The Rough Guide to film

670 Pages·2007·21.041 MB·English

by  Armstrong, Richard B

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E THE ROUGH GUIDE TO FILM is a bold new guide to cinema. Arranged E
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by director, it covers the top moguls, mavericks and studio stalwarts of
every era, genre and region, in addition to lots of lesser-known names.
Choice reels: Reviews of thousands of the greatest movies ever made,
Praise for Nigel Williamson’s
The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan: with each fi lm placed in the context of its director’s career, plus lists
highlighting where to start, arranged by genre and by region.
The view from the chair: Profi les of over eight hundred directors, from
Hollywood legends Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to contemporary
favourites like Steven Soderbergh and Martin Scorsese and cult names F
such as David Lynch and Richard Linklater.
Planet Cinema: Great cinema from around the globe, including French
i
New Wave, German giants, Iranian innovators and the best of East
Asia, from Akira Kurosawa to Wong Kar-Wai and John Woo. l
m
The wider cast: Overviews of major cinema movements and genres,
plus feature boxes on partnerships between directors and key actors,
cinematographers and composers.
THE ROUGH GUIDE to
Film
AN A–Z OF DIRECTORS AND THEIR MOVIES
OTHER ROUGH GUIDES INCLUDE:
Published by Rough Guides
ISBN 978-1-84353-408-2 USA $27.99
Distributed by The Penguin Group
Can $36.99
Front cover photo: Werner Herzog on
the set of Fitzcarraldo © Jean-Louis UK £18.99
Atlan/Sygma/Corbis.
Back cover photo: Robert Altman on
the set of Fool For Love, courtesy of
the Cannon Group, RGA. 9 781843 534082
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ISBN 978-1-84353-408-2
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9 781843 534082
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In 1942 Orson Welles was in Brazil
filming his three-part documentary
about Latin America, It’s All True – an
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ambitious project that was eventually
axed by the studio.
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The Rough Guide to
Film
Credits
Reference director: Andrew Lockett Authors: Richard Armstrong (RA), Tom Charity (TC),
Managing editor: Tracy Hopkins Lloyd Hughes (LH), Jessica Winter (JW)
Editors: Peter Buckley, Duncan Clark, Samantha Cook, Additional contributors: Roger Bardon (RB), Ronald
Kilmeny Fane-Saunders, Sean Mahoney, Matthew Bergan (RBe), Michael Brooke (MB), Peter Buckley (PB),
Milton, Simon Smith, Joe Staines, Ruth Tidball, Patrick James Clarke (JC), Samantha Cook (SC), Richard Craig
Davidson (consulting editor) (RC), Eddie Dyja (ED), Mark Ellingham (ME), Erika
Picture research: Duncan Clark, Tracy Hopkins, Franklin (EF), Leslie Felperin (LF), Ali Jaafar (AJa), Alan
Matthew Milton, Ruth Tidball Jones (AJ), Nick North (NN), Naman Ramachandran
Layout: Dan May, Nikhil Agarwal (NR), John Riley (JR), James Smart (JS)
Proofreading: Jason Freeman
Cover: Chloë Roberts
Production: Rebecca Short
Publishing information
This first edition published September 2007 by
Rough Guides Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
345 Hudson St, 4th Floor, New York 10014, USA
Email: [email protected]
Distributed by the Penguin Group:
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
Penguin Putnam, Inc., 375 Hudson Street, NY 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4P 2YE
Penguin Group (New Zealand), Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Printed in Italy by LegoPrint S.p.A.
The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and currency of all information in The
Rough Guide To Film; however, they can accept no responsibility for any loss or inconvenience sustained by any
reader as a result of its information or advice.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the
quotation of brief passages in reviews.
