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London-born Edmund Goulding was an actor/playwright/director on the London stage, and entered the British army when WWI broke out. Mustered out of the service because of wounds suffered in battle, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1921. He obtained assignments as a screenwriter in Hollywood, wrote a novel, "Fury," in 1922 and directed the film version of it (Fury (1923)). Hired as a screenwriter/director by MGM in 1925, Goulding quickly developed a reputation for turning out tasteful, cultured dramas and drawing-room comedies. His films typified the elegance and refinement with which MGM was identified, the best example of this being Grand Hotel (1932). He was entrusted with the pictures of some of MGM's biggest stars, such as Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. However, one of his best-known films, and probably the one most atypical of his work, was Nightmare Alley (1947), a dark, brooding drama of greed and corruption among high and low society involving phony mentalists and a conniving psychiatrist.- Director
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Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa. He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14. At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing. In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone). They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris. After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films. In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work. At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.
In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna. After his divorce from von Harbou, he had relationships with many other women, but from about 1931 to his death in 1976, he was close to Lily Latte, who helped him in many ways.- Writer
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Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWI. Upon his return to Maison Desti, he invented a kissproof lipstick, Red-Red Rouge, in 1920. Shortly after his first marriage, his mother demanded that he return control of the company to her. Kicked out of Maison Desti, he turned to inventing. A tickertape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, an automobile and an airplane were among his some of his commercially unsuccessful inventions. He began writing stories and, while recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, wrote his first play, "The Guinea Pig". In financial trouble over producing his plays, he moved to Hollywood in 1932 to make money. It wasn't long before he became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his work and wanted to direct the scripts he wrote. Paramount gave him this chance as part of a deal for selling his script for The Great McGinty (1940), at a cheap price. The film's success launched his career as writer/director and he had several hits over the next four years. That success emboldened him to become an independent filmmaker, but that did not last long--he had a string of commercial failures and acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist. He moved to France to make what turned out to be his last movie, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955). He died at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City, in 1959.- Director
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The son of Thomas William Powell and Mabel (nee Corbett). Michael Powell was always a self-confessed movie addict. He was brought up partly in Canterbury ("The Garden of England") and partly in the south of France (where his parents ran a hotel). Educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Dulwich College, he worked at the National Provincial Bank from 1922-25. In 1925 he joined Rex Ingram making Mare Nostrum (1926). He learned his craft by working at various jobs in the (then) thriving English studios of Denham and Pinewood, working his way up to director on a series of "quota quickies" (short films made to fulfill quota/tariff agreements between Britain and America in between the wars). Very rarely for the times, he had a true "world view" and, although in the mold of a classic English "gentleman", he was always a citizen of the world. It was therefore very fitting that he should team up with an émigré Hungarian Jew, Emeric Pressburger, who understood the English better than they did themselves. Between them, under the banner of "The Archers", they shared joint credits for an important series of films through the 1940s and '50s. Powell went on to make the controversial Peeping Tom (1960), a film so vilified by critics and officials alike that he didn't work in England for a very long time. He was "re-discovered" in the late 1960s and Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese tried to set up joint projects with him.
In 1980 he lectured at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He was Senior Director in Residence at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in 1981, and in fact married Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. He died of cancer in his beloved England in 1990.- Director
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British director Charles Frend started his film career as an editor, and worked on several Alfred Hitchcock films, including Secret Agent (1936) and Young and Innocent (1937). He later worked for MGM at Elstree Studios, where he edited such films as A Yank at Oxford (1938) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). He made his directorial debut in 1942 and turned out several low-budget dramas and documentaries. After the war he directed several critically acclaimed dramas, including The Cruel Sea (1953) and Scott of the Antarctic (1948). His final film as director was The Sky-Bike (1967) and the film on which he ended his career was Ryan's Daughter (1970), on which he worked as a second-unit director.- Director
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Inspired by Fred Astaire's dancing in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Stanley Donen (pronounced 'Dawn-en') attended dance classes from the age of ten. He later recalled that the only thing he wanted to be was a tap dancer.
