Michelangelo Antonioni • Ingmar Bergman • Robert Bresson • Luis Buñuel • John Cassavetes • Charlie Chaplin • Jean Cocteau • Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne • Vittorio De Sica • Jacques Demy • Carl Th. Dreyer • Victor Erice • Rainer Werner Fassbinder • Federico Fellini • John Ford • Louis Feuillade • Samuel Fuller • Howard Hawks • Alfred Hitchcock • Hou Hsiao-hsien • Shohei Imamura • Aki Kaurismäki • Abbas Kiarostami • Krzysztof Kieslowski • Hirokazu Kore-Eda • Shunji Iwai • Stanley Kubrick • Akira Kurosawa • Fritz Lang • David Lean • Ernst Lubitsch • David Lynch • Terrence Malick • Anthony Mann • Jean-Pierre Melville • Kenji Mizoguchi • Lukas Moodyson • F. W. Murnau • Mikio Naruse • Yasujiro Ozu • Sergei Parajanov • Roman Polanski • Otto Preminger • Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger • Satyajit Ray • Jean Renoir • Jacques Rivette • Nicolas Roeg • Eric Rohmer • Roberto Rossellini • Mrinal Sen • Douglas Sirk • Alexander Sokurov • Andrei Tarkovsky • Bela Tarr • Jacques Tati • Hiroshi Teshigahara • Jacques Tourneur • Anh Hung Tran • François Truffaut • Tsai Ming-liang • Edgar Ulmer • Agnès Varda • Luchino Visconti • Erich von Stroheim • Peter Weir • Orson Welles • Wim Wenders • Wong Kar-wai • William Wyler • Zhang Yimou
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Ranier Werner was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1946. Success initially eluded young Fassbinder and his first feature length film, a gangster drama entitled Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), was greeted by loud jeers at the Berlin Film Festival. His next work, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its showing at Mannheim. Each progressive film identified his style using social criticism and featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression. His first domestic commercial success was The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) and his as is his first international success was Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973) an ode to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk. His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Many of his later films focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently contained a strongly pornographic edge. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Fassbinder: Life and Work of a Provocative Genius |
Director - Selected filmography and review links:
Querelle (1982), Veronika Voss (USA), Lola (1981/I), Lili Marleen (1981), "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (1980), The Marriage of Maria Braun, In a Year of 13 Moons (1978), Despair (1978), Chinese Roulette (1976), Satan's Brew (1976), Fear of Fear (1975), Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975), Fist-Fight of Freedom (1975), Effi Briest (1974), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), Whity (1971), Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1971), The American Soldier (1970), Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970), Katzelmacher (1969), Love Is Colder Than Death |
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Federico Fellini's name is recognized as one of the icons of world cinema. He had no formal film training in his youth and appropriately his cinema is one of personal expression often imbued with artistic fantasy as one of his many signatures. He repeatedly explored the roles and relationships between unattached lovers, parents / children and spouses. His admitted influences included preferences for Chaplin, Keaton, and other comedian of that era as well as Luis Buñuel (admiring his biting satirist expression) preferring them to those currently recognized with him as canons of the world cinema stage (Bergman, Kurosawa etc.). He was known to have a volatile temper during the film shooting process. One which he never disguised to outsiders utilizing this fervent passion as part of his creative process. Constantly capturing public interest, his recognized 'muse', and wife of over 40 years (till his death), Giulietta Masina was occasionally cast as his leading lady. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Fellini on Fellini |
Official Fellini website (in Italian)
Director - Selected filmography and review links:
And the Ship Sails On (1983), City of Women (1980), Prova d'orchestra (1978), Fellini's Casanova (1976), Amarcord (1973), Roma (1972), Satyricon (1969), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), 8½ (1963), Boccaccio '70 (1962), La Dolce vita (1960), Nights of Cabiria (1957), Il Bidone (1955), La Strada (1954), I Vitelloni (1953), The White Sheik (1952), Variety Lights (1950) |
