoiled socialite, who melts in the arms of a cynical reporter, Mike Connor (James Stewart), who has been sent to cover her second marriage to the dull George Kittredge (John Howard). She eventually succumbs to the dazzling charms of her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). The film sparkles right from the celebrated wordless opening scene when Grant is tossed out of the front door by Hepburn, along with his bag of golf clubs. Katharine Hepburn A true original and one of the all-time greats, Hepburn (1907–2003) was famed for her refusal to play the Hollywood game. Her film career began in the 1930s — she won the first of her four Academy Awards in 1933. After a string of flops she became known as “Box-Office Poison,” a spell which was only broken by The Philadelphia Story. A series of films with her off-screen partner, Spencer Tracy, such as Adam’s Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952) capitalized on the chemistry between the pair and did well at the box office. Later roles in movies such as The African Queen (1951), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), and The Lion in Winter (1968) earned her further acclaim.
Film poster, 1940 (Top) John Howard (George) and Cary Grant (Dexter) look on as a tipsy Katharine Hepburn (Tracy) languishes in the arms of James Stewart (Mike) on the eve of her wedding, after a midnight dip in the swimming pool.
Credits studio
MGM
producer
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
screenplay
Donald Ogden Stewart, based on the play of the same name by Philip Barry
cinematography Joseph Ruttenberg costume design Adrian awards
Academy Awards: Best Actor (James Stewart), Best Screenplay
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His Girl Friday Howard Hawks 1940 Howard Hawks’ scintillating adaptation of the Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur Broadway comedy The Front Page is a fine example of screwball comedy with its breakneck pace, sexual innuendo, rapid-fire wisecracks, and absurd situations. But, it is also a pointed satire on political corruption and journalistic ethics, as well as a commentary on “a woman’s place” in the professional world.
By changing the role of a main character — the star reporter — from a man (in the original play) to a woman, Hawks created sexual tension between the ruthless and wily newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), his employee and ex-wife. Hildy is about to leave the newspaper to marry meek insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). The editor is determined to win her back, both to the newspaper and his bed, and hatches a plot, realizing that she will not be able to resist one final scoop. The twist works brilliantly in the film, especially as played by Grant and Russell, who give sharp and witty performances in this sparkling battle of the sexes. Most effective is the quick, intelligent repartee and the use of overlapping dialogue, while the characters are constantly on the move. Despite being limited mostly to two sets — the newspaper office and the pressroom at the jail, where the journalists await the execution of an anarchist for killing a cop — the film never feels staged. It eclipses Lewis Milestone’s excellent earlier version The Front Page (1931) and Billy Wilder’s tired remake (1974). Rosalind Russell as Hildy poses between co-stars Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy in a promotional shot for the film.
Credits studio
Columbia
producer
Howard Hawks
screenplay
Charles Lederer, from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
cinematography Joseph Walker
Film poster, 1940
cary grant In a 34-year film career, Cary Grant (1904–1986), born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, hardly varied his screen persona from that of a charming, elegant star with a good sense of irony and perfect timing. This made him ideal for the screwball comedies of the 1930s, such as Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938), as well as for tongue-in-cheek adventures, such as Gunga Din (1939). Alfred Hitchcock took advantage of his playboy image in four thrillers, including North By Northwest (1959).
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The Grapes of Wrath John Ford 1940
John Steinbeck’s great novel — a desolate vision of America during the Depression — provided John Ford with the material to make one of the few Hollywood films until then to reveal a genuine social conscience. With its unpatronizing treatment of ordinary people, it retains the themes of family and home — typical of many Ford films — while making a social statement.
This humanistic masterpiece follows the Joad family who, forced to leave their land in the dustbowl of Oklahoma, struggle to reach the “promised land” of California. Only exploitation, disappointment, and hardship await them at the end of their arduous cross-country journey, when they find that the meager wages paid to migrant workers are barely enough for survival. Although The Grapes of Wrath focuses on the recent past, the film has a nostalgic poetry in its bleak visual images and beautifully lit studio exteriors. Expert cinematographer Gregg Toland, who would go on to work in Citizen Kane, filmed it in documentary-style black-and-white textures and low-key lighting, recreating the look and feel of rural America in the 1930s. Henry Fonda gives one of his most sincere performances as Tom Joad, the grassroots American buffeted by fortune but willing to stand up for his rights. As he says to his mother: “I’ll be all around... Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat... And when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build. I’ll be there too.” Producer Darryl F. Zanuck insisted on an upbeat ending, unlike the novel’s bleak conclusion, with the indomitable matriarch Ma Joad, played brilliantly by Jane Darwell, proclaiming “They can’t wipe us out. They can’t lick us. And we’ll go on forever, Pa, because we’re the people,” thus affirming the strength and human dignity of the individual spirit.
Dorris Bowden, Jane Darwell, and Henry Fonda in their old jalopy face trouble on their way to California.
Credits studio
20th Century Fox
producer
Darryl F. Zanuck
screenplay
Nunnally Johnson, from the novel by John Steinbeck
cinematography Gregg Toland awards
Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Jane Darwell)
The courage and strength of Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) keeps her suffering family together.
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Citizen Kane Orson Welles 1941 In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) voted Citizen Kane first out of 100 of the greatest Hollywood films ever. It also tops Sight And Sound’s poll of best films every 10 years since 1962. Despite being burdened with the label of “greatest film ever made,” Citizen Kane generally lives up to expectations.
As a newcomer to movie-making, the 25year-old Welles is said to have broken rules he did not know existed. Working against chronological narrative conventions, his newspaper tycoon, Charles Foster Kane, is seen from many subjective viewpoints, providing a deeper understanding of the protagonist. The innovative use of wideangle and deep focus lenses, the creative use of sound, the great set pieces, the titanic performance of Welles as Kane, were all in pursuit of the meaning of “Rosebud,” the single word Kane utters on his death-bed at the beginning of the film. To facilitate the low-angle shots, nearly every indoor set had a visible ceiling, a device rare at the time. The newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, tried to have the film banned, believing that Kane was a veiled portrait of himself. It was screened only after Welles threatened RKO with a lawsuit. One of cinematographer Greg Toland’s high-angle shots depicts Kane (Welles) and his best friend, Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) taking over a small newspaper, a shot echoed in the film’s final scenes of Kane’s amassed goods.
Orson Welles in the title role makes a speech in front of a giant poster of himself in Madison Square Garden during his campaign to become Governor of New York.
Credits studio
RKO
producer
Orson Welles
screenplay
Orson Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz
cinematography Gregg Toland editors
Robert Wise, Mark Robson
music
Bernard Herrmann
art director
Van Nest Polglase
awards
Academy Award: Best Original Screenplay
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The Maltese Falcon John Huston 1941
Considered the first film noir, The Maltese Falcon is one of the most assured directorial debuts and perhaps the greatest ever remake, effacing two other versions (1931, 1936) of Dashiell Hammett’s classic detective novel.
Among the many firsts of this seminal film was the screen debut, at 61, of stage actor Sydney Greenstreet. He plays one of three people—the others being Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) and femme fatale Brigid (Mary Astor)—searching for a treasured objet d’art named the Maltese Falcon. The trio hire private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) to find it. Bogart’s depiction of the laconic Spade pushed him into the top rank of stars, inaugurating a succession of thrillers featuring hard-boiled detectives. Huston created a brooding, shadowy world, often placing characters in the foreground, giving their mute reactions greater weight than was usual at the time. HUMPHREY BOGART Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) is today regarded as the archetypal anti-hero—tough on the outside, but sensitive at the core. High Sierra (1941) was the first film in which he played a sympathetic gangster. His persona was set forever in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and in the four films he made with Lauren Bacall. He won his only Oscar for Huston’s The African Queen (1951).
In a hotel lobby, Sam Spade (Bogart) confronts the hired gunman Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.). Bogart is superb as the sentimental antihero living by his own code of ethics.
Humphrey Bogart cornered the market in cool, streetwise investigators after his performance in The Maltese Falcon.
Credits studio
Warner Bros.
producer
Hal B. Wallis
screenplay
John Huston, from the novel by Dashiell Hammett
cinematography Arthur Edeson music
Adolph Deutsch
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The Little Foxes William Wyler 1941 Bette Davis was at her bitchy best and director William Wyler was as classy as ever in this remarkable cinematic adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s lush, hothouse stage drama, which focued on an avaricious Southern family in the early 1900s.
Wisely resisting the temptation to “open up” Lillian Hellman’s play, which was adapted by the playwright herself, William Wyler and his director of photography, Gregg Toland, were able to exploit the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house in which the Giddens family’s power struggles take place. At its center is Bette Davis as the thoroughly nasty Regina Giddens — passionate, thwarted, tyrannical, and greedy. She conspires with her brothers in her bid to grab the family fortune for herself, only to deceive and blackmail them, too. Toland’s use of deep focus photography is particularly effective in one tour de force scene in Credits studio
RKO
producer
Sam Goldwyn
screenplay
Lillian Hellman, from her play of the same name
cinematography Gregg Toland
bette Actor davis Box Bette Davis (1908–89) thought of herself as a screen actress not a movie star. Her spoiled Southern belle in Jezebel (1938) won her a second Oscar. Other successes were Dark Victory (1939), The Old Maid (1939), and Now, Voyager (1942). Davis made a stunning comeback in All About Eve (1950) as an ageing actress.
which Regina refuses to give her husband Horace (Herbert Marshall) his medicine although he is in the throes of a heart attack, choosing instead to watch him from the background as he struggles in the foreground. The Little Foxes was the last of three films Davis and Wyler made together, the others being Jezebel (1938) and The Letter (1940); each had a spark that perhaps came from the romantic involvement between the pair at the time. Regina (Bette Davis) talks business with her villainous brother Ben Hubbard (Charles Dingle), on the right, and industrialist William Marshall (Russel Hicks) over coffee in an Oscar-nominated performance.
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To Be Or Not To Be Ernst Lubitsch 1942 As the world experienced the dark times of World War ll, Lubitsch directed one of Hollywood’s greatest comedies. To Be Or Not To Be took the Nazi occupation of Poland as its theme and, as anti-Nazi propaganda, it was more effective than many “serious” attempts.
In their finest performances, Carole Lombard and Jack Benny play Maria and Joseph Tura, a couple who head a troupe of Shakespearean actors trapped in Warsaw when Nazi troops march into Poland. When asked what he thinks of Joseph, the richly comic Gestapo chief, “Concentration Camp” Erhardt (Sig Ruman), says, “What he did to Shakespeare, we’re now doing to Poland.” Benny’s darkly comic role sees him impersonating both a Nazi professor and a Gestapo officer. Although the jokes
Credits studio
United Artists
producers
Alexander Korda, Ernst Lubitsch
screenplay
Edwin Justus Mayer, Melchior Lengyel
cinematography Rudolph Maté
come thick and fast, and the Nazis are seen as incompetent clowns, the situation still comes across as horrific. When the film was released, no one was in the mood to laugh: Pearl Harbor had recently been attacked by the Japanese, the Nazis were sweeping across Europe, and Lombard had just been killed in a plane crash. However, over the years, the film has become a black-and-white classic. Professor Alexander Siletsky (Stanley Ridges) raises a glass to Maria (Carole Lombard). The Polish academic is actually a Nazi spy intent on destroying the Resistance.
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In Which We Serve Noël Coward 1942
A tribute to those serving in the Royal Navy in World War II, In Which We Serve captured the prevailing mood of Britain at the time. Noël Coward wrote the screenplay, as well as composing the score and starring in the film. David Lean edited the film and co-directed (his first film).
This “story of a ship” is told in flashback by the survivors of HMS Torrin, a bombed British destroyer, as they cling to a life raft. It is May 1941, and the Torrin has been patrolling Europe’s coasts as part of Britain’s defense against German warships. It is sunk by enemy action off Crete. Led by Noël Coward as Captain Kinross, an archetypal British commander, the crew hope and pray for rescue. Their stories and that of the ship is told in flashbacks, as some of them look back on the events of the war, including the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk and the loss of many of their comrades. Permeating the film is a deep love for the ship, which symbolizes the unity of the nation without resorting to false heroics or flag waving. The behavior of the crew, all of whom “knew their places” on the social scale, was presented as the ideal model for the behavior of a society at war. The film is also notable for the debut of 19-year-old Richard Attenborough, playing a callow stoker who deserts his post.
Captain Edward V. Kinross (Noel Coward) addresses his crew before their ship is sunk by enemy forces.
Credits production
Two Cities Films
producers
Noël Coward, Anthony Havelock Allan
screenplay
Noël Coward
cinematography Ronald Neame awards
Special Academy Award: “outstanding production achievement”
Ordinary Seaman Shorty Blake (John Mills), one of the crew of HMS Torrin, begins a courtship with Freda Lewis (Kay Walsh) on a train.
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Casablanca Michael Curtiz 1942 The strong plot, the exotic setting, the quotable piquant dialogue, the cherished performances from a magnificent cast, and the emotional Max Steiner score—not forgetting Dooley Wilson as Sam playing “As Time Goes By”—have ensured that Casablanca remains the epitome of 1940s Hollywood romance.
American forces liberated French North Africa in the same year that Casablanca was released, giving the movie a topical title. Most of the film takes place in and around the Café Américain, which is run by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical isolationist and gunrunner who gets involved in the Free French cause in order to help Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a resistance leader and husband of Rick’s former lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). The poignant and passionate team of Bogart and Bergman, with flashbacks to their love affair in pre-war Paris, is one of the most celebrated relationships in cinema history. Strangely, the most structured and beloved of films was made in a manner that left everyone on set confused as to what was happening. Everyone, it seems, except Michael Curtiz, who brought together all the subplots and huge supporting cast of this romantic war melodrama with his expert hand. As time goes by, Casablanca looks better and better. ingrid bergman Actor Box The healthy, unspoiled natural looks and personality of Swedish-born Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) made her a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s in films such as For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and Gaslight (1944), which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Other roles in the 1940s included Paula Alquist in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). Bergman, who had played a nun in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) and Joan of Arc (1948), shocked Hollywood in 1949 when she left her family for Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Although it was years before she made another American movie, with Anastasia (1956) she won another Academy Award – which may have signalled Hollywood’s “forgiveness.”
The love between Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is rekindled as she makes one last effort to get the transit papers for her resistance fighter husband to be able to escape Casablanca. Film poster, 1942
Credits studio
Warner Bros.
producers
Hal B. Wallis, Jack L. Warner
screenplay
Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
cinematography Arthur Edeson music
Max Steiner
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay
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“Round up the usual suspects,” says Claude Raines (second left) at the climax of Casablanca as Paul Henreid (centre), Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman await the result of the shooting of the Nazi officer.
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Ossessione Luchino Visconti 1942
Ossessione was the first film to be labelled Italian NeoRealist, a label given by critic Antonio Pietrangeli, one of the film’s screenwriters. It was also the first film to be directed by Luchino Visconti, whose use of natural settings and workingclass characters inspired other Italian film-makers.
Massimo Girotti (Gino) and Clara Calamai (Giovanna) play illicit lovers whose relationship is beginning to descend into guilt and mistrust.
Gino (Massimo Girotti), a handsome drifter, and Giovanna (Clara Calamai), the beautiful and desperately unhappy wife of Bragana (Juan de Landa), an elderly and boorish innkeeper, embark on an affair. Their passion leads them to kill Bragana, after which their relationship drifts toward inevitable tragedy. Visconti took James M. Cain’s study of fatal lust in the rural US, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and brilliantly transplanted it to provincial Italy. Because it was wartime, Visconti was able to buy the rights of the novel and therefore retained only the outline of the original and introduced a new character, whose presence further disrupts the already guilt-ridden central relationship. Although having professional actors, a well-defined plot, and visual formality make it less neorealistic than its successors, the film’s down-to-earth characters and evident sensuality Film poster, 1942 contrasted vastly with the predominant bourgeois melodramas of the day. Initially Credits cut and then withdrawn by the Fascist production ICI Rome censors, the film only reappeared after the Libero Solaroli producer war. Cain’s novel had already been made Luchino Visconti, Antonio Pietrangeli, screenplay into a film in France—Le Dernier Tournant Giuseppe De Santis, Mario Alicata, (1939). It was remade in Hollywood in Gianni Puccini 1945 and 1981, and then in Hungary cinematography Aldo Tonti, Domenico Scala in 1998, under the title of Passion.
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Children of Paradise Marcel Carné 1945 Marcel Carné described his film as a “homage to the theater” and the script breathes with the life and soul of the French theatrical tradition. The larger-than-life characters, the witty and profound dialogue, the narrative skill and sweep of the whole production have placed this on many critics’ lists as one of the greatest films ever made.
This film has the breadth and complexity of a novel, although its action and characters are confined to the world of Parisian theater in the 1840s. “Paradis” in the French title— Les Enfants du Paradis—refers to the upper seats in the theater where poorer spectators sat). Among the crowds that throng the boulevards in the film are the classical actor Frederic Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), the mime-artist Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), and the criminal Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand)—all three are based on real historical figures. Each of these men is in love with the sensuous
Film poster, 1945
and free-spirited courtesan Garance (Arletty). Making her screen debut is Maria Casarès, as the wife of Debureau. The film came into being because the Nazi occupation of Paris forced Carné and scriptwriter Jacques Prévert to make “escapist” films, with no political content. Nevertheless, some commentators viewed the character Garance as a representation of Free France. Today, the film is seen as a richly entertaining and intensely romantic evocation of an epoch. Ironically, Arletty’s career suffered owing to a liaison with a Nazi officer. She was put under house arrest, forbidden to work for three years, and was not invited to the film’s premiere. The great mime artist, Baptiste Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), performs with his father Anselme (Etienne Ducroux), and the alluring Garance (Arletty).
Credits production
S.N. Pathé Cinema
screenplay
Jacques Prévert
cinematography Marc Fossard, Roger Hubert production design music
Léon Barsacq, Raymond Gabutti Alexandre Trauner Joseph Kosma
costume design Antoine Mayo
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A Matter of Life and Death Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 1946
In their fourth collaboration as producers, directors, and writers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger delivered a richly comic film, which juxtaposed highly stylized fantasy with a morale-boosting version of Britain during World War II.
A British pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven) survives a plane crash only to discover that the powers above have made a mistake and that he was actually scheduled to die. As he fights for his life on the operating table under the loving eyes of June, an American radio operator (Kim Hunter), a debate takes place in Heaven about whether or not to save him. Avoiding the obvious, the directors decided to shoot the scenes on Earth in Technicolor and the sequences “up there” in black-and-white. The link between the two worlds, the one that exists in reality and the other in the mind of the pilot, is wittily represented by a mechanical staircase that uses modern technology to express a fantasy. One of the underlying intentions of the plot was to celebrate the Anglo-American alliance that prevailed during World War II.