He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Helen Pauline (Cohen) and Mordecai Moses Donen, a dress-shop manager, of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish descent. Donen debuted on Broadway at seventeen. While working as an assistant choreographer in 1941, he met and befriended the actor Gene Kelly, Kelly being the brash, extrovert and energetic side of the burgeoning partnership, Donen the more refined and relaxed. Three years later, the two men renewed their collaboration in Hollywood and did much to reinvigorate the musical genre. For the next decade, they worked side-by-side as choreographers and co-directors (a relationship Donen described as 'wonderful' but 'also trying at times'), linked to MGM's Arthur Freed unit. Between them, they directed classic musicals like On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952) and co-wrote the original story for Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). Freed, by the way, was the producer almost single-handedly responsible for the high standard of MGM's A-grade musicals in the 40s and 50s. A former vaudevillian and song-plugger, Freed was an astute judge of talent and encouraged gifted individuals from other media (like radio or theatre) to become involved with pictures. Moreover, he gave artists like Kelly and Donen free rein to express their creative flair.
In 1949, MGM signed Donen to a seven-year contract as director in his own right. From then on, he and Kelly went their separate ways. After directing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Donen moved on to Paramount for Funny Face (1957), then to Warner Brothers for The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). As musicals waned in popularity, Donen branched out into other genres. He began to direct and produce elegant, lavish romantic dramas like the delightful Indiscreet (1958), sophisticated comedies like The Grass Is Greener (1960) and Two for the Road (1967) (which starred Donen's favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn), as well as the top-shelf thrillers Charade (1963) (the best film Alfred Hitchcock never directed, again with Hepburn) and Arabesque (1966). Arguably, his most out-of-character film from this period was the esoteric mephistophelean (and very British) farce Bedazzled (1967), featuring the irrepressible comic talents of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
The 1970s heralded a steady decline in the quality of Donen's output. None of his later efforts seemed to have the panache of his earlier work: not the tepid adventure-comedy Lucky Lady (1975) (despite a good cast and sumptuous production look) nor the nostalgic musical fantasy The Little Prince (1974), based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A failure at the box office, the latter also marked the end of the Frederick Loewe-Alan Jay Lerner musical partnership. Donen's career may have finished on a low with a weak sojourn into science fiction that was Saturn 3 (1980) and the absolutely dreadful comedy Blame It on Rio (1984), but his reputation as one of the giants of the classic Hollywood musical is assured. Donen received an Honorary Oscar in 1998 ""for a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit, and visual innovation.''- Director
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Lewis Gilbert was a British film director, producer and screenwriter best known for Alfie (1966), as well as three James Bond films: You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).
He also directed Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Educating Rita (1983) and Shirley Valentine (1989).
For his work on Alfie, Gilbert was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and an Golden Globe for best director.
In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute, the highest accolade in the British film industry.
Gilbert was married to Hylda Tafler for 53 years, until her death in June 2005.
He died from natural causes on 23 February 2018 at the age of 97.- Writer
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One of the most distinguished (if frequently overlooked) directors ever to emerge from the British film industry, Alexander Mackendrick, was in fact born in the US (to Scottish parents), but grew up in his native Scotland, where he studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He started out as a commercial illustrator, and his first film endeavors were in animation (for advertising films) but he soon found himself attracted by live-action, shooting numerous short documentaries and writing screenplays throughout the 1940s. He made his feature debut in 1948 with the Ealing comedy classic Whisky Galore! (1949), set in his native Scotland, and more than half his total feature output would be for the studio including such masterpieces as The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955) -- comedies with a rather darker, more satirical edge to them than the rather cosy and parochial British comedy more typical of the era. His first Hollywood film pushed this style to its limit in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a vicious, no-holds-barred portrait of the world of ruthless New York gossip columnists. Although now acclaimed as one of the great American films, and a career high-point for Mackendrick, stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and cinematographer James Wong Howe, it was a critical and box-office disaster that, sadly, ensured that Mackendrick would never again scale such heights. After just three more films, he was offered an academic job as the Dean of the Film Department of the California Institute of the Arts, which he accepted and held from 1969 until shortly before his death.- Writer
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The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.
After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks.
The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'Age d'Or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.
Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in The Young and the Damned (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour.
After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films- a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.
