Great Movie Directors [antikvár]

Introduction Directing Movies How would one define "film director"? Like the blind men trying to describe an elephant, one can come up with many possible explanations, many ways of pinpointing what a film director actually does during the long, arduous days of preproduction and filming. Any movie reference book will tell you, in brief, that the director is the person who is directly in charge of all creative aspects, both interpretive and technical, of a film production, the one who mixes all the ingredients— from the acting to the lighting—that contribute to the final look of a motion picture. Of course, this formal definition does not cover the many roles the film director may be called on to play before the wrap-up: tyrant, father- {or mother-) confessor, psychiatrist, bosom pal, teacher, baby sitter, and arbiter of stormy battles. Every director at some time has had to cajole, wheedle, rebuke, bully, or soothe the people he needs to help him get through the making of a movie. Ask a movie buff what a director does, and he may summon up memories of, say, Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley) in the classic Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen musical Singin' in the Rain. Driven to near-madness by the baffling, brand-new complications of sound, this director in cap and riding breeches rushes around the set in a permanent state of hysteria as everything unravels around him. Ask a film director what his job is like, and you may be regaled with descriptions of physical distress not so far removed from Roscoe Dexter's distraught condition. William Wellman found that directing assaulted the nerves in a variety of ways: "nervous tension, strain, stress, the jitters, the willies, the heebie-jeebies, all wrapped up in that thing called 'a director's stomach' " (WeUman, A Short Time for Insanity). After ten days of shooting, Arthur Hiiler claims to go into a manic-depressive state. George Lucas has admitted that he gets "physically sick. I get a very bad cough and a cold when \ direct____It's like climbing mountains, cut and bruised and freezing cold, and you lose your toes and everything and then you get it done and it's all worth it" {Action, January-February 1974). Of course, when film directors talk about their craft, or, on a loftier level, their art, the physical ailments disappear. Despite the tribulations, despite the alarmingly bulging budgets, the missed cues, and the temperamental stars, their love for films and filmmaking remains pervasive, enduring, and sustaining. George Cukor asserted that making a film was "a joyous experience" {Film Culture, Fall 1964). Orson WeUes affirmed that he was "besotted with love for the medium" {The New York Times Magazine, 14 July 1985). Without discounting the toll that it takes, Robert Altman thinks of filmmaking as "a natural high and the only life in the world for me"; it marks "a time of beginning, a hme of struggle, a time of doubt and fear, a time when you feel your power, a time when you grow old" {Action, January-February 1972). Time and again directors will talk of their elation and their deep satisfaction when the vision they have brought to a film has been fully realized. Interestingly, when film directors discuss their work, many resort to musical references or compare their job to that of an orchestra conductor. Both are required to blend many disparate elements into a unified and seamless whole, the conductor realizing his interpretation of a piece of music out of a combination of instruments, the director creating a film out of the efforts of writers, actors, and technicians. Peter Bogdanovich has written, "Pure cinema is complementary pieces of film put together. Like notes of music to make a melody" (The Cinema of Peter Bogdanovich). Directors as diverse as William Wyler, John Cromwell, and François Truffaut have described themselves as orchestra conductors. Fred Zinne-mann enlarged on the idea: "There is a good deal of 13