In the climactic sequence, a celestial judge and jury use the “stairway to heaven” to visit the unconscious Peter Carter and decide his fate.
Back in the earthly realm, here represented by color, June (Kim Hunter) comforts injured airman Peter Carter (David Niven) before he goes into the operating theater.
Credits production
The Archers
producers
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
screenplay
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
cinematography Jack Cardiff production design
Alfred Junge
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It’s a Wonderful Life Frank Capra 1946 Director Frank Capra called It’s a Wonderful Life his favorite film and it is certainly loved by most audiences. Its story aims to impart the real meaning of the Christmas season and has similarities to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It has certainly justified its perennial screening during the festive season.
The impetus and structure of It’s a Wonderful Life recall Capra’s pre-war successes, including Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), in which the heroes represent a civic ideal only to be opposed by the forces of corruption until they are redeemed by society at large. The character of George Bailey (James Stewart) embodies the quintessential Capraesque “little man.” He falls in love with Mary (Donna Reed), but financial troubles send him into a spiral of despair. He teeters on the verge of suicide when he is rescued by Clarence (Henry Travers), james stewart James Stewart (1908–97), one of the screen’s most natural actors, appeared so relaxed and easygoing that his very real talent was taken for granted. Tall, thin, and gangly with a slow distinctive drawl, his was a likeable film persona with which audiences found it easy to identify. Combining sensitivity with intelligence, Stewart was at his best with three directors: Frank Capra, who used his ability to express naivety; Alfred Hitchcock, who found his obsessive side; and Anthony Mann, who gave him the chance to reveal a rugged physicality in a series of Westerns in the 1950s.
Credits studio
RKO
production
Liberty Films
producer
Frank Capra
screenplay
Frank Capra, Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, from the story The Greatest Gift by Philip Doren Stern
cinematography Joseph Walker, Joseph Biroc music
Dmitri Tiomkin
his guardian angel, who shows him how different the world would have been if he had never been born—Bedford Falls, the idealized small US town in which Bailey grew up, has become a cesspool of big city ways. The film was found too whimsical and sentimental for post-war audiences, and failed on its initial release. In the celebrated final scene of It’s A Wonderful Life, Bailey (Stewart) realizes the value of the love of his family, having been rescued by his guardian angel.
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Bicycle Thieves Vittorio De Sica 1948 Of all the films dubbed “Italian neorealist,” Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (Ladri Di Biciclette) is the most beloved and the most moving. The film is still as poignant today, despite improved social conditions in Italy, because it contains one of the most believable portrayals of a father-son relationship on screen.
Filmed on location in the working-class districts of Rome, Bicycle Thieves tells the simple story of an unemployed man who is offered a job as a bill sticker, provided he has a bicycle. He borrows money from a pawnbroker to buy a bike, but it is stolen on his first day of work. He then spends the day with his small son, desperately searching for it and the thief. He discovers that the thief was just as needy as he is and considers stealing a bicycle himself, thus conveying the message that anybody is capable of theft in certain circumstances. After De Sica’s success in the US with Shoeshine (1946), David O. Selznick offered to produce Bicycle Thieves with a star like Cary Grant, but De Sica refused, raised the money himself, and continued to work with non-actors in real locations. It paid off because it was this un-Hollywood quality that gave the film its wide appeal. Italian neorealism The origins of Italian neorealism can be traced to the “realist” or verismo style of writings of Verga and others. It influenced Italian silent cinema, which portrayed human suffering in natural settings. The neorealists of the 1940s returned to these themes, reacting against frivolity. Films, such as Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine (1946), Roberto Rossellini’s Paisà (1946), Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema (1948), and Giuseppe de Santis’ Bitter Rice (1949), dealt with the problems of working class people and the social conditions that caused them. Roma, Città Aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945) was an early neorealist film, shot in real locations, and using local people as well as professional actors.
Bewilderment and despair shows on the face of Bruno (Enzo Staiola). The boy joins his father as he searches for his stolen bicycle, showing his filial loyalty and trust.
Credits production
Produzioni De Sica
producer
Giuseppe Amato, Vittorio De Sica
screenplay
Cesare Zavattini, Oreste Biancoli, Suso D’Amico, Vittorio De Sica, Adolfo Franci, Gerardo Guerrieri
cinematography Carlo Montuori awards
Acadamy Award: Best Film in a foreign language
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Letter from an Unknown Woman Max Ophüls 1948
The second of German émigré Max Ophüls’ four Hollywood movies, Letter from an Unknown Woman, is set in a lovingly evoked turn-of-the-century Vienna. It is his only one that came close to capturing his sumptuous and sensuous European work. It is that rare thing — a Hollywood art movie.
In this bittersweet romance of unrequited love, Lisa Berndle, in a touching performance by Joan Fontaine, hero-worships her handsome, concert-pianist neighbor, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), from a distance. After several years they meet and have a short-lived affair, but he disappears from her life again. The film, recounted in flashbacks, suggests that Lisa, blind to reality, occupies a romantic dream world in which her love can never be fulfilled. Seen from a female perspective, however, it also reveals the shallowness of many men’s perception of women. Ophüls changed the original ending of Stefan Zweig’s story by sending the hero to certain death in a duel. On its release in the US, the film was dismissed as too sentimental, but it was later celebrated as one of the most evocative “European” films ever made in Hollywood.
“By the time you finish reading this letter, I’ll be dead” opening lines Lisa (Joan Fontaine), in her modest apartment, reflects on her glamorous encounter with Stefan.
Stefan (Louis Jourdan), the selfabsorbed concert pianist, finally realizes the consequences of his actions as he reads the deathbed letter from Lisa.
Credits production
Rampart
producer
John Houseman
studio
UniversalInternational
screenplay
Howard Koch from the story by Stefan Zweig
cinematography Franz Planer
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Passport to Pimlico Henry Cornelius 1949 A tribute to the war effort and the British character, Passport to Pimlico exudes good humor and social observation. It is also an expression of hope in the post-war period.
In postwar Britain in Pimlico, a small district of London, a wartime bomb explodes and reveals treasures from Burgundy, France. Among these is a manuscript that claims, according to local historian Professor Hatton-Jones (Margaret Rutherford), that Pimlico is by ancient law a Burgundian possession. The inhabitants are no longer bound by wartime restrictions and austerity; instead they can operate outside British law by destroying their ration books and drinking at all hours. Border crossings are set up, and
Credits studio
Ealing
producer
Michael Balcon, E.V.H. Emmett
screenplay
T.E.B. Clarke
cinematography Lionel Banes
customs officers patrol local trains. An Ealing comedy, this delightful film shows ordinary people in a small community making extraordinary things happen. It pokes fun at the new Labor government, but is too gentle to be classified as satire; when Pimlico is forced to rejoin Britain, the spirit of compromise is celebrated. Fire wardens Shirley (Barbara Murray) and Arthur (Stanley Holloway) discover a centuries-old document, which identifies Pimlico as French territory, not British.
ealing comedy Although Ealing Studios, situated in west London’s suburbs, made dramas and war films, they will always be associated with the particular brand of comedy they produced between 1947 and 1955. With rare exceptions, they used original scripts from the studio’s own writers, principally T.E.B. Clarke, who wrote Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). They generally dealt with a small group of people in a naturalistic social setting, making much of the indomitable, if somewhat idealized, British spirit.
The Ladykillers (1955), starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, marked the end of a short period of black comedy at Ealing Studios, which began with Hue and Cry (1947).
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The Third Man Carol Reed 1949 One of the most effective British thrillers, the look of The Third Man derives from German Expressionism, Italian neorealism, and the work of Orson Welles. He appears for only about 20 minutes in the film, but his unforgettable presence is felt throughout.
Developed by Graham Greene from an idea jotted down on an envelope, this dark, yet playful, film studies the effect of postwar economic and social corruption on war-torn Vienna. It was the first British film to be shot almost entirely on location. The sense of locale, making the shattered city an integral part of the action, and the superb, moody, black-and-white cinematography all add to the film’s very specific atmosphere. The moment, more than halfway through the film, when Welles — as the presumeddead racketeer Harry Lime — reappears, is legendary. In the sequence, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is searching for his friend through the nocturnal streets of
Carol Reed told Robert Krasker to keep the camera at an angle. This technique heightens the drama of the moment when Harry Lime (Orson Welles) reappears.
Vienna. A cat miaows in a doorway. Martins turns and, as Anton Karas’ exciting zither music swells, we see the cat licking a pair of shoes. The camera rises and Welles’ face emerges into the light. The film begins and ends with the same scene: the funeral and burial of Harry Lime. The first funeral pronounces him the unfortunate victim of an accident — but the second identifies him as an unrepentant mass murderer. Credits production
British Lion, London Film Production
producer
Carol Reed
screenplay
Graham Greene
cinematography Robert Krasker art director
Vincent Korda
music
Anton Karas
awards
Academy Award: Best Black-and-White Cinematography; Cannes: Best Film
In the famous ferris-wheel showdown scene, Harry Lime offers Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten, see left) a partnership in his illicit penicillin trade.
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Orpheus Jean Cocteau 1950 This witty and haunting film can be considered the centrepiece of Jean Cocteau’s entire oeuvre. It forms part of his Orphic trilogy, along with Blood of the Poet and The Testament of Orpheus. Cocteau himself described Orpheus (Orphée) as “a detective story, bathed on one side in myth, and on the other, the supernatural.”
The poet Orpheus (Jean Marais) falls in love with the Princess of Death (Maria Casarés). In turn, her chauffeur (François Périer), the angel Heurtebise, is in love with the poet’s wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa). Heurtebise takes Eurydice to the Underworld through a looking-glass, with Orpheus following to bring her back. “Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you’ll see Death at work like bees in a hive of glass,” says the angel. Although Cocteau uses reverse slow-motion and negative images to evoke the Underworld, the domestic life of Mr. and Mrs. Orpheus is filmed “realistically.” This elaborates the theme of the poet caught between the real and the imaginary in a perfect marriage between Greek legend and Cocteau’s own mythology. Orpheus (Jean Marais) holds open a book, showing a photograph of Eurydice (Maria Déa). The presence of Eurydice in person and in a photograph reflects the subtle interplay of reality and illusion in the film.
Orpheus (Jean Marais) presses his face against a mirror before he enters the Underworld through the glass to search for his wife Eurydice (Maria Déa).
Credits production
Films du Palais-Royal
producer
André Paulvé
screenplay
Jean Cocteau based on his play of the same name
cinematography Nicholas Hayer production design
Jean d’Eaubonne
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Rashomon Akira Kurosawa 1950
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon was the first Japanese film to be shown widely in the west. This makes it significant beyond its indubitable qualities because it opened the way for even greater works by Kurosawa.
In feudal Japan, a samurai named Takehiro (MasaYuki Mori) travels through the woods with his wife Masako (Machiko Kyo). She is raped and he is killed by a bandit (Toshiro Mifune). At the trial, the incident is described in four conflicting, yet equally credible, versions by the bandit, the wife, a priest (Minoru Chiaki), and a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), demonstrating the subjective nature of truth. The film’s popularity was due to its intriguing story and the forceful performances, as much as for its unfamiliar background. By the time Rashomon (named after the ruined stone gate where the tale is told) awakened western audiences to Japanese cinema,
This combat scene in a wood displays stunning light and shade effects.
Kurosawa was already an established director in his own country. The film was remade in Hollywood as the Western called The Outrage (1964), one of the three Kurosawa samurai movies to be adapted to the Hollywood genre. point of view Point of view (P.O.V.) is a shot filmed at such a camera angle that an object or an action appears to be seen through the eyes of a particular character. This is achieved by placing the camera beside the actor or at the spot he or she would occupy on set. The other actors look at the point where the character is supposed to be, rather than at the camera. One extreme example of P.O.V. was Robert Montgomery’s The Lady in the Lake (1946), in which a subjective camera was used to tell the whole story as seen by the film’s protagonist Philip Marlowe.
Credits studio
Daiei
producer
Minoru Jingo
screenplay
Akiro Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto from two short novels by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa awards
Academy Award: Honorary award for “most outstanding foreign language film released in the USA in 1951”; Venice: Best Film
Masako cradles a dying Takehiro. Viewed through the multiple perspectives of Rashomon, the events leading to Takehiro’s death reveal the relativity of truth.
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Singin’ in the Rain Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen 1952 Considered the apogee of MGM musicals, Singin’ in the Rain is a delightful mixture of nostalgia and affectionate satire on the turmoil and triumphs that marked the transition from silent films to the talkies. The era is splendidly conjured up by the period settings and costumes, and a series of wonderfully staged numbers.
Credits studio
MGM
producer
Arthur Freed
screenplay
Betty Comden, Adolph Green
cinematography Harold Rosson music
Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown, Comden, Green, Roger Edens
Producer Arthur Freed, the supremo plot, ingénue Debbie Reynolds, sparkling of the MGM movie musical, brought in her first major role as Kathy Selden, has together an expert team. Many of the to dub the voice of Lina Lamont, a movie songs he had previously written, along star from the silent era (unforgettably with Nacio Herb Brown, for Hollywood played by Jean Hagen), because Lina’s review of 1929 were integrated into voice was found to be risibly squeaky for sound movies. Ironically, Debbie’s singing the plot — including the liberating title number. This famous song showed off voice was, in turn, dubbed by Betty Royce the balletic and hoofing skills of Gene — who remained uncredited. Kelly as Don Lockwood to memorable effect. Kelly’s Gene Kelly skills were also in evidence When Gene Kelly in the “Broadway Ballet,” (1912–96) sang while Donald O’Connor’s “Gotta Dance” in electrifying comedy-dance Singin’ In The Rain, routine, “Make ’Em he was uttering his credo. He danced Laugh,” was the peak of his career. In one part of the in 19 Hollywood Fantasy dance sequence during which Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is bewitched by the shapely, seductive nightclub dancer and gangster’s moll (Cyd Charisse)
musicals between 1942 and 1957, establishing himself, along with Fred Astaire, as one of the greatest dancers in motion picture history. Kelly also shone as a choreographer and director, continually widening his scope in films such as Cover Girl (1944) and Anchors Aweigh (1945).
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Tokyo Story Yasujiro Ozu 1953
One of the finest films of Yasujiro Ozu’s last decade, and one which continually appears in “best ever” lists of critics, Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story) belatedly made the Japanese director’s name in the west, mainly when it was released in the USA in 1972, almost 20 years after it was made.
Chishu Ryu (left), Setsuko Hara, and Chieko Higashiyama in a domestic scene, shot at floor level.
An elderly couple (Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama), who live by the sea in south Japan, pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. No one shows them much affection, except for Noriko (Setsuko Hara), their widowed daughter-in-law. “Be kind to your parents when they are alive. Filial piety cannot reach beyond the grave;” so says a simple Japanese proverb. But instead, this old couple are made to feel a burden on their grown-up children. When they return home, the wife dies, leaving her husband to face an unknown future. Tokyo Story was a prime example of shomingeki, defined as a family melodrama. Yet this radiant, gentle, heartbreaking, and perceptive investigation into the tensions within a family, the generation gap, old age, The poster for the now-defunct Academy Cinema in London. and the pressures of city life, is far from the west’s idea of melodrama. There are remarkable Credits performances in the film and a creative use of sound — the chugging boats, the production Shochiku noise of trains — and ravishing exteriors Takeshi Yamamoto producer punctuating the subtle interior sequences. Yasujiro Ozu, Kôgo Noda screenplay Ozu shoots his story with as little camera cinematography Yunharu Atsuta movement as possible, to attempt to make Takanobu (or Kojun) Saitô music perfect the balance of every scene.
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On the Waterfront Elia Kazan 1954
A shatteringly powerful melodrama of social conscience, On the Waterfront was shot on location in New York. It reveals Elia Kazan’s mastery in dealing with realistic settings and personal conflicts, highlighted by a naturalistic, improvisational style of acting, which Kazan brought to cinema from the Actors Studio.
The plot deals with a group of dock laborers in the clutches of an unscrupulous union boss (Lee J. Cobb), who eventually confront their exploiters with the aid of a former union henchman and washed-up boxer Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando, who at first balked at doing the role because Kazan had named sympathizers during the anti-Communist investigations at the time), a liberal priest (Karl Malden), and a courageous young woman (Eva Marie Saint). Brando’s deeply felt characterization dominates the film. Especially memorable is the scene played in a taxi between Terry and his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), in which he speaks the poignant lines, “I coulda had class. I coulda been somebody. I coulda been a contender instead of a bum, which is what I am.” Boris Kaufman’s photography and Leonard Bernstein’s music greatly enhance the mood of the film. Credits studio
Columbia
producer
Sam Spiegel
screenplay
Budd Schulberg
cinematography Boris Kaufman music
Leonard Bernstein
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actress (Eva Marie Saint), Best Story and Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Richard Day), Best Editing (Gene Milford). Venice Silver Prize.
Edie (Saint) talks to Terry (Brando) on a tenement rooftop beside a pigeon coop. The pigeon coop belonged to Edie’s brother, for whose death Terry is partly responsible.
marlon brando Modern film acting began with Marlon Brando (1924–2004). Unlike the stars of an earlier generation, Brando approached each part differently. Some of his performances may have been mannered, but he brought an intelligence and intensity to each role. Only Brando could have asked for £3 million for his ten-minute appearance in Superman (1978) and top billing for appearing just before the end of Apocalypse Now (1979).
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All That Heaven Allows Douglas Sirk 1955 Although Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows has the appearance of a lush soap opera, and is enjoyable at that level, it is also a thinly disguised, scathing critique of American suburbia and a potent analysis of a middleclass woman’s social oppression.
Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), a still attractive fortyish widow in a prominent social position in a New England town, is ostracized by her peers and condemned by her grown-up children when she becomes romantically involved with her gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson, Sirk’s favorite actor), a much younger man. One of the most effective scenes is when Wyman’s children, after trying to break up her relationship with Hudson, give her a television set as a Christmas present to occupy her time. The sequence ends with her reflection on the television’s blank screen as she watches it in her Widow Cary (Jane Wyman) defies convention and finds troubled happiness in the strong arms of her gardener Ron (Rock Hudson).
