THE ARTS

4005 Films3 – Best Directors

In the 1960s the most controversial director was Fellini. His ‘La Dolce Vita’ was especially controversial, and his follow-up with ‘8½’ was also very enjoyable. Best of all, though, were the two earlier films starring his wife, Giulietta Messina: La Strada’ and ‘La Notte di Cabiria’ (which was later made into the musical ‘Sweet Charity’). The final scene, just after she has been jilted and is walking down the road with young couples Vespas roaring by her and happy music playing with her smiling – but with tears streaming down her face, is just about the saddest I have seen.

At that time we also saw all the films of Sergei Eisenstein, one of the greatest directors ever. Of course we saw his ‘Battleship Potemkin’, together with ‘Alexander Nevsky’ and the much more obscure ‘Strike’ and ‘October’. We also sat through five hours of rushes from his work on ‘Que Viva Mexico’, which he never completed; which was informative – but very tedious. Best of all his films was ‘Ivan the Terrible’, especially part II which was in colour. With music by Prokofiev, it was visually ravishing.

My two top favourite directors, though, are pure Hollywood; and with very similar names. The first of these was Billy Wilder. He is best remembered for his comedies, especially ‘Some Like it Hot’ with the incomparable Jack Lemmon putting on one of his best performances (as also did Marilyn Monroe). This is often rated the best film comedy of all time, a view with which I agree. I first saw this in Braunschweig, dubbed into German – and still believe the ending in German was even wittier – but have seen it many times since and never tire of it. But we have also seen, at the cinema or sometimes on TV, ‘Front Page’ and ‘The Fortune Cookie’ (both again with Jack Lemmon, though these times also with his ‘partner’ in many superb films Walter Mathau), ‘The Apartment’ (again with Lemmon, but this time with Shirley Maclaine, another of my favourites) . Marilyn also appeared in the ‘Seven Year Itch’ which was funny, but not his best, and the same can be said of ‘Sabrina’ which surprisingly matched the incomparable Humphrey Bogart with Audrey Hepburn. But he also made some of the best dramas ever made including: ‘Double Indemnity’ and the very dark masterpiece ‘Ace in the Hole’

The second was my favourite director of all time, William Wyler, but he covered so many different genres that I didn’t realize this for many years. He made his reputation with adaptations of Lillian Hellman plays, the most powerful of which (starring both Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn!) were ‘The Children’s Hour’ and ‘Little Foxes’ with Bette Davies (the best actress of her generation).  He also made the classic ‘Wuthering Heights’ with Laurence Olivier. But he also made the romantic comedies ‘Roman Holiday’ and ‘How to Steal a Million’ both with Hepburn and the beautifully gentle ‘Friendly Persuasion’.  Amazingly, though, he also made the best films in a number of other genres. In the field of wartime propaganda he made ‘Mrs Miniver’, the best weepy ever, in the Western he made ‘The Big Country’, in blockbusters he made ‘Ben Hur’ (which he only took on because he wanted to film the chariot race, only to find he had to hand it over to the second unit director!) and in musicals ‘Funny Girl’ with Barbra Streisand. We attended a memorable Guardian/NFT lecture by him and, when asked why he had made so many different types of film, he simply said he had wanted to try and make the best in every field – and I think he succeeded. Most memorable of all was that, during the lecture, he suddenly shaded his eyes from the spotlights and, looking at an elderly woman about half way back in the auditorium. said “Ist das du Hetty?” At the end he was shepherded out to the green room and the woman left alongside us, with tears streaming down her face. Two weeks later he was dead. I do not know what the relationship between them might have been, but – to me - it seemed a suitably dramatic end to his career.

Most people think of Vincent Minnelli in terms of ‘Meet Me in St Louis’ with Judy Garland who he married, but he was another director who made a range of movies – only some of which were musicals. His other musicals which we saw, all of which were superb, were ‘An American in Paris’ brilliantly danced by Gene Kelly (my favourite film hoofer) and Leslie Caron, ‘Gigi’ also with Caron), the very atmospheric ‘Brigadoon’ (again with Kelly, partnered by Cyd Charisse);

along with ‘The Band Wagon’ (starring Fred Astair and Charisse also favourite hoofers), ‘The Pirate’ (with Garland and Kelly), ‘Designing Woman’ (with Lauren Bacall) which I loved when it came out and the earlier, less memorable ‘Zigfield Follies’. But he too made his fair share of comedies and dramas, of which we saw: ‘Father of the Bride’ (with a magnificent Spencer Tracy and a very young Elizabeth Taylor), ‘Lust for Life’ (with Kirk Douglas playing Vincent Van Gogh), the beautifully sad ‘Some Came Running’ (with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine) and ‘On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’ (with Barbara Streisand).

Of course, Alfred Hitchcock’s movies must feature – not least because we have seen more of them than those of anyone else. We have seen many, if not most, of them, including: ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, ‘The 39 Steps’, ‘Sabotage’, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, ‘Rebecca’, ‘Suspicion’, ‘Spellbound’, ‘Notorious’, ‘The Paradine Case’, ‘Rope’, ‘Dial M for Murder’, ‘Rear Window’, ‘To Catch a Thief’, ‘The Trouble with Harry’, ‘Vertigo’, ‘Psycho’,  ‘The Birds’ and ‘Marnie’. Of these I loved Marnie best, perhaps because it was so different to the rest and yet seemed to contain so much of Hitch himself.

At a somewhat lesser level, I like some of Blake Edwards’ movies, not so much the Clouseau movies (since, though the direction is excellent, Peter Sellars always overacted), including ‘The Great Race’ (with the beautiful and much underrated Natalie Wood), the wistful ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ with Audrey Hepburn, the tragic tale of alcoholism ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ with Jack Lemmon, and the classic comedy ‘Operation Petticoat’, starring Cary Grant; one of my favourite comedy stars.

From the silent era I hate Charlie Chaplin’s bathos and my favourite is Buster Keaton; in particular ‘The Boat’, ‘The Navigator’, ‘The General’; but Harold Lloyd’s comedies are also still funny.

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