Festival de Cannes Official Selection 1946-2015 In Competition - Filmmakers (almost all and even some that should not be)
HUILES DE PALME
• April 13, 2015 - a month before Cannes Festival opening, I make this a private list to a public list, despite the lack of a detailed introduction text (more than necessary). It's a work in progress without the essential: the filmography in description with all the complementary info collected.
◦ To make a long story short, keep on mind this:
according to Cannes' website (start/base for searches done here), and made in IMDb's spirit/style (for specifications and the way to written them, plus mine own way to do).
◦ It's the reason why some people mentioned should not be, but are. It's a deliberate choice and, I think, the best way to correct errors and to find more easily whom filmmakers are really omitted.
◦ To find more quickly something you looking for, remember the link Export this list at the bottom of the page (.csv file*) and the Ctrl+F, or equivalent, of your browser can be useful. RSS also with certain configurations.
*if your spreadsheet displays unexpected characters, used a .txt / text logiciel (for example, the one called in French, "Bloc-notes") to open it with. Then select the entire text, copy and paste after clicking the cell of your choice, all should be clean. If you know basic functions this is not hard to extract, but, even if you don't, to make a search on that unique column is a quick way to find something on the entire of a list (including in descriptions).
• April 15. (IMDb's server time) Thursday 16, here. Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille … Je n'ai pas sommeil. Filmography added to description of 48 filmmakers (1st Festival 1946). Let's call this a teaser. An illustration by the example. A bit more explanations very soon.
D DAY
• April 16. 11:00 AM CET. Press conference of Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure.
> External links: http://www.festival-cannes.com ^ (Cannes' website, in several languages, but not for all entries or pages) and http://www.festival-cannes.com/fr/archives/2000/inCompetition.html ^ (contain the data I've compiled for year 2000 Festival).
• April 13, 2015 - a month before Cannes Festival opening, I make this a private list to a public list, despite the lack of a detailed introduction text (more than necessary). It's a work in progress without the essential: the filmography in description with all the complementary info collected.
◦ To make a long story short, keep on mind this:
according to Cannes' website (start/base for searches done here), and made in IMDb's spirit/style (for specifications and the way to written them, plus mine own way to do).
◦ It's the reason why some people mentioned should not be, but are. It's a deliberate choice and, I think, the best way to correct errors and to find more easily whom filmmakers are really omitted.
◦ To find more quickly something you looking for, remember the link Export this list at the bottom of the page (.csv file*) and the Ctrl+F, or equivalent, of your browser can be useful. RSS also with certain configurations.
*if your spreadsheet displays unexpected characters, used a .txt / text logiciel (for example, the one called in French, "Bloc-notes") to open it with. Then select the entire text, copy and paste after clicking the cell of your choice, all should be clean. If you know basic functions this is not hard to extract, but, even if you don't, to make a search on that unique column is a quick way to find something on the entire of a list (including in descriptions).
• April 15. (IMDb's server time) Thursday 16, here. Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille … Je n'ai pas sommeil. Filmography added to description of 48 filmmakers (1st Festival 1946). Let's call this a teaser. An illustration by the example. A bit more explanations very soon.
D DAY
• April 16. 11:00 AM CET. Press conference of Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure.
> External links: http://www.festival-cannes.com ^ (Cannes' website, in several languages, but not for all entries or pages) and http://www.festival-cannes.com/fr/archives/2000/inCompetition.html ^ (contain the data I've compiled for year 2000 Festival).
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- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Alberto Lattuada was born on 13 November 1914 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Guendalina (1957), Flesh Will Surrender (1947) and Bambina (1974). He was married to Carla Del Poggio. He died on 3 July 2005 in Rome, Lazio, Italy..
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1946| IL BANDITO (LE BANDIT)
1947| IL DELITTO DI GIOVANNI EPISCOPO (LE CRIME DE GIOVANNI EPISCOPO)
1952| IL CAPPOTTO (LE MANTEAU)
1957| GUENDALINA
.- Director
- Special Effects
- Writer
Aleksandr Ptushko was born on 19 April 1900 in Lugansk, Lugansk uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire [now Luhansk, Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a director and writer, known for The Stone Flower (1946), Sadko (1953) and Ruslan i Lyudmila (1972). He died on 6 March 1973 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia]..
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1946| KAMENNYJ CVETOK (LA FLEUR DE PIERRE)
.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Alessandro Blasetti was born on 3 July 1900 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for First Communion (1950), La corona di ferro (1941) and Me, Me, Me... and the Others (1966). He was married to Maria Laura Quagliotti. He died on 1 February 1987 in Rome, Lazio, Italy..
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1946| UN GIORNO NELLA VITA (UN JOUR DANS LA VIE)
.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Alf Sjöberg was born on 21 June 1903 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden. He was a director and writer, known for Miss Julie (1951), Ön (1966) and Torment (1944). He died on 16 April 1980 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden..
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1946| IRIS OCH LÖJTNANTSHJÂRTA (L'ÉPREUVE)
1951| FRÖKEN JULIE (MADEMOISELLE JULIE)
1953| BARABAS
1961| DOMAREN (LE JUGE)
1966| ON (L'ÎLE)
.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut..
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1946| NOTORIOUS (LES ENCHAÎNÉS)
1953| I CONFESS (LA LOI DU SILENCE)
1956| THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (L'HOMME QUI EN SAVAIT TROP)
.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Anders Henrikson born on June 13, 1896 in Stockholm, Sweden, was an actor, director and writer. He dropped out of high school to become an actor. In 1914 he first studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm. The year after he was accepted at the acting school of Royal Dramatic Theatre (RDT). He was engaged at the RDT as an actor and teacher for most of his life. Anders Henrikson was only 17 when he did his debut in film. As an actor he appeared in 60 feature films from 1913 to his death in 1965. He directed 30 feature films from 1933 to 1956. Anders Henriksson was a first class character actor. He received a number of awards: for example the RDT O'Neill scholarship and the Royal Medal "Litteris et artibus". During his last year 1965 he was active in film as well as in the theatre..
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1946| BLOD OCH ELD (SANG ET FEU)
.- Actress
- Director
Bárbara Virgínia was born on 15 November 1923 in Lisbon, Portugal. She was an actress and director, known for Três Dias Sem Deus (1945), Sonho de Amor (1945) and Aqui, Portugal (1947). She died on 8 March 2015 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil..
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1946| TRES DIAS SEM DEUS (TROIS JOURS SANS DIEU)
.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
A former stage director, Basil Dearden entered films as an assistant to director Basil Dean (he changed his name from Dear to avoid being confused with Dean). Dearden worked his way up the ladder and directed (with Will Hay) his first film in 1941; two years later he directed his first film on his own. He eventually became associated with writer/producer Michael Relph, and together the two made films on themes not often tackled in British films, such as homosexuality and race relations. In the '60s Dearden embarked on a new phase of his career by directing large-scale action pictures, the best of which was Khartoum (1966), which was a critical and financial success. Not long after completing The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Dearden was killed in an automobile accident..
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1946| THE CAPTIVE HEART (J'ÉTAIS UN PRISONNIER)
.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
British director Bernard Knowles started his career as a newspaper photographer, and in the 1920s journeyed to the US and worked as a photographer for the Detroit News. Upon his return to England in 1922 he was hired by Gainsborough Pictures as an assistant cameraman, and it didn't take long for him to become a full-fledged Director of Photography. He gained a reputation as an innovator in photographic techniques and for his mastery of moody, atmospheric black-and-white photography, most notably on such classic films as The 39 Steps (1935), King Solomon's Mines (1937) and Gaslight (1940). After World War II he set out to fulfill his ambition of becoming a director, and his debut was the well-received ghost story A Place of One's Own (1945). However, his next film, The Magic Bow (1946), a "biopic" of 19th-century violinist/composer Nicolo Paganini, was a critical and commercial flop, being derided as heavy-handed and slow-moving. His film career faded somewhat after that, and in the mid-'50s he turned to television, making the occasional foray back into feature films..
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1946| THE MAGIC BOW
.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre (with whom he shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. (Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981..
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1946| THE LOST WEEK-END (LE POISON)
.- Actress
- Director
Bodil Ipsen was born on 30 August 1889 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was an actress and director, known for Café Paradis (1950), Red Meadows (1945) and The Viking Watch of the Danish Seaman (1948). She was married to Ejnar Black, Emanuel Gregers, Helmuth Heinrich Otto Moltke and Jacob Texiere. She died on 26 November 1964 in Denmark..
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1946| DE RØDE ENGE (LA TERRE SERA ROUGE) [Directors: Bodil Ipsen, Lau Lauritzen]
.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Hungarian-born Karoly Vidor spent the First World War as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian infantry. Following the armistice, he made his way to Berlin and worked for the German film company Ufa, as editor and assistant director. In 1924, he emigrated to the U.S. and, for several years, earned his living as a singer in Broadway choruses and (at one time) with a Wagnerian troupe. While little detail is extant of this period in his career, it enabled him to accumulate the means with which to finance his own project: an experimental short film entitled The Bridge (1929). On the strength of this, he was signed by MGM to co-direct his first feature film The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). For the remainder of the decade, Vidor worked with relatively undistinguished material at various studios, notably RKO (1935) and Paramount (1936-37). In 1939, he joined Columbia, where he remained under contract until 1948.
Vidor's career is something of an enigma. Never a particularly prolific filmmaker, his output has been variable. It includes a good-looking, but decidedly stodgy romance, The Swan (1956) (starring Grace Kelly in her penultimate screen role); and the interminably dull remake of A Farewell to Arms (1957). On the other side of the ledger is the lavish showbiz biopic of singer Ruth Etting, Love Me or Leave Me (1955), for which Vidor elicited powerhouse performances from his stars Doris Day and James Cagney. Frank Sinatra, also, gave one of his best performances as nightclub entertainer Joe E. Lewis, descending into alcoholism in The Joker Is Wild (1957). Other Vidor standouts are Ladies in Retirement (1941), a gothic Victorian thriller, tautly directed and maintaining its suspense, despite a relatively claustrophobic setting (among the cast, as Lucy the maid, was actress Evelyn Keyes, who became Vidor's third wife in 1944). Finally, two Rita Hayworth vehicles, the breezy musical Cover Girl (1944), and Vidor's principal masterpiece, the archetypal film noir Gilda (1946). This cleverly plotted, morally ambiguous tale of intrigue and ménage-a-trois was one of Columbia's biggest money-earners to date.
Some of the wittier dialogue in "Gilda" was voiced in re-takes, long after primary filming had been completed. The same applies to the two main musical numbers, the show-stopping "Put the Blame on Mame", and "Amado Mio". Yet, under Vidor's direction, all the dramatic and musical elements blended perfectly. The film has an undeniably electric atmosphere, largely due to the chemistry between the three leads. When the same material was later re-worked as Affair in Trinidad (1952) (with a bigger budget), that chemistry was notably absent.
In 1948, Vidor fell out with studio boss Harry Cohn, taking him to court for alleged verbal abuse and exploitation. He wanted out of his contract. Having just married Doris Warner, daughter of Warner Brothers president Harry M. Warner, Vidor sensed opportunities in working at a more prestigious studio. Cohn wasn't going to let him go quietly. It was pretty much all over, when actor Steven Geray testified, that he had himself been on the receiving end of invective at the hands of Vidor on the set of "Gilda". Glenn Ford, who thought Vidor opportunistic, then went on the stand, relating, that Cohn routinely used foul language on everyone around him, rather than aiming at any individual in particular. The fact that Vidor was not the easiest man to get along with, became evident during filming of the Liszt biopic Song Without End (1960). Both his stars (Dirk Bogarde and Capucine) found him to be ill-tempered and erratic. However, since Vidor died before the film was completed (George Cukor taking over), other factors may have played a part. In the final analysis, for "Gilda" alone, Charles Vidor deserves a niche in Hollywood heaven..
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1946| GILDA
.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Chetan Anand was born on 3 January 1921 in Lahore, Punjab, British India. He was a director and writer, known for Kudrat (1981), Haqeeqat (1964) and Neecha Nagar (1946). He died on 10 July 1997 in Delhi, India..
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1946| NEECHA NAGAR (LA VILLE BASSE)
.- Director
- Writer
- Production Designer
Christian-Jaque was born on 4 September 1904 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Fanfan la Tulipe (1952), If All the Guys in the World... (1956) and The Pearls of the Crown (1937). He was married to Denise Morlot, Laurence Christol, Martine Carol, Renée Faure, Simone Renant and Germaine Spy. He died on 8 July 1994 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France..
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1946| LE REVENANT
1952| FANFAN LA TULIPE
.- Director
- Animation Department
- Art Department
Clyde Geronimi was born on 12 June 1901 in Chiavenna, Lombardy, Italy. He was a director, known for Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). He died on 24 April 1989 in Newport Beach, California, USA..
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1946| MAKE MINE MUSIC (LA BOÎTE À MUSIQUE) [Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador (as Josh Meador)]
1953| PETER PAN (LES AVENTURES DE PETER PAN) Réalisé par Clyde GERONIMI, Wilfred JACKSON, Hamilton LUSKE [Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Jack Kinney (uncredited)]
.- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Compton Bennett started out as a bandleader and then became a commercial artist. He turned out a few amateur films that caught the attention of producer Alexander Korda's London Films, and they hired him in 1932 as a film editor. During World War II he directed a few instructional films for the British military and some propaganda shorts for the general public. His feature debut as a director was The Seventh Veil (1945), which was a big success. MGM took note, and he was brought to Hollywood to make films for them. The films he made there weren't particularly well-received--his most successful, King Solomon's Mines (1950), was lauded mainly for its impressive action scenes, which were in fact directed not by Bennett but by Andrew Marton, who received co-director credit--and he returned to Britain a few years later. While there he divided his time between films and television, with an occasional foray into directing theatrical productions. In 1957 he turned out two well-received films, After the Ball (1957) and The Mailbag Robbery (1957). He made his last feature in 1960 and, apart from an occasional foray into television, retired. He died in London in 1974..
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1946| THE SEVENTH VEIL (LE SEPTIÈME VOILE)
.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
An important British filmmaker, David Lean was born in Croydon on March 25, 1908 and brought up in a strict Quaker family (ironically, as a child he wasn't allowed to go to the movies). During the 1920s, he briefly considered the possibility of becoming an accountant like his father before finding a job at Gaumont British Studios in 1927. He worked as tea boy, clapper boy, messenger, then cutting room assistant. By 1935, he had become chief editor of Gaumont British News until in 1939 when he began to edit feature films, notably for Anthony Asquith, Paul Czinner and Michael Powell. Amongst films he worked on were Pygmalion (1938), Major Barbara (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942).
By the end of the 1930s, Lean's reputation as an editor was very well established. In 1942, Noël Coward gave Lean the chance to co-direct with him the war film In Which We Serve (1942). Shortly after, with the encouragement of Coward, Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer 'Anthony Havelock-Allan' launched a production company called Cineguild. For that firm Lean first directed adaptations of three plays by Coward: the chronicle This Happy Breed (1944), the humorous ghost story Blithe Spirit (1945) and, most notably, the sentimental drama Brief Encounter (1945). Originally a box-office failure in England, "Brief Encounter" was presented at the very first Cannes film festival (1946), where it won almost unanimous praises as well as a Grand Prize.
From Coward, Lean switched to Charles Dickens, directing two well-regarded adaptations: Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). The latter, starring Alec Guinness in his first major movie role, was criticized by some, however, for potential anti-Semitic inflections. The last two films made under the Cineguild banner were The Passionate Friends (1949), a romance from a novel by H.G. Wells, and the true crime story Madeleine (1950). Neither had a significant impact on critics or audiences.
The Cineguild partnership came to an end after a dispute between Lean and Neame. Lean's first post-Cineguild production was the aviation drama The Sound Barrier (1952), a great box-office success in England and his most spectacular movie so far. He followed with two sophisticated comedies based on theatrical plays: Hobson's Choice (1954) and the Anglo-American co-production Summertime (1955). Both were well received and "Hobson's Choice" won the Golden Bear at the 1954 Berlin film festival.
Lean's next movie was pivotal in his career, as it was the first of those grand-scale epics he would become renowned for. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was produced by Sam Spiegel from a novel by 'Pierre Boulle', adapted by blacklisted writers Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman. Shot in Ceylon under extremely difficult conditions, the film was an international success and triumphed at the Oscars, winning seven awards, most notably best film and director.
Lean and Spiegel followed with an even more ambitious film, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), based on "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence. Starring relative newcomer Peter O'Toole, this film was the first collaboration between Lean and writer Robert Bolt, cinematographer Freddie Young and composer Maurice Jarre. The shooting itself took place in Spain, Morocco and Jordan over a period of 20 months. Initial reviews were mixed and the film was trimmed down shortly after its world première and cut even more during a 1971 re-release. Like its predecessor, it won seven Oscars, once again including best film and director.
The same team of Lean, Bolt, Young and Jarre next worked on an adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel "Dr. Zhivago" for producer Carlo Ponti. Doctor Zhivago (1965) was shot in Spain and Finland, standing in for revolutionary Russia and, despite divided critics, was hugely successful, as was Jarre's musical score. The film won five Oscars out of ten nominations, but the statuettes for film and director went to The Sound of Music (1965).