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John Ford may be the most influential director of sound films. His legacy is best noted for a long string of successful westerns that revolutionized and uplifted that genre to respected heights. Consistency seems a hallmark working often with John Wayne, Harry Carey, John Carradine, and Henry Fonda while his western exteriors were filmed almost exclusively in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah, USA. Many great directors list him as their most influential including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Bernardo Bertolucci and the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa who worshipped Ford. After extensive work 'cutting his teeth" Ford finally perfected his film-making 'modus operandi' using a systematic (but often intangible) style of detailed simplicity. The pace of his films is often slow and deliberate and his shots, while free of tricks, imbue an unpretentious quality reflected in the films narratives. Famous for embarrassing Jean-Luc Godard, a young journalist for Les Cahiers du Cinema at the time, inquiring: "What Brought you to Hollywood ?" Ford abruptly replied "A train". |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
John Ford and the American West |
Director - Very Abbreviated filmography and review links: Donovan's Reef (1963), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Two Rode Together (1961), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), The Searchers (1956), Mister Roberts (1955), Mogambo (1953), The Quiet Man (1952), Rio Grande (1950), Wagon Master (1950), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Fort Apache (1948), My Darling Clementine (1946), They Were Expendable (1945), The Battle of Midway (1942), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Tobacco Road (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Stagecoach (1939), Arrowsmith (1931), The Iron Horse (1924) (uncredited) |
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Prolific director of over 800 films (most of them short or medium-length) Louis Feuillade (pronounced "Foo-yaad") began working with Gaumont in France where he was appointed artistic director in charge of production in 1907. The majority of Feuillade's work was mostly comprised of crime serial films that were a popular and prolific genre at the time of early cinema in both the US and France. He is noted especially for Fantômas consisting of 5 episodes that were based on a series of 32 novels and Les Vampires who detailed the exploits of a sinister gang plaguing Paris with their underworld activity. Feuillade's crime films were perceived at the time as passé lacking the sophistication of Griffith or DeMille, although they are recognized today for the inventive, surreal aspects of the imaginative narrative. His work is renowned for being part of the 'primordial soup' from which all modern cinema evolved. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Silent Cinema: An Introduction (Distributed for the
British Film Institute) |
Sight and Sound article on Louis Feuillade
Director - Very Abbreviated filmography and review links:
Judex (1916), Les Vampires (1915), Fantômas contre Fantômas (1914), La Marche des rois (1913), Le Mort qui tue (1913), Juve contre Fantômas , Fantômas - À l'ombre de la guillotine (1913) |
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Samuel Fuller's screenwriting, production and direction established him as a controversial political figure in American cinema. Consistent opposition to standard conventions and ideology including traditional Western lifestyles developed his reputation as a highly acclaimed auteur by many leftist European film-makers. At the age of 12 Fuller became a copyboy on The New York Journal and at 17 a crime reporter for the San Diego Sun. His colorful past included hopping freight trains while touring the country and later a stint in the army (World War II) fighting in North Africa and Europe. His greatest recognition came with Forty Guns (1957) which was initially condemned in the U.S. because of its ham-fisted deconstruction of the narrative, but in Europe it was strongly praised for its stylistic and aggressive vigor. Among the director's unfinished projects was a film about Abraham Lincoln, in which Lincoln is seen in a uncharacteristic critical light. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Sam Fuller: Film Is a Battleground : A Critical
Study With Interviews, a Filmography and a Bibliography |
Director - Selected filmography and DVDBeaver review links:
Street of No Return (1989), Thieves After Dark (1984), White Dog (1982), The Big Red One (1980), Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973), Shark! (1969), The Naked Kiss (1964), Shock Corridor (1963), Underworld U.S.A. (1961), The Crimson Kimono (1959), Verboten! (1959), China Gate (1957), Run of the Arrow (1957), Forty Guns (1957), House of Bamboo (1955), Hell and High Water (1954), Pickup on South Street (1953), Park Row (1952), Fixed Bayonets! (1951), The Steel Helmet (1951), The Baron of Arizona (1950), I Shot Jesse James (1949) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Hawks on Hawks |
