A lot of people are upset that Greta Gerwig (director of Barbie) wasn’t nominated for best director. My gut feeling is that I can tell the difference between good acting and bad acting, and between good special effects and bad special effects. But as I sit here and think about it, I’m not sure how the director’s input manifests in the quality of a movie. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Barbie yet, so I couldn’t say anything one way or the other about any aspect of the movie, other than that it was very popular and raked in a lot of money.)
There does seem to be something about a movie that’s connected to the director. In the same way that guitar solos usually have a style that you can pinpoint as belonging to a certain player, movies by a particular director all seem to have a similar feel. I have a sense of what I’m in for when I see that a movie has been directed by someone like:
Ridley Scott
Michael Mann
Christopher Nolan
James Cameron
Peter Jackson
Neill Blomkamp
Nora Ephron
Michael Bay
But having a particular style is not the same as being good.So what makes for good/best movie direction? Can someone 'splain it? Barbie was reportedly very good, but how much of that goodness is because of the director’s efforts? Can you provide some examples of movies with good acting and writing, but crummy directing?
This is a huge, huge, huge question, well beyond the capacity of a message board answer to capture.
It will also vary wildly between directors — say, between Tarantino, who writes his own scripts, and a director like Ridley Scott, who does not. Some directors are technical, highly conscious of the camera, lighting, lens choice, etc, and don’t know how to “speak actor.” Other directors give general visual guidance to the cinematographer, and let him/her worry about that, while focusing heavily on directing the actors. Some, like Wes Anderson, can do both, putting a clear stamp in all areas. Some directors are excellent, but adapt themselves to the material and don’t impose an authorial voice (e.g. Michael Curtiz), while other directors may have a clear signature whether or not it’s appropriate (Blomkamp, on your list, is one). Some directors edit their own movies, or actively supervise the editing; others just check in with the editor from time to time. (Editing, by the way, is probably the most important craft in moviemaking; some would say editing is moviemaking. But most viewers don’t really know how to look at the way a movie is edited.) In short, there simply isn’t an easy way to say what makes good and bad direction.
If you’re genuinely interested in a deep dive, I can highly recommend this book:
Bogdanovich talks to many, many directors, of many different creative persuasions. From this, you’ll get a clear sense of what the director actually does. And from that, you’ll be able to look at a movie and see what choices on screen represent the director’s influence.
Ishtar is a film that sometimes gets mentioned in discussions about poor directing. The woman who directed it, Elaine May, committed a host of sins, such as casting some of the leads against type (e.g. leading man, Warren Beatty, as an inept bungler), or didn’t adequately cut up the script to eliminate bad scenes.
Take a good movie, like ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ and ask yourself what decisions could have been made to make the movie worse, and you begin to see where directing becomes important. What if Peter Jackson had decided to spend 20 minutes of the film on the Tom Bombadil chapter? Tom Bombadil, after all, was a delightful character in the story, but added absolutely zero to advancing the storyline, except possibly helping to develop mood or atmosphere. Not advancing a story along quickly is a forgivable sin for a book, but not so when dealing with the limits imposed by 2.5 hours of screen time.
Heh. That reminds me of something I’ve always kind of wondered about this topic: if someone — Warren Beatty, for example; or Orson Welles, if you prefer — gets nominated for Best Actor as the star, and Best Director for directing the star, and for writing and for producing the film that’s clearly built around the leading man’s performance, then, what? How can you tell whether to praise the choices he made there as an actor, or whether to praise the director for having him do that then, or whether it was all pretty much spelled out in the script and it’s a triumph for the writer, or what?
I’m not a serious student of film, but I know a bit more and have seen a few more than most people.
When asked this question about directors, I usually offer up Robert Altman as a good place to start when considering the impact that a director has and the “signatures” he or she develops. You may want to read some more about Altman and his films. Among other things, he is noted for using a lot of overlapping dialogue and for tracking shots. My wife does not appreciate the dialogue thing at all, but I think it’s kind of cool.
Disclosure: He was not one of my favorite directors, but the acting community seemed to love him. He was apparently very tolerant/encouraging of extemporizing.
I see the director as the captain of the ship. They bear the responsibility of how well the movie is made, regardless of the details. There’s probably not a lot of good movies out there made under bad directors. A good director can put together a good movie despite a bad script, weak acting, or poor fx. A bad director can take a great script, award winning actors, and a top of the line effects dept. and make a bad movie.
A movie stands on it’s own whether the director was good or not. Director awards are given for good movies, not good directors. A very good director may pick up a lifetime achievement award but not Best Director for a particular movie unless it’s outstanding, and Barbie wasn’t. It will be forgotten in the history of movies.