Film poster, 1955
empty house. The fluid camerawork, the inventive use of color, and the intensity of the performances transcend the usual “chick flick” format. Rainer Werner Fassbinder used the film as a model for his film Fear Eats the Soul (1973), and Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven (2003) paid direct homage to it. Credits production
Universal International
producer
Ross Hunter
screenplay
Peg Fenwick
cinematography Russell Metty
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Rebel Without a Cause Nicholas Ray 1955 Rebel Without a Cause, a disenchanted cry of youth, alienated from the adult world, will always be synonymous with its star, James Dean, in the role that did most to create his image and posthumous fame.
The need to be loved and understood as an individual is at the core of this inappropriately titled film, which focuses on three youngsters: “Plato,” (Sal Mineo) whose divorced parents have abandoned him, Judy (Natalie Wood), who feels her father has withdrawn his love, and Jim (James Dean), who is being “torn apart” by his domineering mother and weak father. Unlike many of the teen rebel films which followed, it places the blame on the parents rather than the teenagers. The main action takes place over one day, and includes a knife fight, a “chicken run,” (a high-speed race in hot rod cars to the edge of a cliff) and a love affair Credits studio
Warner Bros.
producer
David Weisbart
screenplay
Stewart Stern
cinematography Ernest Haller
James Dean Actor Box What is remarkable about the icon James Dean (1931–55) is that his fame rests on three movies — East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant — all made in the year of his death. In these, he was perfect as a complex young man, with his tortured postures, hesitant speech, and animal sensitivity.
between Jim and Judy. Nicholas Ray, making his first film in CinemaScope, a format in which he would become a master, caught the immediate and timeless qualities of frustrated adolescence. Strangely, all three of the film’s young stars died violent and unnatural deaths: Dean was killed in a car crash, Mineo was murdered, and Wood drowned in mysterious circumstances. When Jim (James Dean), far right, goes to the police station after Buzz, a teenage gang leader, has been killed in a “chicken run” with him, he meets Buzz’s fellow gang members coming out.
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Pather Panchali Satyajit Ray 1955
Out of an Indian film industry almost entirely dominated by formulaic, escapist musical films, Satyajit Ray suddenly appeared on the international scene with this masterpiece in the regional language of Bengali. Pather Panchali entirely altered notions of Indian cinema.
Shot in natural surroundings with non-professional actors, Pather Panchali revolves around Apu, a young boy who lives in a small Bengal village with his parents, his sister Durga, and aged aunt on the borderline of poverty. The title means “song of the little road,” and the motif throughout is travel, of vistas beyond the confines of the tiny rural community. There are the traveling players viewed with wonder by the child, and the lyrical sequence when Apu and his sister run through the long grass towards the railroad line to see a train taking people to big cities. The boy was to take this journey himself in the film that followed — Aparajito (1956), the second part of the trilogy, which concludes with Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959). Ray had difficulty raising funds for his debut film, and was about to abandon shooting after 18 months when he was rescued by the West Bengal government.
Durga (Uma Das Gupta) offers a stolen guava to her old aunt Indir Thakrun (Chunibala Devi).
Credits production
Government of West Bengal
screenplay
Satyajit Ray from the novel by Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee
cinematography Subrata Mitra music
Ravi Shankar
Kanu Banerjee (Harihar Ray), Apu’s father, struggles to feed his family.
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The Night of the Hunter Charles Laughton 1955
The actor Charles Laughton’s only film as director is an eerily beautiful parable of good and evil, its bold visual style derived from German Expressionism and American primitive paintings. The presence of Lillian Gish as Rachel, who represents the spirit of healing, echoes the rural dramas of D.W. Griffith.
The plot focuses on Harry Powell, a psychopathic woman-hating preacher (Robert Mitchum) who obtains money for “the Lord’s work” by marrying and murdering rich widows. Powell sets his sights on Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), whose imprisoned husband has hidden a huge sum of money. Only the couple’s two children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) know where the money is. The children flee from Harry and escape by river, finally finding refuge with an old woman, Rachel (Lillian Gish) who protects them with a rifle. Evil — Powell — is destroyed by the forces of good and innocence as represented by the old lady, the children, nature, and animals, all of which are atmospherically
With love and hate tattooed on his hands, Robert Mitchum produces an unforgettable performance as a psychopath, posing as a pastor, hunting his prey.
photographed. The extraordinary Mitchum pursuing the children through a nocturnal landscape, Gish guarding a brood of orphans like a mother hen, and the murdered Winters’ hair streaming out underwater are some of cinema’s most haunting images. Sadly, this unique film’s failure at the box office dissuaded Laughton from ever directing another film. Credits studio
United Artists
producer
Paul Gregory
screenplay
James Agee (rewritten by Laughton, uncredited) from the novel by Davis Grubb
cinematography Stanley Cortez
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The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman 1957 Ingmar Bergman’s 17th film set him firmly in the pantheon of great directors. Shot in only 35 days, this powerful morality tale depicts in luminous images derived from early church paintings the cruelty of medieval life, including witch burning and flagellations, as well as the joy and noble aspirations of humankind.
Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a 14th-century knight, returns from the Crusades with his earthy and cynical squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) to find Sweden ravaged by the plague. In his search for God, Block meets a group of strolling players, suffering peasants, and Death (Bengt Ekerot), with whom he plays a deadly game of chess in an attempt to save his life. The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet), which Bergman called “a film oratorio,” is one of the first in the director’s mature Credits production
Svensk Filmindustri
producer
Allan Ekelund
screenplay
Bergman from his dramatic sketch Wood Painting
cinematography Gunnar Fischer
Silhouetted against the sky, Death is seen holding his scythe and leading the knight and his followers in a medieval dance macabre.
works. It is shot in a highly individual style, full of religious imagery, which, paradoxically, expresses a Godless universe. The film also explores human morality, and Bergman uses the figure of Death to express his thoughts about existence and religion. Tall, gaunt, and imposing, Von Sydow made his mark in cinema with his portrayal of a man in spiritual turmoil. Also in the cast was Bibi Andersson, who made 13 films with Bergman. Death (Bengt Ekerot) plays chess with the knight (Max Von Sydow), who hopes to extend his time on Earth by beating the Grim Reaper.
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Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock 1958
Although Vertigo was a commercial and critical flop when first released, the film’s reputation has grown gradually over time, and it is now widely considered to be Alfred Hitchcock’s finest achievement. The reassessment has come about because of a deeper understanding of Hitchcock’s films, both in theme and style, of which Vertigo is a supreme example.
Private detective John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) quits the San Francisco police force because he has developed a pathological fear of heights. He is hired by a friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) to follow his suicidal wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) around San Francisco. Scottie falls in love with Madeleine as he watches her day after day, but is unable to prevent her fatal leap from a bell tower, because of his fear of heights. After she dies, the distraught Scottie meets Judy (also played by Novak) who reminds him of Madeleine. Scottie tries to remake Judy, a brunette, into the exact image of the blonde he had loved. Vertigo is an absorbing study of sexual obsession, which makes the twists in the plot almost irrelevant. With its central tragic love story, it is one of the few Hitchcock films to move audiences emotionally. Vertigo has also been acclaimed for its innovative use of camera techniques, such as forward zoom and reverse tracking shots, to intensify the atmosphere of suspense. Seldom has picturesque San Francisco looked so alluring as in the sharp-edged Technicolor photography of the film, nor has Bernard Herrmann’s yearning music ever been so effective. Kim Novak’s cool, somnambulist manner accords perfectly with the film’s dreamlike atmosphere as she lures James Stewart to his doom.
In the opening scene, James Stewart is a plainclothes police officer clinging to a rooftop gutter, frozen by fear.
Credits studio
Paramount
producers
Alfred Hitchcock and Herbert Coleman
screenplay
Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor
cinematography Robert Burks music
Bernard Herrmann
title design
Saul Bass
Poster designed by Saul Bass
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Ashes and Diamonds Andrzej Wajda 1958 Polish cinema burst upon the world with Andrzej Wajda’s lively “War Trilogy” about the resistance in Warsaw carried out by young people. The third part, Ashes and Diamonds (Popiól i Diament), which followed A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1957), is perhaps Wajda’s finest work, its enigmatic twilight world communicating the “Polish experience” during World War II far beyond the country’s frontiers.
On the last day of World War II in 1945, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), the youngest member of a Nationalist underground movement in a provincial Polish town, is ordered to kill Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzezynski), the new Communist district secretary. As he waits in a hotel during the night, he meets and falls in love with a barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzanowska) and learns that there is something more to life than killing — the possibility of love and happiness. He is soon torn between his conscience and loyalty to the cause he has lived for. The assassination scene, the climactic slow-motion dance to Polish music known as Polonaise, and Maciek’s death scene are all stunningly realized. In a complex characterization, the brilliant Cybulski, his eyes hidden by dark glasses, embodies the sceptical new generation, establishing his reputation as “the Polish James Dean.” The actor was killed while running for a train in 1967 at the age of 40.
Credits production
Film Polski
screenplay
Jerzy Andrzejewski, Andrzej Wajda from the novel by Andrzejewski
cinematography Jerzy Wojcik music
Jan Krenz, Michal Kleofas Oginski
The remarkable Zbigniew Cybulski as Maciek, having been shot during a chase, besmirches white sheets hanging on a line with his blood.
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The 400 Blows François Truffaut 1959
Truffaut’s first feature film, made when he was 27, was based on his own deprived childhood. It was an immediate success, winning the Best Director’s prize at Cannes. It also helped to launch the French New Wave and started a series of films following the character of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) through adolescence, marriage, fatherhood, and divorce.
A harsh critic writing for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Truffaut was challenged by his movie-producer fatherin-law to make a film himself. The 400 Blows was the triumphant result. A 12-year-old Parisian boy, Antoine Doinel (Jean Pierre Léaud), neglected by his mother and stepfather, plays truant and takes to petty crime. He is placed in a reform school, but escapes to the coast. The film has a wonderful free-wheeling quality as it follows its young hero through the streets of Paris. There was an extraordinary rapport between the director Nouvelle Vague and Léaud, his alter ego, This term described the “new and much of the film’s wave” of directors who made quality is due to the child’s their first feature films in France spontaneous performance. in the years following 1959. The The freeze of his face main impetus for the movement in France came from the criticsas he runs towards the turned-directors of the sea is one of cinema’s influential magazine Cahiers most celebrated endings. du Cinéma, headed by François The title comes from Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. a colloquial expression Jean-Luc Godard was perhaps faire les quatre cents coups, the greatest and most radical of meaning “to get into the French New Wave directors. a lot of trouble.”
Jean-Pierre Léaud (fourth left) as Antoine Doinel lines up at the reform school, where he is sent for stealing a typewriter.
Credits production
Les Films du Carrosse
producer
Georges Charlot
screenplay
Marcel Moussy from an original story by Truffaut
cinematography Henri Decaë music
Jean Constantin
award
Cannes: Best Director
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Some Like It Hot Billy Wilder 1959 A high watermark in American post-war comedy, Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot is an amalgam of parody, slapstick, farce, and sophistication. Modern in its liberal sexual approach, the film is nostalgic in its tribute to the screwball comedies and gangster movies of the 1930s.
Two jazz musicians (Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon), on the run from gangsters, disguise themselves as “Josephine” and “Daphne” and join an all-girl band on the way to Florida. On the train, they become friends with Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band’s singer. Complications occur when “Josephine” falls in love with Sugar, and “Daphne” is courted by millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown). When “Daphne” finally admits he is a man, Osgood replies, in one of the most memorable punchlines in cinema, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” Curtis and Lemmon give two of Hollywood’s best cross-dressing portrayals, with Curtis offering a triple treat — as his wise-guy self, as a woman with a dark wig and a high-pitched voice, and as an oil tycoon who sounds like Cary Grant. Lemmon, in high-heeled shoes, flapper’s frock, and blond wig, is hilarious in his role, identifying himself closely with his female character. Monroe brings sensitivity to her role and sings two zippy 1920s numbers. Film poster, 1959
Credits studio
United Artists
production
Mirisch Company
screenplay
Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
cinematography Charles Lang music
Adolph Deutsch
awards
Academy Award: Costume Design
Marilyn Monroe The troubled life of Norma Jean Baker (1926–62) — her unhappy childhood, her marriages, and the tragic circumstances of her death — are probably as familiar as her films. Marilyn Monroe burst into the public consciousness and stardom in 1953 singing “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the same year she appeared in How to Marry A Millionaire alongside Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall and then made The Seven Year Itch (1955). By this time she was a box-office draw and her performances showed that she could not only sing but had a comic touch. In dramas, such as Bus Stop (1956) and The Misfits (1961), she revealed her special blend of vulnerability and sexuality that made her a screen legend, and she is as popular today as she was in her lifetime.
Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), in rehearsal with her band on the train to Florida, belts out “Runnin’ Wild.” Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon can be seen over her right shoulder.
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Breathless Jean-Luc Godard 1960
This greatly influential film made the anarchic Jean-Paul Belmondo a star, revitalized Jean Seberg’s career, and established 29-year-old Jean-Luc Godard, in his first feature, as a leading member of the French New Wave movement.
Patricia (Jean Seberg) talks to petty criminal Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who seeks refuge from the police in her Paris apartment.
The story of Michel Poiccard (Belmondo), a young, dashing car thief who kills a policeman and goes on the run with Patricia Franchini (Seberg), his American girlfriend, was based on an idea by François Truffaut and dedicated to Monogram Pictures, Hollywood’s allB movie studio. Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) attempts to recapture the directness and economy of the American gangster movie by the superb use of location shooting, jump cuts (which eliminated the usual establishing shots), and a hand-held camera. The cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who worked on many of the French New Wave films, was pushed around in a wheelchair, and used as a camera dollie, following the characters down the street and Film poster, 1960 into buildings. In order to achieve an Credits immediacy in the performances, Godard cued the actors, who were not allowed studio Impéria to learn their lines, during the takes. A Georges de Beauregard producer former critic, Godard consciously broke Jean-Luc Godard screenplay film conventions but at the same time cinematography Raoul Coutard paid homage to what he regarded as Berlin: Best Director award worth emulating in Hollywood cinema.
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La Dolce Vita Federico Fellini 1960 Credits production
Pathé Consortium Cinema, Riama Film
producer
Guiseppe Amato
screenplay
Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi, Ennio Flaiano
cinematography Otello Martelli music
Nino Rota
costume design Piero Gherardi awards
Cannes: Best Film
Causing a sensation when it was released, Federico Fellini’s most (in)famous film is an impressive three-hour, wide-screen panorama of decadent contemporary society in Rome. It introduced into English the expressions “la dolce vita” and “paparazzi”— the latter now synonymous with intrusive photographers who chase celebrities.
The film’s story follows jaded gossip columnist and would-be serious writer Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) through seven nights and seven days, as he rootlessly and amorally wanders around the hot spots of Rome in search of himself. At the metaphoric ending, he glimpses innocence in the form of a young girl on the beach at dawn, but a stretch of water separates them and he cannot hear what she is saying. There is imaginative brilliance in the notorious set pieces—a vast statue of Christ is flown over Rome; Marcello and a bored heiress pick up a prostitute for a ménage à trois; a high society orgy takes place, at which the hostess Nadia (Nadia Gray) performs a striptease, and Marcello sticks feathers on a woman and rides her like a horse. Especially memorable is Anita Ekberg as blonde starlet Sylvia, who calls out to Marcello in seductive tones at the striptease party.
Film poster, 1960
Anita Ekberg, as American starlet Sylvia, wanders tipsily into the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
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Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Karel Reisz 1960
One of the key works of British cinema of the post-war period, and arguably the best and most honest of the British New Wave movies that dealt with working class life, Karel Reisz’s first feature Saturday Night and Sunday Morning made Albert Finney, as the rebellious anti-hero, into a new kind of star.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. That’s one thing you learn. What I’m out for is a good time. All the rest is propaganda,” says defiant Arthur Seaton (Finney), who works at a lathe in the Raleigh factory in Nottingham, in the north of England. He has an affair with Brenda (Rachel Roberts), the wife of his co-worker, who later finds out. Brenda gets pregnant and in the meantime Arthur has met Doreen (Shirley Anne Field) in a pub and marriage soon threatens him. Albert Finney’s “angry free cinema In the mid-1950s, a group of British film-makers challenged orthodoxy in society and cinema. They stressed the social responsibility of the artist to make films free from commercial considerations, and to express the “significance of the everyday.” Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, and Tony Richardson were connected with the “Angry Young Men” of literature and so-called “Kitchen Sink” drama in theatre. This poster for Tony Richardson’s film adaptation of Look Back In Anger aptly reflects the impact of John Osborne’s revolutionary play.
Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney), an amoral, disenchanted, blue-collar worker, goes to bed with the married Brenda (Rachel Roberts) while her husband is working a night shift.
Credits production
Woodfall Film Productions
producer
Tony Richardson, Harry Salzman
screenplay
Alan Sillitoe from his novel
cinematography Freddie Francis music
Johnny Dankworth
young man” gives the film a punch as he reacts against his surroundings with energy and humor. The film, with wellrounded, recognizable working class characters rarely seen in British films until then, splendidly evokes the drab midland industrial setting — the factories and back streets, canal banks, and pubs — and its effect on human relationships.
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L’Avventura Michelangelo Antonioni 1960 After five features in ten years, director Antonioni’s style reached its maturity in L’Avventura (The Adventure). A minimal plot, the long takes and slow tracking shots, limited dialogue, and strong relationship between the characters and their environment redefined views of time and space in cinema.
Anna (Lea Massari) and her fiancé Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) visit a Sicilian island with a group of wealthy people. After an argument with Sandro, Anna disappears. Her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) joins Sandro in a search for her and they become lovers. The bitter ending is not a resolution of the conventional type. Antonioni’s refusal to explain Anna’s disappearance outraged and disconcerted many on its first release, although this did not stop the film from becoming a success. What matters in the plot is the effect the unsolved mystery has on the alienated characters, especially the ravishing Vitti in the first of many roles for Antonioni.
Credits producer
Cino Del Duca, Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim, Amato Pennasilico, Luciano Perugia
screenplay
Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, Tonino Guerra
cinematography Aldo Scarvarda music
Giovanni Fusco
Best friends Anna (Massari), left, and Claudia (Vitti) prepare to go off to spend a fateful few days on a Sicilian island, from where Anna disappears.
Last Year in Marienbad Alain Resnais 1961 Credits producers
Pierre Courau, Raymond Froment
screenplay
Alain Robbe-Grillet
cinematography Sacha Vierney music
Francis Seyrig
awards
Venice: Jury Prize
Delphine Seyrig as A, the nameless woman who does not remember if she had an affair.