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Vittorio De Sica grew up in Naples, and started out as an office clerk in order to raise money to support his poor family. He was increasingly drawn towards acting, and made his screen debut while still in his teens, joining a stage company in 1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful matinee idol of the Italian theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, mostly light comedies. He turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar vein, but with his fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1943), he revealed hitherto unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with actors, especially children. It was also the first film he made with the writer Cesare Zavattini with whom he would subsequently make Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), heartbreaking studies of poverty in postwar Italy which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was officially established. After the box-office disaster of Umberto D. (1952), a relentlessly bleak study of the problems of old age, he returned to directing lighter work, appearing in front of the camera more frequently. Although Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) won him another Oscar, it was generally accepted that his career as one of the great directors was over. However, just before he died he made The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), which won him yet another Oscar, and his final film A Brief Vacation (1973). He died following the removal of a cyst from his lungs.- Director
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Born in New York and raised in Queens, John Frankenheimer wanted to become a professional tennis player. He loved movies and his favorite actor was Robert Mitchum. He decided he wanted to be an actor but then he applied for and was accepted in the Motion Picture Squadron of the Air Force where he realized his natural talent to handle a camera. After his military discharge he began a TV career in 1953 convincing CBS to hire him as an assistant director, which consisted mainly working as a cameraman at that time. He eventually started to direct the show he was working on as an assistant director. Frankenheimer still didn't want to direct films. He liked to direct live television, and he would have continued to do it if the profession itself hadn't cease to exist. He first turned to the big screen with The Young Stranger (1957) which he hated to do because he thought he didn't understand movies and wasn't used to work with only one camera. Disappointed his with first feature film experience he returned to his successful television career directing a total of 152 live television shows between 1954 and 1960. He took another chance to move to the cinema industry, working with Burt Lancaster in The Young Savages (1961) ending up becoming a successful filmmaker best known by expressing on films his views on important social and philosophical topics.- Director
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Stage, television and film director Daniel Mann was born Daniel Chugerman on August 8, 1912, in Brooklyn, NY. He was a child performer and attended the New York's Professional Children's School. He studied with renowned acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, eventually becoming his assistant. Mann was one of the first acting teachers at the Actors Studio.
He established himself as a first-rate actors' director while on Broadway. Sidney Blackmer and Shirley Booth won Tony Awards under his direction for "Come Back, Little Sheba", which also became Mann's film directorial debut (Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)), with Burt Lancaster in support of Booth on the screen (Mann would direct her again in the less successful Hot Spell (1958) at the end of the decade). Booth won an Oscar for her work, as did Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo (1955), which Mann also directed on Broadway (with Maureen Stapleton in the part of the lonely Italian-American widow Serafina Delle Rose, which Tennessee Williams originally wrote with Magnani in mind). Magnani beat out 'Susann Hayward in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) for the Oscar, another performance directed by Mann.
In all, Mann directed six women and one man ('Paul Muni') to Oscar nominations. On Broadway he helped James Dean break through into the big time, directing his performance as the gay Arab houseboy in André Gide's "The Immoralist". Despite dropping out after the first two weeks to go to Hollywood to make East of Eden (1955), Dean won a Theatre World Award for his performance.
Mann was one of the top movie directors of the 1950s, helming I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), The Last Angry Man (1959) and BUtterfield 8 (1960), which brought Elizabeth Taylor her first Oscar. However, his film career began to decline in the 1960s. In the first half of the decade he still was given A-list pictures with top female stars like Rosalind Russell and Sophia Loren, but he also directed Dean Martin comedies and the spy movie spoof Our Man Flint (1966). His reputation waned and he played out his string in the 1970s and 1980s, directing TV movies and an embarrassingly bad feature about a boxing kangaroo, Matilda (1978).
