There are some directors whose work I might not love, but whose lives were interesting… I can name a few more, but I’m curious if anyone else will point them out. I’ll be happy to discuss them, too, since I’ve seen many, and am always looking forward to seeing more.
Vittorio D - 10/10
This is a documentary on my very favorite director - Vittorio De Sica. I was watching this with pride as if I were his son. I’ve searched for one about him in the past, but somehow I ran into this while browsing Amazon Prime, which I know many have, and should check out. I never heard De Sica speaking English, so there are limitations on knowing everything you can about the man, but his movies speak on his poetic yet realistic humanity… I liked how it divided into segment… You had “The Director”, “The Actor”, “The Man”, “The Gambler”, “The Father”, etc.
You don’t see any young “flavor of the month” directors or actors, not because they don’t know him, but because whoever produced it made sure he got the best of the best…
Featured in this documentary
-Clint Eastwood
-Woody Allen
-Sophia Loren
-Federic Fellini
-Ken Loach
-Mike Leigh
-Shirley MacLaine
-Ettore Scola (great Italian director)
-Mario Monicello
-Paul Mazursky (who told De Sica that he was stealing “Umberto D” to make (my favorite movie), “Harry and Tonto”
-Dino DeLaurentis (great producer)
and many others, including his family and friends.
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985) – Fine tribute to an awesome talent.
The South Bank Show: Michael Powell (1986) – Relatively short for such a long career, it nevertheless tells its story with a style few other docs on directors can match.
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) – Three hours long yet never boring, this seems like the last word on a major talent (and liar) who sold her soul to make movies.
Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre (2002) – Okay doc on the master of atmospheric lighting and senseless plotting.
The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002) – Producer Robert Evans was involved in many a highly-regarded film while maintaining a public persona as a total sleazeball.
Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen (2004) – Interesting, but generally disappointing and poorly told account of a director who worked primarily in “b” pictures.
Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007) - Decent tribute to a producer who exerted a dominant influence on the films he made.
Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes (2008) – Kinda sad account of Kube’s later years, when he seemed afflicted by OCD-like behavior and turned out increasingly infrequent and inferior work.
Re: Vittorio De Sica
I had a film class on Italian Neo-Realism in college. The teaching assistant – whose name I do not recall – claimed her father had been an assistant to De Sica on most of his important films as a director. She told us that while making Bicycle Thieves, her father saw De Sica twist the kid’s arm and burn his cigarette into his flesh to get the reactions he wanted.
I have no idea if this story is true, but I also have no reason to doubt it.
I saw “Boxes” (I liked very much) and “The Kid Stays…”
Very interesting about your story, but in that documentary, there is footage of the scene, but he doesn’t burn him with a cigarette, but he does slap him in the face (not too hard, though) after telling him how he shouldn’t be flippant after his father gets into trouble.
I recently came upon Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach , whose movies I have loved since I was a teenager. It is a terrific insight into his methods and I had, I guess, never seen him interviewed before because I was surprised at how little he fit my image of the director of so many furious statements.
Five Came Back on Netflix is excellent. About 5 directors who joined the Army for WWII. All had careers before and after the war but it shows what they did during the war and how it affected their work post war.
It’s hard to imagine, but there is an excellent documentary called “Side by Side” featuring Keanu Reeves interviewing a bunch of directors about the transition from film to digital, some of whom are on board, and some of whom are very much not. He talks to James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, I forget who else… really very well done. ETA Greta Gerwig, Lars von Trier, Danny Boyle, Richard Linklater, the list goes on.
He’s one of my favorite directors… I see it on YouTube. Not sure if I’ve seen it. Does he talk about his struggles finding a job, and having to resort to making McDonalds commercials (especially since it was antithetical to his politics?)
Briefly. He himself refers to it as a “betrayal” and one of his kids says, half joking, that within the family the commercials were never to be mentioned, even to this day.
What timing to see this thread right after I finished “The Ghost of Peter Sellers”!
One of the most cathartic films I’ve seen, where director Peter Medak revisits the places and people involved in shooting a movie that went horribly wrong. So wrong that he felt guilty about it his whole life.
I’ll never look at Peter Sellers, the Goon Show, the 60s… or the art of moviemaking… the same again.