© Richard Armstrong, Tom Charity, Lloyd Hughes, Jessica Winter, 2007
Additional contributions © Rough Guides, 2007
Typeset in Helvetica Neue and Din to an original design by Peter Buckley
672 pages; includes index
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-1-84353-408-2
ISBN 10: 1-84353-408-8
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
The Rough Guide to
Film
by
Richard Armstrong, Tom Charity,
Lloyd Hughes and Jessica Winter
Contents
About the authors ..........................................................................................vi
Introduction .....................................................................................................vii
Essential films & filmmakers .....................................................................ix
A–Z ..........................................................................................................................1
Index of film reviews .................................................................................631
Feature boxes
Ones to watch: directors for the future ............ xviii One-hit wonders ....................................................... 302
Almodóvar’s women ............................................... 10 Ennio Morricone: a fistful of music ..................... 313
Mavericks and Hollywood studios: a Rock’n’roll at the movies ........................................ 317
hate-hate relationship? .......................................... 14 Jazz in the movies .................................................... 342
Ingmar Bergman and Max von Sydow ............. 43 The Hollywood musical .......................................... 373
Action movies: the cinema of spectacle .......... 74 Contemporary animation ...................................... 375
French poetic realism: style with Shocksploitation in contemporary
substance .................................................................... 79 French cinema ........................................................... 393
Claude Chabrol and Isabelle Huppert .............. 87 Arthur Penn and the rise of New
Close colleagues: George Cukor and Hollywood ................................................................... 420
Katharine Hepburn .................................................. 117 Film noir: from out of the shadows ..................... 443
The rise and fall of the ancient epic ................... 128 British social realism: keeping it real ................. 451
Scarface and the reinvention of the The Holocaust on film ............................................. 456
gangster movie ......................................................... 132
The Splat Pack ............................................................ 477
Italian neo-realism and its legacy ....................... 134
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro ................. 497
Walt Disney: the only real filmmaker in
Close encounters of the sci-fi kind ..................... 501
America ........................................................................ 140
Burt Lancaster: power and vulnerability .......... 512
A classical sound: Eisenstein and
Prokofiev ...................................................................... 155 Sholay’s star: Amitabh Bachchan ........................ 514
Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina ................ 165 Melodrama: appealing to the emotions .......... 516
The Western: destiny to demise .......................... 175 The rise of the independents ............................... 522
D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish ................................. 206 John Williams and Steven Spielberg ................. 528
A dangerous mixture: Werner Herzog The Dogme connection ......................................... 561
and Klaus Kinski ........................................................ 223 Cahiers du cinéma and the nouvelle
Alfred Hitchcock and the modern vague .............................................................................. 564
thriller ........................................................................... 228 Montage ...................................................................... 579
Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard German expressionism ........................................... 603
Herrmann .................................................................... 231
Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon ............................. 605
Martial arts films ....................................................... 238
Into the limelight: cinematographers
The Method: Elia Kazan and Marlon get their due ............................................................... 611
Brando .......................................................................... 269
Gong Li: Zhang Yimou’s heroine ......................... 624
New Iranian Cinema ................................................ 276
Toshirô Mifune: Kurosawa’s leading man ........ 292

About the authors
Richard Armstrong Lloyd Hughes
Richard Armstrong has written for Film Lloyd Hughes has been reviewing films since
International, The Times Higher Education the age of 11 for several listings magazines, the
Supplement, Film Quarterly, Cineaste, Bright Lights Radio Times and his own teenage opus The Hughes
Film Journal, Australia’s Metro and the online Guide To Cinema (sales: one copy). He has conduct-
journal Senses Of Cinema. He is the author of ed interviews with hundreds of directors and stars
Billy Wilder (2000) and Understanding Realism over the last decade, and is the author of The Rough
(2005), and a contributor to The Encyclopedia Of Guide To Gangster Movies (2005).
The Documentary Film (2005) and France And The
Americas: Culture, Politics, And History (2005). Lloyd would like to thank Sarah, Laura, Jane, Gareth,
Edith, Liam, Sean and Aidan, as well as Tracy, Ruth
Richard would like to thank his supervisor, Dr and Andrew at Rough Guides.