By rejecting a chronological structure and objective reality, and by mingling memory and imagination, desire and fulfillment as well as past, present, and future, Alain Resnais, in his second feature, created one of the most enigmatic, haunting, and erotic of ciné-poems.
In a vast baroque mansion with geometrically designed gardens, X, an unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to convince A, a woman guest (Delphine Seyrig) that they had had an affair the year before, and that she should leave M, the man (Sacha Pitoëff), who might be her husband, for him. Although the style and structure puzzled many at the time, the interweaving of past and present, and the instant “flash-ins,” instead of traditional slow flashbacks, have now become part of the vocabulary of contemporary film-making. Taken on one level, Last Year in Marienbad (L’Année Dernière à Marienbad) is a variation on the eternal romantic triangle, expanded from the old chat up line, “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” The stylized dresses, the organ music, the tracking shots down endless corridors, the dazzling décor, and the mysterious Seyrig, are all unforgettable.
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Lawrence of Arabia David Lean 1962 One of the most intelligent and spectacular blockbusters ever made, Lawrence of Arabia is a travelogue, a history lesson, and an adventure movie. Above all, it is a study of an enigmatic and controversial military figure. Peter O’Toole in the title role became an international star overnight.
The playwright Robert Bolt brilliantly shaped much of the adult life story of T.E. Lawrence, a British army officer who fought in Arabia, into a manageable screenplay. Based on Lawrence’s memoirs, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the film’s narrative begins with the death of Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) in England in an accident. Then a flashback retraces the major stages of his tumultuous military career; his friendship with Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), his support of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), his capture and torture by the Turkish Bey (José Ferrer), and the central role he played in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. The story brought out the best in director David Lean, who responded, like his hero, to the beauties of the vast Sahara desert, splendidly caught in all its shifting moods by the camera of Freddie Young. The first sight of Sharif, initially a mere dot on the horizon, is perhaps the most striking sequence in this epic film. Peter O’Toole plays Colonel Lawrence, a legendary war hero who leads the Arabs into battle in the campaign against the Turks in World War I.
Film poster, 1962
“...dreamers of the day are dangerous men...they may act their dreams out with open eyes...This I did.” T.E. lawrence
Credits production
Horizon
producer
Sam Spiegel
screenplay
Robert Bolt, Michael Wilson, based on the memoirs of T.E. Lawrence
cinematography Frederick A. Young music
Maurice Jarre
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Colour Cinematography, Best Colour Art Direction (John Box, John Stoll, Dario Simoni); Best Sound (John Cox); Best Film Editing (Anne Coates), Best Music Score
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Dr. Strangelove Stanley Kubrick 1964
Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove elects to view nuclear annihilation as the ultimate absurdity. A satire on those who have stopped worrying about the bomb, this masterpiece of black comedy gets as close to a 20th-century catastrophe as possible, and is far more effective than more sombre efforts.
Kubrick had planned to make Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb as a serious drama about the inevitable heated ending of the Cold War. He changed the tone to a comic one during the early days of working on the script when he found he had to suppress some of the more absurd elements to keep it from being funny. The plot centers on frantic Peter Sellers (in dark glasses), in attempts by the US government to call back B-52s sent the title role as the mad scientist, by mad Air Force Brigadier-General Jack D. Ripper to gives advice to the President (Sellers launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Sterling again, offscreen) in the War Room. Hayden as Ripper, who is convinced the “Commies” are tainting the drinking water to reduce “Please gentlemen, you sexual potency, and George C. Scott as the hawkish General “Buck” Turgidson, can’t fight here, this is embody Kubrick’s antimilitarism. the War Room!” Peter Sellers gives three brilliant caricature performances: as an RAF president merkin muffley group captain; in the title role as a sinister, wheelchair-bound German scientist whose Credits artificial arm involuntarily jerks into a production Hawk Films Nazi salute; and as a liberal President Stanley Kubrick, Victor Lyndon producer of the USA. The ominous circular War Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, screenplay Room, brilliantly designed by Ken Adam, Peter George (based on his novel) is central to Kubrick’s nightmarish vision. cinematography Gilbert Taylor Through comedy Kubrick sought to Ken Adam production bring about an awareness of the very design real possibility of nuclear destruction.
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The Battle of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo 1966 Without recourse to any newsreel footage, director Gillo Pontecorvo achieved a naturalistic quality in this stunning film about the French–Algerian War, probably coming closer to the truth and the complexities of the situation than any documentary.
The guerilla war fought for Algerian independence from the French in 1954 is seen through the eyes of some of the participants, especially the central character Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag), imprisoned for a petty theft. He joins the cause after seeing a fellow Algerian’s execution and, recruited by the National Liberation Front, goes on to become a hero in the war. The film was shot in the actual locations, from the dingy backstreets of the Casbah to the tree-lined avenues of the French quarter. Except for Jean Martin as Colonel Mathieu, the cast are all non-professional, and the film mixes the grainy texture of a newsreel with handheld camera movements, depth of field, and dramatic close-ups. Although banned A narrow alley in the Casbah, the Muslim section of in France for some years, its main Algiers, where patrolling French soldiers pass by veiled strength lies in its scrupulous attention women in an atmosphere fraught with tension. to the views and problems on both sides. The torture of Algerians by the French Credits is shown, but so is a devastating scene production Casbah/Igor in which a woman plants a bomb in a Antonio Musu, producers restaurant, knowing she will kill innocent Yacef Saadi people. In the late 1960s, The Battle of Gillo Pontecorvo, Franco Solinas screenplay Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) was watched cinematography Marcello Gatti by Americans opposed to the Vietnam Gillo Pontecorvo, Ennio Morricone music War, and the Pentagon reportedly held a Venice: Best Film awards screening early in the Second Gulf War. Cinéma Vérité Kino-pravda or “film-truth” was a concept evolved by Dziga Vertov in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. The term was adopted in 1960s’ France to describe films by directors such as Jean Rouch and Chris Marker, who were attempting to capture truth on film by presenting reality without exercising directorial control. The improvements in 16-mm equipment – including the reduction in weight of the cameras – made it possible to reduce a film crew down to two people. The movement developed simultaneously in the USA as “Direct Cinema”. One of the recruits in Basic Training (1971), directed by Fred Wiseman, which eavesdrops on life in a US Army training centre in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
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The Sound of Music Robert Wise 1965 This heart-warming musical features seven children, their handsome, wealthy widower father, and a fresh-faced singing governess. With its catchy Rogers and Hammerstein songs, the film, set in spectacular Tyrolean scenery and shot in magnificent Todd-AO and De Luxe Color, has become, for many audiences, one of their favorite things.
The plot centers on Maria (Julie Andrews), a young postulant nun who leaves the convent to take up a position of governess to the children of Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). She marries her employer, and the family becomes the internationally celebrated Trapp Family Singers, but have to flee the country during the Nazi annexation of Austria. The Sound of Music is based on the true life story of the Trapp family as narrated in The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, written by Maria Augusta Trapp and published in 1949. Shot on location in Austria, and with a perfectly cast Julie Andrews radiating youthful charm — as well as showcasing a melodious voice — the film had an advantage over the 1959 Broadway musical. An unashamed escape from the harshness of contemporary life, The Sound of Music grossed almost $200 million worldwide on its first release. Maria (Julie Andrews) sings the opening sequence title song in a grassy, flower-filled meadow encircled by the Austrian Alps.
Credits production
20th Century Fox
producer
Robert Wise
screenplay
Ernest Lehman
cinematography Ted McCord choreography Marc Breaux, Dee Dee Wood music and lyrics
Richard Rodgers (music) Oscar Hammerstein (lyrics)
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound (20th Century Fox sound department), Best Film Editing (William Reynolds), Best Adapted Music Score (Irwin Kostal)
sing-a-long-a sound of music Since 1999, Sing-Along-A Sound of Music has played to packed houses all over the English-speaking world. It is interactive, fun entertainment in which audiences dress up as characters from the film, sing all the songs (helped by subtitles), boo the Nazis, and cheer and set off poppers when Captain von Trapp finally kisses Maria.
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Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky 1966 This three-hour epic was shelved for some years by the Soviet authorities, who felt it was too “dark” for the October Revolution’s 50th anniversary. But four years after it was made, it was released in the west to great acclaim.
Eight imaginary episodes in the life of the great 15th-century icon painter Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn), as he journeys through feudal Russia, make up this film. Rublev leaves the peace and seclusion of a monastery and because of the cruelty he witnesses—rape, pillage, and famine— he gradually abandons speech, his art, and religious faith. Finally, inspired by a young peasant who assumes responsibility for making a huge bell, he learns that creativity is still possible in the worst of conditions, and regains his faith in the world.
Credits production Mosfilm producer Tamara Ogorodnikova screenplay Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Konchalovsky cinematography Vadim Yusov production design Yevgeni Tcherniaiev
Anatoly Solonitsyn as the monk and artist Rublev; for director Tarkovsky, a horse was a “symbolic image,” capturing the essence of life.
The Chelsea Girls Andy Warhol 1966 A milestone of American Underground cinema, The Chelsea Girls marks the zenith of pop artist Andy Warhol’s movie career and his breakthrough to national and international exposure. It features all the resident self-styled superstars of the “Factory,” his art space in New York’s Manhattan, such as “Pope” Ondine.
Consisting of twelve 35-minute reels, each representing the activities in one room of New York’s Chelsea Hotel at 222 West 23rd Street, The Chelsea Girls is projected two reels at a time, side by side, bringing its six hours of footage to a running time of three hours. Each of the 12 reels, eight in black-and-white and four in color, consists of a single unedited shot in which personalities from Warhol’s entourage (junkies, gays, transvestites, and rock singers) act out their fantasies, some of which Credits involve sex and “shooting producer Andy Warhol up.” The Chelsea Girls is a Andy Warhol, screenplay consistently fascinating Ronald Tavel document of the countercinematography Andy Warhol culture of the time. Andy Warhol prepares to film (from bottom to top) Mary Woronov, Nico, and International Velvet.
production assistant
Paul Morrissey
music
The Velvet Underground
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Bonnie and Clyde Arthur Penn 1967
One of the most influential American movies in its amoral attitude toward the outlaw, seen from a modern psychological and social viewpoint, Bonnie and Clyde also depicts a graphic violence rare in mainstream films of the time.
Gangsters Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman), Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) hold up a bank.
“They’re young...they’re in love...and they kill people...” was the effective publicity line of this most stylish and uncompromising of gangster pictures based on a true story. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty excel as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, infamous gun-toting criminals who roamed the American midwest during the late 1920s and early 1930s. They are joined by a boy who works in a gas station, C.W. (Michael J. Pollard), Clyde’s brother Buck Barrow (Gene Hackman), and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons) in a crime spree that includes murder. In this film, the bank robbers are portrayed as heroic and as romantic—they are star-crossed lovers caught up in a whirl of violence and passion, meticulously evoked by posed photographs in sepia and carefully selected Film poster, 1967 music and décor. The black comedy moves ineluctably toward the much imitated memorable ending: hundreds of bullets pump into Credits the miscreant pair, who die in slow production Tatira-Hiller; Warner Bros. motion. The film gave two Genes, Warren Beatty producer Hackman (Oscar nominated) and Wilder David Newman, Robert Benton screenplay (in his screen debut), their first chance to cinematography Burnett Guffey shine. The script was earlier offered to art director Dean Tavoularis Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut Academy Awards: Best Supporting awards who turned it down, although the Actress (Estelle Parsons), influence of the French New Wave is Best Cinematography evident in Arthur Penn’s bravura directing.
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The Wild Bunch Sam Peckinpah 1969 On its release, The Wild Bunch caused a stir due to its amoral depiction of Texas outlaws as heroes and its graphic violence. Today it is seen as an elegiac examination of “unchanged men in a changing land” and a landmark in the Western genre.
In 1913, Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his band of ageing outlaws are trying to live under the same codes as in the Old West when they find themselves stalked by bounty hunters, one of whom is Pike’s former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). They flee into Mexico where, in the gory, surrealistically choreographed, slow-motion climax, the gang is riddled by bullets. The Wild Bunch takes a nostalgic view of the morals of the Old West and is a contemplation of the more romantic old Western. Beautifully photographed in widescreen by Lucien Ballard, with multiple angles and elaborate editing — six Panavision cameras were run together at different speeds — the film emanates a lyrical disenchantment.
Credits production
Seven Arts
studio
Warner Brothers
producers
Phil Feldman, Roy N. Sickner
screenplay
Walon Green, Sam Peckinpah, Roy N. Sickner,
cinematography Lucien Ballard editor
Louis Lombardo
music
Jerry Fielding
Outlaws Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine march across a Mexican town for the final shoot-out.
Easy Rider Dennis Hopper 1969 Credits production
Columbia
producer
Peter Fonda
screenplay
Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Terry Southern
cinematography László Kovács
Peter Fonda (left) as Wyatt and Dennis Hopper as Billy, are hippie bikers from Los Angeles riding to New Orleans...and destruction.
Made for less than $400,000, Easy Rider was a “sleeper” hit. The film’s combination of drugs, rock music, violence, motorcycles, and its counter-culture stance caught the imagination of the young and earned over $50 million.
Two hippies, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), hit the road on motorcycles “in search of the real America.” What they mostly find is hostility towards them from small-town bigots. The odyssey ends when the two trippers are shot down by a truck driver who despises their lifestyle. Stupidity, corruption, and violence are set against the potential freedom of America in Hopper’s first feature as director (and Fonda’s as producer). Derived from the American “Direct Cinema” documentary filmmakers of the early 1960s, the film relied heavily on the expertise of cameraman László Kovács. The folkrock music soundtrack featured Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, Steppenwolf, Bob Dylan, and other “counter-culture” performers of the time.
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The Conformist Bernardo Bertolucci 1969
An ironic and stylish study of pre-war Italy, hauntingly evoked by Vittorio Storaro’s camerawork, The Conformist (Il Conformista) penetrates the mores of ordinary fascism. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first commercially popular film, it is the most successful blend of his Freudian and political preoccupations.
A professor in 1938 Italy, Marcello Clerici (JeanLouis Trintignant) has suffered the childhood trauma of shooting a chauffeur who tried to seduce him. This experience, together with his own repressed homosexuality, contribute to his decision to enter into a bourgeois marriage with Giula (Stefania Sandrelli) and offer his services to the Fascist party. He is asked to assassinate his former teacher, Professor Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), leader of an anti-Fascist group, but then has doubts about his mission. The Conformist sees the full flowering of Bertolucci’s flamboyant style — elaborate tracking shots, baroque camera angles, opulent colour effects, ornate décor, and the intricate play of light and shadow. Trintignant brings conviction to his role, and there are also enticing performances from Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda (as Anna, Professor Quadri’s young wife), who dance a memorable tango together.
Jean-Louis Trintignant (Marcello) carries flowers to a loved one along the streets of Rome.
Credits producer
Maurizio Lodi-Fé
screenplay
Bernardo Bertolucci from the novel by Alberto Moravia
cinematography Vittorio Storaro music
Georges Delerue
costume design Gitt Magrini
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The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola 1972 Credits studio
Paramount
producer
Albert S. Ruddy
screenplay
Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo from the novel by Puzo
cinematography Gordon Willis
With this film, Francis Ford Coppola made the public “an offer it could not refuse.” The story, covering the rise of the Mafia and the Corleone crime “family” in the 1940s, builds up a rich pattern of relationships, meticulously detailing the rituals of an enclosed group. The film was one of the biggest commercial and critical successes of the 1970s, making sequels (The Godfather II, 1974, and The Godfather III, 1990) seem inevitable.
Mafia boss Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is part of a society where murder is “nothing personal, just business.” For all the excessive violence, justified by the plot and never arbitrary, the movie effectively conveys the codes of loyalty, love, masculine honor, and women’s submissiveness that bind the family together. Even more than the killings, audiences seemed to have been shocked by the scene in which a Hollywood tycoon wakes up to find the bloody head of his horse in his bed. Coppola controls the material in a masterful manner with the help of extraordinary chiaroscuro photography of the interiors and the outstanding cast led by Brando, who creates an iconographic figure with his throaty voice and papal hand gestures as he switches from the stern Godfather to
production design
Dean Tavoularis
set decoration
Philip Smith
music
Nino Rota
costume design
Anna Hill Johnstone
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best Screenplay (Coppola, Puzo)
In his shuttered room during his daughter’s wedding, Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) listens to one of several supplicants who want him to “deal with” their enemies. Film poster (left).
kindly paterfamilias. Brando famously sent a Native American woman to the Academy Awards in his place in protest about their treatment in the US. al pacino Actor Box Al Pacino (born 1940) has gone from strength to strength as an actor since his dominating and pivotal performances as Michael Corleone in the three Godfather movies. Whether playing a gangster as in Scarface (1983) or Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (2004), he brings maximum power to the screen. Nominated eight times for an Oscar, he won it for Scent Of A Woman (1992).
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Aguirre, Wrath of God Werner Herzog 1972 This film, featuring a megalomaniac hero, is a powerful, hypnotic, epic tale of the depravity of imperialism. Also known in German as Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes, Werner Herzog had to overcome difficult conditions filming in the Andes. The film’s success, due mainly to the striking images, was proof that the hardships paid off.
In the wilds of Peru, a 16th-century Spanish conquistador, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), with the assistance of native slaves, leads a hazardous expedition over the mountains and down an uncharted river in search of the mythical kingdom of El Dorado. The fascination of this morality tale, presented in the guise of a true historical account, derives from the jungle atmosphere and pictorial flair, as well as the intense performance of Kinski. This was the first of five films he was to make with Herzog. The opening long shot of the expedition weaving its way down the mountain through the fog is particularly Klaus Kinski as the film’s protagonist gives an enigmatic and frightening portrayal of human obsession and its consequences.
Credits production
Hessicher Rundfunk/Werner Herzog
producer
Werner Herzog
screenplay
Werner Herzog
cinematography Thomas Mauch music
Popol Vuh
effective, as is the final shot, in which the camera circles rapidly around a raft littered with dead bodies and overrun with monkeys. The narrative is a steady stream of images, accompanied by brief pieces of dialogue, which not only set the pace of the film, but the mood as well. It is the topography of the landscape— the film was shot on location in the Peruvian rainforest near Puerto Maldonado—that dictates the action, rather than the actors. Indeed, the actors react strongly to their surroundings, which reflect and mirror the growing madness and the feverish hallucinations of the doomed expedition.
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Nashville Robert Altman 1975 This portrayal of one weekend in the lives of people involved in the music business in Nashville, Tennessee, in the US – the world’s country music capital – is a tour-de-force in its manipulation of characters and sound.