Lean's next movie, the sentimental drama Ryan's Daughter (1970), did not reach the same heights. The original screenplay by Robert Bolt was produced by old associate Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Lean once again secured the collaboration of Freddie Young and Maurice Jarre. The shooting in Ireland lasted about a year, much longer than expected. The film won two Oscars; but, for the most part, critical reaction was tepid, sometimes downright derisive, and the general public didn't really respond to the movie.
This relative lack of success seems to have inhibited Lean's creativity for a while. But towards the end of the 1970s, he started to work again with Robert Bolt on an ambitious two-part movie about the Bounty mutiny. The project fell apart and was eventually recuperated by Dino De Laurentiis. Lean was then approached by producers John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin to adapt E.M. Forster's novel "A Passage to India", a book Lean had been interested in for more than 20 years. For the first time in his career; Lean wrote the adaptation alone, basing himself partly on Santha Rama Rau's stage version of the book. Lean also acted as his own editor. A Passage to India (1984) opened to mostly favourable reviews and performed quite well at the box-office. It was a strong Oscar contender, scoring 11 nominations. It settled for two wins, losing the trophy battle to Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984).
Lean spent the last few years of his life preparing an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's meditative adventure novel "Nostromo". He also participated briefly in Richard Harris' restoration of "Lawrence of Arabia" in 1988. In 1990, Lean received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award. He died of cancer on April 16, 1991 at age 83, shortly before the shooting of "Nostromo" was about to begin.
Lean was known on sets for his extreme perfectionism and autocratic behavior, an attitude that sometimes alienated his cast or crew. Though his cinematic approach, classic and refined, clearly belongs to a bygone era, his films have aged rather well and his influence can still be found in movies like The English Patient (1996) and Titanic (1997). In 1999, the British Film Institute compiled a list of the 100 favorite British films of the 20th century. Five by David Lean appeared in the top 30, three of them in the top five..
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1946| BRIEF ENCOUNTER (BRÈVE RENCONTRE)
1949| THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (LES AMANTS PASSIONNÉS)
1966| DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (LE DOCTEUR JIVAGO)
.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez Romo is the most famous person in the history of Mexican movies. For an era he symbolized Mexico due to his violent machismo, rooted in the Revolution of 1910-17, and because of his staunch commitment to Mexican cultural nationalism. Born to a Mexican (Mestizo) father and a Native American Kickapoo mother, Emilio was himself the "mestizaje" (mestizo) that his films would later glorify.
The teenaged Fernandez abandoned his studies to serve as an officer in the Huertista rebellion, which broke out on 12/4/1923, led by Gen. Adolfo de la Huerta. On July 20th of that year, Pancho Villa had been ambushed and murdered; one theory was that the killing was done by agents of Mexican President Álvaro Obregón. Obregon, when he served as a general during the revolution, had defeated Villa in four successive battles collectively known as the Battle of Celaya, which was the largest military confrontation in Latin-American history before the 1982 Falklands War.
Under the Constitution of 1917 that Obregon himself helped write, Mexican presidents could not succeed themselves (Obregon would later have the constitution amended so he could serve a second, non-consecutive term; after winning the presidential election of 1928, he was assassinated before his inauguration). Obregon had won the presidency in 1920 after inciting a successful military revolt against President Venustiano Carranza, who had planned on naming Ignacio Bonillas as his successor instead of Obregon, who believed that he deserved it. The revolt began when the governor of the state of Sonora, Gen. Huerta, broke with President Carranza and declared the secession of Sonora. This was a signal for the beginning of the successful uprising against Carranza, led by Obregon and supported by Gen. Plutarco Elías Calles. After Carranza was killed in an ambush, Huerta served as provisional president of Mexico from 6/1/1920 to 12/1/1920, until elections could be held. When Obregon won the federal election, Huerta became Minister of Finance in the new government.
Huerta considered himself the natural successor to President Obregon, just as Obregon had considered himself Carranza's natural successor. The murdered Villa was seen as an ally of Huerta, who had publicly announced his candidacy for the presidency. Obregon, however, planned to remain in power by handpicking his successor, a tradition that lasted throughout 20th-century Mexican politics. When he named his anti-clerical Minister of the Interior, the former Gen. Calles, as his heir, Huerta rose up in a rebellion that eventually affected half of the Mexican army. Like Huerta a native of Sonora and a former general in the Mexican army, Calles had preceded him as governor and military ruler of their home state from 1915-16. Huerta thought his service and loyalty to Obregon should have brought him the presidency, but Mexican presidents, not allowed to succeed themselves and limited (mostly) to one term, tried to extend their power by naming political puppets as successors (Calles would outdo Obregon by controlling the Mexican presidency outright or through puppets from 1924-34).
The rebellion was a serious threat to Obregon, but he was able to quash it by using loyal army units, battalions of workers and farmers and intervention by the US. By the time the revolt ended in March 1924, 54 generals and 7,000 soldiers were gone, either killed in battle, executed, exiled or dismissed. Obregon banished Huerta to exile in the US (where he lived in Los Angeles, supporting himself as a music teacher). This was the cauldron of violence and nationalism in which the young Fernandez came into his manhood. He received a 20-year prison sentence for his participation in the rebellion on the losing side. Escaping prison by following Huerta into exile in Los Angeles, Fernandez absorbed the rudiments of filmmaking as a bit player and extra working in Hollywood in the 1920s and early 1930s. With the election of Lázaro Cárdenas as president in 1934, the Huertista rebels were granted an amnesty (Huerta himself was recalled from exile by Cardenas in 1935 and served in several posts, including Inspector General of Foreign Consulates and Director General of Civil Pensions). Fernandez returned to Mexico in 1934 and began working in the Mexican movie industry as a screenwriter and actor. His Indian looks, which gave him his nickname "El Indio," also brought him his first lead role, playing an Indian in Janitzio (1935). Due to his imposing physical presence and Indian countenance, El Indio was cast as bandits, charros (cowboys) and revolutionaries.
The Cardenas government of 1934-40 established the framework in which the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" could be realized. The political system that dominated Mexico for over half a century was consolidated during his regime. The government incorporated trade unions, campesino (peasant) organizations and middle-class professionals and office workers into the ruling Party of the Mexican Revolution (later the Party of the Institutional Revolution, or PRI). Cardenas oversaw the redistribution of millions of acres of land to peasants and the expansion of collective bargaining rights and wage increases to workers.
Cardenas and all subsequent PRM/PRI presidents (all presidents of Mexico in the 20th century beginning with Calles were PRM/PRI members; Vicente Fox was the first from outside the party in three-quarters of a century) maintained political control of Mexico by granting favors and concessions to their constituencies inside the corporatist party structure in exchange for worker and campesino organizations delivering votes and suppressing discontent among their constituencies. The PRM/PRI itself created an organizational structure for the government that allowed citizens access to the political realm, in the sense that they could interface with government agencies. Once inside the government machine, seeking redress, favors, etc., the non-connected citizen was led through a maze of layers of bureaucracy that never permitted a satisfactory result. Citizens caught in the maze were eventually frustrated and discouraged, but the ingenious if disingenuous system worked as it gave them input--just no guaranteed output. By frustrating them within an institutional structure, the PRM/PRI governments--both federal and state--took the fight out of them. The PRM/PRI sought to control frustration that had led to violence in the past, particularly among the generals who had the power to destabilize the society and economy. That government structure thus served as a homeostatic device for the people's frustration, relieving it and never allowing it to build up again into a revolutionary situation.
Cardenas' most notable achievement arguably was the nationalization of Mexico's oil industry. After unsuccessfully trying to negotiate better terms with Mexican Eagle--the holding company owned by Royal Dutch/Shell and Standard Oil of New Jersey--Cardenas nationalized Mexico's petroleum reserves and expropriated the equipment of the foreign oil companies on 3/18/38. A spontaneous six-hour parade broke out in Mexico City to celebrate the event. Unlike Fidel Castro's nationalization of foreign assets in Cuba, Shell and SONJ were compensated for their expropriated assets. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Mexican model became a beacon for other oil-producing nations seeking to gain control over their own energy resources from foreign companies. Cardenas was the only PRM/PRI president who did not enrich himself while in office. After retiring as Minister of Defense in 1945--the post he took after relinquishing the presidency--he assumed a modest lifestyle. He spent the last years of his life supervising irrigation projects and promoting education and free medical care for the poor. This was the man who set the tone of the modern Mexico that arose from the revolution and civil wars of the 1920s, who cleared the ground for the economic boom of the 1940s in which the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" reached its apogee. Classic Mexican cinema has mostly been ignored in the US due to the language barrier and a colonialist mindset suffused with racism. When Mexican cinema has been addressed by those north of the border, the primary focus fell on the brilliant cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa, who shot films for John Ford and John Huston, or on former Hollywood star Dolores Del Río. Fernandez's reputation was so great that he was even appreciated in the US in his lifetime, but his notoriety as a sort of wildman of the Mexican movie industry and his appearance as an actor in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) overshadowed his greatness as a director. While Mexico has often served as a locale for American films--the genres of sweet (white) young things imperiled by swarthy Mexican bandits and of Americans in revolutionary Mexico, to say nothing of Zorro and The Cisco Kid--have been part of the Yankee cinema since the East Coast-based film companies began relocating to southern California in the early 1910s. Gringo Warner Baxter won the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Actor playing The Cisco Kid in a role originally intended for Raoul Walsh, of all people. Mexico has been the site of such blockbuster films as Viva Villa! (1934), Juarez (1939), Viva Zapata! (1952), Vera Cruz (1954), The Professionals (1966) and "The Wild Bunch," but except for La caza del oro (1972), a Johnny-Come-Lately to the genre, they seldom featured Mexican actors in anything other than bit parts, if at all, with the exception of Anthony Quinn, one of the few Mexican-Americans to achieve superstar status. Mexican performers taken up by Hollywood --such as Ramon Novarro, Rita Hayworth, John Gavin and Raquel Welch--were, like half-Mexican baseball great Ted Williams (born in San Diego), de-ethnicized in a sort of cultural ethnic cleansing. Salma Hayek, who is of mixed Mexican and Lebanese parentage, is arguably the first Mexican since Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio to cross over as a Hollywood superstar and remain identifiably Mexican (even at the dawn of a new millennium, she was urged by her Hollywood agents to play up her Arabic ethnicity, even with anti-Arab feeling rife in Hollywood and the US at large--their "reasoning" was that no one would go see a Mexican in movies since their cleaning ladies were Mexican),
Until the 1990s, with Like Water for Chocolate (1992) ("Like Water for Chocolate"), Mexican films themselves seldom strayed in the Yankee consciousness, except for the rare one like The Pearl (1947), based on a novel by Californian John Steinbeck and a prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival. "La Perla" was directed by Fernandez, the greatest director to come out of Mexico's golden age of cinema. The first Mexican feature was released in 1906, though production often was eclipsed by political and economic conditions. There were documentaries made about the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, but very few films were made in the 1920s. Sergei Eisenstein's trip to Mexico in the early 1930s to make Que Viva Mexico (1979), which remained unfinished due to his problems with his American backer, Upton Sinclair, injected a new enthusiasm into the Mexican movie industry.
While most American film historians place the Golden Age firmly in the 1940s--some specifically assigning it to the period 1943-46 and others extending it until the mid-'50s--the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema properly stretches back to 1936, peaks in the mid-'40s (when the Mexican cinema receives international recognition; two of Fernandez's films won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and were nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festivals) and terminates in the mid-'50s, with the end of Fernandez's 25-film collaboration with cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Figueroa, the Mexican movie industry's first great director, inaugurated the Golden Age in 1936 with two hits, Out on the Big Ranch (1936) ("Out at Big Ranch") and Let's Go with Pancho Villa (1936) ("Let's Go with Pancho Villa"). Both were "political message" movies addressing the social and cultural issues lying at the heart of Mexican Revolution. "Vamonos con Pancho Villa" has the distinction of being the first feature produced at the Mexican government-subsidized studio Cinematografica Latino Americana S.A., while "Allá en el Rancho Grande" made Tito Guízar a star. Guizar eventually became the Mexican movie industry's first superstar by playing in the "comedias rancheras" (ranch comedies) genre that was the most popular type of film in Mexico in the 1930s. A hit with audiences throughout Latin America, "comedias rancheras" were set in an idyllic, pre-revolutionary Mexico. The vaudevillian Mario Moreno, who became a Latin-American superstar under the name Cantinflas, made his short-subject debut in 1936 and would soon become the Latin-American film industry's leading comedian when he made his feature-film debut in You're Missing the Point (1940) ("There is the Detail"). The Cantinflas character is rooted in the image of the "pelado," or poor white trash, and his character deflates respectable society through his sharp repartee. Peace--i.e., a lack of overt domestic political turmoil--laid the groundwork for the development of a truly popular indigenous cinema in the 1930s and '40s. The comedias rancheras and Cantinflas comedies helped make the Mexican cinema commercially viable. With Hollywood distracted by turning out propaganda and military training films during World War II, there was an opening in Latin America that the Mexican industry filled. Without competition from Hollywood, the Mexican movie industry dominated Latin-American cinemas for most of the decade. Movie production tripled in the 1940s compared to the previous decade. The Mexican film industry underwent a consolidation and developed a star system, some of whom crossed over to achieve international recognition. The peak of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema came in the 1940s, spurred by rapid industrialization and a resulting affluence--although inequitably distributed--caused by trade with the US, as World War II boosted American demand for Mexican raw materials. The Mexican movie industry became the world's largest producer of Spanish-language films, helped by the fact that the other large producers, Argentina and Spain, were headed by fascist governments. Though the Mexican government was conservative and repressive in the 1940s, it encouraged the production of nationalist films that helped articulate a Mexican identity. During the 1940s Mexican movie stars and directors became popular icons, and some even became public figures with effective political influence. Among the movie stars blossoming during the decade were Dolores del Rio, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Joaquín Pardavé and María Félix, while Fernandez and Figueroa became globally known. Luis Buñuel moved to Mexico and would direct some of the country's major movies in the following decade.
Mexican movies typically were genre pictures, melodramas, romances, musicals, comedies and horror, which addressed all aspects of Mexican society, from love stories about the "lumpen proletariat" to dramas about the Indians. Mexican movies are a mirror of Mexican society, including history (19th-century dictator Porfirio Díaz and his court, The Revolution and Villa and Emiliano Zapata), obsessions (both familial and erotic) and mythology (Indian and big-city culture). Mexican cinema did this using the classic genres of the the melodrama, the comedy (in its romantic, musical and ranchera versions, and slapstick and farce) and even the horror film. With its proximity to Hollywood, and the fact that many leading lights of the Mexican cinema were familiar with Hollywood production values, the indigenous movie industry set a high standard for itself, as it had to measure up to Hollywood product.
Fernandez made his motion picture debut as an actor in Chano Urueta's El destino (1928), but his early work in movies was in American westerns churned out by Monogram director John P. McCarthy, including the Bob Steele programmers The Oklahoma Cyclone (1930), The Land of Missing Men (1930), Headin' North (1930), The Sunrise Trail (1931) and the Tim McCoy "hoss opera" The Western Code (1932). After a supporting role in Enrico Caruso Jr.'s La buenaventura (1934), he made his return to Mexican pictures in 1934, starring in Heart of a Bandit (1934) and director Fernando de Fuentes' Cruz Diablo (1934).
Fernandez's first film as a director was La isla de la pasión (1942), in 1941, which he also wrote and in which he played a bit part. The movie starred Pedro Armendáriz, who Fernandez would cast in many of his films. Another favorite collaborator was his wife Columba Domínguez. El Indio rapidly gained a reputation as Mexico's premier director making populist dramas. His Maria Candelaria (1944) put Mexican film on the map when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. It has been variously praised as "the highest triumph of Mexican plastic arts on celluloid" and as "a titanic promise for strictly patriotic [Mexican] cinema." French film critic Georges Sadoul, in his 1954 book "Histoire General du Cinema," praised the film for its "authentic" portrayal of rural Mexican life and for addressing race relations.
The film remains controversial in Mexico due to El Indio's aesthetic choices, which emphasized the exotic and primitive, and his representation of Mexican Indians, which some critics believed was inauthentic or "touristy." The nationalistic Fernandez wanted to articulate an idea of what it meant to be Mexican that was uniquely Mexican, and not influenced by Hollywood, whose films he felt were Americanizing Mexican cinema audiences. Terming his films "autos sacramentales [passion plays] of mexicanidad," Fernandez wanted to create a Mexican cinema that Mexicanized Mexicans. The film stars Dolores del Rio, the Hollywood movie star who had returned to Mexico after becoming disillusioned with the American movie industry, as the daughter of a prostitute trying to survive just before the Revolution. Set in the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City, del Rio's character is shunned by the locals, who are indigenous people. Her great desire is to marry her lover, played by Pedro Armendariz, but their romance proves to be star-crossed. Fernandez's direction was flawless, and Figueroa's black-and-white cinematography was masterful. The collaborators created one of the classics of not just Mexican movies but of world cinema. When El Indio and Figueroa were making "Maria Candelaria," they were part of a movement in which Mexican filmmakers were consciously attempting to create an indigenous art cinema that could compete with Hollywood product while simultaneously articulating a vision of Mexicans that was rooted in the "indigenismo" and "mestizophilia" of Mexican intellectuals. José Vasconcelos, the Minister of Education during the Obregon administration, was particularly influential due to his concepts of "mexicanos en potencia" and the cosmic race. In Vasconcelos' philosophy, the "barbarous" Indian was redeemed by a modernization program based on education, and by the assimilation of the Indians with the Caucausian Europeans into "la raza" of mestizos ("mestizaje"). Gabriel Figueroa was conscious of the fact that he and Fernandez, a creative team that became known as "Epoca de Oro," invented an idea of rural Mexico that did not actually exist. Figueroa established himself as the leader in imagining a new, post-revolutionary Mexican consciousness, through the vehicle of the visual image. A "painter in light," Figueroa learned his craft from Gregg Toland and Eduard Tisse, Eisenstein's cinematographer. Figueroa is credited with creating the classic Mexican film aesthetic in collaboration with El Indio and other film directors. In over 200 movies, he developed the classic imagery and aesthetic of Mexican cinema, which also influenced and was influenced by contemporary Mexican artists. Figueroa pioneered an indigenous visual vernacular that affected the muralist movement, and he has been referred to as the fourth of the most important Mexican muralist after Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros. Siqueiros himself called Figueroa's cinematography "murals that travel."