It’s a subtle thing but here’s something I’ve noticed about Tarantino; notice how many actors have given one of their greatest performances in a movie he directed. Individually, you focus on the actors giving the performances. But if you look at the pattern, I feel Tarantino deserves a lot of the credit. As a director, he appears to be able to draw great performances out of his actors.
I disagree completely. A film can have a great script, great actors, great sets, great music, but if it doesn’t have a good director it won’t be a good movie. It can’t be.
Look at it this way - the director is the chef; everything else is the ingredients.
[ring] Well hello Mr. Producer. How are you? What’s that, you want ME to direct your screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’. I’m flattered you thought of me. As it happens I’ve got some excellent ideas for the film. See the problem with so many directors where Jane Austen is concerned is that they insist on treating it as a costume drama and it ends up being yet another boring drawing room yawner. Yeah, I want to spice things up. I want to go with a lot of shaky hand held camera to help build that sense of ‘you’re here in the moment as the action is happening!’ I can get you a short list of the cinematographers I want. Most of them being ones who’ve worked on a lot of martial arts films. I’m looking for lots of one or two second choppy camera cuts, lots of back and forth between characters in dialogue so the audience can see second by second the characters facial reactions to dialogue. Like I said this is all about creating a sense of action… What’s that, you want Dame Judy Dench in this picture? Yeah, I dunno, casting a bunch of English actors has been, well, done before. I was thinking about going instead in an entirely new direction and rely on a lotta casting from the local community college acting classes. You know, young faces and fresh new talent. Give it a uniquely American spin, but, hey, if you want to keep the film setting in merry olde England I’m sure most of the actors would be willing to do English accents. Speaking of settings, I know just the locations I wanna do filming. There’s an abandoned old warehouse in Des Moines with a charming old alley with brick buildings on both sides behind it. Looks just like England back in the old days I’m sure…hello? hello? you still there? hello?
Actually, if you want to understand where a director can go right or wrong watch an old Steve Martin comedy called ‘Bowfinger’ to further illustrate the point.
So the acting, the script, the sets and costumes have no bearing on how good a movie is? I don’t consider it that simple. Awful directors aren’t likely to produce a good movie by accident for sure, however good enough not to ruin a movie is not sufficient to win awards. Movies have also been saved and ruined by a new director replacing the original one after almost all production is complete.
It’s just not that simple a formula. There’s a range of quality among directors, they aren’t always the overwhelming factor in the quality of a movie.
I am in no way an authority, but it seems one of the primary qualifications for being a director is being good at “herding cats.” You’ve got actors, writers, producers, the studio, and other parties all trying to pull the production in different directions. You’ve got to be able to placate these people enough to be able to get their cooperation, while still maintaining a coherent vision for the film.
I read an article some time ago about the making of Street Fighter. The first-time director was beset on all sides – Capcom kept insisting that more characters be added, the Australian government (who was providing tax subsidies) insisted an Australian actor be cast, Jean Claude Van Damme was coked up half the time, Raul Julia showed up to set gaunt and almost unrecognizable due to his stomach cancer, producers refused to allow adequate time and money for post-production. The director was in over his head, and the result is widely recognized as an unmitigated disaster.
Yet Francis Ford Coppola encountered equal or worse challenges in the making of Apocalypse Now and the result was a masterpiece.
If you give me a load of tasty ingredients, I’ll make you something tasty. Not as good at Michel Roux would make, but it’ll be good. I’m not in any way a skilled chef.
The analogy is that those things are the ingredients, like having velveeta and elbow macaroni to work with vs. prime dry aged ribeye and garden fresh vegetables. A great chef will make one acceptable meal and one fantastic meal, a bad chef can ruin both of them.
Take the “romantic” scenes in Attack of the Clones, jeez louise those scenes are terrible terrible terrible. There is no doubt that the right director makes those scenes seem believable, if only by demanding a rewrite of the dialogue.
I don’t disagree with your analogy, or others, but when comes to the Best Director Oscar it all comes down to the movie, not some objective analysis of a director’s ability. The quality of the movie may or may not reflect on the job the director has done, but it takes an exceptional movie to win a Best Director award. Unfortunately for good directors that’s not always something a director can control, and even the best directors turn out a turkey on occasion.
Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Best Director award where the judges were essentially saying “well you had a lousy script and terrible performances but we appreciate the skillful way you coped with them and also the indications of your artistic vision that could have made the film great if your material hadn’t been so bad.”
As an aside, though: consider Give 'em Hell, Harry! — which had (a) the leading man perform the one-man-show stage play, which promptly earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe nomination as an actor; and there were (b) no award nominations for the director, because, well, why would there be?