Credits studio
Paramount Pictures
producer
Robert Altman
screenplay
Joan Tewkesbury
In order to create this mosaic of characters, music, sights, and sounds, Altman used 16 tracks for the soundproducing conversations, as well as a continuously moving camera, rhythmic cuts, and on- and off-screen commentaries. Particularly remarkable is the opening sequence at Nashville airport during which all 24 characters are introduced. Conceived as a celebration of the US bicentennial anniversary in 1976, Nashville ironically reveals the dark side of the country, such as racial prejudice, selfishness, and vulgarity.
cinematography Paul Lohmann award
Academy award: Best Song:”I’m Easy” (Keith Carradine)
Karen Black plays Connie White, a country singer who uses Barbara Jean’s (the reigning queen of Nashville) period out of the spotlight to bolster her own career.
In the Realm of the Senses Nagisa Oshima 1976 Director Nagisa Oshima’s first big commercial success, was, for many, in the realm of pornography. For others, it was a serious treatment of gender status and oppression, a link between eroticism and death, and an artistic breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex on screen.
Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji), a married man, and Sada (Eiko Matsuda), a geisha, retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own where they After strangling her lover, Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji), while obsessively act out their sexual fantasies. having sex, the geisha, Sada (Eiko Matsuda), prepares Finally, in a quest for the ultimate for a final, terrible act. orgasm, Sada strangles and then castrates her lover. Based on a notorious murder case of the Credits 1930s, Oshima’s voyeuristic masterpiece is a blend of production Argos Films, tenderness and brutality, spontaneity and ritual. The Oshima original title, Ai No Corrida, refers to a ritualized fight to Productions the death — corrida means “bullfight” in Spanish. In the Anatole Dauman producer mid-1970s, the film created a storm of controversy, and Nagisa Oshima screenplay encountered censorship problems in several countries. cinematography Hideo Itoh Although it still has the capacity to shock, when this Cannes: Best awards sensational film was rereleased in the original uncut Director version in 2000, it caused hardly a ripple.
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Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese 1976 This deeply disturbing drama, which examines alienation in urban society by combining elements of film noir, the western, and horror movies, established Martin Scorsese as a major figure in world cinema and Robert De Niro as a star.
A Vietnam War veteran, paranoid loner, and taxi driver, Travis Bickle (De Niro) has no friends. He sees New York as “an open sewer” populated by “animals” and “scum” that need to be swept away. De Niro immerses himself in the complex character — his monologue to a mirror has become one of the most famous sequences from 1970s cinema. Bickle’s diary entries — “Listen, you screwheads, here is someone who would not take it anymore” – force audiences into an ambivalent identification with him. Scorsese presents an apocalyptic view of the city, with steam hissing out of the streets, incessant traffic noise, and wailing sirens. This is contrasted with the haunting score by Bernard Herrmann (his last) that accompanies the film’s bleak images.
“You talkin’ to me?” Travis Bickle to himself in a mirror “On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody...” The film’s tagline describes Robert De Niro’s character.
Credits studio
Columbia
production
Bill/Phillips Production, Italo-Judeo Production
screenplay
Paul Schrader
cinematography Michael Chapman music
Bernard Herrmann
award
Cannes: Best Film
Jodie Foster Jodie Foster (born 1962) proved to be one of the most talented of child stars as the teenage prostitute in Taxi Driver. The film threw her reluctantly into the spotlight; John Hinkley Jr., who shot President Reagan, attributed his actions to his obsession with Foster in the role. This cast a shadow over her career until she won Academy Awards for The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). In 1991, she made her impressive directorial debut with Little Man Tate, after which she continued to move successfully between acting and directing.
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Annie Hall Woody Allen 1977 Until Annie Hall, Woody Allen was considered one of America’s brightest new funnymen whose films were little more than a series of revue sketches. He was catapulted into the big time with this “nervous romance,” which won four Oscars, made a fortune, and gained a cult following.
The script, about the on-off relationship between Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), a television and nightclub comic, and budding singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) is semi-autobiographical, based loosely on the stars’ real-life affair (Keaton’s real name is Diane Hall and her nickname is Annie). In the film, their friendship begins during an indoor tennis match of mixed singles which she wins, and continues through the Jewish Alvy’s awkward and hilarious meeting with Annie’s WASP family. The New York-loving Alvy then follows Annie Credits studio
United Artists
producers
Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe
screenplay
Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
cinematography Gordon Willis awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Director, Best Screenplay
Film poster, 1977
to “mellow” California. The pair portray an intelligent, contemporary adult couple with wit, accuracy, and an undercurrent of anxiety. Highlights include media guru Marshall McLuhan, playing himself, who suddenly appears to refute what a phony, standing in line to see a Bergman movie, is saying about him. Keaton’s unisex costume of baggy trousers, white shirt, black waistcoat, knotted black tie, scarf, and felt hat oozed character and was a strong influence on what the well-dressed, liberated woman was to wear in the late 1970s. Diane Keaton (Annie) and Woody Allen (Alvy) talk on the balcony of Annie’s apartment; their real thoughts are seen in subtitles, contradicting the words actually spoken.
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Star Wars George Lucas 1977
In Star Wars, a young man, Luke Skywalker, is chosen by destiny to lead the resistance against the Galactic Empire. George Lucas’s fantasy film inspired generations of audiences — and forever changed the way films are marketed.
Lucas modeled his universe (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) on the Saturday serials he enjoyed as a child, but he also studied Joseph Campbell’s work on mythologies, and borrowed significantly from Akira Kurosawa’s samurai film, The Hidden Fortress. The structure of Star Wars was substantial enough to fascinate adolescent boys — without complicating what is essentially a simple fable of good and evil. It was also able to hold two sequels and, 20 years later, three prequels. An unexpected hit (sci-fi wasn’t considered box office at the time), Star Wars transformed the movie industry, ushering in a new era of special effects-driven cinema aimed at a youth audience, released on the rise of the blockbuster The word "blockbuster," refers either to a big-budget Hollywood movie that catches the public’s attention, or to a film that has broken box-office records, such as Jaws (1975), the first film to earn $100 million in domestic ticket sales. It ushered in the "blockbuster era" during which Star Wars became the biggest blockbuster of the 1970s. The blockbusters of the late 1970s and early 1980s were mostly fantasies, such as E.T. (1982) and Back to the Future (1985), while those of the 1990s, like Terminator 2 (1991) and The Matrix (1999) were darker and more violent.
Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Luke (Mark Hamill), Master Kenobi (Alec Guinness), and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) set off to rescue Princess Leia from the evil clutches of Darth Vader, leader of the Galactic Empire.
Credits studio
20th-Century Fox
production
Lucasfilm
producer
Gary Kurtz, George Lucas
screenplay
George Lucas
cinematography Gilbert Taylor awards
Academy Awards: Best Art Direction (John Barry, Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian), Best Costume Design (John Mollo), Best Effects, Best Film Editing (Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas, Richard Chew), Best Music (John Williams), Best Sound
as many screens as possible, and with a marketing budget offset by merchandising. Lucas became a billionaire and established Industrial Light & Magic, the leading special effects company.
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Darth Vader was first portrayed in Star Wars (1977) by British actor David Prowse, with the voice of James Earl Jones dubbed over. Through the series, Darth Vader gradually develops from being a villain archetype to a more complex character.
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The Marriage of Maria Braun Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1978
Fassbinder’s biggest international box-office success is his most effective onslaught on Germany’s “Economic Miracle” of the 1950s, as well as being a dramatic and subtle picture of an indomitable woman.
Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla) survives in wartime Berlin while her husband Hermann (Klaus Löwitsch) fights at the Russian Front. On his return, he is imprisoned for killing Bill (Greg Eagles), a black G.I. who had befriended his wife. Maria then takes up with industrialist Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny) and rises to a position of wealth and power. The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun) is the first of Fassbinder’s trilogy of women (Veronika Voss, 1982; Lola, 1981) struggling to survive in harsh post-war Germany. A successful blend of the elements of classical Hollywood melodrama with contemporary socionew german cinema Among the first of the new wave of German films to make an impression were Alexander Kluge’s Yesterday Girl and Volker Schlöndorf’s Young Torless, which were both made in 1966. The former is set in the 1950s, where a rebellious young East German girl escapes to the West, while the latter is set in a semimilitary boarding school for embryonic Nazis. Angela Winkler greets Jürgen Prochnow (left) in The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum (1975), Volker Schlöndorf and Margarethe von Trotte’s statement on terrorism.
Hanna Schygulla, here seen with Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny), plays the seductive and scantily dressed Maria Braun, a strong woman who exploits the men in her life to prosper in post-war Germany.
Credits production
Albatros, Fengler, Autoren, Tango Film, Trio Film, WDR
producer
Michael Fengler
screenplay
Peter Märthesheimer, Pea Fröhlich
cinematography Michael Ballhaus music
Peer Raben
awards
Berlin: Best Actress (Hanna Schygulla)
political themes, the story, beginning in 1943, is filled with superbly conceived comic and soap-opera incidents. Effective use is made of the camera, which follows the heroine with long, sweeping movements as Schygulla gives one of her best performances in her 13th feature with Fassbinder.
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The Deer Hunter Michael Cimino 1978 The first major American movie about the Vietnam War and its aftermath, The Deer Hunter won five Oscars. Because of the film’s impact, Hollywood discovered that audiences were ready to accept the disastrous war as a subject, as testified by the number of films in the early 1980s that dealt with it.
Although there are a number of scenes set during the Vietnam conflict, the film’s principal theme is friendship and the psychological and social effects of the war on a small community—a Pennsylvanian industrial town acting as a microcosm. Hunting and drinking buddies Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stevie (John Savage) volunteer to go to Vietnam together and are thrown into the hell of war, which affects their lives forever. Stevie ends up in a wheelchair, Nick shoots himself in the head, and Mike learns the dangers of the macho code he lived by. Director Cimino orchestrates the set pieces brilliantly—the wedding, the hunt, and the sequence when the American POWs are forced to play Russian roulette by their captors, which is a metaphor for the futility of war. Mike (Robert De Niro) hunts for deer in the mountains for the last time before going to Vietnam.
meryl streep Actor Box Meryl Streep (born 1949) is one of the few female stars of today who stands with the greats of the past such as Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. Her acclaim—she has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, and has won two—is due to her versatility and ability to fully immerse herself in her roles. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her moving performance as a Polish survivor of Auschwitz in Sophie’s Choice (1982), and is at her best playing mature and complex women, as in The Hours (2002).
Credits production
EMI, Universal
producer
Michael Cimino, Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, John Peverall
screenplay
Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker
cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond music
Stanley Myers
awards
Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), Best Editing (Peter Zinner), Best Sound (C. Darin Knight, William L. McCoughey, Richard Portman, Aaron Rochin)
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E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Steven Spielberg 1982 One of only a handful of live-action films to capture the imagination of generations of children and their parents, E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial remains Steven Spielberg’s bestloved movie. It may also be his most heartfelt.
Kicking off with a quick, precise sketch of a typical middle-class suburban California family household, much like the one in which Spielberg grew up, the film quickly gets down to the business of introducing young Elliott (Henry Thomas) to his new best friend. A brown, short, waddling creature with four rubbery limbs, a retractable neck and eyes the size of headlights, E.T. is basically playing the dog in this movie, but he’s a dog with supernatural powers: telepathy, and telekinesis. If it doesn’t really stand up to logical analysis (E.T. can build an interstellar communicator but seems to have nothing to say to earthlings), but from a child’s (or E.T.’s) innocent viewpoint, the film works well on an emotional level. E.T. goes through an accelerated life-cycle with Elliott acting as his protector, teacher, and surrogate parent. The death scene is heartbreaking, but through the “E.T. phone home,” E.T.’s repeated request, became the catchphrase of the film; here, Elliott and his vulnerable alien friend are about to part forever.
The flying bicycle silhouetted against a full moon was later adopted as the logo for Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment production company.
power of love E.T. is resurrected in time for the literally uplifting climax — and Elliott’s own emotional education is complete. Credits studio
Universal
producer
Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
screenplay
Melissa Mathison
cinematography Allen Daviau awards:
Academy Award: Best Sound Effects (Charles L. Campbell, Ben Burtt), Best Visual Effects (Carol Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, Kenneth Smith), Best Music (John Williams), Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo, Gene S. Cantamessa), Best Sound Effects Editing (C. Campbell, B. Burtt)
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Blade Runner Ridley Scott 1982
Among the most discussed and influential science fiction films ever made, Ridley Scott’s adaptation filters Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? through a retro noir sensibility appropriate to the Los Angeles setting.
Harrison Ford is Deckard, a “blade runner” hired to “retire” four rogue replicants — organic robots so lifelike they don’t even know they’re not human. In the course of his pursuit, Deckard falls in love with another replicant (Sean Young), and comes to question his own — ambiguous — humanity. Although the plot is thin, the movie’s visuals are astonishingly layered. Scott’s imagination knows no bounds here. The movie’s spectacular cityscapes are reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, while the street level scenes give equally vivid impressions of a social fabric torn every which way. A failure at the box office, Blade Runner became a key cult movie, and was among the first titles to benefit from a restored “director’s cut” when it was re-released in 1991. This version was actually shorter than the original, dispensed with the lugubrious noir voice-over, and had a bleaker ending. Crucially, it also carried clearer intimations that Deckard himself might be a replicant. Ironically, this makes him all the more human because he finally realizes his brotherhood with the android combatant (Rutger Hauer).
Deckard (Harrison Ford) struggles to evade death in a scene from the film that brilliantly combines conventions of 21st-century sci-fi and 1940s detective film noir.
harrison ford Harrison Ford (born 1942) starred in four of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time: as Han Solo in Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983), and as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This was obviously attributable to the popularity of the films, but also to Ford’s ability to embody plausible heroes, even in far-fetched tales. While continuing his fantastic exploits as Indiana Jones, in Witness (1985), Regarding Henry (1991), and The Fugitive (1993), Ford proved he could play characters with depth. He has also successfully starred in romantic comedies such as Working Girl (1988) and Sabrina (1995). It is hard to imagine that in the early 1970s, he gave up acting for carpentry until George Lucas, for whom Ford had played a small role in American Graffiti (1973), offered him Star Wars.
Credits production
Ladd Company
producer
Michael Deeley
screenplay
Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples
cinematography Jordan Cronenweth
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Paris, Texas Wim Wenders 1984
The title of the film suggests a meeting between the new and the old world, and Paris, Texas expertly reworks elements of both classical Hollywood and European art cinema in this successful collaboration between the German director Wim Wenders and the American writer Sam Shepard.
Wenders saw his chance to explore the vast American landscape — both urban and rural — in Paris, Texas and used it as the setting for the story of Travis, his lonely and lost protagonist. Brilliantly portrayed by the melancholy character actor Harry Dean Stanton, Travis does not speak for the opening 20 minutes, and is first seen walking alone in the Texan desert. Neither he nor the audience knows where he comes from or where he is going. Gradually we learn that he wishes to see Hunter (Hunter Carson), the son he left some years ago in the care of his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell), and is trying to find his estranged French wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), hoping, in vain, to put the pieces of his life back together again. He does find his wife and son, only to lose them once again. Wenders, with the help of Ry Cooder’s haunting score and Robby Müller’s stunning camerawork, evokes a poignant world in which communication between people has become complex but not impossible.
A gaunt and unshaven Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) wanders aimlessly across the bleak Texan desert.
Credits production
Road Movies/ Argos
producer
Don Guest, Anatole Dauman
screenplay
Sam Shepard
cinematography Robby Müller music
Ry Cooder
awards
Cannes: Best Film
Jane (Nastassja Kinski) listens to Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), separated by a one-way mirror, as he talks about their life together in the past.
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Heimat Edgar Reitz 1984, 1992, 2005 Consisting of three series of 30 films, and running at 42 hours, Edgar Reitz’s Heimat (Homeland) is an amusing, moving, and absorbing soap opera. Filmed in color and monochrome, it mirrors Germany’s history from 1919 onwards through the eyes of ordinary people as the characters age and develop.
Part I, A German Chronicle, depicts life in the fictitious German village of Hunsrück. The central character is Maria (Marita Breuer), who marries into the Simon family. Part II, Chronicle of a Generation, moves to Munich in the 1960s, focusing on a group of young people; among them is Maria’s son Hermann (Henry Arnold), who is struggling to become a composer. Part III, A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings, starts with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as Hermann, now an internationally respected conductor, moves back to Hunsrück with his lover Clarissa (Salome Kammer). Particularly fascinating is the depiction of the Nazi era, when the film In Part III, A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings, Heiko Senst (center) plays Tobi, a young construction laborer from East Germany.
Hänschen (Alexander Scholz), a one-eyed boy, aims at a prisoner in a concentration camp as a Nazi guard shows him how to sight the rifle — a chilling moment in Part III.
Credits production
Edgar Reitz/WDR/SFB
producer
Edgar Reitz
screenplay
Edgar Reitz, Peter Steinbach
cinematography Gernot Roll, Gerard Vanderbergh, Christian Reisz music
Nikos Mamangakis
comes close to explaining how the evil of Hitler’s ideology filtered down to taint otherwise decent citizens.
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Come and See Elem Klimov 1985 This moving and powerful film, the last to be directed by Elem Klimov, depicts the war in Belorussia in 1943, as seen through the eyes and heard through the ears of a 16-year-old boy, whose family and village have been destroyed by the Nazis.
The viewer is invited to “come and see” the teenage Florya (Alexei Kravchenko) as he wanders alone, gun in hand, witnessing an unbroken series of Nazi atrocities, until he joins a group of partisans as a hardened and active participant. Some of the unforgettable images include the agonising struggle through a swamp to reach an encampment of lamenting women, and the journey to find food, accompanied by a death’s head effigy of Hitler. A sense of derangement is heightened by the film’s soundtrack, most significantly when the bombing of a village damages Florya’s hearing. Unlike many traditional war films, Come and See — or Idi i Smotri, the original Russian title — has no heroic catharsis or narrative symmetry. Instead, Klimov’s apocalyptic vision, which mixes poetic and brutal imagery, focuses on the destruction of a young life and the horrors of war.
Alexei Kravshenko plays Florya, a teenage boy scarred by his nightmarish experiences during the war, one of which is discovering his village destroyed and his family butchered by the Germans.