In their 25 films together between 1942-58, El Indio and Figueroa created the idea of "mexicanidad" cinema while elevating the mestizaje (mixed-race) identity, as well as the status of the pre-Columbian culture. The epic visual style they developed was indebted to Eisenstein's unfinished "Que viva Mexico." Their style fetishized the Mexican landscape through beautiful, carefully composed, stationary long shots. For two decades Mexican art cinema was identified with the films resulting from the Fernandez-Figueroa collaboration. Their films not only affected Mexican audiences' collective identity, but they affected how their audiences, both domestic and global, viewed Mexico and its history.
The climax of "Maria Candelaria" was an homage to Carlos Navarro's classic "indigenista" film Janitzio (1935). The movie is evocative of the anti-clerical struggles engendered by the Revolution. The secularization of the Mexican state was begun with the 1910 Revolution, continued with the 1917 Constitution, and reached a violent apotheosis in the Cristero Rebellion of 1926-29, when the President tried to crack down on the Roman Catholic church. However, the anti-clericalism of the revolutionaries had to co-exist with the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the symbol that has proved the most powerful and enduring in creating a Mexican national consciousness. Our Lady has served as a symbol for political struggles from the 19th-century wars of independence to the Cristero wars. On one level, "Maria Candelaria" is a paean to the cult of the Virgin Mary, a phenomenon present in much of classical Mexican cinema, which likely is one of the reasons the films Fernandez and Figueroa and others of the 1940s and 1950s proved so popular all over Latin America.
In 1946 Fernandez filmed an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella "The Pearl," in Spanish- and English-language versions. Shot by Figueroa and starring El Indio's favorite actor, Pedro Armendariz, "La perla" won El Indio a nomination for Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, further solidifying his notoriety as a director and publicizing the Mexican movie industry. The film also won him the Golden Ariel for Best Picture at the 1948 Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), and Fernandez, Figueroa, Armendariz and Juan García won Silver Ariels for Best Direction, Cinematography, Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively. Figueroa won a Golden Globe for Best Cinematography in 1949 from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
In 1948 Salón México (1949) was released, written and directed by Fernandez with cinematography by Figueroa. An urban melodrama, the film was groundbreaking in that it helped usher in a new genre, the "cabaretera" (cabaret) film, racier and just as commercial as the familiar genre of rancheras, which was then fading in popularity. The movie recreates the atmosphere of the famous Mexico City dance hall and won Marga López an Ariel Award for her role as the taxi dancer Mercedes. The movie featured a sensual soundtrack performed by the Afro-Cuban music group Son Clave de Oro. By the end of the 1940s Emilio Fernandez was the most famous and prestigious director in all of Latin America. He would continue his reign as Mexico's premier director into the mid-'50s, when his powers began to decline and Spanish amigra Luis Buñuel took over the title. As the most famous directors and biggest stars aged or died, Mexican cinema began to decline commercially, and the Golden Age of Mexican cinema came to an end (ironically, Bunuel's Mexican oeuvre strengthened as the national cinema went into decline and L'age d'or went into eclipse).
Although Fernandez and Figueroa last worked together in El puño del amo (1958), which starred El Indio's half-brother Jaime Fernández, the collaboration was essentially over by the mid-'50s when they made La rosa blanca (1954) and La Tierra del Fuego se apaga (1955). Their last great film together was La rebelión de los colgados (1954) (based on B. Traven's "Rebellion of the Hanged," it's English-language title), which starred Pedro Armendariz and Emiolio's half-brother Jaime Fernández, both of whom were nominated for Silver Ariel awards as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Jaime Fernandez won the Ariel, as did Amanda del Llano for Best Supporting Actress, Gloria Schoemann for editing and José B. Carles for sound. Antonio Díaz Conde was nominated for a Silver Ariel for Best Score. As his collaboration with Fernandez waned, Figueroa's professional relationship with Bunuel waxed. Figueroa first served as director of photography on Bunuel's classic The Young and the Damned (1950), which won 11 Ariels in 1951, including the Golden Ariel as Best Picture in 1951 and awards for Best Cinematography for Figueroa and Best Director and Original Story for Bunuel. Their other films together were Nazarin (1959) ("This Strange Passion"; winner of the International Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival), Fever Mounts at El Pao (1959); The Young One (1960), (which won a Special Mention at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival); The Exterminating Angel (1962), ("The Exterminating Angel"); and Simon of the Desert (1965) ("Simon of the Desert"). Of the Golden Age output, "New York Times" movie critic A.O. Scott said, "There is a frankness in these films that would never have passed muster with the Hays Office." The Golden Age had peaked in the 1940s, bolstered by the economic boom caused by the World War II alliance with the US, government support for the industry via state-funded studios, the maturation of a star system, and the rationalization of distribution and exhibition. Aside from Bunuel's pictures, the post-Golden Age era saw indigenous cinema suffer through the 1960s, as the industry became more dependent on formulaic pictures and such popular genres as the "Santo the Wrestler" series. During the 1960s and 1970s many low-grade horror and action movies were produced with professional wrestler Santo and Hugo Stiglitz being the biggest stars. However, the moribund 1960s led to a revival of government support for the industry in the 1970s, which established the base for a revival of Mexican art cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. El Indio continued directing films until 1979, but when his collaboration with Figueroa ended in 1958, his reputation suffered as the artistry of his pictures declined. He began acting more, though he directed a picture every few years. Gradually, the notoriety of his life began overtaking his reputation as a filmmaker. El Indio lived out the fantasy of perhaps every director when he shot a critic, who had dissed one of his movies, in the testicles. A violent man, he shot and killed a farm laborer, which he claimed was in self-defense. Convicted of manslaughter in 1976, he served six months of a 4-1/2-year sentence. By the 1960s Fernandez's off-screen reputation as a violent man led to his typecasting as brutal villains in many Mexican and American films. As an actor, Fernandez appeared with his brother, singer/actor Fernando Fernández, in John Ford's The Fugitive (1947), on which he also served as associate producer. Other American films he appeared in were John Huston's The Unforgiven (1960) (on which he also served as second unit director) and The Night of the Iguana (1964), the John Wayne pictures The War Wagon (1967) and Chisum (1970) (on which he also served as second unit director), Sidney J. Furie's The Appaloosa (1966) in support of Marlon Brando, and Burt Kennedy's Return of the Seven (1966). After assaying the role of renegade Mexican Gen. Mapache in the classic "The Wild Bunch", Fernandez appeared in two other Peckinpah films, as Paco in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and as El Jefe, who gives the order to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). He was reunited with John Huston in Under the Volcano (1984) and appeared in Roman Polanski's Pirates (1986).
El Indio's last two films as a writer-director were México Norte (1979) and Erótica (1979), in which he also starred. In all, El Indio directed 43 pictures from 1942-79. He was the credited screenwriter on 40 pictures, starting with Beautiful Sky (1936) in 1936. He also served as second-unit director, both credited and uncredited, on such American pictures shot in Mexico as The Magnificent Seven (1960), in which he was attached to the American crew by the Mexican government to ensure that the depictions of Mexicans were not racist or demeaning. Fernandez died in Mexico City on 8/6/86.
Government sponsorship of the industry and the creation of state-supported film helped create the phenomenon known as the "Nuevo Cine Mexicano" ("New Mexican Cinema") that catapulted Mexican movies into prominence on the global market in the 1990s. Amores Perros (2000), And Your Mother Too (2001) and The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002) are just three of the most recent Mexican films that have featured prominently in American art cinemas. The spirit of El Indio lives on!
In 2002 "La Perla" was named to the National Film Preservation Board's National Film Registry, which is maintained by the US Library of Congress. Fernandez and his collaborator Gabriel Figueroa were honored on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of El Indio's birth at the inaugural Puerto Vallarta Film Festival of the Americas held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in November 2004..
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1946| MARIA CANDELARIA
1949| PUEBLERINA (LA VILLAGEOISE)
1953| LA RED (LE FILET)
.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Frantisek Cáp was born on 7 December 1913 in Celákovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and writer, known for Nocní motýl (1941), Vesna (1953) and Moments of Decision (1955). He died on 12 January 1972 in Ankaran, Slovenia, Yugoslavia..
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1946| MUZI BEZ KIDEL (LES HOMMES SANS AILES)
.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Fridrikh Ermler was born on 13 May 1898 in Rechitsa, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire [now Rezekne, Latvia]. He was a director and writer, known for The Great Force (1951), Great Citizen (1938) and The Turning Point (1945). He died on 12 July 1967 in Leningrad, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia]..
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1946| VELIKIY PERELOM (LE TOURNANT DÉCISIF)
.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actor
Gabriel Pascal was born on 4 June 1894 in Arad, Transilvania, Austria-Hungary [now Arad, Arad, Romania]. He was a producer and actor, known for Major Barbara (1941), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and The Living Dead (1932). He was married to Valéria Hidvéghy. He died on 6 July 1954 in New York City, New York, USA..
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1946| CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (CÉSAR ET CLÉOPÂTRE)
.- Director
- Additional Crew
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
George Cukor was an American film director of Hungarian-Jewish descent, better known for directing comedies and literary adaptations. He once won the Academy Award for Best Director, and was nominated other four times for the same Award.
In 1899, George Dewey Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. His parents were assistant district attorney Viktor Cukor and Helén Ilona Gross. His middle name "Dewey" honored Admiral George Dewey who was considered a war hero for his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay, in 1898.
As a child, Cukor received dancing lessons, and soon fell in love with the theater, appearing in several amateur plays. In 1906, he performed in a recital with David O. Selznick (1902-1965), who would later become a close friend.
As a teenager, Cukor often visited the New York Hippodrome, a well-known Manhattan theater. He often cut classes while attending high school, in order to attend afternoon matinees. He later took a job as a supernumerary with the Metropolitan Opera, and at times performed there in black-face.
Cukor graduated from the DeWitt Clinton High School in 1917. His father wanted him to follow a legal career, and had his son enrolled City College of New York. Cukor lost interest in his studies and dropped out of college in 1918. He then took a job as an assistant stage manager and bit player for a touring production of the British musical "The Better 'Ole". The musical was an adaptation of the then-popular British comic strip "Old Bill" by Bruce Bairnsfather (1887-1959).
In 1920, Cukor became the stage manager of the Knickerbocker Players, a theatrical troupe. In 1921, Cukor became the general manager of the Lyceum Players, a summer stock company. In 1925, Cukor was one of the co-founders the C.F. and Z. Production Company. With this theatrical company, Cukor started working as a theatrical director. He made his Broadway debut as a director with the play "Antonia" by Melchior Lengyel (1880-1974).
The C.F. and Z. Production Company was eventually renamed the Cukor-Kondolf Stock Company, and started recruiting up-and-coming theatrical talents. Cukor's theatrical troupe included at various times Louis Calhern, Ilka Chase, Bette Davis, Douglass Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, Elizabeth Patterson, and Phyllis Povah.
Cukor attained great critical acclaim in 1926 for directing "The Great Gatsby", an adaptation of a then-popular novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940). He directed six more Broadway productions until 1929. At the time, Hollywood film studios were recruiting New York theater talent for sound films, and Cukor was hired by Paramount Pictures. He started as an apprentice director before the studio lent him to Universal Pictures. His first notable film work was serving as a dialogue director for "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930).
After returning to Paramount Pictures, he worked as aco-director. His first solo directorial effort was "Tarnished Lady" (1931), and at that time he earned a weekly salary of $1500. Cukor co-directed the film "One Hour with You" (1932) with Ernst Lubitsch, but Lubitsch demanded sole directorial credit. Cukor filed a legal suit but eventually had to settle for a credit as the film's assistant director. He left Paramount in protest, and took a new job with RKO Studios.
During the 1930s, Cukor was entrusted with directing films for RKO's leading actresses. He worked often with Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), although not always with box-office success. He did direct such box office hits as "Little Women" (1933) and "Holiday" (1938), but also notable flops such as "Sylvia Scarlett" (1935).
In 1936, Cukor was assigned to work on the film adaptation of the blockbuster novel "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. He spent the next two years preoccupied with the film's pre-production, and with supervising screen tests for actresses seeking to play leading character Scarlett O'Hara. Cukor reportedly favored casting either Katharine Hepburn or Paulette Goddard for the role. Producer David O. Selznick refused to cast either one, since Hepburn was coming off a string of flops and was viewed as "box office poison," while Goddard was rumored to have had a scandalous affair with Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) and her reputation suffered for it.
Cukor did not get to direct "Gone with the Wind", as Selznick decided to assign the directing duties to Victor Fleming (1889-1949). Cukor's involvement with the film was limited to coaching actresses Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) and Olivia de Havilland (1916-). Similarly, the very same year, Cukor also failed to receive a directing credit for "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), though he was responsible for several casting and costuming decisions for this iconic classic.
In this same period, Cukor did direct an all-female cast in "The Women" (1939), as well as Greta Garbo's final motion picture performance in "Two-Faced Woman" (1941). Then his film career was interrupted by World War II, as he joined the Signal Corps in 1942. Given his experience as a film director, Cukor was soon assigned to producing training and instructional films for army personnel. He wanted to gain an officer's commission, but was denied promotion above the rank of private. Cukor suspected that rumors of his homosexuality were the reason he never received the promotion.
During the 1940s, Cukor had a number of box-office hits, such "A Woman's Face" (1941) and "Gaslight" (1944). He forged a working alliance with screenwriters Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and the trio collaborated on seven films between 1947-1954.
Until the early 1950s, most of his Cukor's films were in black-and-white, and his first film in Technicolor was "A Star Is Born" (1954), with Judy Garland as the leading actress. Casting the male lead for the film proved difficult, as several major stars were either not interested in the role or were considered unsuitable by the studio. Cukor had to settle for James Mason as the male lead, but the film was highly successful and received 6 Academy Award nominations. But Cukor was not nominated for directing.
He had a handful of critical successes over the following years, such as Les Girls (1957) and "Wild Is the Wind" (1957), and also helmed the unfinished "Something's Got to Give" (1962), which had a troubled production and went at least $2 million over budget before it was terminated.
Cukor had a comeback with the critically and commercially successful "My Fair Lady," one of the highlights of his career., for which he won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, along with the Directors Guild of America Award. However, his career very quickly slowed down, and the aging Cukor was infrequently involved with new projects.
Cukor's most notable film in the 1970s was the fantasy The Blue Bird (1976) , which was the first joint Soviet-American production. It was a box-office flop, though it received a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and was groundbreaking for its time. Cukor's swan song was "Rich and Famous" (1981), depicting the relationship of two women over a period of several decades., played by co-stars Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen, Cukor's final pair of leading ladies.
He retired as a director at the age of 82, and died a year later of a heart attack in 1983. At the time of his death, his net worth was estimated to be $2,377,720. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA. Cukor was buried next to his long-time platonic friend Frances Howard (1903-1976), the wife of legendary studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn..
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1946| GASLIGHT (HANTISE)
.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Giacomo Gentilomo was born on 5 April 1909 in Trieste, Austria-Hungary [now Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy]. He was a director and writer, known for The Lovers (1946), Condottieri (1937) and Ecco la radio! (1940). He died on 16 April 2001 in Rome, Lazio, Italy..
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1946| AMANTI IN FUGA (AMANTS EN FUITE)
.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
A juvenile actor, Bruce Humberstone started his career as a script clerk, later serving as assistant director for the likes of King Vidor, Edmund Goulding and Allan Dwan. One of the 28 founders of the Directors Guild of America, Humberstone worked in a number of capacities on several silent films. With no distinct directing style of his own, Humberstone was able to direct comedies, dramas, westerns, melodramas or thrillers without any problem. He's known for directing several Charlie Chan films at 20th Century-Fox and came up with the "technique" of keeping star Warner Oland drunk so that he could deliver his lines in a style that was appropriate to the Chan character. During the 1950s Humberstone worked mainly for television, and retired in 1962..
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1946| WONDER MAN (LE JOYEUX PHÉNOMÈNE)
.- Director
- Animation Department
- Producer
Hamilton Luske was an American animator and film director from Chicago, who spend most of his career at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. He served as the supervising director of several of Disney's films. He was also the supervising animator for the character of Snow White in the feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), tasked with making the character more believably human and realistic than any previous Disney character.
