The Directors is a series of programmes on Sky Arts, each episode looking into the career of one important film director. It is narrated by Ryan Mandrake with superb contributions from film critics and experts Ian Nathan, Bonnie Greer, Stephen Armstrong, Neil Norman and Derek Malcolm.
The series is made by 3DD Entertainment whose team is dominated by the Saville family. The programmes are written and edited by Cal Saville and produced and directed by Lyndy Saville. I am extremely impressed.
The directors for Series 1 are:
Episode 1 Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock needs no introduction. However he did struggle in his early British films. It was only the introduction of Peter Lorre for
The Man Who Knew Too Much that started a successful run of thrillers.
The 39 Steps was as successful in the USA as it was back home. Equally fine was
The Lady Vanishes. Off to America, Hitchcock directed that string of black and white movies for which he became famous:
Rebecca, Suspicion, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Notorious and his first in colour
Rope. Note all one word titles. Thrillers continued with
Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry and a remake of
The Man Who Knew Too Much. Then those classics:
Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Topaz and Frenzy. What a collection. There just wasn't enough time to show too many clips.
Episode 2 Billy Wilder
Austrian Born Wilder first became a screenwriter in Berlin before fleeing to Paris and eventually America where a string of successful movies won him 12 Oscar nominations ( winning 3) with his actors winning 14 Academy Awards.
The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard and
The Apartment were the big winners, but all his films were high class. His brilliant comedies included
Some Like It Hot and
The Seven Year Itch.
Episode 3 William Wyler
Originally from Germany, William Wyler hit the big time in America with
Mrs Miniver in 1942 for which he won the Oscar for best director. He followed this in 1946 with
The Best Year of Our Lives, also winning best director. A third would follow with
Ben-Hur in 1959 that followed the previous year's
The Big Country. He gave big screen debuts to Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday and Barbara Streisand in
Funny Girl. Wyler was a colossus in Hollywood.
Episode 4 Sam Peckinpa
Sam Peckinpa was notorious for his many troubled productions being effected by alchohol and drug abuse. However, he will always be known for his great westerns with Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch and later Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Peckinpa was also notable for some of the most violent scenes of the day. His trip to the UK to direct Straw Dogs brought about a cult following. But The Getaway proved he could make great middle of the road movies. Funnily enough, one of his last films, the the awful Convoy, became his biggest box office success.
Episode 5 Howard Hawks
From his entitled background, Howard Hawks turned out to be a major studio director, with a huge variety of movies. He started in the silent era with films such as A Girl in Every Port and Hell's Angels. It was as he was finishing the latter than movies with sound took hold. His first was Dawn Patrol and then in 1932 the highly successful Scarface. He followed these with Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, To Have and To Have Not with Humphrey Bogarde and Lauren Bacall in their first film together, The Big Sleep, Monkey Business and the classic Gentleman Prefer Blondes with Marilyn Monroe. After a break, he returned with Rio Bravo, one of the best Westerns of all time. His last movie, Rio Lobo, also starred John Wayne.
Episode 6 Fritz Lang
It was interesting to hear about the career of Fritz Land as it was long before I started watching movies. It was his classic Metropolis in 1927 for which he is best known. Land started directing experimental films in Germany in 1919 but left Germany in 1933 for Paris and for the USA in 1936.
In Hollywood with MGM, his first film in 1936 was a crime drama Fury. But it was not until 1953 that the very dark The Big Heat was a notable release. So he will always be remembered for Metropolis. A hugely expensive and artistic work, with 25,000 extras, that inspired many directors that followed.
Episode 7 Cecil B DeMille
If there is one word that sums up the work of Cecil B DeMille it would be spectacle. After starting in the theatre, he started his career in the age of silent movies with The Squaw Man in 1914 as co-director and then on his own with The Virginian. But the start of those famous biblical movies was in 1923 with The Ten Commandments. His first venture with sound was Dynamite but his early films with sound were not successful.
But in 1949, Samson and Delilah was a big hit as was 1952's The Greatest Show On Earth which won the Oscar for best picture. In 1956, DeMille released a remake of The Ten Commandments, his final film. Nominated for best picture, it became the second biggest box office success after Gone With The Wind.