Credits production
Byelarusfilm/Mosfilm
screenplay
Ales Adamovich, Klimov based on the works of Adamovich
music
Oleg Yanchenko
cinematography Alexei Rodionov awards
Moscow International Film Festival: Golden Prize
A group of partisans terrify their new recruit, Florya, by pointing a pistol at him — while at the same time posing to have their photograph taken.
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Blue Velvet David Lynch 1986
David Lynch’s radical fable is one of the seminal films of the 1980s — its influence was such that it spawned a number of inferior imitations. Initially a satire on the complacency of small-town America, it turns into a powerful parable of evil where corruption is found in the most unlikely places.
Blue Velvet opens with dreamlike images of America: perfect houses with white picket fences and impeccably manicured lawns. A man collapses while watering his lawn, and the camera reveals a colony of swarming bugs between the blades of grass. A little later, a college student (Kyle MacLachlan) finds a severed ear in a field, and he and his girlfriend (Laura Dern) try to solve the mystery; it leads them to enter film noir territory with a femme fatale (Isabella Rossellini) and a sadistic villain (Dennis Hopper). “Are you a detective or a pervert?” asks Dern of her boyfriend at one point. The answer, perhaps, is that he, the director, and the audience are being a bit of both. The film is set in a rather vague time zone with Bobby Vinton’s evocative 1963 hit title song juxtaposed with more contemporary music. Credits production
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
producer
Richard Roth
music
Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch
screenplay
David Lynch
cinematography Frederick Elmes
Gangster Dennis Hopper snorts gas through an insect-like mask and forces Isabella Rossellini — a nightclub singer known as The Blue Lady — to have sex with him.
Kyle MacLachlan, a David Lynch favourite, plays Jeffrey Beaumont who, in his investigations, is halfforced to play a voyeur.
“See that clock on the wall? In five minutes you are not going to believe what I just told you. ” jeffrey Beaumont
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Shoah Claude Lanzmann 1985 Lanzmann’s monumental documentary, over eight hours long, on the calculated extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis is both a tribute to those who died and a warning. Although the film begins by saying, “This is an untellable story,” it manages, as far as possible, to describe the indescribable.
In Shoah, survivors of the Nazi extermination camps (at Treblinka, Auschwitz, and elsewhere), Polish bystanders — who make no attempt to hide their past or anti-Semitism — and a handful of “former” Nazi officials, recall
Credits production
Les Films Aleph, Historia
cinematography Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky awards
Berlin: Caligari Film Award
the Holocaust. Under Lanzmann’s unwavering and detailed questioning, they reveal the barbarism of the atrocities and the minutiae of the planning that went into the Final Solution. The nightmarish conditions of the Warsaw ghetto are described and harrowing stories told. Lanzmann spent 10 years travelling and visiting the scenes of the crimes to amass his towering document, edited down from 350 hours of film. No archival footage is used in this terrible testimony, which is made all the more powerful for it. An eyewitness arrives at Treblinka by train, one of many who recount the horror and tragedy of Shoah (an Israeli word meaning“catastrophic upheaval”).
A Room with a View James Ivory 1985 The first (and best) of three adaptations of E.M. Forster novels filmed by director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, A Room with a View perfectly captures Forster’s wit and idiom.
There was an ideal coming together when Ivory met Forster. A Room with a View, Maurice (1987), and Howard’s End (1991) deal with the stultifying, hypocritical restrictions of Edwardian society. In A Room with a View, sheltered Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter), Credits production
Merchant-Ivory, Goldcrest
producer
Ismail Merchant
screenplay
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by E.M. Forster
cinematography Tony Pierce-Roberts awards
Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Gianni Quaranta, Brian Ackland-Snow, Brian Savagar, Elio Altramura), Best Costume Design (Jenny Beavan, John Bright)
holidaying in Florence with her chaperone Charlotte (Maggie Smith), is kissed by bohemian George (Julian Sands). Back in England, she seems to settle for stuffy Cecil Vyse (Daniel DayLewis) although she really loves George. Ivory vividly contrasts the untamed landscape of Italy, which triggers Lucy’s sexual awakening with the dampening effect of pastoral England. Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) falls under the spell of Italy with free-spirited George Emerson (Julian Sands) in a lush field outside Florence.
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Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Pedro Almodóvar 1988
Although Pedro Almodóvar had previously made seven features, it was this anarchic farce that broke through the barriers, becoming 1989’s highest-grossing foreign film in North America and the most successful film ever in Spain, where it is called Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios.
Pepa — a smouldering Carmen Maura — is a volatile and attractive television actress who is pregnant by Iván (Fernando Guillén), her married philandering lover. Unaware of her condition, he blithely abandons her, leaving a message on her answering machine. As all her efforts to contact him fail, Pepa grows more and more hysterical, and is precipitated into a series of increasingly bizarre and surreal situations. As in the best of farces, the film’s arrangement of irrational events is held together by an internal logic that is very funny, and, like many a French bedroom farce, most of the action takes place in one setting — Pepa’s smart Madrid penthouse apartment, which becomes overpopulated with eccentric, desperate women. Among them is Iván’s deranged wife Lucía (Julieta Serrano), intent on taking revenge on her husband, and Pepa’s best friend Candela, who has fallen in love with a terrorist. Also making an appearance is the young, bespectacled Antonio Banderas as Carlos, Iván’s 20-year-old son. There is a feminist message beneath the comic events, played out in true screwball comedy style, as all the women are frustrated by the childish egotism of the men with whom they get involved. Audiences were mainly attracted by Almodovar’s campy brand of humor and distinctive visual style that was influenced by 1950s’ Hollywood.
Lucía (Julieta Serrano), determined to kill her unfaithful husband, brandishes twin pistols in the “other woman’s” apartment.
Spanish film poster, 1988
Credits production
Rank, El Deseo, Laurenfilm, Orion
producer
Pedro Almodóvar
screenplay
Pedro Almodóvar
cinematography José Luis Alcaine music
Bernardo Bonezzi
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Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore 1989
This heartwarming, nostalgic film looks at the lure of cinema and the death of the picture palace through the eyes of a child. Understandably, Cinema Paradiso has become one of the most popular Italian films of the last few decades, both outside and inside Italy.
Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio as the young boy) learns how to edit films and run the projector from his mentor, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret).
The story, told in flashbacks, of Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio), a little boy who lives with his harassed widowed mother in the grimness of a small, war-torn Sicilian village, and finds refuge from the daily misery of life by sneaking into Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, the local cinema hall. The projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), soon becomes his friend and teacher. When Alfredo is blinded in a fire, he teaches the boy to take over his job, but ultimately encourages him to leave the stifling confines of the village. In his teens, Salvatore falls in love with a banker’s daughter, Elena (Agnese Nano), and wins her over by taking Alfredo’s advice to stand outside her Father figure Alfredo with the child, window every night. Years later, when Salvatore (Jacques Salvatore, cycles down a village Perrin) has become a successful film-maker, he watches a pathway in Sicily. montage, bequeathed to him by Alfredo, Credits of all the scenes of kisses from the films shown at the Paradiso over the years — production Cristaldifilm, Ariane, RAI, TF1 scenes that the priest (Leopoldo Trieste) Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli producers of Salvatore’s village insisted were cut Giuseppe Tornatore screenplay from the movies. A poignant reminder, cinematography Blasco Giurato helped by Ennio Morricone’s haunting Ennio Morricone music musical score, of how personal the Cannes: Special Jury Prize; awards cinema experience can be, Cinema Paradiso Academy Award: Best Foreign Film is a film that stirs memories of childhood.
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Do the Right Thing Spike Lee 1989 A high watermark in US independent cinema and certainly the most important African-American film to date, Spike Lee’s third feature is a stylized, provocative distillation of racial tensions in Brooklyn, New York, towards the end of the 20th century.
Set over the course of a sweltering summer day, the film follows Mookie, a pizza delivery boy played by Lee himself, as he goes about the neighborhood. Along the way we encounter various black and Hispanic youths, such as Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) and Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), their elders (Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee), and Mookie’s employers at the pizzeria, Sal (Danny Aiello) and his sons, the racist Pino (John Turturro) and colorblind Vito (Richard Edson). Shot in bold, heavily saturated colors and using a blaring rap soundtrack (with band Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” prominent), the film bristles with energy and purpose. Tapping a rich vein of street comedy, Lee confronts racist attitudes before magnifying the tensions in a morally ambiguous climax reflecting contemporary controversies over police brutality. Although derided as inflammatory by some, the film is vibrant and searching. Strolling in Brooklyn, Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem, a quiet, easygoing character, prefers his boom box to do the talking for him.
Film poster, 1989
Credits production
40 Acres/Mule Filmworks
producer
John Kilick, Spike Lee, Monty Ross
screenplay
Spike Lee
cinematography Ernest R. Dickerson
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Raise the Red Lantern Zhang Yimou 1991
One of the first Chinese films to be widely shown in the west, Raise the Red Lantern (Dahong Denglong Gaogao Gua) was a great success. This can be ascribed to the gripping, humanistic story it tells, its exoticism, stunning visual imagery, and the radiant, stately beauty of its star, Gong Li, who was director Zhang Yimou’s muse.
In the China of the 1920s, Songlian (Gong Li) becomes the fourth wife of Master Chen (Jingwu Ma), a rich and powerful landowner. It is the patriarch’s tradition to light red lanterns outside the house of the wife he intends to join for the night. Most of the film takes place within one small compound where all four wives become rivals for their master’s attentions. Intrigue and scheming mark the relationships between the wives and the young Songlian soon learns that she has to fight for her status in the convoluted domestic set-up. The house is seen through the seasons of a year,
Gong Li plays Songlian, the beautiful new bride of a feudal patriarch. Here she is bathed in the rich glow of the red lanterns in her bedroom, as she waits for her husband to come to her.
Credits production
Century Communications, Era International, China Film, Salon Films
producers
Chiu Fu-Sheng, Hou Xiaoxian, Zhang Wenze
screenplay
Ni Zhen based on a short story Wives and Concubines by Su Tong
cinematography Zhao Fei, Yang Lun
with the interiors of the four apartments in vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows, in spaces marked out for passion. The Chinese government banned the film from its homeland. The authorities obviously saw that, beneath the surface story, there is a parable of an authoritarian government, represented by the master, who allows no freedom of expression to the individual, represented here by Songlian.
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Unforgiven Clint Eastwood 1992 The film that finally gave its director Oscar recognition after 40 years in the business, Unforgiven is a gripping Western, a genre in which Clint Eastwood made his name. In returning to the moral and thematic roots of the genre, the veteran actor gave the Western film a kiss of life.
Dedicated “to Sergio and Don,” the directors of lowbudget Westerns, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, who served as his most important mentors, Unforgiven perhaps owes even more to John Ford than its violent dedicatees. When Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), a dictatorial sheriff of a small frontier town, denies justice to a prostitute whose face has been viciously slashed by two clients, the brothel women hire Bill Munny (Eastwood), a once-ruthless gunfighter, now a hog farmer, to kill the culprits. He teams up with his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and the young Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) and embarks on the trail, until the final showdown. While exploring the darker side of the myths of the Old West, the film is striking in its willingness to confront the effects of violence on both those who commit it and those who suffer it. For Eastwood, there are no heroes because even the good are capable of evil. He shatters illusions about heroism in the film, portraying the ugliness and pain that violence brings. According to Eastwood, Unforgiven “summarized everything I feel about the Western. The moral is the concern with gunplay.” Credits studio
Warner Bros.
producer
Clint Eastwood
screenplay
David Webb Peoples
cinematography Jack N. Green art direction
Janice Blackie-Goodine, Henry Bumstead
awards
Academy awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Editing (Joel Cox)
Avenger Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) is tormented by memories of his past crimes, but when the sheriff kills his friend Ned, he forgets his remorse and goes on a blood-spattering killing spree.
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Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino 1992
For many, the most distinctive and exciting voice to emerge in US movies in the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino announced himself with this bravura crime thriller. Smaller in scale than his subsequent output, Reservoir Dogs features the elements that would become fully-formed Tarantino staples.
Beginning in the middle of the story of a failed diamond robbery, and carving it into a series of chapters introducing each of the gangsters in turn, Tarantino borrows from the heist movie catalog — Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, and the underworld milieu of JeanPierre Melville — all but omitting the robbery itself. The aftermath is a bloody trial of conflicting loyalties and festering suspicions as the crooks convene to figure out what (or who) went wrong. Tarantino’s profane, pop-littered dialogue puts its own ironic spin on things — these heavies talk like movie-obsessed ordinary people, not like gangsters, but it is the disquieting ease with which postmodern cool shifts to blood-soaked violence, making it easy to overlook the emotional pain beneath, that caused a stir at the time.
Steve Buscemi (on the floor) as Mr Pink and Harvey Keitel as Larry Dimmick alias Mr White, in the climactic shoot-out in a warehouse.
Film poster, 1992
Credits production
Live Entertainment/Dog Eat Dog
producer
Lawrence Bender
screenplay
Quentin Tarantino
cinematography Andrzej Sekula
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Three Colors: Blue, White, and Red Kryztof Kieslowski 1993, 1994 The colors of the titles of Krzystof Kieslowski’s trilogy, the Polish director’s final work, refer to the colors of the French flag, while the themes are allied to the French revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. All three films offer sensual, emotional, and spiritual experiences rarely so well depicted in contemporary cinema.
The trilogy is about people separated from those they love, but are different in tone, moving from meditative drama (Blue), through oblique social comedy (White), to a symbolic mystery-romance (Red). In Blue, after the deaths of her composer husband and young daughter in a car crash, Julie (Juliette Binoche) seeks to free herself from everyone and everything Credits production
CED, Canal +, Eurimages, France 3 Cinéma, MK2, TOR, TSR
producer
Marin Karmitz
screenplays
Agnieszka Holland, Slavomir Idziak, Kieslowski, Krzysztof Pisiewicz, Edward Zebrowski
cinematography Slowomir Idziak (Blue), Edward Klosinski (White), Piotr Sobocinski (Red) music
Zbigniew Preisner
In Red, which explores the nuances of fraternity and platonic love, Valentine (Irène Jacob) models for a poster that visually illustrates the film’s theme of loneliness.
that reminds her of her past. In White, Polish hairdresser Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), returning to his homeland, makes a success of his life, aiming to avenge himself on the wife who spurned him. In Red, Valentine (Irène Jacob), a model, develops a relationship with an elderly, cynical judge Joseph Kern (JeanLouis Trintignant). Kieslowski’s stylish visuals and use of locations are a fitting epitaph to one of Europe’s best directors. In Blue, Kieslowski’s film about the imperfection of human liberty, Julie (Juliette Binoche) reflects on her vain search for freedom from the past.
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Through the Olive Trees Abbas Kiarostami 1994 Although Abbas Kiarostami had been making feature films since 1974, it was only in the 1990s with Through the Olive Trees (Zire darakhatan zeyton) that he was recognized as the leading force behind the extraordinary flood of Iranian films of quality that began to win prizes at international film festivals.
In 1992, Kiarostami made And Life Goes On, about a film being made on the survivors of an earthquake in Iran. Through the Olive Trees, set in the same area, is a comedy about a director casting and filming another film. The most fascinating aspect of this film-withina-film is that the audience never knows what is real and what is fiction. The celebrated final sequence follows the two main actors, who are having a “real life” romance, in extreme long shot as the boy persuades the girl to marry him. The film, at once simple and complex, intimate and distant, is full of insights into film-making, society, and human relationships.
Fifteen-year-old Tahereh Ladanian plays herself; here she is on the balcony of her grandmother’s house, listening to pledges of love from her co-star Hossein Rezai (out of shot).
Credits studio
Abbas Kiarostami productions, CiBy 2000, Farabi Cinema Foundation, Miramax
producer
Abbas Kiarostami
screenwriter
Abbas Kiarostami
cinematography Hossein Djafarian, Farhad Saba
Four Weddings and a Funeral Mike Newell 1994 After the highs and lows that British cinema went through in the 1970s and 80s, it was this romantic comedy that hit the jackpot and made an international star of Hugh Grant.
Fashioned around an ingenious structural conceit, Richard Curtis’s deftly polished script is a love story filtered across several months and five ceremonies. At the first wedding, the chronically self-effacing Charles (Grant) is surprised to find himself flirting with
Carrie, a forthright American (Andie MacDowell) who is engaged to another man. Subsequent encounters only go to prove that “the course of true love never did run smooth.” Reminiscent of the screwball comedies of the 1930s in its depiction of a wealthy class of socialites unencumbered with any cares but their own embarrassments, the film is an artful comedy of exquisite manners. Grant and Curtis reteamed with production outfit Working Title for Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Love Actually, all of them popular hits at home and abroad. The habitually late Charles (Hugh Grant) and roommate Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman) race to the wedding of a friend, where Charles has been asked to be best man.
Credits production
Channel Four/Polygram/Working Title
producers
Tim Bevan, Richard Curtis, Eric Fellner, Duncan Kenworthy
screenplay
Richard Curtis
cinematography Michael Coulter
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Toy Story John Lasseter 1995 The idea that a studio brand might define the quality and characteristics of a film bearing its logo disappeared in the 1950s. But starting with Toy Story, Pixar was an exception to this rule. It revitalized the form of digital animated technology, becoming a hallmark for witty, sophisticated productions.
The first feature-length blockbuster produced by the Pixar studio, a pioneer of computer-animated films in the mid1980s, was Toy Story, which was also its first feature to be released in theaters. Based on one of director John Lasseter’s earlier shorts, the story is about toys in the room of Andy, a six-year-old boy. Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) is a cowboy toy and the favorite game in town — until his friend Andy gets a new Buzz Lightyear doll (voiced by Tim Allen) for his birthday and Woody finds himself gathering dust with the rest of Andy’s cast-offs. Consumed with jealousy, he tries to get rid of his naïve rival — who still believes he really is a space explorer in some brave new world.
Credits studio
Buena Vista/Walt Disney/Pixar
producer
Bonnie Arnold, Ed Catmull, Ralph Guggenheim, Steve Jobs
screenplay
Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow
awards
Academy award: Special achievement (John Lasseter)
Lasseter’s computer generated animation has a synthetic texture that is well suited to the subject of Toy Story, but also displays a fluidity and dynamism that the old animation style cannot match. However, Pixar’s strengths go back to the drawing board: a rich story sense, fresh perspectives, and unforgettable characters created imaginatively and with originality. Pixar developed a corporate culture that nourished creativity and was rewarded with one hit film after another: A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), and The Incredibles (2004). Cowboy Woody pretends to be friendly with Buzz Lightyear, a fancy high-tech action figure dressed in a spacesuit and outfittted with gadgets; the pretence is necessary because Woody feels threatened by Buzz.