Luske graduated from the University of California- Berkley, where he majored in business. He started his working life as a newspaper cartoonist in Oakland. Luske was hired by Walt Disney Animation in 1931, and received most of his training as an animator there. His early work included several of the studio's short films, both in the anthology series "Silly Symphonies" (1929-1939) and the long-running character-driven series "Mickey Mouse" (1929-1953). His first major assignment was serving as the supervising animator of Snow White in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). He was rewarded for his success by becoming a supervising director in subsequent films.
Luske served as a supervising director in the feature film "Pinocchio" (1940), which he co-directed with Ben Sharpsteen. He co-directed "The Pastoral Symphony" segment of the anthology film "Fantasia" (1940), which focused on characters from Greco-Roman mythology. Luske served as the supervising director of the animated segments of the feature film "The Reluctant Dragon" (1941), while the live-action segments were directed by Alfred Werker.
Luske subsequently co-directed "Saludos Amigos" (1942), "Make Mine Music" (1946), "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947), "Melody Time" (1948), "So Dear to My Heart" (1948), "Cinderella" (1950), "Alice in Wonderland" (1951), "Peter Pan" (1953), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), and "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961). He directed an animated sequence in the live-action musical film "Mary Poppins" (1964), and won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for his efforts.
Luske's last significant assignment was directing the animated short film "Scrooge McDuck and Money" (1967), marking the first animated appearance of Scrooge. Scrooge McDuck had been a recurring character in Disney comics since 1947, but had received no adaptations in film until Luske's short film.
Luske died in 1968, in Bel Air, California, at the age of 64. At the time, Disney's other veteran animators had started leaving or retiring, marking an end of an era for the studio. Luske was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 1999. Luske's son Tommy Luske worked as a voice actor in the 1950s..
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1946| MAKE MINE MUSIC (LA BOÎTE À MUSIQUE) [Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador (as Josh Meador)]
1953| PETER PAN (LES AVENTURES DE PETER PAN) Réalisé par Clyde GERONIMI, Wilfred JACKSON, Hamilton LUSKE [Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Jack Kinney (uncredited)]
.- Additional Crew
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Irving Rapper was one of the last surviving directors from the "Golden Age of Hollywood," passing away on Dec. 20, 1999, at the age of 101, four weeks shy of his 102nd birthday. Rapper is best remembered for the films he made with Bette Davis, including the classics Now, Voyager (1942) and The Corn Is Green (1945). He also directed the first film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie (1950), and the Rapper-helmed The Brave One (1956) won screenwriter Robert Rich an Oscar (Rich actually was blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, one of The Hollywood Ten, who did not receive his Oscar for almost 20 years). Rapper continued directing well into the 1970s.
Born in London on January 16, 1898, he emigrated to the United States and became an actor and stage director on Broadway while studying at New York University. In the mid-'30s, he journeyed westward to Hollywood, hired as an assistant director and dialog coach at Warner Bros., where he proved invaluable translating--and mediating--for non-native-English-speaking directors; by the early 1940s, he had metamorphosed into the hottest director on the Warner Bros. lot.
Hired as a "dialog director" (a position created by the film studios in the late 1920s with the advent of sound) by Warners in 1935, he practiced that craft until 1941, when he was promoted to director. While the position of dialog director no longer exists, in the first decades of the talkies dialog directors worked with the actors on their line readings and interpretation of individual scenes. The position was particularly critical when the director was a foreigner who didn't understand English very well.
Rapper initially worked with Gernan émigré William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939). While Dieterle was focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, such as the lighting of the sets and the camera angles, Rapper concentrated on the actors' performances. He also served as a dialog director for Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz, for whom he translated (and who, according to Rapper, spoke English more poorly the longer he was in Hollywood) and French-born Anatole Litvak. In that position, Rapper forged strong bonds with certain actors, who came to depend on him.
Bette Davis and Rapper formed a bond that included the free solicitation of advice. He counseled Davis to ask to have William Keighley, who was originally assigned to direct her in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), replaced by Curtiz. Davis was to be in heavy makeup, and Rapper knew that Curtiz, a perfectionist, would be the right man to capture the visuals in the costume drama. Ironically, Rapper did not get to be the dialog director on the film, as he was assigned to a troubled picture helmed by Litvak. Without him on the set of "Elizabeth and Essex" to run interference, Davis and Curtiz--both strong-willed perfectionists---fought furiously.
Rapper resisted being assigned as a director of "B" films because he knew that once you were assigned to that unit you were stuck there and would never get a chance to graduate to "A" pictures. Rapper bided his time until he was offered a "programmer," Shining Victory (1941), by studio head Jack L. Warner. Shot without stars, the inspirational movie was a modest success and Warners assigned him to another "inspirational" picture, about a minister, One Foot in Heaven (1941). The minister was played by Oscar-winner Fredric March, then widely considered the best American actor since John Barrymore (who had by now turned into a parody of himself). March's talent was matched only by Paul Muni and the Great Profile's brother Lionel Barrymore. March was enthusiastic about the character and has long considered it one of his favorite roles. The film's success solidified Rapper's filmmaking career, which was further bolstered by his next picture The Gay Sisters (1942), starring the great Barbara Stanwyck, who lobbied for the role.
The next picture he directed was destined to become a classic. "Now, Voyager" (1942) was "the picture that made me," Rapper said in a 1981 interview. Politics played a role in his nabbing the choice assignment with only three directorial credits under his belt. Hal B. Wallis, a Warners producer with his own unit, intended to cast Irene Dunne in the picture, but Rapper leaked Wallis' plans to his close friend Bette Davis, who demanded the part from Jack L. Warner. The front office gave in to her demands, and she reciprocated Rapper's favor by asking for him as her director.
Rapper knew that casting Davis' co-stars was important if the picture was to work. He defied Wallis' choice of May Whitty as the mother of Davis' character, stumping for Gladys Cooper, whom Wallis claimed he had never heard of. Cooper received an Oscar nomination in the role. Paul Henreid got his first big break from Rapper, who tested him and then got approval to cast him (although the role made Henreid's career, he later humiliated Rapper at Davis' gala American Film Institute tribute in 1977, where he mocked the director and took credit for the famous scene where he lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis. According to Rapper, Henreid had always wanted to be a successful director, and this engendered a personal enmity in him towards the director who "discovered him").
In addition to Davis and Henreid, Rapper attributed the film's success to lighting cameraman Sol Polito and versatile character actor Claude Rains, who played the psychoanalyst and thus the third side of the love triangle anchored by Davis and Henreid. Rapper felt that after the picture ends, Davis' character eventually will marry her psychoanalyst.
Rapper reteamed with Davis for the highly successful "The Corn Is Green" (1945), a story set in Wales but shot entirely--even the outdoor scenes--on Warners' sound stages. Rapper said that for her role as the Welsh schoolteacher, Davis tried very hard to not use the mannerisms that had made her famous. Rapper believes that John Dall, who played the schoolboy and whom he discovered, did not have a major career and became typecast as a villain because he was androgynous, and the public mood and cinema censorship of the time would not allow such an actor to be a star.
Rapper reportedly broke with Warners over Rhapsody in Blue (1945), a biography of George Gershwin. He felt that the script, which was approved by the Gershwin family which initially controlled the project, was wrong in that it made Gerswhin a character infatuated with two fictional women, while the real Gershwin was likely only really enthused about his music. Jack Warner, whose studio had never employed Gershwin and thus was an odd choice for the Gershwin family to entrust with his life story, fought the director over his choice of John Garfield to play the composer. Rapper believed that the casting of the film was all-important and its success ultimately was compromised by the casting of the bland Robert Alda at Warner's insistence. Jack Warner would not cast Garfield, as he was seeking leverage in the actor's upcoming contract negotiations. He also vetoed Rapper's second choice of Cary Grant on the grounds that no one would accept Grant as a composer (Warner subsequently took Rapper's insight to heart and cast Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946)). Although he looked like Gershwin, Alda "had a blah personality," Rapper told an interviewer in 1981. The film was showcased at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, but ultimately it was a failure. Some movie historians believe that Rapper's disenchantment over the failure of the film caused him to eventually break with Warner Bros.
He made Deception (1946) with Davis, which reunited her with "Now, Voyager" co-stars Rains and Henreid. Rapper claims that the movie was compromised when Davis--who was convinced that Rains' performance was stealing the picture from her--went behind Rapper's back and got Jack Warner to change the script so that she could shoot Rains' character in the finale. Rapper believed that the new ending weakened the picture. He also felt that his next picture The Voice of the Turtle (1947), an adaptation of the huge Broadway hit, was compromised by the casting of Ronald Reagan as the leading man. Despite Reagan's trying to beef his part up by inventing bits of business, Rapper believes that Eve Arden stole the film from him and his co-star, Eleanor Parker.
Rapper claimed in 1981 that he left Warners and became a freelancer due to the bad advice of his agent, who told him " . . . the movie business was booming and I could have my pick of assignments." Unfortunately, neither Rapper nor his agent forecast the downturn in the industry caused by the advent of television and the US Justice Department's order that the film studios divest themselves of their theater chains. The industry went into an economic tailspin, and Rapper's career suffered.
His first post-Warners gig was at Columbia Pictures, directing Anna Lucasta (1949). Originally a story of an African-American girl looking for acceptance from society, studio boss Harry Cohn had the girl and her family's ethnic identity changed to Polish, with narrative results that were, in Rapper's words, "pretty bizarre." Rapper wanted future Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the girl, but Columbia cast Paulette Goddard in order to fulfill a one-picture commitment she had to the studio. Goddard got the role because she had threatened to sue Columbia if the studio didn't fulfill her contract. Rapper said that Goddard was "hopeless in drama. She couldn't match any bits of business and her reading of lines was wooden." Cast in the role of a teenager, Goddard "claimed she was 34 but the records showed it was more like 44." Thus are debacles made.
Rapper returned to Warner Bros. to helm The Glass Menagerie (1950), the first movie adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, because producer Charles Feldman requested him. Just off her Oscar win for Johnny Belinda (1948), the 36-year-old Jane Wyman was cast as the 20-something Laura to boost box-office returns. Tallulah Bankhead was hired to play Amanda Wingfield, but her drunkenness on the set on the second day of shooting led Jack Warner to fire her. Refusing to cast Miriam Hopkins "because of past differences," Warner "positively screamed when I mentioned Bette Davis." Ruth Chatterton was considered, and Ethel Barrymore, who wanted the part, was rejected as being too old. Finally, said Rapper, "that left Gertrude Lawrence, who had little camera experience and was so very jittery she'd cry every time a take was spoiled."
Commenting on the film three decades later, Rapper said, "I still like Kirk Douglas as the gentleman caller and Arthur Kennedy as Tom." The movie, considered one of the least successful adaptations of Williams' work, is barely remembered today and suffers from a bowdlerization of the original play. Williams hated the film as, against his wishes, the script implies a totally different, more upbeat ending than his play.
Of his later films, Rapper felt that they suffered, as he "missed the studio set-up." He claimed "The Brave One" (1956) as his best movie. Marjorie Morningstar (1958) was his last success at the box office, and his career tailed off in the 1960s, although he continued to direct until the end of the 1970s.
He attributed the failure of The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970) to "casting a beautiful boy [John Hansen] rather than a girl" to play Jorgensen, who rocketed to fame in the 1950s after a sex change. "That, after all, was Christine's story. She always believed she was a woman trapped inside a man's body." Born Again (1978), based on a memoir of a convicted Watergate co-conspirator who was on President Richard Nixon's staff, was a failure, as Rapper "was prevented from dramatizing the crimes of Charles Colson, only the redemption--and that made for boredom."
"Born Again" turned out to be Rapper's last film, as he reneged on his commitment to direct Sextette (1977), an exploitation film based on the joke of the elderly Mae West taking a (far younger) husband, her sixth. Rapper backed out, as he didn't have the heart for it: "Mae West was too frail-looking. She'd put her hands on her hips but there were no hips; she had faded away. However, I helped her with her line readings. So, you see, I was back to where I started--as a dialog director!"
Irving Rapper's goal late in life was to live in three separate centuries. He died on Dec. 20, 1999, aged 101, a little less than two weeks shy of fulfilling that wish..
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1946| RHAPSODY IN BLUE
.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Jack Kinney was born on 29 March 1909 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Dumbo (1941), Pinocchio (1940) and The Magical World of Disney (1954). He was married to Eva Jane Sinclair and Virginia Schulte. He died on 9 February 1992 in Glendale, California, USA..
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1946| MAKE MINE MUSIC (LA BOÎTE À MUSIQUE) [Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador (as Josh Meador)]
1947| DUMBO (DUMBO, L'ÉLÉPHANT VOLANT) Réalisé par Ben SHARPSTEEN, Walt DISNEY [Directors: Samuel Armstrong (as Sam Armstrong), Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts (sequence director)*, Ben Sharpsteen (supervising director), John Elliotte (uncredited)] {(sequence director)* for the first five; Walt Disney not listed [imdb= producer (uncredited) & presenter]}
1953| PETER PAN (LES AVENTURES DE PETER PAN) Réalisé par Clyde GERONIMI, Wilfred JACKSON, Hamilton LUSKE [Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Jack Kinney (uncredited)]
.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei Diaghilev, and was active in many art movements, but always remained a poet at heart. His films reflect this fact. Cocteau was also a homosexual, and made no attempt to hide it. His favorite actor was his close friend Jean Marais, who appeared in almost every one of his films. Cocteau made about twelve films in his career, all rich with symbolism and surreal imagery. He is now regarded as one of the most important avant-garde directors in cinema..
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1946| LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE Réalisé par Jean COCTEAU [Directors: Jean Cocteau, René Clément (uncredited)] _/imdb/trivia/`During the shooting of the film, Jean Cocteau became very ill and eventually had to be hospitalized. While he was recovering, René Clément served as the director.`
.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Jean Delannoy began his film career in the 1920s as an actor. By the 1930s he had switched careers and become an editor, then a short-subjects director. By the mid-'30s he was a full-fledged director, and soon garnered a reputation as a sensitive, understated craftsman with a thorough command of the medium. By the 1950s, however, he was doing overheated melodramas and overblown epics, including a particularly undistinguished version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)), and he was soon reduced to churning out such drivel as Action Man (1967) (US title: "Action Man") and The Double Bed (1965) (US title: "The Double Bed")..
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1946| LA SYMPHONIE PASTORALE
1947| LES JEUX SONT FAITS
1956| MARIE ANTOINETTE REINE DE FRANCE
.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Johan Jacobsen was born on 14 March 1912 in Denmark. He was a director and producer, known for Jenny and the Soldier (1947), A Stranger Knocks (1959) and Brevet fra afdøde (1946). He died on 7 July 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark..
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1946| BREVET FRA AFDØDE (LA LETTRE)
.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Actor / director John Cromwell was born December 23, 1887, in Toledo, OH. He made his Broadway debut on October 14, 1912, in Marian De Forest's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" at the Playhouse Theatre. The show was a hit, running for a total of 184 performances. Cromwell appeared in another 38 plays on Broadway between February 24, 1914--when he appeared in Frank Craven's "Too Many Cooks" at the 39th Street Theatre (a hit show he co-directed with Craven that ran for a total of 223 performances)--and October 31, 1971, when he closed with "Solitaire/Double Solitaire" at the John Golden Theatre after 36 performances. In addition to "Cooks", Cromwell directed or staged 11 plays and produced seven plays on Broadway. Among the highlights of his Broadway acting career were his multiple appearances as a Shavian actor. He was "Charles Lomax" in the original Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara" in 1915 (Guthrie McClintic, who married Katharine Cornell in 1921 and became a notable Broadway director, played a butler) and as "Capt. Kearney" in the revival of "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" the following year (McClintic played "Marzo"). He also appeared as "Brother Martin Ladvenu" in Katharine Cornell's 1936 "Saint Joan", directed by McClintic, and played "Freddy Eynsford Hill" in Cedric Hardwicke's 1945 revival of "Pygmalion", starring Gertrude Lawrence as "Eliza Doolittle" and Raymond Massey as "Henry Higgins".
As for William Shakespeare, he played "Paris" to Katharine Cornell's "Juliet" and Maurice Evans' "Romeo" in McClntic's "Rome and Juliet" in 1935, and appeared as "Rosenkrantz" in McClintic's 1936 Broadway staging of "Hamlet", with John Gielgud in the title role, Lillian Gish as "Ophelia" and Judith Anderson as "Gertrude". He also appeared as "Lennox" in the 1948 revival of Shakespeare's "Scottish Play", with Michael Redgrave as "Macbeth" and Flora Robson as "Lady Macbeth" (young actors also featured in the play who went on to renown were Julie Harris, Martin Balsam and Beatrice Straight). Cromwell won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1952 for "Point of No Return", in which he supported Henry Fonda, and appeared as the father, "Linus Larabee Sr.", in "Sabrina Fair" the next year.