Daniel Mann died of heart failure in Los Angeles on November 21, 1991. He was 79 years old.- Writer
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Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally titanic filmmaker whose work remained stylistically sui generis through arguably the most impressive decades of 20th century filmmaking. The quietude of La Terra Trema (1948) is managed with an operatic virtuosity, and the baroque period pieces-for which he is best known today-clearly point to a noble upbringing. However, there is also a Gothic character to Visconti-embodied in the spired cathedral that overshadowed his childhood-that has remained largely unsung. The relationship between the Visconti family and Gothic architecture stretches back to the Medieval Era. In 1386, Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti envisioned a cathedral in the heart of Milan, though it was fated to remain under construction for almost half a millennium until Napoleon ordered its completion in the 19th century. Just as his ancestor brought Northern Gothic architecture to Italy, so, in 1943, did Luchino introduce the groundbreaking cinematic genre of Italian neorealism to the peninsula. Doing away with sets, neorealist cinema was set in the raw environment of postwar Italy. In one sense anti-architectural in its desire to transcend the bonds of interior space, this same ambition is what makes the style a perfect cinematic analog to the Gothic. The Gothic is an architecture of exteriority: Throwing ceilings to the sky and opening walls onto the outside with large windows, the Gothic presents light as the manifestation of divinity within a place of worship. The mysticism of light, dating back to the pseudo-Dionysian theology of Abbot Suger of St. Denis Cathedral, translates well to the medium of light that is the cinema. In any Visconti work, lighting is intimately connected to set design: It is often seen in the gleam of curtains, the radiance of starlight or the glow of Milanese fog, where the director carries the religiosity of Gothic architecture into his realism. Visconti's religion (or should we say religions? For he was also a Marxist) adds an ethical weight, powerful and challenging, to his works. The term decadence, often associated with Visconti, only attains meaning through being in excess of contemporary mores. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian communists could accept Visconti's homosexuality, and a resultant displaced angst is plainly worn by his protagonists-monumental individuals who bear the full weight of their social milieus. While neorealism has come to be packaged with its own mythology-a new cinema for a liberated nation, the idea of a new "Italian" style-re-centering our historical gaze on the Gothic Visconti allows one's imagination to spread across a much larger plane of geography and time. From his cinematic apprenticeship with Jean Renoir in France-the very cradle of Gothic architecture-to his German trilogy, Visconti's style has always been one of cosmopolitan effort. This international flavor also matches the deeper etymological referent of the Gothic-the Goths, those barbarian invaders who toppled the Roman Empire. Among Visconti's formal signatures are many borrowings from foreign directors, including the particularly pronounced influence of Jean Renoir, Josef Von Sternberg and Elia Kazan. Global in scope, timeless in influence and architectural in spirit: This is the legacy of Luchino Visconti.- Director
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Karel Reisz was born on 21 July 1926 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. He was a director and producer, known for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan! (1966). He was married to Betsy Blair and Julia Coppard. He died on 25 November 2002 in London, England, UK.- Camera and Electrical Department
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When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964) two years later containing his first really distinctive solo work. He went on to photograph films for such distinguished directors as François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451 (1966)), John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)) and Richard Lester (Petulia (1968)) before his sensational directorial debut in 1968. Co-directed with writer (and painter) Donald Cammell, Performance (1970) was intended to be a simple-minded star vehicle for Mick Jagger and Warner Bros were so horrified when they saw the final multi-layered kaleidoscope of sex, violence, and questions of identity that they delayed its release for two years. Roeg went to Australia for his solo debut as director (Walkabout (1971)), which was also his last film as cinematographer, and throughout the next decade he produced a world-class body of work (Don't Look Now (1973); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)) that revealed his uniquely off-kilter view of the world, expressed through fragmented, dislocated images and a highly original yet strangely accessible approach to narrative. He married the star of Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980), the elegant Theresa Russell who would play the female lead in nearly all his subsequent films, though these have generally found less favor with critics and audiences, and the release of both Eureka (1983) and Cold Heaven (1991) was severely restricted due to problems with the films' distributors.- Writer
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Lawrence Kasdan is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He directed Body Heat, Grand Canyon, The Big Chill, Silverado and Dreamcatcher. He wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Bodyguard, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story. He is married to Meg Goldman since 1971 and has two sons.- Director
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István Szabó was the first director to bring home to Hungary the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie receiving the award was his 1981 film Mephisto. In January 2006, it became public that he had been an agent of the III/III department, a former communist agency of interior intelligence. After the revolution in 1956, he was blackmailed and forced to cooperate, though later he was considered willingly cooperative. Allegedly, he wrote reports about fellow Hungarian directors, actors, and actresses such as Miklós Jancsó, Mari Töröcsik, Károly Mécs. Szabó has never denied the charges and considers his agent work heroic and needful, claiming he saved the life of a friend sentenced to death for his involvement in the revolution of 1956.- Director
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Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. Thus he started directing TV commercials and video clips (such as Julien Clerc in 1984). At the same time he met designer/drawer Marc Caro with whom he made two short animation movies: L'évasion (1978) and Le manège (1979), the latter winning a César for the best short movie. After these two successful movies Jeunet and Caro spent more than one year together by making every detail (scenario, costumes, production design) of their third short movie: The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981). This movie combined sci-fi and heroic-fantasy in a visually delirious story of the rising paranoia among soldiers trapped underground. With that movie they garnered several festival prizes in France. (This movie also marked their first collaboration with Gilles Adrien who later wrote the story of their two feature movies with them). After that Jeunet directed two other short movies without the help of Caro: Pas de repos pour Billy Brakko (1983), then Foutaises (1989) with Dominique Pinon who became another regular collaborator of Jeunet. All Jeunet's short movies won a lot of awards in France but also overseas and he won a second César with Foutaises (1989).