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Fargo Joel Coen 1996 Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen hit the big time with their sixth film, Fargo, a cleverly plotted thriller effectively set in Minnesota “the abstract landscape of our childhood — a bleak, windswept tundra, resembling Siberia except for its Ford dealerships, and Hardee’s restaurants.”
A desperate Minneapolis car dealer, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), in financial difficulties, hires two petty gangsters, Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife so that his rich father-in-law Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) will pay a huge ransom. He plans to split the money with the kidnappers, but things go awfully wrong when they kill a state trooper, a murder which police chief Marge Gunderson (Oscar-winning Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife), seven months pregnant, investigates. Even though morning sickness overwhelms her, she conducts the murder investigation with astute aplomb. The role of Marge, played brilliantly by McDormand, is probably the best (and warmest) female part written by the Coens. The film, superbly photographed against a snowy background, moves seamlessly between black humor, violent crime drama, and
Film poster, 1996
Credits production
Polygram/Gramercy/Working Title
producer
Ethan Coen
screenplay
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
cinematography Roger Deakins music
Carter Burwell
awards
Cannes: Best Director; Academy Awards: Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Screenplay
genial comedy, while telling a good yarn. The semi-stylized dialogue, so important to the Coens’ films, is here given another dimension by the “yah-yah” rhythms of the local Minnesotan dialect. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), chief of police, bends down in the snow to examine the scene of the crime after a shoot-out that kills a state trooper.
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang Lee 2000
The Chinese tradition of wuxia storytelling combines swordplay, martial arts, and Tao Buddhist philosophy. The movies’ greatest exponent of the form was the Hong Kong director King Hu, to whom Ang Lee pays tribute in this sweeping and romantic action film. This was the first Chinese language film to become a worldwide hit, making more than $100 million in North America alone.
Posing as a warrior, Ziyi Zhang as Jiao Long fights several men at once at a wayside station; her fiery passion shows that her fight is also for respect in a man‘s world.
Produced by Sony, the Japanese company, through Columbia, its Hollywood division — but with Chinese and European co-financing, a Taiwanese-born, US-based director, and both American and Chinese screenwriters — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was global entertainment not centered on the American dream — perhaps a sign of things to come. Measured and flamboyant, the movie pits a reckless, young couple Jiao Long and Luo Xiao Hu (Ziyi Zhang and Chen Chang) against two older, wiser souls, Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai (Michelle Yeoh and Yun-Fat Chow) battling it out over love, duty, and the priceless jade sword “Green Destiny.” For many western audiences, this was their first exposure to Hong Kong cinema’s gravity-defying Film poster, 2000 wire-work, a craft enabling swordsmen not just to leap through the air but to bound over rooftops. The climax is a duel between Credits Chow and Zhang high among swaying production Columbia Tristar bamboo trees, a scene at once perilous Li-Kong Hsu, William Kong, Ang Lee producers and mysteriously romantic. This scene Hui-Ling Wang, James Schamus, screenplay was choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, the Kuo Jung Tsai kung-fu director who helped realize the cinematography Peter Pau director Ang Lee’s vision.
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In the Mood for Love Wong Kar Wai 2000 A touching, atmospheric romance of unconsummated love, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa) is set in a dreamy, impressionistic evocation of Hong Kong in 1962, and stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, two of Asia’s biggest stars.
Chow Mo-wan (Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Cheung) have rented rooms next to each other. They fall in love while trying to deal with the infidelities of their respective spouses whom they discover are involved with each other. Adultery has desecrated their lives: “For us to do the same thing, would mean we are no better than they are,” Cheung says. What is unusual in a film about adultery is that we only see the wronged couple and not the adulterers. As the English title suggests, In the Mood For Love is a mood piece with nostalgic music in the background. Wong’s skill in recreating Hong Kong of the 1960s is so assured that it is surprising to discover that the film was actually shot in Bangkok.
Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung play two reluctant lovers struggling to repress their passion for each other. Christopher Doyle, Wong’s favorite cameraman, imbued the film with deep colors of red, yellow, and brown.
Credits production
Block 2, Jet Tone, Paradis Films
producer
Wong Kar Wai
screenplay
Wong Kar Wai
cinematography Christopher Doyle, Mark Lee Ping-bin original music Michael Galasso, Shigeru Umebayashi production design
William Chang
Traffic Steven Soderbergh 2000 At a time when American cinema seemed increasingly decadent and detached from the real world, director Steven Soderbergh took on the challenge of mapping out the drugs trade in this panoramic, multi-strand drama.
Unsuspecting Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her young son watch in disbelief as federal agents arrest her husband, a high-level drug trafficker.
Credits production
Entertainment/USA Films
producer
Philip Messina
screenplay
Steven Gaghan
cinematography Steven Soderbergh awards
Academy Awards: Best Actor in a supporting role (Benicio del Toro), Best Director (Steven Soderbergh), Best Editing (Stephen Mirrione), Best Screenplay based on previous material (Stephen Gaghan).
In Washington, the US President’s drug czar, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), plans a renewed “war on drugs,” not suspecting that his teenage daughter is addicted to heroin. In San Diego, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is shocked when her husband Carlos (Steven Bauer) is arrested for trafficking — but realizes that the only way to preserve her standard of life is to carry on where he left off. Meanwhile, Tijuana cop Javier (Benicio Del Toro) puts his life on the line to enforce the law even as his superiors profit from smuggling. Inspired by a British television series but reconceived in American terms by Steven Gaghan, Traffic was one of a number of millennial movies that adopted a multistory structure to address a bewildering sense of individual powerlessness.
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Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson 2001, 2002, 2003 Released in three parts but filmed concurrently (with some additional shooting along the way), Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga of the land called Middle Earth was a massive undertaking, and a critical and commercial triumph. Using computerized special effects with great artistry, Jackson redefined the word “epic.” For scale and spectacle, cinema-goers had never seen anything like it.
Immersing himself in Tolkien’s richly imagined primordial world, inhabited by hobbits, elves, and other strange creatures, director Jackson exploits the natural wonder of his native New Zealand to full advantage and gets the details just right. But he never tarries for long — there are too many mountains, rivers, and valleys to traverse, armies to muster, and spells to cast. The narrative moves at a relentless pace as Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), a hobbit, is given a ring that gives its wearer great power. But is too dangerous to keep so Frodo has to travel with his friend Sam (Sean Astin) to Mordor, the only place where the ring can be destroyed. Understood as an anti-fascist allegory when Tolkien wrote it, The Lord of the Rings took on an unwelcome militaristic zeal when it was released during US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet at root it remains a tribute to the resource and pluck of common men confronted with the evil lure of absolute power. In the grotesque, schizophrenic swamp creature Gollum, Jackson and actor Andy Serkis created a compelling character, computer-generated yet imbued with humanity.
Ian McKellen plays Gandalf, the wizard who guides Frodo in his quest to destroy the evil ring; McKellen was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.
Credits production
Entertainment/New Line/Wingnut (Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh)
producer
Grant Major
screenplay
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
cinematography Andrew Lesnie awards
11 Academy Awards for The Return of the King, including Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Picture (Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh), Best Art Direction (Grant Major, Dan Hennah, Alan Lee), Best Costume Design (Ngila Dickson, Richard Taylor), Best Editing (Jamie Selkirk).
The hobbit, Frodo (Elijah Wood), is mesmerized by the power of the ring in the first part, The Fellowship of the Ring.
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City of God Fernando Meirelles 2002 This searing, anecdotal account of growing up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has a startling immediacy and a punchdrunk, charged camera style that leaves you reeling.
Working with a group of young non-professionals in front of the camera and creating episodes based on true stories, co-directors Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund recreate 15 years in the downward spiral of crime in Cidade de Deus, a Brazilian shantytown (favela) from the late 1960s to the 1980s. During this time, the cocaine trade had emerged in Brazil — and the favelas become the hideouts of drug gangs. Meirelles and Lund portray children growing up in these violence-ridden slums. They graduate from reckless but amusing hijinks to the ruthless terrorism of their neighborhood, with a new generation of preteen sociopaths following hard on their heels. The narrator of the film’s story, Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a poor boy, escapes life in the gangs by virtue of his criminal ineptitude and his passion for photography. It is his one-time friend Li’l Zé (Leandro Firmino), known as Li’l Dice (Douglas Silva) in the 1960s, who becomes a vicious, coldhearted drug lord — with Rocket as his reluctant court photographer. This powerful and fast-paced epic speaks the brutal language of the streets — in this respect, it is reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas and the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix. The film is a masterful depiction of urban violence and the chaotic combination of drugs, guns, and teenagers, and successfully portrays the horror of life in the favelas.
Credits studio
O2/Video Filmes
producer
Andrea Barata Ribeiro
screenplay
Bráulio Mantovani
cinematography César Charlone
Film poster, 2002 This scene captures the violence of life in a favela, as teenaged gangsters are chased by a rival gang down a street.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry 2004
This brainteaser of a love story proves there is something new under the sun. A successful second film from the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich; Adaptation) and the inventive French pop video director Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind drops you smack into an evaporating consciousness and demands that you make sense of what you are seeing.
Joel (Jim Carrey) gets on a train in the wrong direction and meets Clementine (Kate Winslet). He is reserved and conventional, while she is impulsive and extroverted. There is attraction, then there is heartache, resentment, and so much pain that they wonder if they ever really knew each other at all. If he could wipe all traces of her out of his mind Joel would do it — he can and he does, in this romantic comedy about memory erasure. Original thinkers are rare in the movie business but Charlie Kaufman really does project out of the box. The theme of amnesia is hardly unfamiliar, and the notion of a firm — Lacuna, Inc. — specializing in memory loss is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction. But the film’s subjective stream of lucid and unconscious imagery is something else again — it is as if the movie is reinventing itself as it goes along. Credits production
Focus Features/Anonymous Content/This is That
producers
Anthony Bregman, Steve Golin
screenplay
Charlie Kaufman
cinematography Ellen Kuras awards
Academy Awards: Best Writing, Screenplay written for the screen (Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth)
Clementine (Winslet) with Joel (Carrey), who is reliving their first date on the frozen Charles river; her orange dyed hair indicates the scene is a memory of time gone by.
kate winslet Although British actress Kate Winslet (born 1975) is most well known for her role as the rich American girl in love with poor boy Leonardo di Caprio in James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic (1997), she had already established herself in classical English parts. Winslet made a spirited Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), was luminous as Sue Bridehead in Michael Winterbottom’s Jude (1996), and was a poignant Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996). She first made an impact in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994).
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refe r e n c e
Reference This section provides facts and figures from the world’s greatest awards ceremonies, including the Academy Awards, or the Oscars, in the US, the BAFTA awards in the UK, and the most prestigious film festival of them all—Cannes, in France. The Academy Awards
The best-known of all the awards ceremonies, the Oscars are watched by millions worldwide. Presented annually in Hollywood, they have a huge influence on the fortunes of the films involved. academy award winners—Best film 1927/8 Wings
1954 On the Waterfront
1980 Ordinary People
1928/9 The Broadway Melody
1955 Marty
1981 Chariots of Fire
1929/30 All Quiet on the Western Front
1956 Around the World in 80 Days
1982 Gandhi
1930/1 Cimarron
1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1983 Terms of Endearment
1958 Gigi
1984 Amadeus
1959 Ben-Hur
1985 Out of Africa
1960 The Apartment
1986 Platoon
1961 West Side Story
1987 The Last Emperor
1962 Lawrence of Arabia
1988 Rain Man
1963 Tom Jones
1989 Driving Miss Daisy
1964 My Fair Lady
1990 Dances with Wolves
1965 The Sound of Music
1991 The Silence of the Lambs
1966 A Man for All Seasons
1992 Unforgiven
1967 In the Heat of the Night
1993 Schindler’s List
1968 Oliver!
1994 Forrest Gump
1969 Midnight Cowboy
1995 Braveheart
1970 Patton
1996 The English Patient
1971 The French Connection
1997 Titanic
1972 The Godfather
1998 Shakespeare in Love
1973 The Sting
1999 American Beauty
1974 The Godfather Part II
2000 Gladiator
1949 All the King’s Men
1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
2001 A Beautiful Mind
1950 All About Eve
1976 Rocky
1951 An American in Paris
1977 Annie Hall
2003 Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
1952 The Greatest Show on Earth
1978 The Deer Hunter
2004 Million Dollar Baby
1953 From Here to Eternity
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer
2005 Crash
1931/2 Grand Hotel 1932/3 Cavalcade 1934 It Happened One Night 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty 1936 The Great Ziegfeld 1937 The Life of Emile Zola 1938 You Can’t Take It with You 1939 Gone With the Wind 1940 Rebecca 1941 How Green Was My Valley 1942 Mrs. Miniver 1943 Casablanca 1944 Going My Way 1945 The Lost Weekend 1946 The Best Years of Our Lives 1947 Gentleman’s Agreement 1948 Hamlet
2002 Chicago
films with most academy awards 11 awards Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 10 awards West Side Story (1961) 9 awards
Gigi (1958), The Last Emperor (1987), The English Patient (1996)
8 awards
Gone With the Wind (1939), From Here to Eternity (1953), On the Waterfront (1954), My Fair Lady (1964), Cabaret (1972), Gandhi (1982), Amadeus (1984)
7 awards
Going my Way (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Patton (1970), The Sting (1973), Out of Africa (1985), Dances with Wolves (1990), Schindler’s List (1993), Shakespeare in Love (1998)
reference
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academy award winners—directors 1927/8 Frank Borzage Seventh Heaven
1968 Carol Reed Oliver!
1928/9 Frank Lloyd The Divine Lady
1969 John Schlesinger Midnight Cowboy
1929/30 Lewis Milestone All Quiet on the Western Front
1970 Franklin J. Schaffner Patton
1930/1 Norman Taurog Skippy
1971 William Friedkin The French Connection
1931/2 Frank Borzage Bad Girl
1972 Bob Fosse Cabaret
1932/3 Frank Lloyd Cavalcade
1973 George Roy Hill The Sting
1934 Frank Capra It Happened One Night
1974 Francis Ford Coppola The Godfather Part II
1935 John Ford The Informer
1975 Milos Forman One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1936 Frank Capra Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
1976 John G. Avildsen Rocky
1937 Leo McCarey The Awful Truth
1977 Woody Allen Annie Hall
1938 Frank Capra You Can’t Take It with You
1978 Michael Cimino The Deer Hunter
1939 Victor Fleming Gone With the Wind
1979 Robert Benton Kramer vs. Kramer
1940 John Ford The Grapes of Wrath
1980 Robert Redford Ordinary People
1941 John Ford How Green Was My Valley
1981 Warren Beatty Reds
1942 William Wyler Mrs. Miniver
1982 Richard Attenborough Gandhi
1943 Michael Curtiz Casablanca
1983 James L. Brooks Terms of Endearment
1944 Leo McCarey Going My Way
1984 Milos Forman Amadeus
1945 Billy Wilder The Lost Weekend
1985 Sydney Pollack Out of Africa
1946 William Wyler The Best Years of Our Lives
1986 Oliver Stone Platoon
1947 Elia Kazan Gentleman’s Agreement
1987 Bernado Bertolucci The Last Emperor
1948 John Huston The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1988 Barry Levinson Rain Man
1949 Joseph L. Mankiewicz A Letter to Three Wives
1989 Oliver Stone Born on the Fourth of July
1950 Joseph L. Mankiewicz All About Eve
1990 Kevin Costner Dances with Wolves
1951 George Stevens A Place in the Sun
1991 Jonathan Demme The Silence of the Lambs
1952 John Ford The Quiet Man
1992 Clint Eastwood Unforgiven
1953 Fred Zinnemann From Here to Eternity
1993 Steven Spielberg Schindler’s List
1954 Elia Kazan On the Waterfront
1994 Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump
1955 Delbert Mann Marty
1995 Mel Gibson Braveheart
1956 George Stevens Giant
1996 Anthony Minghella The English Patient
1957 David Lean The Bridge on the River Kwai
1997 James Cameron Titanic
1958 Vincente Minnelli Gigi
1998 Steven Spielberg Saving Private Ryan
1959 William Wyler Ben-Hur
1999 Sam Mendes American Beauty
1960 Billy Wilder The Apartment
2000 Steven Soderbergh Traffic
1961 Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise West Side Story
2001 Ron Howard A Beautiful Mind
1962 David Lean Lawrence of Arabia
2002 Roman Polanski The Pianist
1963 Tony Richardson Tom Jones
2003 Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
1964 George Cukor My Fair Lady 1965 Robert Wise The Sound of Music 1966 Fred Zinnemann A Man for All Seasons
2004 Clint Eastwood Million Dollar Baby 2005 Ang Lee Brokeback Mountain
1967 Mike Nichols The Graduate
actresses with most nominations
actors with most nominations
1
Meryl Streep (13)
1
Jack Nicholson (12)
2
Katharine Hepburn (12)
2
Laurence Olivier (10)
3
Bette Davis (10)
3
Paul Newman, Spencer Tracy (9)
4
Geraldine Page (8)
4
Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino (8)
5
Ingrid Bergman, Jane Fonda, Greer Garson (7)
5
Richard Burton, Dustin Hoffman, Peter O’Toole (7)
6
Ellen Burstyn, Deborah Kerr, Jessica Lange, Vanessa Redgrave, Thelma Ritter, Norma Shearer, Maggie Smith, Sissy Spacek (6)
6
Michael Caine, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall (6)
494
refe r e n c e
academy award winners—best actor 1927/8 Emil Jannings The Last Command
1966 Paul Scofield A Man for All Seasons
1928/9 Warner Baxter In Old Arizona
1967
Rod Steiger In the Heat of the Night
1929/30 George Arliss Disraeli
1968
Cliff Robertson Charly
1930/31 Lionel Barrymore A Free Soul
1969
John Wayne True Grit
1931/32 Wallace Beery The Champ Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (this year there was a tie and two winners were announced)
1970 George C. Scott Patton 1972 Marlon Brando The Godfather
1932/3 Charles Laughton The Private Life of Henry VIII
1973 Jack Lemmon Save the Tiger
1934 Clark Gable It Happened One Night
1974 Art Carney Harry and Tonto
1971 Gene Hackman The French Connection
1935 Victor McLagen The Informer
1975 Jack Nicholson One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1936 Paul Muni The Story of Louis Pasteur
1976 Peter Finch Network
1937
Spencer Tracy Captains Courageous
1977
Richard Dreyfuss The Goodbye Girl
1938
Spencer Tracy Boys Town
1978
Jon Voight Coming Home
1939
Robert Donat Goodbye Mr. Chips
1979
Dustin Hoffman Kramer vs. Kramer
1940 James Stewart The Philadelphia Story
1980 Robert De Niro Raging Bull
1941 Gary Cooper Sergeant York
1981 Henry Fonda On Golden Pond
1942 James Cagney Yankee Doodle Dandy
1982 Ben Kingsley Gandhi
1943 Paul Lukas Watch on the Rhine
1983 Robert Duvall Tender Mercies
1944 Bing Crosby Going My Way
1984 F. Murray Abraham Amadeus
1945 Ray Milland The Lost Weekend
1985 William Hurt Kiss of the Spider Woman
1946 Fredric March The Best Years of Our Lives
1986 Paul Newman The Color of Money
1947
Ronald Colman A Double Life
1987
Michael Douglas Wall Street
1948
Lawrence Olivier Hamlet
1988
Dustin Hoffman Rain Man
1949
Broderick Crawford All the King’s Men
1989
Daniel Day Lewis My Left Foot
1950 José Ferrer Cyrano de Bergerac
1990 Jeremy Irons Reversal of Fortune
1951 Humphrey Bogart The African Queen
1991 Anthony Hopkins The Silence of the Lambs
1952 Gary Cooper High Noon
1992 Al Pacino Scent of a Woman
1953 William Holden Stalag 17
1993 Tom Hanks Philadelphia
1954 Marlon Brando On the Waterfront
1994 Tom Hanks Forrest Gump
1955 Ernest Borgnine Marty
1995 Nicolas Cage Leaving Las Vegas
1956 Yul Brynner The King and I
1996 Geoffrey Rush Shine
1957
Alec Guinness The Bridge on the River Kwai
1997
Jack Nicholson As Good As It Gets
1958
David Niven Separate Tables
1998
Roberto Benigni Life is Beautiful
1959
Charlton Heston Ben-Hur
1999
Kevin Spacey American Beauty
1960 Burt Lancaster Elmer Gantry
2000 Russell Crowe Gladiator
1961 Maximilian Schell Judgment at Nuremberg
2001 Denzel Washington Training Day
1962 Gregory Peck To Kill a Mockingbird
2002 Adrien Brody The Pianist
1963 Sidney Poitier Lilies of the Field
2003 Sean Penn Mystic River
1964 Rex Harrison My Fair Lady
2004 Jamie Foxx Ray
1965 Lee Marvin Cat Ballou
2005 Phillip Seymour Hoffman Capote
academy award winners—best actress 1927/8 Janet Gaynor Seventh Heaven, Stre
1936 Luise Rainer The Great Ziegfeld
1928/9 Mary Pickford Coquette
1937
Luise Rainer The Good Earth
1929/30 Norma Shearer The Divorcee
1938
Bette Davis Jezebel
1930/1 Marie Dressler Min and Bill
1939
Vivien Leigh Gone With the Wind
1931/2 Helen Hayes The Sin of Madelon Claudet
1940 Ginger Rogers Kitty Foyle
1932/3 Katharine Hepburn Morning Glory
1941 Joan Fontaine Suspicion
1934 Claudette Colbert It Happened One Night
1942 Greer Garson Mrs. Miniver
1935 Bette Davis Dangerous
1943 Jennifer Jones The Song of Bernadette
495
reference academy award winners—best actress (continued) 1944 Ingrid Bergman Gaslight
1975 Louise Fletcher One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1945 Joan Crawford Mildred Pierce
1976 Faye Dunaway Network
1946 Olivia de Havilland To Each His Own
1977
Diane Keaton Annie Hall
1947
Loretta Young The Farmer’s Daughter
1978
Jane Fonda Coming Home
1948
Jane Wyman Johnny Belinda
1979
Sally Field Norma Rae
1949
Olivia de Havilland The Heiress
1980 Sissy Spacek Coal Miner’s Daughter
1950 Judy Holliday Born Yesterday
1981 Katharine Hepburn On Golden Pond
1951 Vivien Leigh A Streetcar Named Desire
1982 Meryl Streep Sophie’s Choice
1952 Shirley Booth Come Back Little Sheba
1983 Shirley Maclaine Terms of Endearment
1953 Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday
1984 Sally Field Places in the Heart
1954 Grace Kelly The Country Girl
1985 Geraldine Page The Trip to Bountiful
1955 Anna Magnani The Rose Tattoo
1986 Marlee Matlin Children of a Lesser God
1956 Ingrid Bergman Anastasia
1987
Cher Moonstruck
1957
Joanne Woodward The Three Faces of Eve
1988
Jodie Foster The Accused
1958
Susan Hayward I Want to Live!