With the advent of sound pictures, Cromwell went "Hollywood" in 1929, appearing in The Dummy (1929) in support of Ruth Chatterton and Fredric March. He also co-directed two talkies with A. Edward Sutherland that year, Close Harmony (1929) and The Dance of Life (1929) (he had a bit part as a doorman in the latter). After learning the craft of directing, he directed The Mighty (1929) with George Bancroft, in which he made innovative use of sound. He also directed Jackie Coogan in Tom Sawyer (1930) the next year. He made his name with Ann Vickers (1933) in 1933 and Of Human Bondage (1934) in 1934, two films he shot for RKO based on novels by the preeminent writers Sinclair Lewis and W. Somerset Maugham. Both movies ran into censorship trouble. Lewis' "Ann Vickers" featured Irene Dunne as a reformer and birth control advocate who has a torrid extramarital affair. The novel had been condemned by the Catholic Church, and the proposed movie adaptation proved controversial. The Studio Relations Committee, headed by James Wingate (whose deputy was future Production Code Administration head Joseph Breen, a Roman Catholic intellectual) condemned the script as "vulgarly offensive" before production began. The SRC, which oversaw the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, refused to approve the script without major modifications, but RKO production chief Merian C. Cooper balked over its excessive demands. Though studio head B.B. Kahane protested the SRC's actions to MPPDA President Will Hays, the studio agreed to make "Ann Vickers" an unmarried woman at the time of her affair, thus eliminating adultery as an issue, and the film received a Seal of Approval. The battle over "Ann Vickers" was one of the reasons the more powerful PCA was created in 1934 to take the place of the SRC.
Joseph Breen, now head of the PCA, warned that the script for W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" was "highly offensive" because the prostitute "Mildred", whom the protagonist, medical student "Philip Carey", falls in love with, comes down with syphilis. Breen demanded that Mildred be turned into less of a tramp, that she be afflicted with tuberculosis rather than syphilis and that she be married to Carey's friend whom she cheats on him with. RKO gave in on every point, as the PCA, unlike the SRC, had the ability to levy a $25,000 fine for violations of the Production Code. Despite the changes, chapters of the Catholic Church's Legion Of Deceny condemned the film in Chicago, Detroit, Omaha and Pittsburgh. Despite a picket line manned by local priests in Chicago, Cromwell's film broke all records at the Hippodrome Theater when it played there in August 1934. Five hundred people had to be turned away opening night. It seemed that wherever the Legion of Decency had condemned the film, it played to capacity crowds. In 1935 Breen ruled that "Of Human Bondage" would have to be changed if RKO wished to re-release it.
Other major films Cromwell directed include Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Algiers (1938), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Since You Went Away (1944) and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). In 1951 he directed The Racket (1951) starring Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, and Robert Ryan; he had appeared in the original staging of the Broadway play by Bartlett Cormack on which the movie was based back in 1927.
Busy on Broadway in the 1950s, it was seven years before he directed another film, The Goddess (1958), with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Kim Stanley. He directed two more minor films before calling it quits as a movie director in 1961. As a director, Cromwell eschewed flashy camera work, as he felt it detracted from both the story and the actors' performances. Late in his life director Robert Altman cast Cromwell as an actor in two of his films, 3 Women (1977) and A Wedding (1978).
John Cromwell died on September 26, 1979, in Santa Barbara, CA..
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1946| ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (ANNA ET LE ROI DE SIAM)
.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
José Leitão de Barros was born on 22 October 1896 in Lisbon, Portugal. He was a director and writer, known for Ala-Arriba! (1942), Camões (1946) and Lisboa (1930). He was married to Helena Roque Gameiro. He died on 29 June 1967 in Lisbon, Portugal..
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1946| CAMOENS
.- Visual Effects
- Animation Department
- Director
Joshua Meador was born on 12 March 1911 in Greenwood, Mississippi, USA. He was a director, known for Forbidden Planet (1956), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He was married to Libby Alston. He died in August 1965 in California, USA..
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1946| MAKE MINE MUSIC (LA BOÎTE À MUSIQUE) [Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador (as Josh Meador)]
.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Lau Lauritzen was born on 26 June 1910 in Vejle, Denmark. He was a director and actor, known for Dangerous Youth (1953), The Face of Truth (1951) and Café Paradis (1950). He was married to Lisbeth Movin. He died on 12 May 1977 in Denmark..
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1946| DE RØDE ENGE (LA TERRE SERA ROUGE) [Directors: Bodil Ipsen, Lau Lauritzen]
.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Leopold Lindtberg was born on 1 June 1902 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He was a director and writer, known for The Village (1953), Die mißbrauchten Liebesbriefe (1940) and The Last Chance (1945). He was married to Valeska Hirsch. He died on 18 April 1984 in Sils im Engadin, Graubünden, Switzerland..
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1946| DIE LETZTE CHANCE (LA DERNIÈRE CHANCE)
1951| DIE VIER IM JEEP (QUATRE DANS UNE JEEP ) Réalisé par Léopold LINDTBERG [Directors: Leopold Lindtberg, Elizabeth Montagu]
1953| SIE FANDEN EINE HEIMAT (NOTRE VILLAGE)
.- Writer
- Director
- Sound Department
Lev Arnshtam was born on 15 January 1905 in Yekaterinoslav, Yekaterinoslav uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire [now Dnipropetrovsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer and director, known for The Great Glinka (1946), Romeo & Juliet (1955) and Zoya (1944). He died on 26 December 1979 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]..
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1946| GLINKA
1946| ZOYA (ZOIA)
1955| ROMEI I DZHULYETTA (ROMEO ET JULIETTE) [Directors: Lev Arnshtam (as L. Armstram), Leonid Lavrovsky (as L. Lavrovsky)]
.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Louis Daquin was born on 20 May 1908 in Calais, Pas-de-Calais, France. He was a director and actor, known for Le point du jour (1949), Les frères Bouquinquant (1947) and The Thistles of the Baragan (1957). He died on 2 October 1980 in Paris, France..
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1946| PATRIE
1958| CIULINII BARAGANULUI (LES CHARDONS DU BARAGAN) Réalisé par Louis DAQUIN [Directors: Louis Daquin, Gheorghe Vitanidis]
.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Mario Soldati studied by the Jesuits and in the 1920s was acquainted with liberal intellectuals who gathered around Piero Gobetti. He wrote his first play ("Pilatus") when he was 18, and published hist first short story collection ("Salmace") in 1929. In 1935 he reached literary success with "America primo amore" (America First Love), a novel in which he transposed his diary of his stay in the U.S. between 1929 and 1931 as guest professor at the Columbia University. His life was divided between literature and movie-making. He was also a well-known scholar of English and American Literature, and authored several documentary programs for Italian State broadcaster RAI-TV..
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1946| LE MISERIE DEL SIGNOR TRAVET (LES ENNUIS DE MONSIEUR TRAVET)
1953| LA PROVINCIALE (UNE MARCHANDE D'AMOUR)
1959| POLICARPO UFFICIALE DI SCRITTURA (POLYCARPE MAÎTRE CALLIGRAPHE)
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Miguel M. Delgado was born on 1 April 1904 in Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He was a director and writer, known for Los tres mosqueteros (1942), El señor fotógrafo (1953) and Cantando nace el amor (1954). He was married to Shirley Miller Eckenroth, Ofelia González Hernández and Josefina Velez. He died on 2 January 1994 in Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico..
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1946| LOS TRES MOSQUETEROS (LES TROIS MOUSQUETAIRES)
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Mikhail Romm was born in 1901, into a Russian-Jewish family, in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russia. He served in the Red Army in 1918-21 as an Inspector of the Special Forces for Food Supplies. He was in charge of confiscations of bread and food from the wealthier farmers (kulaks) in Central Russia. Romm later was avoiding any discussions regarding this painful memories, though he used his experience in the films about Lenin.
He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Arts and Technology as a sculptor (1925), where he studied under Anna Golubkina. Worked as a sculptor and interpreter. In 1928-30 he worked at Institute for extra-scholastic studies as researcher on the theory of Cinematography. From 1931 he worked at Mosfilm Studios, where he made his first film 'Pyshka' (1934). His next film '13' (1936) was considered the first Soviet "eastern" (a Soviet answer to "western"). During the years of "Great Terror" under Joseph Stalin Romm made two features and a documentary about Lenin.
His criminal drama 'Murder on the Dante Street' (1956) was the first film for the great Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy. After an eight-year brake Romm made his 'Nine Days in One Year' (1962). It was an excellent psychological drama about the life and death of nuclear physicists. After the political shifts during and after the "Thaw", started by Nikita Khrushchev, Romm devoted his talent to documentary material. He worked like a sculptor, cutting through the massive Nazi archives of documentaries in Germany. His work was rewarded with an astounding result - 'Tiumph over violence' (1965) in which he also was a narrator. His last film 'I vse-taki Ya Veryu' (1974) was finished by his disciples Marlen Khutsiev and Elem Klimov..
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1946| CHELOVEK NO. 217 (MATRICULE 217)
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Muhammad Karim was born in 1896 in Cairo, Egypt. He was a director and writer, known for Dunia (1946), El warda el baida (1932) and Doumou' el hub (1936). He died on 27 May 1972 in Cairo, Egypt..
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1946| DUNIA
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A beloved, warmly popular French character player and screenwriter in his heyday, Noël Noël was born Lucien Édouard Noël on August 9, 1897 in Paris. He initially developed his celebrity in music halls and the cabaret venue, where he created his Adémaï Joseph comic character, a blundering, oafish French soldier. He eventually took this character successfully to film in the early 30s and remained in movies as both actor and sometime writer and director in both his own vehicles and those of others top comedians. A leftist cartoonist at one time not to mention a skillful songwriter, many of his ideals seeped into his work.
Noël Noël began immediately in starring roles with the comedy La prison en folie (1931) (Prison Madness); as a buffoonish lover in the more dramatic Mistigri (1931) opposite Madeleine Renaud; as a fiancé torn between two women in the comedy Papa sans le savoir (1932); as the title comic role in Monsieur Albert (1932); and as a snubbed lover in [the social comedy Mam'zelle Spahi (1934). He took his popular protagonist, the naive, unassuming, bewildered-looking Adémaï soldier, to cinematic life first in the short films Adémaï et la nation armée (1932) and Backbench (2014), then to feature films with Adémaï aviateur (1934) co-starring Fernandel, Passing Glory (1999) co-starring Michel Simon and the war time picture Adémaï bandit d'honneur (1943).
Noël Noël became just as popular during the WWII years starring in such escapist film vehicles as La famille Duraton (1939), Sur le plancher des vaches (1939) and A Cage of Nightingales (1945). He continued sporadically as a character lead or support in the 1950's and 1960's with such delights as the musical comedy La vie chantée (1951), which he also wrote and directed; La fugue de Monsieur Perle (1952), in the title role; the Preston Sturges comedy The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955); the political comedy La terreur des dames (1956); The Gangsters (1957); the mystery comedy Le septième ciel (1958) with Danielle Darrieux; the comic farce Sputnik (1958); Messieurs les ronds de cuir (1959); Les vieux de la vieille (1960); and the sex comedy Jessica (1962) starring Maurice Chevalier and Angie Dickinson.
He left films after starring in the farcical comedy La sentinelle endormie (1966), which he also wrote, in which he portrays a doctor who conspires with the royalists against Napoleon. Married twice, he died in France on October 4, 1989, age 92.
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1946| LE PÈRE TRANQUILLE Réalisé par René CLEMENT [Directors: René Clément, Noël-Noël (uncredited)]
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Otakar Vávra was born on 28 February 1911 in Hradec Kralove, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was a writer and director, known for Witchhammer (1970), Romance pro kridlovku (1967) and Dny zrady (1973). He died on 15 September 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic..
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1946| NEZBEDNY BAKALAR (LE BACHELIER MALICIEUX)
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Paul Calinescu was born on 23 August 1902 in Galati, Covurlui, Romania. He was a director and writer, known for Pe raspunderea mea (1956), Floarea reginei (1946) and Titanic Waltz (1965). He died on 25 March 2000 in Bucharest, Romania..
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1946| FLOAREA REGINEI (IMMORTELLE DES NEIGES)
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René Clément was one of the leading French directors of the post-World War II era. He directed what are regarded as some of the greatest films of the time, such as The Battle of the Rails (1946), Forbidden Games (1952) and The Day and the Hour (1963). He was later almost forgotten as a director. He was back in public attention briefly when his epic Is Paris Burning? (1966) (with an all-star cast of famous actors) was released in 1966, but it was much criticized.
During the 1960s and 1970s Clement directed a number of unnoticed international productions, always with his usual brio and technical virtuosity. Indeed, what characterizes most of his films is how, even to serve sometimes very unexceptional scripts, the directing is always breathtakingly original, inventive, featuring technical virtuosity and the use of special effects. When a remarkable script is associated with these qualities, a film such as Forbidden Games (1952) is the result: the masterpiece of a lifetime. I think we can say that René Clément was one of the most unlucky talented filmmakers who existed, but unfortunate career choices damaged his legacy.
He died in March 1996..
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1946| LA BATAILLE DU RAIL
1946| LE PÈRE TRANQUILLE Réalisé par René CLEMENT [Directors: René Clément, Noël-Noël (uncredited)]
1946| LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE Réalisé par Jean COCTEAU [Directors: Jean Cocteau, René Clément (uncredited)] _/imdb/trivia/`During the shooting of the film, Jean Cocteau became very ill and eventually had to be hospitalized. While he was recovering, René Clément served as the director.`
1947| LES MAUDITS
1949| LE MURA DI MALAPAGA (AU-DELÀ DES GRILLES)
1954| KNAVE OF HEARTS (MONSIEUR RIPOIS)
1961| CHE GIOIA VIVERE (QUELLE JOIE DE VIVRE)
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Robert Cormack was born on 1 April 1909 in California, USA. He was a director and art director, known for Make Mine Music (1946), Bambi (1942) and Fantasia (1940). He died on 25 March 1952..
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1946| MAKE MINE MUSIC (LA BOÎTE À MUSIQUE) [Directors: Robert Cormack (as Bob Cormack), Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador (as Josh Meador)]
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The master filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, as one of the creators of neo-realism, is one of the most influential directors of all time. His neo-realist films influenced France's nouvelle vague movement in the 1950s and '60s that changed the face of international cinema. He also influenced American directors, including Martin Scorsese.
He was born into the world of film, making his debut in Rome on May 8, 1906, the son of Elettra (Bellan), a housewife, and Angiolo Giuseppe "Beppino" Rossellini, the man who opened Italy's first cinema. He was immersed in cinema from the beginning, growing up watching movies in his father's movie-house from the time that film was first quickening as an art form. Italy was one of the places were movie-making matured, and Italian film had a huge influence on D.W. Griffith and other international directors. Between the two world wars, Hollywood would soon dictate what constituted a "well-made" film, but Rossellini would be one of the Italian directors who once again put Italy at the forefront of international cinema after the Second World War.
His training in cinema was thorough and extensive and he became expert in many facets of film-making. (His brother Renzo Rossellini, also was involved in the industry, scoring films.) He did his apprenticeship as an assistant to Italian filmmakers, then got the chance to make his first film, a documentary, "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", in 1937. Due to his close ties to Benito Mussolini's second son, the critic and film producer Vittorio Mussolini, he flourished in fascist Italy's cinema. Once Il Duce was deposed, Rossellini produced his first classic film, the anti-fascist Rome, Open City (1945) ("Rome, Open City") in 1945, which won the Grand Prize at Cannes. Two other neo-realist classics soon followed, Paisan (1946) ("Paisan") and Germany Year Zero (1948) ("Germany in the Year Zero"). "Rome, Open City" screenwriters Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini were nominated for a Best Writing, Screenplay Oscar in 1947, while Rossellini himself, along with Amidei, Fellini and two others were nominated for a screen-writing Oscar in 1950 for "Paisan".
"I do not want to make beautiful films, I want to make useful films," he said. Rossellini claimed, "I try to capture reality, nothing else." This led him to often cast non-professional actors, then tailor his scripts to their idiosyncrasies and life-stories to heighten the sense of realism.
With other practitioners of neo-realism, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, film was changed forever. American director Elia Kazan credits neo-realism with his own evolution as a filmmaker, away from Hollywood's idea of the well-made film to the gritty realism of On the Waterfront (1954).
Rossellini had a celebrated, adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman that was an international scandal. They became lovers on the set of Stromboli (1950) while both were married to other people and Bergman became pregnant. After they shed their spouses and married, producing three children, history repeated itself when Rossellini cheated on her with the Indian screenwriter Sonali Senroy DasGupta while he was in India at the request of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to help revitalize that country's film industry. It touched off another international scandal, and Nehru ousted him from the country. Rossellini later divorced Bergman to marry Das Gupta, legitimizing their child that had been born out-of-wedlock.
Rossellini continued to make films until nearly his death. His last film The Messiah (1975) ("The Messiah"), a story of The Passion of Christ, was released in 1975.
Roberto Rossellini died of a heart attack in Rome on June 3, 1977. He was 71 years old..
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1946| ROMA CITTA APERTA (ROME VILLE OUVERTE)
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He has made been famous in the young soviet cinema by his films about Lenin (Lenin in Poland (1966) and others). He had a great international acclaim by his version of Othello (1956) and engaged to the Soviet cinema two French stars: Marina Vlady for Lika in Syuzhet dlya nebolshogo rasskaza (1969) and Claude Jade for Inessa in _Lenin v Parizhe (1980)_..