Episode 8 George Cukor
Initially working as a stage manager in the theatre, George Cukor became a well respected director on Broadway before moving to Hollywood in 1929. His experience of dramas in the theatre transferred into his movies. He worked successfully with many of the top actresses of the time and put many of them centre stage. He cast Katherine Hepburn in many of his films and gave opportunities to Judy Garland, Greta Garbo and Sophia Loren. His stars found more Oscar success than any other director.
He made the best version of Little Women, used the drawings of Charles Dickens as inspiration and casting of David Copperfield but was sacked from Gone With The Wind after developing the screenplay. His Philadelphia Story is now a classic. The successful Gaslight showed he was just as good with a thriller.
In 1954 he struggled to finish A Star is Born with Judy Garland at her most difficult. But eventually it was released after Cukor had left and gained six Oscar nominations, but not one for Cukor. But it was not until 1964 that Cukor had his biggest success with My Fair Lady for which he won the Oscar for best director along with other awards. Nothing after that matched this movie's huge critical acclaim.
Episode 9 Akira Kurosowa
If you asked me what films Akira Kurosowa had directed, I would not have been able to answer. Yet here he was being described as the greatest ever Japanese director. Apparently he joined Kajiro Mamamuto ( another director I didn't know) as an assistant and learned everything from him on the seventeen films out of the twenty four he was employed as AD. He was also influenced greatly by the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and the death of his beloved brother by suicide. When he started directing in his own right, he made a long succession of films, culminating in Drunken Angel in 1948, the first of his fifteen collaborations with his lead actor Toshiro Mifume.
In 1951, Kurosowa directed Rashomon. It was entered, and won the top prize at the Venice Film festival, and this was the beginning of international recognition. !953 saw his most influential work in The Seven Samurai. This was action cinema never seen before and was a huge Japanese blockbuster and the basis for The Magnificent Seven. His Throne of Blood was based on Macbeth and his Hidden Fortress was the basis for Star Wars. But it was not until 1980 when co-producer Francis Ford Coppola became involved, that Kagemusha won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Then in 1985 he directed the one film that I know well. Ran is based on King Lear for which Kurosowa was nominated for a best Director Oscar. His mastery of invention, spectacular sets and using countless extras paved the way for the blockbusters of today
Episode 10 Frank Capra
Of course, this episode had to start with Frank Capra's iconic movie It's a Wonderful Life., but this was towards the end of his career. His family emigrated from Italy to the USA in 1903 when he was five. He was the only child in his humble family who pushed himself through school and college. However, he was unable to settle for a career but his habit of doing odd jobs around the studios in LA paid off. He found work as a comedy writer and this brought him into work with th silent film actor Harry Langdon. They formed a successful partnership when Capra directed one of his films.
Harry Cohn, at the struggling Columbia Pictures, took on Capra. At the time Columbia was the poor relation of Hollywood. But with the coming of sound, Capra's technical education meant he adapted better than most. He formed a major partnership with innovative cinematographer Joseph Waller and screenwriter Robert Riskin. Their 1934 film It Happened One Night propelled Columbia to the top of Hollywood studios. It was the first to win all five major Oscars including best picture and best director for Capra.
He followed this with the 1936 film Mr Deeds Goes to Town and picked up another best director Oscar, and again in 1938 with You Can't Take It With You which also won best picture. In 1939 he directed Mr Smith Goes To Washington. An Oscar nomination, but one his two most important films, this time about politics in the USA.
During WW2, Capra volunteered to make propaganda documentaries, the seven films called "Why We Fight". His return to the studio resulted in that film for which he will always be remembered. His nomination for an Oscar for It's A Wonderful Life now seems insufficient. Like many of his films, it was a movie that tapped into American life using Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" as one of the themes. Nothing after could match It's success, coming as it did towards the end of his career. But he was instrumental in turning around the fortunes of Columbia Pictures, not least because in his films, he felt the mood of his adopted country.