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Alfred Hitchcock, 'The Master', went on to become the most widely known and influential director in history of cinema with a prolific body of work spanning 50 years. After some exposure to German- expressionism Hitch established his preferred niche in the mystery/suspense genre where his films dominated public appeal for decades. His meticulous preparation and understanding of every facet of the production medium and the plot of each project allowed the actual filming process to be considered a foregone conclusion and a virtual decision-less process. To deter studio post intervention with his films Hitch would strive to limit his shooting process to the required scenes, each essential to the plot, fitting as cohesively as the pieces of a puzzle - until there was no other conceivable manner for them to be edited. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title)
Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and
Interviews |
Family Plot (1976), Frenzy (1972), Topaz (1969), Torn Curtain (1966), Marnie (1964), The Birds (1963), Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), Suspicion (1957), The Wrong Man (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Trouble with Harry (1955), To Catch a Thief (1955), Rear Window (1954), Dial M for Murder (1954), I Confess (1953), Strangers on a Train (1951), Stage Fright (1950), Under Capricorn (1949), Rope (1948), The Paradine Case (1947), Notorious (1946), Spellbound (1945), Lifeboat (1944), Bon Voyage (1944), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Saboteur (1942), Suspicion (1941), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Rebecca (1940), Jamaica Inn (1939), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Young and Innocent (1937), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), The 39 Steps (1935), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Waltzes from Vienna (1933), Number 17 (1932), Rich and Strange (1931), Blackmail (1929), Easy Virtue (1928), Downhill (1927), The Ring (1927), The Lodger (1927), Number 13 (1922) |
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Director - Selected filmography and DVDBeaver review links: Café Lumière (2003), Millennium Mambo (2001), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996), Good Men, Good Women (1995), The Puppetmaster (1993), City of Sadness (1989), Daughter of the Nile (1987), Dust in the Wind (1986), The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985), A Summer at Grandpa's (1984), The Sandwich Man (1983), The Boys From Fengkuei (1983) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
A City of Sadness |
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Since his first films in the 1950s, Shohei Imamura has been depicting on-screen his own version of humanity: a humanity far from gentleness, altruism and nobility. Often vulgar, greedy and grotesque, life is under duress, fighting on the verge of extinction. But while actions seem triggered by this fight, Imamura is mainly interested in the intrinsic qualities of the human psyche, beyond any causal rationalizations. From his early masterpieces "Insect Woman" and "Pigs and Battleships" to his later "Ballad of Narayama", Imamura has exposed a darker aspect of society. Civilization, education, industrialization etc., appear inadequate to bridge the chaos between solipsism and social order, between bawdy needs and the conventions of co-existence. Imamura's highly fluent cinematic style is perfectly complemented by skillful editing, dynamic compositions, colorful characters and occasional hints of magical realism, all painting a portrait of Japan that is both anti-sentimental and loving, denouncing yet unapologetic. Life is not a fairy-tale perhaps, but hope can be found nonetheless. |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
Shohei Imamura (Cinematheque Ontario Monographs, No. 1) |
World Socialist Website interview with Shohei Imamura
Director - Very Abbreviated filmography and review links:
11'09''01 - September 11 (2002) (segment "Japan"), Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001), Dr. Akagi (1998), The Eel (1997), Black Rain (1989), Zegen (1987), Ballad of Narayama (1983), Why Not? (1981), Vengeance Is Mine (1979), Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute (1975), Deep Desire of Gods (1968), A Man Vanishes (1967), The Pornographers (1966), Akai satsui (1964), Nippon konchuki (1963) |
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
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Suggested Reading (click cover or title for more info)
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