In 1991, Jeunet and Caro took their first steps in a feature movie: Delicatessen (1991). It was such a success that it won 4 Césars including the awards for the best new director(s) and the best scenario. For this movie Jeunet and Caro divided responsibilities with the former guiding the actors and the latter coordinating the artistic elements. And Jeunet showed again his liking to have Dominique Pinon, of course, but also Rufus, Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Ticky Holgado who appeared again in Jeunet's next movies, or Maurice Lamy who already had a little role in Foutaises (1989). The success of Delicatessen (1991) even surprised Jeunet and Caro themselves but they took advantage of that in order to finally make their almost 10 year-old project! This project took more than 4 more years to be carried out but the movie turned out enormous: The City of Lost Children (1995) was a black tale and was so innovative at this period that they needed to create new software for the special effects (mostly made by Pitof). Jeunet and Caro kept the same responsibilities as in Delicatessen (1991) and the movie also combined different international skills: US actor Ron Perlman, Chilean-born actor Daniel Emilfork, Iranian cinematographer Darius Khondji (who was already in the crew of Delicatessen (1991)), Americo-Italian composer Angelo Badalamenti and French fashion-designer Jean-Paul Gaultier for the costumes. While the film was supposed to be suitable for children, some considered it "dark", to which Jeunet and Caro replied that it was no more "dark" than Pinocchio (1940) or Bambi (1942).
But these critics didn't stop the movie from being successful and when the movie gained them further attention, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood called them. Thus in 1997, Jeunet left France to make a temporary career in the USA for the fourth installment of the 'Alien' series: Alien: Resurrection (1997). Marc Caro followed him just as a design supervisor but Jeunet brought with him a little army' of his usual collaborators (mostly French): actors Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman, but also Pitof, Darius Khondji or editor Hervé Schneid, and for the first time Alain Carsoux who was responsible of the special effects of Jeunet's next film. In 2000, after two collaborations with Caro and one in the US, Jeunet came back to France in order to make a more personal movie, even if Guillaume Laurant wrote the story with him. Thus he used a lot of different details he wrote everywhere during his life (and also recycled things he'd already done, e.g. in Foutaises (1989)) and shot his story mostly in the Parisian suburb of Montmartre where he lives. Then the result was Amélie (2001) starring Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz. With this movie Jeunet made the biggest worldwide success of French cinema history. A real magical potion, which won innumerable awards in the whole world including 4 Césars (therefore Jeunet won his fifth and sixth Césars!).
Jeunet eventually decided to adapt Sébastien Japrisot's book A Very Long Engagement (2004) for which he called Audrey Tautou and Dominique Pinon again, but also many other famous French actors and Jodie Foster. It had one of the most important budgets in French film history and eventually had a good international success and many nominations and awards.- Writer
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A bright child, John Sayles began reading novels before age 9. A Williams College grad in 1972, he shunned a corporate career to work various blue-collar jobs, moving to east Boston to take a factory job. He wrote stories and submitted them to various magazines, and the Atlantic Monthly gave him the idea of publishing them in a novel--thus "Pride of the Bimbos" (1975) was born.
In the late 1970s he worked for renowned low-budget producer Roger Corman as a screenwriter. He saved much of the money he earned from that job, got some friends together and made Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980) in 25 days. Altough it was a hit, he had trouble obtaining financing for the films he wanted to make because he would not give up his right of final cut. Baby It's You (1983) was Sayles' only film made under studio control.
In 1983 the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship granted him a tax-free income of $32,000 a year for 5 years. That stipend and money he earned for writing such films as The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983) and Breaking In (1989) enabled him to make the kinds of films he wanted to make. Lone Star (1996) placed Sayles in the ranks of top American filmmakers. In it and his other films, a broadly appealing social consciousness emerges, showing Sayles to be concerned with what's going on with regional cultures, national values and what living in the US is like today.
Sayles and Maggie Renzi, whom he met during college, have lived together since the 1970s, splitting their time between a Hoboken, NJ, house and a farm in upstate New York. They have no plans to marry.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Yimou Zhang was born on 14 November 1951 in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. He is a director and writer, known for Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). He has been married to Ting Chen since December 2011. They have three children. He was previously married to Hua Xiao and Hua Xie.