Review: 'The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema's Most Influential Filmmakers'

The auteur theory tends to get overstated when examining the very collaborative art of filmmaking. Nevertheless, the most distinctive directors do tend to have the final say when it comes to the look and philosophy of the films they manage. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of cinema could identify a film that, say, Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, or Steven Spielberg directed from just a single carefully selected still frame. Other very famous directors, such as Robert Wise and Billy Wilder, are less identifiable by visual style than they are by point of view (Wise: optimistic; Wilder: pessimistic). Plus, directors have flashy jobs that require a certain gregariousness, or at least a big mouth. Hunching over a typewriter like Robert Towne or adjusting a lens like Gregg Toland is not as attention-getting as DeMille shouting through a megaphone in his jodhpurs.

Sloan De Forest's new book The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema's Most Influential Filmmakers celebrates these most celebrated people to work behind the cameras. Like other volumes published in Turner Classic Movies' series of film studies, The Essential Directors consists of short entries each with a bit of background history, a bit of critical assessment, a few recommendations for representative works, and lots and lots of fabulous photos. More so than the series' volumes on horror films and summer movies I've reviewed here on Psychobabble, The Essential Directors refuses to rock the boat too much with its selections, mostly only straying from the household-name canon to acknowledge that white men didn't always helm movies with entries on Oscar Micheaux, Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, and Elaine May. Consequently, those are among the book's most interesting and informative entries. De Forest could have diversified his selection a lot more if he did not limit himself to directors who worked in Hollywood before 1975, but I guess that would have been outside the scope of TCM's programming.

Review: 'Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s'

Even with its multilayered mysteries and bizarre developments, film noir was always more about style than plot. No one can tell you what The Big Sleep is about, but everyone remembers Bogart’s rumpled trench coat/fedora combo and Bacall’s sharp houndstooth suit.

Kimberly Truhler surveys film noir style in her new book Film Noir Style. This is more than an analysis of the costumes the actors wore in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gilda, though it is that. Truhler occasionally discusses how lighting, set design, and camera angles fashioned the instantly identifiable noir aesthetic.

 

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 272

The Date: June 28

The Movie: Double Indemnity (1944)

What Is It?: Your noir education resides in Nowheresville until you see what may be the genre’s quintessential film. You’ve got your femme fatale, your dupe duped into committing a heinous crime for her, the cuckold, the steaminess, violence, and B&W shadow play. Billy Wilder brings his masterful style, Barbara Stanwyck electrifies, and Fred MacMurray once again raises a confounding question: how did this dude get cast as the dad from “My Three Sons”?

Why Today?: Today is Insurance Awareness Day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 229

The Date: May 16

The Movie: The Lost Weekend (1945)

What Is It?: Billy Wilder shoots his finger-wagging fest about alcoholism as if it was a noir crime picture or a nightmare of German Expressionism. Ray Milland was sometimes written off as “the poor man’s Cary Grant”. Nuts to that.

Why Today?: Today is World Whiskey Day. Drink up!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 210

The Date: April 27

The Movie: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

What Is It?: Billy Wilder tops his films past and future with a dark, funny, occasionally surreal portrait of fading Hollywood stardom. Gloria Swanson devours the camera… she teases it… she curls up inside of it… she stares it down and passes into legend.

Why Today?: Today is Tell a Story Day, and waterlogged corpses tell the best stories.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 126

The Date: February 3

The Movie: The Apartment (1960)

What Is It?: Jack Lemon is a corporate schlub who allows his sleazy superiors to use his apartment as a sleazy motel. Shirley Maclaine has it even worse as the plaything of the dad from “My Three Sons”. Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy is often very unromantic and very uncomedic, but it is always superb.

Why Today?: On this day Lemmon lives in apartment 2C—2 for second month, third day for third letter