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1946| ZDRAVSTVUJ, MOSKVA ! (SALUT MOSCOU)
1954| VELIKIJ VOIN ALBANII SKANDERBEG
1956| OTHELLO
1966| LENIN V POLCHE (LENINE EN POLOGNE)
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One of the more prolific American directors, Alfred E. Green entered films in 1912 as an actor for the Selig Polyscope Co. He became an assistant to director Colin Campbell and started directing two-reelers, turning to features in 1917. His career lasted into the mid-1950s but his output was mostly routine, though there were some gems among them. A solid, dependable journeyman, not given to flashy directorial touches, he was picked by Mary Pickford to direct quite a few of her pictures in the 1920s, and he guided Wallace Reid and Colleen Moore in several of their bigger hits. He directed Bette Davis in her Oscar-winning performance in Dangerous (1935) and was responsible for the commercial and critical success of The Jolson Story (1946). That film, however, was followed by a string of routine B pictures.
Green had suffered for many years from arthritis, which got worse as he got older. In an interview, producer Albert Zugsmith recalled that during the filming of Top Banana (1954) Green was so crippled by the disease that he was seldom able to move from the director's chair.
He made his last feature in 1954 and spent the remainder of his career directing episodic TV series.- Writer
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British writer/director Anthony Kimmins was a naval officer in World War I, and after the war became a film actor and playwright. He wrote and directed several films for British comedian George Formby in the 1930s, but with the outbreak of World War II Kimmins rejoined the Royal Navy and spent the duration in the service. With the end of the war Kimmins returned to the film industry, but his output was somewhat erratic, ranging from the excellent and well-received psychological thriller Mine Own Executioner (1947) to the major flop Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948). His final film, The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), was an adaptation of his stage farce that was a hit on the West End.- Actor
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Arnold Sjöstrand was born on 30 June 1903 in Sundbyberg, Stockholms län, Sweden. He was an actor and director, known for Två kvinnor (1947), Synd (1948) and Starkare än lagen (1951). He died on 1 February 1955 in Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden.- Writer
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Arthur Ripley started his movie career as an apprentice at Kalem Pictures and then worked for several studios, including Vitagraph and Metro. By early 1920s he had become a gag writer for Mack Sennett. In 1923 Sennett signed vaudeville comic Harry Langdon and gave his writers the job of developing something for Langdon's character. Ripley and fellow Sennett gagman Frank Capra created the perfect story lines for the pantomime of Langdon and soon his two-reel comedies were hugely popular. For the next few years Sennett cranked out film after film with Langdon, written by Ripley and Capra and directed by Harry Edwards. The last film on the Sennett lot was Saturday Afternoon (1926), which was released as a three-reeler.
In 1926 Langdon left Sennett to form his own company, the Harry Langdon Corporation, and took Edwards, Capra and Ripley with him. The first picture they made together was Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), which became a big hit. After one film Edwards left and Capra became director, although still writing with Ripley. Capra directed the next two films, The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927), and then he also departed, leaving Ripley as head writer and Langdon not only starring but taking over as director. Without Capra, however, the next three films flopped and Ripley was soon looking for another job. During the 1930s he would work as gag writer in a number of shorts, not unlike the job he held a decade before. He would also occasionally direct and in the 1940s he would add producer to his credits.- Animation Department
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Ben Sharpsteen was born on 4 November 1895 in Tacoma, Washington, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Dumbo (1941), Pinocchio (1940) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He died on 20 December 1980 in Santa Rosa, California, USA.- Producer
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Benito Perojo was born on 14 June 1894 in Madrid, Spain. He was a producer and director, known for Goyescas (1942), Marianela (1940) and A Prisoner Has Escaped (1934). He died on 11 November 1974 in Madrid, Spain.- Director
- Animation Department
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Bill Roberts was born on 2 August 1899 in Kentucky, USA. He was a director, known for Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942) and Pinocchio (1940). He was married to Lillian Roberts. He died on 18 March 1974 in Tulare County, California, USA.- Director
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Camillo Mastrocinque was born on 11 May 1901 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for I mariti (Tempesta d'anime) (1941), Don Pasquale (1940) and Lost in the Dark (1947). He died on 23 April 1969 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Director
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Charles Walters was born on 17 November 1911 in Pasadena, California, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Lili (1953), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and Ask Any Girl (1959). He died on 13 August 1982 in Malibu, California, USA.- Director
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If Curtis Bernhardt is a relative unknown, it's because he didn't direct his first Hollywood feature until 1940 at the age of 41. Bernhardt worked for years in Germany until his Jewish heritage made living there impossible by 1933-- he was arrested by the Gestapo and made a harrowing underground escape to France. With Europe plunging into war, he left for America in 1939. Despite his limited grasp of the English language, he was offered seven-year contracts at both Warner Bros. and MGM, largely on the strength of Carrefour (1938)-- which proved so enduring that it was remade as Dead Man's Shoes (1940) in the UK and as Crossroads (1942) by MGM. Most émigrés would have jumped an offer to work at MGM-- considered the "Tiffany" of film studios-- but Berhardt went with Warners, favoring that studio's reputation for hard-boiled realism. His career in Hollywood began with a false start; after working on his first assignment he fell ill and was reassigned an Olivia de Havilland vehicle, My Love Came Back (1940), that gained him good notices. Bernhardt rapidly achieved a reputation as a woman's director with occasional forays into suspense with varied results. He directed one of Humphrey Bogart's least popular films, Conflict (1945), which was burdened by ludicrous plot contrivances, but he snapped back the next year with a winner: My Reputation (1946), a melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck. He had another misfire, however, with the critically panned Devotion (1946) and would end his contract with the studio after three more films in 1947, after which he moved briefly to MGM. Ironically, he would later look back fondly upon Warners' assembly-line production methods compared to his days at MGM, where he felt compelled to bend to the whims of its stars and serve at the behest of studio chief Louis B. Mayer. Berhardt managed to make two above-average films during his short stay at Metro, however--the suspenseful High Wall (1947) starring 'Robert Taylor (I)_ in one of his best mid-career roles, and The Doctor and the Girl (1949), starring the likable Glenn Ford.
Bernhard soon moved to RKO, which was entering its final chaotic decade, directing The Blue Veil (1951), a remake of a French film. He did a one-shot gig at Columbia, directing Bogie once again in the hopelessly set-bound Sirocco (1951), and rounded out the remainder of the 1950s back at MGM, ending his Hollywood career with the middling comedy Kisses for My President (1964) at Warners.
He retired from directing due to illness in the mid-'60s and died in 1981, age 81, at his home in Pacific Palisades, California.- Director
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- Editorial Department
Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began running away while in his early teens. Eventually, juvenile authorities allowed him to live alone at the age of 15 and helped him find part-time work as a film studio messenger. Dmytryk was an outstanding student in physics and mathematics and gained a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. However, he dropped out after one year to return to movies, eventually working his way up from film editor to director. By the late 1940s, he was considered one of Hollywood's rising young directing talents, but his career was interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist influence in Hollywood. A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several months behind bars, Dmytryk decided to cooperate after all, and testified again before the committee, this time giving the names of people he said were Communists. He claimed to believe he had done the right thing, but many in the Hollywood community--even those who came along long after the committee was finally disbanded--never forgave him, and that action overshadowed his career the rest of his life. In the 1970s, as his directing career ground to a halt, Dmytryk recalled some advice once given him by Garson Kanin, and returned to academic life, this time as a teacher. From 1976 to 1981 he was a professor of film theory and production at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1981, was appointed to a chair in filmmaking at the University of Southern California, a position he held until about two years before his death. During his teaching career, he also authored several books on various aspects of filmmaking, as well as two volumes of memoirs.- Director
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Known for his creative stage direction, Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his actors, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. He directed a string of successful films, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), and East of Eden (1955). During his career, he won two Oscars as Best Director and received an Honorary Oscar, won three Tony Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
His films were concerned with personal or social issues of special concern to him. Kazan writes, "I don't move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme." His first such "issue" film was Gentleman's Agreement (1947), with Gregory Peck, which dealt with anti-Semitism in America. It received 8 Oscar nominations and three wins, including Kazan's first for Best Director. It was followed by Pinky (1949), one of the first films in mainstream Hollywood to address racial prejudice against black people. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), an adaptation of the stage play which he had also directed, received 12 Oscar nominations, winning four, and was Marlon Brando's breakthrough role. In 1954, he directed On the Waterfront (1954), a film about union corruption on the New York harbor waterfront. In 1955, he directed John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955), which introduced James Dean to movie audiences.
A turning point in Kazan's career came with his testimony as a witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 at the time of the Hollywood blacklist, which brought him strong negative reactions from many liberal friends and colleagues. His testimony helped end the careers of former acting colleagues Morris Carnovsky and Art Smith, along with ending the work of playwright Clifford Odets. Kazan later justified his act by saying he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong." Nearly a half-century later, his anti-Communist testimony continued to cause controversy. When Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, dozens of actors chose not to applaud as 250 demonstrators picketed the event.
Kazan influenced the films of the 1950s and 1960s with his provocative, issue-driven subjects. Director Stanley Kubrick called him, "without question, the best director we have in America, and capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses." On September 28, 2003, Elia Kazan died at age 94 of natural causes at his apartment in Manhattan, New York City. Martin Scorsese co-directed the documentary film A Letter to Elia (2010) as a personal tribute to Kazan.- Director
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The son of Louis K. Sidney the vice president of M.G.M. and Hazel Mooney of The Mooney Sisters. In his teens he worked as studio messenger going through every department learning the techniques and secrets of the trade. In 1933 he was assigned to direct screen tests of Judy Garland, Robert Taylor and Janet Leigh then he was promoted to shorts and the 'Our Gang' comedies winning two Oscars.He was promoted to features in 1942 directing such as 'Annie Get Your Gun', 'Showboat' and 'Pal Joey'.- Writer
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Partly due to the uneven quality of his work, Henri Decoin remained an overlooked director. Born in 1890, he was a sports correspondent, a novelist, Gallone's assistant, and a screenwriter, As a director, some of his films noirs are simply stellar and deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as those of Clouzot and Duvivier.
His first efforts (from 1933 to 1941) were often vehicles for Danielle Darrieux, one of the greatest stars of the French cinema. They married in 1935 and divorced in 1941. "Le Domino Vert" (1935) was a melodramatic detective story. In both "Abus De Confiance" and "Battements De Coeur", Darrieux played an orphan. The Cinderella syndrome was much better applied on "Premier Rendez-Vous" which made the actress the young girls' idol. "Premier Rendez-Vous" was more of the same, but was another fine comedy of the occupation days. However, in 1938, in "Retour A l'Aube" elements of thriller burst into what was a charming dreamlike tale; this was the key to Decoin's future as he would make his way through the forties.
1942 inaugurated the era of Decoin's films noirs: "Les Inconnus Dans La Maison" from Simenon was the story (imitated many times afterward) of an alcoholic lawyer who redeems himself, a renaissance with a masterful Raimu. "L'Homme De Londres" (Simenon again, later remade by Bela Tarr) depicted a working man's dilemma in the gloomy atmosphere of a harbor. "La Fille Du Diable" (1945) and "Non Coupable" (1947) were the cream of Decoin's work: both Andrée Clément and Michel Simon reached peaks of cynicism and the atmosphere of those films was so black, so desperate, that the viewer needed a breath of fresh air after watching them. With its four (or maybe five) suicides, its spoofs on marriage and religion, "Les Amants Du Pont Saint-Jean" was still Decoin's finest hour. "Les Amoureux Sont Seuls Au Monde" was more romantic, but a romantic tragedy: this time,another suicide might have seemed too much for the producers who reportedly asked for a happy end (today, only the sad ending is screened). "Entre Onze Heures Et Minuit" had a brilliant beginning (people, leaving a movie theater, complain about the implausibility of these dead ringers films, they actually meet three doubles who make them shiver), but the rest of the movie was uneven mainly because highly talented Jouvet and Madeleine Robinson were not able to make up for a weak supporting cast.
The fifties were as uneven as ever. On the plus side: "La Verite Sur Bébé Donge" (1951) from Simenon saw Darrieux's return in her ex-husband's world: all dressed in black (and beautiful), like a death angel, she visited her dying husband (Gabin) with a pallid face in a white room. Darrieux was also featured in "Bonnes A Tuer" (1954), a stifling thriller in which Larry (Michel Auclair) gathered the four women of his life, with a view of killing one of the them, but which one? "Dortoir Des Grandes", in a girls boarding school, showed teenagers playing very strange games at night. "Razzia Sur La Chnouff", dealing with drugs, opted for a quasi-documentary style.
The rest is less successful: his thrillers became more and more disappointing ("Le Feu Aux Poudres", " Tous Peuvent Me Tuer", "Pourquoi Viens-Tu Si Tard?"). But the unfairly neglected "Malefices" (1961) from Boileau-Narcejac, a story of black magic and Amour Fou on an island sometimes inaccessible, nearly matched his best thrillers' level. Juliette Greco's beauty and mystery added to a deadly charm.
His "resistance" efforts, both episodes of "La Chatte", seem obsolete today and are remembered only for Françoise Arnoul who turned a questioning at the Gestapo into an erotic extravaganza. Historic dramas "L"Affaire Des Poisons" and "Le Masque De Fer" were looked upon as failures, particularly Dumas's famous story. His swansong "Nick Carter Va Tout Casser" (1964) was a vehicle for Eddie Constantine and paled into insignificance next to his finest thrillers.
He died in 1969; his son Didier Decoin became a famous writer.- Writer
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (1996) is the trilogy closed. Here, as in 'Den Goda Viljan' Pernilla August play his mother. Note that all three movies are not always full true biographical stories. He began his career early with a puppet theatre which he, his sister and their friends played with. But he was the manager. Strictly professional he begun writing in 1941. He had written a play called 'Kaspers död' (A.K.A. 'Kaspers Death') which was produced the same year. It became his entrance into the movie business as Stina Bergman (not a close relative), from the company S.F. (Swedish Filmindustry), had seen the play and thought that there must be some dramatic talent in young Ingmar. His first job was to save other more famous writers' poor scripts. Under one of that script-saving works he remembered that he had written a novel about his last year as a student. He took the novel, did the save-poor-script job first, then wrote a screenplay on his own novel. When he went back to S.F., he delivered two scripts rather than one. The script was Torment (1944) and was the fist Bergman screenplay that was put into film (by Alf Sjöberg). It was also in that movie Bergman did his first professional film-director job. Because Alf Sjöberg was busy, Bergman got the order to shoot the last sequence of the film. Ingmar Bergman is the father of Daniel Bergman, director, and Mats Bergman, actor at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater. Ingmar Bergman was also C.E.O. of the same theatre between 1963-1966, where he hired almost every professional actor in Sweden. In 1976 he had a famous tax problem. Bergman had trusted other people to advise him on his finances, but it turned out to be very bad advice. Bergman had to leave the country immediately, and so he went to Germany. A few years later he returned to Sweden and made his last theatrical film Fanny and Alexander (1982). In later life he retired from movie directing, but still wrote scripts for film and T.V. and directed plays at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre for many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on July 30, 2007.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
His interest in films was stimulated by a meeting with King Vidor, who offered him employment in the US as actor and assistant director. However, he remained in France and became assistant to Jean Renoir, a friend of the family, during that director's peak period (1932-39). In 1934 he ventured briefly into independent production, co-directing with Pierre Prévert a short film, Pitiless Gendarme (1935). In 1935 he turned out a five-reeler, Tête de turc (1935), which he later refused to acknowledge as his.