1989
Jessica Tandy Driving Miss Daisy
1959
Simone Signoret Room at the Top
1990 Kathy Bates Misery
1960 Elizabeth Taylor Butterfield 8
1991 Jodie Foster The Silence of the Lambs
1961 Sophia Loren Two Women
1992 Emma Thompson Howards End
1962 Anne Bancroft The Miracle Worker
1993 Holly Hunter The Piano
1963 Patricia Neal Hud
1994 Jessica Lange Blue Sky
1964 Julie Andrews Mary Poppins
1995 Susan Sarandon Dead Man Walking
1965 Julie Christie Darling
1996 Frances McDormand Fargo
1966 Elizabeth Taylor Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1997
Helen Hunt As Good As It Gets
1967
Katharine Hepburn Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
1998
Gwyneth Paltrow Shakespeare in Love
1968
Katharine Hepburn The Lion in Winter
1999
Hilary Swank Boys Don’t Cry
1969
Maggie Smith The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
2000 Julia Roberts Erin Brockovich
1970 Glenda Jackson Women in Love
2001 Halle Berry Monster’s Ball
1971 Jane Fonda Klute
2002 Nicole Kidman The Hours
1972 Liza Minnelli Cabaret
2003 Charlize Theron Monster
1973 Glenda Jackson A Touch of Class
2004 Hilary Swank Million Dollar Baby
1974 Ellen Burstyn Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
2005 Reese Witherspoon Walk the Line
The british academy of film and television awards
Known as the BAFTAs, these awards were established in the UK in 1947 to honor international stars of stage and screen. The awards ceremony has outgrown its humble origins in a hotel room in Hyde Park, London, and the BAFTAs are now one of the film industry’s most coveted awards. bafta best film 1948
1959 The Apartment
1968 A Man for All Seasons
1949 Hamlet
1960 Ballad of a Soldier
1969 The Graduate
1950 Bicycle Thieves
1961 The Apartment
1970 Midnight Cowboy
1951 All About Eve
1962 Ballad of a Soldier
1952 La Ronde
1963 Lawrence of Arabia
1971 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1953 The Sound Barrier
1964 Tom Jones
1954 Jeux Interdits
1965
The Best Years of Our Lives
1955 The Wages of Fear 1956 Richard III 1957 Gervaise 1958 The Bridge on the River Kwai
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1966 My Fair Lady 1967 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1972 Sunday, Bloody Sunday 1973 Cabaret 1974
Day for Night
1975 Lacombe Lucien 1976 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
496
refe r e n c e
bafta best film (continued) 1977 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1978 Annie Hall 1979 Julia 1980 Manhattan 1981 The Elephant Man 1982 Chariots of Fire 1983 Gandhi 1984 Educating Rita 1985 The Killing Fields 1986 The Purple Rose of Cairo
1987 A Room with a View
1998 The Full Monty
1988 Jean de Florette
1999
1989
2000 American Beauty
The Last Emperor
Shakespeare in Love
1990 Dead Poets Society
2001 Gladiator
1991 GoodFellas
2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
1992 The Commitments 1993 Howards End 1994
Schindler’s List
1995 Four Weddings and a Funeral 1996 Sense and Sensibility 1997 The English Patient
2003 The Pianist 2004 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 2005 The Aviator 2006 Brokeback Mountain
The cannes film festival
An international film festival has been held in the French resort of Cannes every year since 1946 (apart from a couple of years when lack of funds prevented it from going ahead). Attended by writers, directors, and actors from all over Europe and the US, this glamorous festival generates a great deal of publicity— and not just for the films. Of the several prizes awarded at Cannes by a jury of movie professionals, the most valued and influential is the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm), which recognizes the year’s Best Film. Cannes Palmes d’or winners 1955 Marty (Delbert Mann, US)
1984 Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, Germany)
1956 Le Monde du Silence (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle, France)
1985 When Father Was Away on Business (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia)
1957 Friendly Persuasion (Willian Wyler, US)
1986 The Mission (Roland Joffé, UK)
1958 The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov, Soviet Union)
1987 Under Satan’s Sun (Maurice Pialat, France)
1959 Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, France)
1989 sex, lies & videotape (Steven Soderbergh, US)
1960 La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, Italy) 1961 Joint winners: Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, Mexico) and Une Aussi Longue Absence (Henri Colpi, France, Italy) 1962 O Pagador de Promessas (Anselmo Duarte, Portugal) 1963 The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
1988 Pelle the Conquerer (Bille August, Denmark) 1990 Wild at Heart (David Lynch, US) 1991 Barton Fink (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, US) 1992 Intentions (Bille August, Sweden) 1993 Joint Winners: Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, China) and The Piano (Jane Campion, Australia) 1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, USA)
1975 Chronique des Années de Braise (Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria)
1995 Underground (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia)
1976 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, US)
1996 Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
1977 Padre Padrone (Vittorio Taviani and Paolo Taviani, Italy)
1997 Joint Winners: A Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran) and Unagi (Imamura Shohei, Japan)
1978 The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, Italy) 1979 Joint Winners: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, US) and The Tin Drum (Völker Schlondorff, Germany) 1980 Joint Winners: All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, US) and Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa, Japan) 1981 Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda, Poland) 1982 Joint Winners: Missing (Costa-Gavras, US) and Yol (Yilmaz Guney, Turkey) 1983 The Ballad of Narayama (Imamura Shohei, Japan)
1998 Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece) 1999 Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, France) 2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark) 2001 The Son’s Room (Nanni Moretti, Italy) 2002 The Pianist (Roman Polanski, France) 2003 Elephant (Gus Van Sant, US) 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, US) 2005 The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium) 2006 The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, UK)
497
reference
The venice film festival
The oldest film festival in the world started in 1932 as part of the 18th Venice Biennale. The festival was not held every year and was not always competitive. Now, however, it is an annual competition held in Venice’s Lido di Venezia. The top prize at the festival is the Leone d’Oro, or the Golden Lion, which was awarded from 1947 onwards. Before then, dual prizes were awarded to the best foreign film and the best Italian film. golden lion and major award winners 1934 Teresa Confalonieri (Guido Brignone, Italy), Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, UK) 1935 Casta Diva (Carmine Gallone, Italy) Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown, US) 1936 Squadrone Bianco (Augusto Genino, Italy) The Emperor of California (Luis Trenker) 1937 Scipione l’Africano (Carmine Gallone, Italy) Un Carnet de Bal (Julien Duvivier, France) 1938
Luciano Serra Pilota (Goffredo Alessandrini, Italy) and Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl, Germany)
1940 The Siege of Alcazar (Augusto Genina, Italy) Der Postmeister (Gustav Ucicky, Germany) 1941 La Corona di Ferro (Alessandro Blasetti, Italy) Ohm Krüger (Hans Steinhoof, Germany) 1942 Bengasi (Augusto Genina, Italy) Der Grosse König (Veit Harlan, Germany) 1947 Siréna (Karel Steklý, Czechoslovakia) International Venice Award 1948 Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, UK) International Venice Award 1949 Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzon, France) Golden Lion 1950
Justice est Faite (André Cayatte) Golden Lion
1951 Rashômon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan) 1952 Forbidden Games (René Clément, France)
1956 Golden Lion not awarded
1987
Au Revoir, Les Enfants (Louis Malle, France)
1988
The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Ermanno Olmi, Italy)
1989
A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan)
1990
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard, UK)
1991
Urga (Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia)
1992
The Story of Qui Ju (Zhang Yimou, China)
1962 Joint winners: Cronaca Familiare (Valerio Zurlini, Italy) Ivanovo Detstvo (Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia)
1993
Joint winners: Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US), Three Colours: Blue (Kryzsztof Kieslowski, France)
1963 Le Mani Sulla Cittá (Francesco Rosi, Italy)
1994
1965 Vaghe Stelle dell’Orsa (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
Joint winners: Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-ling, Taiwan) Before the Rain (Milcho Manchevski, Macedonia)
1995
1966 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria)
Cyclo (Anh Hung Tran, Vietnam)
1996
1967 Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, France)
Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, UK)
1997
1968 Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (Alexander Kluge, Germany)
Hana-bi (Kitano Takeshi, Japan)
1998
The Way We Laughed (Gianni Amelio, Italy)
1980 Joint winners: Atlantic City (Louis Malle, US), Gloria (John Cassavetes, US)
1999
Not One Less (Zhang Yimou, China)
1981
2001 Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, India)
1957 Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, India) 1958 Muhomatsu, the Rikshaw Man (Hiroshi Ingaki, Japan) 1959 La Grande Guerra (Mario Monicelli Italy), Il Generale delle Rovere (Roberto Rossellini, Italy) 1960 Le Passage du Rhin (André Cayatte, France) 1961 L’Année Derniere à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France)
1964 Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy)
Die Bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane) (Margarethe von Trotte, Germany)
2000 The Circle (Jafar Panahi, Iran)
2002
1982 The State of Things (Wim Wenders, Germany)
The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan, UK)
2003
1983 Prénom Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia)
2004 Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, UK)
1953 Golden Lion not awarded
1984 The Year of the Quiet Sun (Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland)
1954 Romeo and Juliet (Renato Castellani, Italy)
1985
Vagabond (Agnès Varda, France)
1955 Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, Denmark)
1986
The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer, France)
2005
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, US)
498
refe r e n c e
The directors guild of america awards
The Screen Directors Guild was founded by 13 film directors in 1936. It later merged with the Radio and Television Directors Guild to form the body that exists today. Apart from protecting the artistic and legal rights of directors, the guild also honors directorial creativity and achievement. Winners of DGA awards often go on to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. dga awards for outstanding directorial achievement directors guild ofA Letter america 1939 Joseph Mankiewicz to Three best Wives director 1978 award Michael Cimino The Deer Hunter 1940 Robert Rossen All the Kings Men
1979 Robert Benton Kramer vs. Kramer
1950 Joseph Mankiewicz All About Eve
1980 Robert Redford Ordinary People
1951 George Stevens A Place in the Sun
1981 Warren Beatty Reds
1952 John Ford The Quiet Man
1982 Richard Attenborough Gandhi
1953 Fred Zinnemann From Here to Eternity
1983 James Brooks Terms of Endearment
1954 Elia Kazan On the Waterfront
1984 Milos Forman Amadeus
1955 Delbert Mann Marty
1985 Steven Spielberg The Color Purple
1956 George Stevens Giant
1986 Oliver Stone Platoon
1957 David Lean The Bridge on the River Kwai
1987 Bernado Bertolucci The Last Emperor
1958 Vincente Minnelli Gigi
1988 Barry Levinson Rain Man
1959 Willian Wyler Ben-Hur
1989 Oliver Stone Born on the Fourth of July
1960 Billy Wilder The Apartment
1990 Kevin Costner Dances with Wolves
1961 Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins West Side Story
1991 Jonathan Demme The Silence of the Lambs
1962 David Lean Lawrence of Arabia 1963 Tony Richardson Tom Jones 1964 George Cukor My Fair Lady 1965 Robert Wise The Sound of Music 1966 Fred Zinnemann A Man for all Seasons 1967 Mike Nichols The Graduate 1969 John Schlesinger Midnight Cowboy 1970 Franklin J. Schaffner Patton 1971 William Friedkin The French Connection 1972 Francis Ford Coppola The Godfather 1973 George Roy Hill The Sting
1992 Clint Eastwood Unforgiven 1993 Steven Spielberg Schindler’s List 1994 Robert Zemeckis Forrest Gump 1995 Ron Howard Apollo 13 1996 Anthony Minghella The English Patient 1997 James Cameron Titanic 1998 Steven Spielberg Saving Private Ryan 1999 Sam Mendes American Beauty 2000 Ang Lee Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2001 Ron Howard A Beautiful Mind 2002 Rob Marshall Chicago
1974 Francis Ford Coppola The Godfather Part II
2003 Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
1975 Milos Forman One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
2004 Clint Eastwood Million Dollar Baby
1976 John G. Avildsen Rocky
2005 Ang Lee Brokeback Mountain
1977 Woody Allen Annie Hall
BFI critics top ten poll
BFI directors top ten poll
1
Citizen Kane
1
Citizen Kane
2
Vertigo
2
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II
3
La Règle du Jeu
3
8½
4
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II
4
Lawrence of Arabia
5
Tokyo Story
5
Dr. Strangelove
6
2001: A Space Odyssey
6
Bicyle Thieves
7
Battleship Potemkin
7
Raging Bull
8
Sunrise
8
Vertigo
9
8½
9 = Rashomon
10 = Singin’ in the Rain
9 = La Règle du Jeu
10 = Our Daily Bread
9 = Seven Samurai
499
reference
The golden globes awards
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) was founded more than 60 years ago by a group of Los Angeles-based journalists working for overseas publications. The aim of their award is to recognize outstanding achievement in film. The organization also funds scholarships for the film-makers of the future. golden globes 1944
The Song of Bernadette
1965 Becket
1986 Out Of Africa
1945
Going My Way
1966 Doctor Zhivago
1987 Platoon
1946
The Lost Weekend
1967 A Man for All Seasons
1988 The Last Emperor
1947
The Best Years of Our Lives
1968 In the Heat of the Night
1989 Rain Man
1948
Gentleman’s Agreement
1969 The Lion in Winter
1990 Born on the Fourth of July
1949
The Treasure of Sierre Madre and Johnny Belinda
1970 Anne of the Thousand Days
1991 Dances with Wolves
1950
All the King’s Men
1971 Love Story
1992 Bugsy
1951
Sunset Boulevard
1972 The French Connection
1993 Scent of a Woman
1952
A Place in the Sun
1973 The Godfather
1994 Schindler’s List
1974 The Exorcist
1995 Forrest Gump
1975 Chinatown
1996 Sense and Sensibility
1956 East of Eden
1976 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1997 The English Patient
1957 Around the World in 80 Days
1977 Rocky
1958 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1978 The Turning Point
1999 Saving Private Ryan
1959 The Defiant Ones
1979 Midnight Express
1960 Ben-Hur
1980 Kramer vs. Krame