In 1939 he began shooting a feature film, Cristobal's Gold (1940), but walked out after three weeks, leaving the film to be finished by Jean Stelli. In 1942, after a year in a German prisoner-of-war camp, he began his career as director. His entire output consisted of only 13 films, but they include some of the most artistically and technically substantial in French cinema. He is one of the few Old Guard directors done honor by the New Wave, which reveres him for his masterpieces, the atmospheric period love story Casque d'Or (1952) and the superb prison escape drama The Hole (1960), and also for his lesser films, such charming love tales as Antoine & Antoinette (1947) and Edward and Caroline (1951), in which he vividly depicts French social milieus through careful attention to background. His Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), a gangster film distinguished for its detailed action and penetration of character, exerted considerable influence on subsequent série noire French films. He was less successful with such commercial ventures as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954), which was dominated by Fernandel, and Montparnasse 19 (1958), a biographical sketch of the last years in the life of Modigliani. Becker's widow is French stage and screen actress Françoise Fabian (b. Michèle Cortès de Leone y Fabianera, 1932, Algiers). He was the father of director Jean Becker.- Director
- Actor
Jean Mauran is known for Marouf, the Cairo Cobbler (1947) and Le picador (1932).- Writer
- Animation Department
- Director
John Elliotte was born on 6 February 1902 in Tennessee, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940) and Perry Mason (1957). He died on 20 June 1986 in Newport Beach, California, USA.- Art Director
- Director
- Writer
Lemuel Ayers (1915-1955), a New Yorker, studied at Princeton University and the University of Iowa before being chosen, at the age of 29, by Leonard Sillman to design the sets for the 1939 Broadway revivals of "Journey's End" and "They Knew What They Wanted". Major recognition came with his costume designs for the Maurice Evans - Judith Anderson "Macbeth" in 1941. Lemuel Ayers Broadway production designs subsequently were seen in, among others, "Angel Street" (1941); "The Pirate" (1942); "Harriet" (1943); "Oklahoma!" (1943); Edwin Lester's "Song of Norway" (1944); "Bloomer Girl" (1944); "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1946); "St. Louis Woman" (1946); "Inside U.S.A." (1948); "Kiss Me Kate" (1948) and "Out Of This World" (1950), both of which he co-produced; Edwin Lester's "Kismet" (1953-sets and costumes); and "Pajama Game" (1954). A prolific Broadway theatrical scenic and costume designer, Ayers was a master at creating a sense of vast spaciousness within a stage proscenium frame. His stylized settings for "Oklahoma!" (1943), "Kiss Me Kate" (1948), and his richly beautiful settings for "Out of This World" (1950), "Kismet" (1953), were noteworthy examples of this gift. One critic suggested that despite Cole Porter's superb score and Charlotte Greenwood's memorable performance, Lemuel Ayers' settings were the "real star" of "Out of This World". Ayers sometimes designed costumes for shows, as well, but frequently collaborated with costume designer Miles White. The Arthur Freed MGM Unit and Vincente Minnelli brought Ayers to the Culver City MGM Studios to design "Meet Me in St. Louis". As was the custom with a NYC "imported Broadway theatre designer", Cedric Gibbons, MGM art department supervisor, appointed Jack Martin Smith, assigned to co-art direct the film. Upon completion of "Meet Me in St. Louis", the Arthur Freed unit went into film production on "Ziegfeld Follies" (1945). Lemuel Ayers designed scenery for the film, as well, directing the musical segment "Love", which was featured in the production. During filming on "Meet Me In St. Louis", Lemuel Ayers recommended the Alfred Lunt-Lynn Fontanne Broadway play "The Pirate" (1942-177 performances) to Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland for his next follow up feature. In the Spring of 1962, seven years after Lemuel Ayers demise, Edwin Lester and his Los Angeles/San Francisco Civic Light Opera Association, remounted the original Broadway 1953 "Kismet" production for their summer revival season. The production's original costumes and scenery had been purchased by the Dallas Light Opera and warehoused in Texas. The Lemuel Ayers Estate loaned all of the original set and costume designs, including 1/2" = 1'-0" scenic drop and set paint illustrations and conceptual designs to Edwin Lester's scenic shop. Phil Raiguel, the scenic supervisor who had painted the original production, supervised the scenic restoration; most of the scenic artists and stage carpenters employed had built and painted the original production. All new back-drops were painted; lost scenic elements were rebuilt; the Texas warehoused sets refurbished, duplicating the entire original 1953 production, including all the costumes. The revival was Edwin Lester's tribute to Lemuel Ayers talent.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lewis Milestone, a clothing manufacturer's son, was born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), raised in Odessa (Ukraine) and educated in Belgium and Berlin (where he studied engineering). He was fluent in both German and Russian and an avid reader. Milestone had an affinity for the theatre from an early age, starting as a prop man and background artist before traveling to the US in 1914 with $6.00 in his pocket. After a succession of odd jobs (including as a dishwasher and a photographer's assistant) he joined the Army Signal Corps in 1917 to make educational short films for U.S. troops. Following World War I, having acquired American citizenship, he went on to Hollywood to meet the director William A. Seiter at Ince Studios. Seiter started him off as an assistant cutter. Milestone quickly worked his way up the ranks to become editor, assistant director and screenwriter on many of Seiter's projects in the early 1920s, experiences that would greatly influence his directing style in years to come.
Milestone directed his first film, Seven Sinners (1925), for Howard Hughes and two years later won his first of two Academy Awards for the comedy Two Arabian Knights (1927). He received his second Oscar for what most regard as his finest achievement, the anti-war movie All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The film, universally praised by reviewers for its eloquence and integrity, also won the Best Picture Academy Award that year. A noted Milestone innovation was the use of cameras mounted on wooden tracks, giving his films a more realistic and fluid, rather than static, look. Other trademarks associated with his pictures were taut editing, snappy dialogue and clever visual touches, good examples being the screwball comedy The Front Page (1931), the melodrama Rain (1932)--based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham--and an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939). When asked in 1979 about the secret behind his success, he simply declared "Arrogance, chutzpah--in the old Hollywood at least that's the thing that gave everybody pause" (New York Times, September 27, 1980). Milestone had a history of being "difficult", having clashed with Howard Hughes, Warner Brothers and a host of studio executives over various contractual and artistic issues. Nonetheless, he remained constantly employed and worked for most of the major studios at one time or another, though never on long-term contracts. While he was not required to testify before HUAC, Milestone was blacklisted for a year in 1949 because of left-wing affiliations dating back to the 1930's. His output became less consistent during the 1950s and his career finished on a low with the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and its incongruously cast, equally headstrong star Marlon Brando.
Milestone must be credited with a quirky sense of humor: when the producer of "All Quiet on the Western Front", Carl Laemmle Jr., demanded a "happy ending" for the picture, Milestone telephoned, "I've got your happy ending. We'll let the Germans win the war".
Having suffered a stroke, Lewis Milestone spent the last ten years of his life confined to a wheelchair. He died September 25, 1980, at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Mario Camerini was born on 6 February 1895 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and writer, known for Il signor Max (1937), I'll Give a Million (1935) and I grandi magazzini (1939). He was married to Assia Noris. He died on 4 February 1981 in Gardone Riviera, Lombardy, Italy.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Mario Soffici was born on 14 May 1900 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was a director and actor, known for Celos (1947), Pasó en mi barrio (1951) and Rosaura a las 10 (1958). He died on 10 May 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
He learnt directing from Pál Fejös, and László Vajda as an assistant director. In 1937 he made his first film followed by 2 other films in the same year, (A harapós férj, a Viki and Torockói menyasszony). Between 1939 and 1944 he couldn't make films because he was Jewish. After the 2nd WW, he made the first Hungarian film (A tanítónö). First he worked at the firm Orient Film Factory, and in 1948 he moved to the National Film Factory. In 1950 he began to teach in the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. Between 1949 and 1953 he made the most watched comedies, with Kálmán Latabár.- Art Director
- Music Department
- Art Department
Merrill Pye was born on 14 August 1902 in Bismarck, North Dakota, USA. He was an art director, known for North by Northwest (1959), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and Ziegfeld Follies (1945). He was married to Doris Simons, Natalie Draper, Patricia Avery and Mary Halsey. He died on 17 November 1975 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
Nicole Védrès was born on 4 September 1911 in Paris, France. She was a director and writer, known for Paris mil neuf cent (1947), Life Begins Tomorrow (1950) and L'art et les hommes (1955). She was married to Marcel Cravenne and Giovanni Adolfo Vedrès. She died on 20 November 1965 in Paris, France.- Animation Department
- Director
- Production Manager
Norman Ferguson was born on 2 September 1902 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and production manager, known for Dumbo (1941), Pinocchio (1940) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He was married to Gladys F.. He died on 4 November 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Robert Lewis was one of the original members of the Group Theatre in the 1930s and co-founder of the Actors Studio in 1947. He was active as a character actor in Hollywood for only a brief period, under contract first to Fox Studios and then MGM. Though he went on to appear in and direct Hollywood musicals, Lewis preferred the stage, eventually becoming one of the most respected directors of Broadway plays. His greatest legacy, however, may be the role he played as one of the foremost proponents and teachers of the Stanislavski Sytem of acting, or the "Method", as it came to be known in America.
In the first year of teaching at The Actors Studio, his group, which met three times a week, consisted of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Jerome Robbins, Herbert Berghof, Tom Ewell, John Forsyth, Anne Jackson, Sidney Lumet, Kevin McCarthy, Karl Malden, E.G. Marshall, Patricia Neal, Beatrice Straight, and David Wayne, to name a few.
In the 1970s, Lewis was the Head of the Acting and Directing Departments at The Yale School of Drama. He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1991.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Roy Del Ruth was born on Oct. 18, 1895, in Philadelphia, PA. He began his Hollywood career as a writer for Mack Sennett in 1915. He began directing in 1919 for Sennett with the two-reeler Hungry Lions and Tender Hearts (1920). In the early 1920s he moved over to features with such efforts as Asleep at the Switch (1923), The Hollywood Kid (1924), Eve's Lover (1925) and The Little Irish Girl (1926)_. Following several more titles, many of which were later lost in a film vault fire, he directed The First Auto (1927), a charming look at the introduction of the first automobile to a small rural town. The film featured several elaborate sound effects for the time and was considered lost until it was restored years later. Del Ruth went on to direct a number of films before having the distinction of directing the musical The Desert Song (1929), the first color film ever released by Warner Bros. That same year he directed Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Warner's second two-strip Technicolor, all-talking feature that also became a big box-office hit for the director. Having successfully segued into the talkie era, Del Ruth directed two more two-strip color musicals, Hold Everything (1930) and The Life of the Party (1930), before directing James Cagney and Joan Blondell in the cheerfully amoral gangster film Blonde Crazy (1931). That same year he directed the first of three adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's famed novel, The Maltese Falcon (1931). In that one Ricardo Cortez portrayed the roguish private eye Sam Spade, whose investigation of a murder case entwines him in a plot involving a number of unsavory types searching for a fabled, jewel-encrusted falcon. While the plot basically mirrors the 1941 remake (The Maltese Falcon (1941), this pre-Code version featured several instances of sexual innuendo, including Bebe Daniels bathing in the nude, overt references to homosexuality and even one instance of cursing.
Del Ruth reunited with James Cagney for the crime drama Taxi (1931) and helmed the well-regarded show-biz comedy Blessed Event (1932). He went on to pilot a number of above average-pictures such as The Little Giant (1933) starring Edward G. Robinson, Lady Killer (1933) with Cagney again, Bureau of Missing Persons (1933) featuring Bette Davis, Upperworld (1934) with Ginger Rogers and the musical comedy Kid Millions (1934) starring Eddie Cantor. He next directed Ronald Colman in his second and final appearance as Bulldog Drummond in the detective mystery Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) and steered the backstage showbiz musical Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), starring Jack Benny and Eleanor Powell
After returning to the realm of crime for It Had to Happen (1936) with George Raft and Rosalind Russell, Del Ruth directed James Stewart in one of the actor's few musicals, Born to Dance (1936). He followed up with Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) before guiding ice skating star Sonja Henie through My Lucky Star (1938) and Happy Landing (1938).
Del Ruth continued churning out product for the studios, helming competent films like The Star Maker (1939), Here I Am a Stranger (1939), He Married His Wife (1940) and Topper Returns (1941). After working solo on The Chocolate Soldier (1941), Maisie Gets Her Man (1942), Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) and Broadway Rhythm (1944). It may be interesting to note that Del Ruth was the second highest paid director in Hollywood from the period 1932-41, according to Box Office and Exhibitor magazine.
Del Ruth was one of seven directors on the successful Ziegfeld Follies (1945), which featured an all-star cast of Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, Red Skelton and William Powell. From there he helmed the cheerfully ambitious Christmas-themed It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), an appealing entertainment that was compared to It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but did not have that film's generational resonance. Still, the musical comedy starring Don DeFore and Ann Harding was still a touching film that managed to delight. Del Ruth next directed The Babe Ruth Story (1948), with William Bendix badly miscast as baseball legend Babe Ruth. Bending historical truths lest he offend Ruth's legacy, Del Ruth's biopic was rushed through production amidst news of the ailing Ruth's declining health. Even Del Ruth remained unsatisfied with the results.
He directed George Raft again in the film-noir crime drama Red Light (1949), Milton Berle and Virginia Mayo in the comedy Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) and James Cagney in the vibrant The West Point Story (1950). Following a pair of mediocre Doris Day musicals, Starlift (1951) and On Moonlight Bay (1951), Del Ruth's career began to slow to basically one project a year, with Stop, You're Killing Me (1952) and the James Cagney military musical About Face (1952). He went on to direct Jane Powell and Gordon MacRae in Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), then took a short excursion into the new 3D process with the horror film Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) with Karl Malden.
Away from the director's chair for the next five years, Del Ruth returned to helm the low-budget horror picture The Alligator People (1959), a bizarre tale about humans being partially transformed into alligators in the Deep South, a picture that would seem more suited to Roger Corman than Del Ruth. His ended his career with the misfire Why Must I Die? (1960), apparently made to cash in on the success of the better known Susan Hayward film I Want to Live! (1958).
Roy Del Ruth died a year later on April 27, 1961, at 67 years old from a heart attack.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Following a two-year apprenticeship under Cecil B. DeMille as assistant director, Samuel Grosvenor Wood had the good fortune to have assigned to him two of the biggest stars at Paramount during their heyday: Wallace Reid (between 1919 and 1920) and Gloria Swanson (from 1921 to 1923). By the time his seven-year contract with Paramount expired, the former real estate dealer had established himself as one of Hollywood's most reliable (if not individualistic) feature directors. Not bad for a former real estate broker and small-time theatrical thesp. In 1927, Wood joined MGM and remained under contract there until 1939. During this tenure he was very much in sync with the studio's prevalent style of production, reliably turning out between two and three films a year (of which the majority were routine subjects).
Most of his films in the 1920s were standard fare and it was not until he directed two gems with The Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937) that his career picked up again. Looking at the finished product it is difficult to reconcile this to Groucho Marx finding Wood "rigid and humorless". Maybe, this assessment was due to Wood being vociferously right-wing in his personal views which would not have sat well with the famous comedian. His testimonies in 1947 before the House Un-American Activities Committee certainly gained Wood more enemies than friends within the industry.
Regardless of his personality or his habitually having to shoot each scene twenty times over, Wood turned out some very powerful dramatic films during the last ten years of his life, beginning with Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). This popular melodrama earned him his first Academy Award nomination. At RKO, he coaxed an Oscar-winning performance out of Ginger Rogers (and was again nominated himself) for Kitty Foyle (1940). Ronald Reagan gave, arguably, his best performance in Kings Row (1942) under Wood's direction. His most expensive (and longest, at 170 minutes) assignment took him back to Paramount. This was Ernest Hemingway's Spanish Civil War drama For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), bought for $150,000 (De Mille was originally slated as director). In spite of editorial incongruities and the relatively uneven pace, the picture turned out to be the biggest (and last) hit of Wood's career.
Sam Wood died of a heart attack on September 22 1949. He has a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.- Animation Department
- Director
- Writer
Samuel Armstrong was born on 5 February 1893 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He died on 29 September 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.- Producer
- Additional Crew
Seymour Nebenzal was born on 22 July 1899 in New York City, New York, USA. Seymour was a producer, known for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), People on Sunday (1930) and Tomorrow We Live (1942). Seymour died on 22 September 1961 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Director
- Additional Crew
- Music Department
Born Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago on February 28 1903, his father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Wanting to pursue an artistic career, Minelli worked in the costume department of the Chicago Theater, then on Broadway during the depression as a set designer and costumer, adopting a Latinized version of his father's first name when he was hired as an art-director by Radio City Music Hall. The fall of 1935 saw his directorial debut for a Franz Schubert revue, At Home Abroad. The show was the first of three, in the best Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. spirit, before receiving Arthur Freed's offer to work at MGM. This was his second try at Hollywood -- a short unsuccessful contract at Paramount led nowhere. He stayed at MGM for the next 26 years. After working on numerous Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland vehicles, usually directed by Busby Berkeley, Arthur Freed gave him his first directorial assignment on Cabin in the Sky (1943), a risky screen project with an all-black cast. This was followed by the ambitious period piece Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) whose star Judy Garland he married in 1945. Employing first-class MGM technicians, Minnelli went on directing musicals -- The Band Wagon (1953) - as well as melodramas -- Some Came Running (1958) - and urban comedies like Designing Woman (1957), occasionally even working on two films simultaneously. Minnelli is one of the few directors for whom Technicolor seems to have been invented. Many of his films included in every one of his movies features a dream sequence.- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.- Director
- Animation Department
- Music Department
Wilfred Jackson was born on 24 January 1906 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a director, known for Cinderella (1950), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Alice in Wonderland (1951). He died on 7 August 1988 in Balboa Island, Newport Beach, California, USA.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
Alfred L. Werker was born on 2 December 1896 in Deadwood, South Dakota, USA. Alfred L. was a director and assistant director, known for He Walked by Night (1948), Lost Boundaries (1949) and It's Great to Be Alive (1933). Alfred L. was married to Frances Allen. Alfred L. died on 28 July 1975 in Orange County, California, USA.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
André Cayatte (b.1909 in Carcassonne, Aude, France) was a lawyer turned novelist and journalist, then screenwriter in 1938, after which he became a film director in 1942. He was known in France from the 1940s to the 1970s for uncompromising films examining the complex ethical and political dimensions of crime and justice in the French judicial system. He saw film as a stimulus for reform, advocating social concerns, and in this way was much a seminal forerunner to Costa-Gavras. Cayatte wrote or co-wrote the scripts for all of his films (his collaborators often including Charles Spaak). He was largely considered the 'Sidney Lumet of France'. Highlights of his career: "The Lovers of Verona" (1949), with dialogue by poet Jacques Prévert, is considered by many to be Cayatte's towering achievement, a first international success, a story loosely based on William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". His film "Justice is Done" (1950) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was one of the first films to deal with the moral acceptability of euthanasia. "We Are All Murderers" was one of the first strong indictments against the death penalty; it focused on a bleak vision of prisoners who were waiting to be executed and received a special award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. "Piège Pour Cendrillon" (1965) (remade in the UK as "The Cinderella Trap") was a tense thriller based on a Sebastien Japrisot novel. In 1967 "Les Risques Du Métier" starring famed Belgian singer Jacques Brel dealt with the tragedy of a school teacher,accused of abusing his pupils. "Mourir D'Aimer" (1971) was based on the real life Gabrielle Russier affair and in an highly emotional manner depicted the forbidden love of a teacher for one of her students. The film would introduce actress Annie Girardot, who was to become a French star and his favorite actress. "Il N'y A Pas De Fumée Sans Feu" and "La Raison D'Etat" were both political thrillers. "A Chacun Son Enfer" was in particular a highly disturbing and provocative criminal thriller, focusing on the unbearable suffering of the mother (Annie Girardot) of a kidnapped daughter, and is considered Cayatte 's most terrifying work. "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1958) was one of the forerunners of movies dealing with the consequences of plastic surgery, namely the emotional and psychological repercussions on the relationship between a husband and a wife. The film, starring Michelle Morgan, was later remade by Barbara Streisand as "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996). Cayatte published six novels before entering the film industry. The opus of his French work, in particular his socially conscious films, can be summed up as a sincere moral plea for a more humane form of justice in the face of rigid and difficult systems of laws and regulations. He exclusively worked for TV in the eighties; he died in 1989 in Paris, France, age 80.- Director
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Art Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of Tree's six illegitimate children with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. There were no social scars here; Reed grew up in a well-mannered, middle-class atmosphere. His public school days were at King's School, Canterbury, and he was only too glad to push on with the idea of following his father and becoming an actor. His mother wanted no such thing and shipped him off to Massachusetts in 1922, where his older brother resided on--of all things--a chicken ranch.
It was a wasted six months before Reed was back in England and joined a stage company of Dame Sybil Thorndike, making his stage debut in 1924. He forthwith met British writer Edgar Wallace, who cashed in on his constant output of thrillers by establishing a road troupe to do stage adaptations of them. Reed was in three of these, also working as an assistant stage manager. Wallace became chairman of the newly formed British Lion Film Corp. in 1927, and Reed followed to become his personal assistant. As such he began learning the film trade by assisting in supervising the filmed adaptations of Wallace's works. This was essentially his day job. At night he continued stage acting and managing. It was something of a relief when Wallace passed on in 1932; Reed decided to drop the stage for film and joined historic Ealing Studios as dialog director for Associated Talking Pictures under Basil Dean.
Reed rose from dialog director to second-unit director and assistant director in record time, his first solo directorship being the adventure Midshipman Easy (1935). This and his subsequent effort, Laburnum Grove (1936), attracted high praise from a future collaborator, novelist/critic Graham Greene, who said that once Reed "gets the right script, [he] will prove far more than efficient." However, Reed would endure the sort of staid, boilerplate filmmaking that characterized British "B" movies until he left this behind with The Stars Look Down (1940), his second film with Michael Redgrave, and his openly Hitchcockian Night Train to Munich (1940), a comedy-thriller with Rex Harrison. It has often been seen as a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) with the same screenwriters and comedy relief--Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who would just about make careers as the cricket zealots Charters and Caldicott, from "Vanishes".
The British liked these films and, significantly, so did America, where Hollywood still wondered whether their patronage of the British film industry was worth the gamble of a payoff via the US public. Dean was just one of several powerhouse producers rising in Britain in the 1930s. Other names are more familiar: Alexander Korda and J. Arthur Rank stand out. For Reed, who would wisely decide to start producing his own films in order to have more control over them, finding his niche was still a challenge into the 1940s. He was only too well aware that the film director led a team effort--his was partly a coordinator's task, harmonizing the talents of the creative team. The modest Reed would admit to his success being this partnership time and again. So he gravitated toward the same scriptwriters, art directors and cinematographers as his movie list spread out.
There were more thrillers and some historical bios: The Remarkable Mr. Kipps (1941) with Redgrave and The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) with Robert Donat. He did service and war effort fare through World War II, but these were more than flag wavers, for Reed dealt with the psychology of transitioning to military life. His Anglo-American documentary of combat (co-directed by Garson Kanin), The True Glory (1945), won the 1946 Oscar for Best Documentary. With that under his belt, Reed was now recognized as Britain's ablest director and could pick and choose his projects. He also had the clout--and the all-important funds--to do what he thought was essential to ensure realism on a location shoot, something missing in British film work prior to Reed.
Odd Man Out (1947) with James Mason as an IRA hit man on the run did just that and was Reed's first real independent effort, and he had gone to Rank to do it. All too soon, however, that organization began subjugating directors' wishes to studio needs, and Reed made perhaps his most important associative decision and joined Korda's London Films. Here was one very important harmony--he and Korda thought along the same lines. Though Anthony Kimmins had scripted four films for Reed, it was time for Korda to introduce the director to Graham Greene. Their association would bring Reed his greatest successes. The Fallen Idol (1948) was based on a Greene short story, with Ralph Richardson as a do-everything head butler in a diplomatic household. Idolized by the lonely, small son of his employer, he becomes caught up in a liaison with a woman on the work staff, who was much younger than his shrewish wife. It may seem slow to an American audience, but with the focus on the boy's wide-eyed view of rather gloomy surroundings, as well as the adult drama around him, it was innovative and a solid success.
What came next was a landmark--the best known of Reed's films. The Third Man (1949) was yet another Greene story, molded into a gem of a screenplay by him, though Reed added some significant elements of his own. The film has been endlessly summarized and analyzed and, whether defined as an international noir or post-war noir or just noir, it was cutting-edge noir and unforgettable. This was Reed in full control--well, almost-- and the money was coming from yet another wide-vision producer, David O. Selznick, along with Korda. Tension did develop in this effort keep a predominantly Anglo effort in this Anglo-American collaboration.
There were complications, though. For one thing, Korda--old friend and somewhat kindred spirit of wunderkind director Orson Welles--had a gentlemen's agreement with the latter for three pictures, but these were not forthcoming. Korda could be as evasive as Welles was known to be, and Welles had come to Europe to further his inevitable film projects after troubles in Hollywood. Always desperate for seed money, Welles was forced to take acting parts in Europe to build up his bank account in order to finance his more personal projects. He thus accepted the role of the larger-than-life American flim-flam man turned criminal, Harry Lime. The extended time spent filming the Vienna sewer scenes on location and at the elaborate set for them at Shepperton Studios in London, entailed the longest of the ten minutes or so of Welles' screen time. Here was a potential source of directorial intimidation if ever there was one. Welles took it upon himself to direct Reed's veteran cinematographer Robert Krasker with his own vision of some sewer sequences in London (after leaving the location shoot in Vienna), using many takes. Supposedly, Reed did not use any of Welles' footage, and in fact whatever there was got conveniently lost. Yet Citizen Kane (1941)'s shadow was so looming that Welles was given credit for a lot of camera work, atmospherics and the chase scenes. He had referred to the movie as "my film" later on and had said he wrote all his dialog. Some of the ferris wheel dialog with its famous famous "cuckoo clock" speech (which Reed and Greene both attributed to him) was probably the essence of Welles' contributions.
Krasker's quirky angles under Reed's direction perfectly framed the ready-made-for-an-art designer bombed-out shadows and stark, isolated street lights of postwar Vienna and its underworld. Unique to cinema history, the whole score (except for some canned incidental café music) was just the brilliant zither playing of Anton Karas, adding his nuances to every dramatic transition. Krasker won an Oscar, and Karas was nominated for one.
Reed's attention to detailed casting also paid off, particularly in casting German-speaking actors and background players. Selznick insisted on Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, the benighted protagonist, and his clipped and sharp voice and subterranean drawl were perfect for the part. Reed had wanted James Stewart--definitely a different perception than Americans of its leading men. Selznick parted ways with Reed on other issues, however; there was a laundry list of reasons for his re-editing and changing some incidentals for the shorter American version, partly based on negative comments from sneak preview responses. Perhaps it was the constant interruptions from the other side of the Atlantic that drove Reed to personally narrate the introduction describing Martins in the British version of the film (given the basic tenets of noir films, the star always played narrator to introduce the story and voice over where appropriate). Selznick showed himself--in this instance, anyway--to have a better directorial sense by substituting Cotten introducing himself in the American cut. It made far more sense and was much more effective. On the other hand, Selznick's editing of the pivotal railway café scenes with Cotten and Alida Valli had continuity problems.
Nonetheless, the film was an international smash, and all the principal players reaped the rewards. Reed did not get an Oscar, but he did win the Cannes Film Grand Prix. Greene was motivated enough to take the story and expand it into a best-selling novel. Even Welles, with his minimum screen time--he was spending most of his time in Europe trying to obtain financing for his newest project, Othello (1956)--milked the movie for all it was worth. He did not deny directorial influences (though in a 1984 interview he did), and even developed a Harry Lime radio show back home.
However, the movie had its detractors. It was called too melodramatic and too cynical. The short scenes of untranslated German dialog were also criticized, yet that lent to the atmosphere of confusion and helplessness of Martins caught in a wary, potentially dangerous environment--something the audience inevitably was able to share. It was all too ironic that Reed, now declared by some as the greatest living director of the time, found his career in decline thereafter. Of his total output, four were based on plays, three on stories and 15 on novels. With less than half of them to go, he was to be disappointed for the most part. His The Man Between (1953) with James Mason was too much of a "Third Man" reprise, and A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) was too sentimental.
By now Reed was being sought by enterprising Hollywood producers. He had--as he usually did--the material for a first-rate movie with two popular American actors, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis for Trapeze (1956). However, it suffered from a slow script, as would the British-produced The Key (1958), despite another international cast. Things finally picked up with his venture into another Greene-scripted film from his novel, with Alec Guinness in the lead in the UK spy spoof Our Man in Havana (1959) with yet another winning international cast.
When Hollywood called again, the chance at such a British piece of history as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) with a mostly British cast and Marlon Brando seemed bound for success. It was the second version of the movie produced by MGM (the first being the Clark Gable starrer Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)). However, Brando's history of being temperamental was much in evidence on location in Tahiti. Reed shot a small part of the picture but finally left, having more than his fill of the star's ego (and, evidently, being allowed too much artistic control by the studio) and the film was finished by Lewis Milestone. Reed would ultimately be branded as a failure in directing historical movies, but it was an unfair appraisal based on the random aspect of film success and such forces of nature as Brando, not artistic and technical expertise.
The opportunity to make another film came knocking again with Reed and American money forming the production company International Classics to produce Irving Stone's best-selling story of Michelangelo and the painting of the Sistine Chapel, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Here is perhaps the prime example of Reed being given short shrift for a really valiant effort at an historical, artistically significant and cultural epic because it was a "flop" at the box office. Shot on location in Rome and its environs, the film had a first-rate cast headed by Charlton Heston doing his method best as the temperamental artist with Rex Harrison, an effortless standout as the equally volatile Pope Julius II. Diane Cilento did fine work as the Contessina de Medici, with the always stalwart Harry Andrews as architect rival Donato Bramante. Most of the other roles were filled by Italians dubbed in English, but they all look good.
Reed's attention to historical detail provided perhaps the most accurate depiction of early 16th-century Italy--from costumes and manners to military action and weapons (especially firearms)--ever brought to the screen. The script by Philip Dunne was brisk and always entertaining in the verbal battle between the artist and his pontiff. Yet by the 1960s costume epics were going out of style and bigger flops, such as Cleopatra (1963) (talk about agony) despite the wealth of stars which included Harrison, tended to spread like a disease to those few that came later. Despite a high-powered distribution campaign by Twentieth Century-Fox, Reed's exemplary effort would ultimately be appreciated by art scholars and historians--not the stuff of Hollywood's money mentality.
For Reed the only remaining triumph was, of all things, a musical--his first and only--yet again he was working with children. However, the adaptation of the great Charles Dickens novel "Oliver Twistt" top the screen (as Oliver! (1968)) was a sensation with a lively script and music amid a realistic 19th-century London that was up to Reed's usual standards. The film was nominated for no less than 11 Oscars, wining five and two of the big ones--Best Picture and Best Director. Reed had finally achieved that bit of elusiveness. He could never be so simplistically stamped with an uneven career; Reed had always kept to a precise craftsman's movie-making formula.
Fellow British director Michael Powell had said that Reed "could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch". It was Graham Greene, however, who gave Reed perhaps the more important personal accolade: "The only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting, and not least important the power of sympathizing with an author's worries and an ability to guide him."- Director
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Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 in Luzarches, Val-d'Oise, France. He was a director and writer, known for Devil in the Flesh (1947), The Crossing of Paris (1956) and The Red and the Black (1954). He was married to Ghislaine Autant-Lara. He died on 5 February 2000 in Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Director
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- Editor
France Stiglic was born on 12 November 1919 in Kranj, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was a director and writer, known for Povest o dobrih ljudeh (1975), The Ninth Circle (1960) and Valley of Peace (1956). He died on 4 May 1993 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do. He became involved in European filmaking for a short time before going to America to study film.- Production Manager
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Georges Lampin was born on 14 October 1901 in Yekaterinburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. He was a production manager and director, known for Retour à la vie (1949), Mathias Sandorf (1963) and Les anciens de Saint-Loup (1950). He died on 8 May 1979 in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Giuseppe De Santis was born on 11 February 1917 in Fondi, Lazio, Italy. He was a writer and director, known for Tragic Hunt (1947), Giorni d'amore (1954) and Bitter Rice (1949). He was married to Gordana Miletic. He died on 16 May 1997 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.- Actor
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- Writer
Hampe Faustman, born in Stockholm, was a Swedish director, writer and actor. He was the son of the artists Gösta Chatham and Mollie Faustman. Hampe Faustman studied at the Royal Dramatic Training Academy from 1937 and made his acting debut in the film "Med livet som insats / They Staked Their Lives" (1940). The director's debut came with the film "Natt i hamn / Night in Port" (1940) where he also played a minor role. Producer Lorens Marmstedt and Terrafilm joined forces with Faustman to give him the opportunity to develop his socially engaged style under Marmstedt's active protection. Later, together with the actor George Fant, he founded the film company F-film. Hampe Faustman directed 15 feature films and acted in 26. He died at the age of 42 in Stockholm 1961.- Writer
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Hans Bertram was born on 26 February 1906 in Remscheid, Germany. He was a writer and director, known for Eine große Liebe (1949), D III 88 (1939) and Kampfgeschwader Lützow (1941). He was married to Gisela Uhlen. He died on 8 January 1993 in Munich, Germany.- Director
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- Actor
Helmut Käutner was born on 25 March 1908 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was a director and writer, known for The Captain from Köpenick (1956), The Last Bridge (1954) and The Rest Is Silence (1959). He was married to Erica Balqué. He died on 20 April 1980 in Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy.- Writer
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Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film The Raven (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. He shot to international fame with The Wages of Fear (1953) and consolidated that success with Diabolique (1955), but continuous ill health caused large gaps in his output, and several projects had to be abandoned (though one, Hell (1994), was subsequently filmed by Claude Chabrol). His films are typically relentless suspense thrillers, similar to Alfred Hitchcock's but with far less light relief.- Actor
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Irving Pichel was born on 24 June 1891 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Destination Moon (1950), Dracula's Daughter (1936) and Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). He was married to Violette Wilson. He died on 13 July 1954 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Director
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The great neglected independent film-maker Jean Dreville had no formal education - he was educated privately at home. He showed an early interest in photography and art and his first jobs were as photographer, poster designer and draftsman. His break into films came in 1928 when he made his first short films. In the 1930's, when films about Russia were popular with supporters of the Popular Front, he got on the bandwagon with 'Troika on the White Piste' (1938) and 'Sleepless Nights of St Petersburg' (1938). After the Second World War he had a big success with 'Heavy Water Battle' (1948), a spy thriller made in documentary style set in Nazi-occupied Norway, about Allied attempts to obliterate the factory producing heavy water to power V2 rockets. In 1960 he co-directed the fine French-Soviet aviation spectacular, Normandie-Niemen. In his later career he turned increasingly to comedy.- Director
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Jean Pichonnier was born on 5 September 1912 in Sint-Gillis Brussel, Belgium. Jean was a director and producer, known for Images d'Ethiopie (1949), Michel Simon sous le plâtre (1939) and Histoire de la LBC - Geschiedenis van de luchtverbinding België - Congo (1950). Jean died in 1965 in Brussels, Belgium.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
Josef von Báky was born on 23 March 1902 in Zombor, Austria-Hungary [now Sombor, Serbia]. He was a director and assistant director, known for Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), Der Ruf (1949) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1943). He was married to Juliska Németh. He died on 28 July 1966 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Writer
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Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount productions in Hollywood, most of them Jack Oakie vehicles. Still in his 20s, he produced first-class MGM films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940). Having left Metro after a dispute with studio chief Louis B. Mayer over Judy Garland, he then worked for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox, producing The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), when Ernst Lubitsch's illness first brought him to the director's chair for Dragonwyck (1946). Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26-year period, successfully attempted every kind of movie from Shakespeare adaptation to western, from urban sociological drama to musical, from epic film with thousands of extras to a two-character picture. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950) brought him wide recognition along with two Academy Awards for each as a writer and a director, seven years after his elder brother Herman J. Mankiewicz won Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). His more intimate films like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Barefoot Contessa (1954)--his only original screenplay--and The Honey Pot (1967) are major artistic achievements as well, showing Mankiewicz as a witty dialoguist, a master in the use of flashback and a talented actors' director (he favored English actors and had in Rex Harrison a kind of alter-ego on the screen).- Director
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Karl Hartl was born on 10 May 1899 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was a director and writer, known for Two Merry Adventurers (1937), The Life and Loves of Mozart (1955) and Der Engel mit der Posaune (1948). He was married to Marte Harell. He died on 29 August 1978 in Vienna, Austria.