Emma Wilson, for tolerating his lapses from the
rigours of a Cambridge PhD to complete this
Jessica Winter
project.
Jessica Winter’s writing appears in Time Out
Tom Charity London, The Boston Globe, Slate and many other
publications. She is associate editor at Cinema Scope
Tom Charity is film critic for CNN.com and and the author of The Rough Guide To American
LOVEFiLM and a programming consultant Independent Film (2006).
for the Vancouver International Film Festival. He
writes regularly for Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope, Jessica would like to thank the film department staff,
Total Film, Uncut and several British newspapers. past and present, at Time Out London: Derek Adams,
His books include John Cassavetes: Lifeworks (2001) Geoff Andrew, Nick Bradshaw, Dave Calhoun, Tom
and The Right Stuff (1997), and he is an annual con- Charity, Gareth Evans, Wally Hammond, Trevor
tributor to the Time Out Film Guide. Johnston and Ben Walters. Thanks also to Michael
Atkinson, Dennis Lim and Mark Peranson, and par-
Tom would like to thank Fiona, Jay and Sacha for ticularly Adrian Kinloch.
their patience, Mehilli Modi, Brad Stevens, Mark
Peranson, Wai Mun Yoon, Helen Cowley, Andrew,
Tracy and everyone at Rough Guides.
i
Introduction
W
hen embarking on The Rough Guide To Film we had one central aim: to present the
world of cinema through the lens of its leading directors. Of course, a set of nearly 840
director portraits hardly tells the whole story of the movies, which is as much an industry
as an art form. In its day-to-day business of self-promotion, cinema always has more to say
about its acting talent than its directorial stars, and when it comes to green-lighting and
the final cut the decisions are mostly made by producers and financiers, not the man with
the megaphone. But with the moneymen mostly shying away from the limelight and the
big-name stars never out of it, we thought it high time that a popular guide shine a light on
the directors. From professionals wielding a budget of millions to improvisers with only a
DV camera and a shoestring crew, they are the people whose artistic vision is often what
ultimately determines a film’s value.
There is no shortage of film reviews out there – whether on the Internet or in large printed
directories – but this wealth of information can actually be unhelpful to the viewer wanting to
pick a film to see at the cinema or add to their DVD rental list. In The Rough Guide To Film
we have prioritized quality over quantity, so that every film reviewed is one that is worthy
of your time. That said, there are still over 2000 reviews in the book, so you will never be
short of ideas for what to watch.
But there is much more to this book than reviews of individual movies: by describing each
director’s career, and the process by which they brought their films to the screen, this Rough
Guide not only puts films in their context, but also provides an introduction to cinema itself.
This ambition is reinforced by the feature boxes scattered throughout the text, in which we’ve
covered other elements of the moviemaking business, from composers, cinematographers
and actor-director partnerships to genres, film movements and national cinemas.
The book is intended to be a browser’s paradise, with serendipitous juxtapositions of
Hollywood big guns with arthouse miniaturists, cult horror directors with masters of classic
European cinema. However, an alternative way to navigate is offered by the “Essential Films
& Filmmakers” section at the beginning of the book, which includes lists of leading directors
and essential films in specific genres or from different parts of the world.
Even within a book of 672 pages, we’ve not been able to include everything. In selecting
which directors and films to include, we have tried to allow for all tastes, if not to equal
degrees. The book gives priority to art over business and creativity over celebrity, preferring
world cinema to mainstream ephemera that doesn’t repay repeat viewing. We have aimed
both to uncover new directors and to encourage readers to revisit great directors of the past.
The book foregrounds the international and historical variety of the medium, from the best
mainstream filmmakers of every decade to figures with their eye more on posterity than the
box office. In the belief that many Hollywood blockbusters can look after themselves (or be
left to gather dust), we have instead looked further afield to unearth films that will surely
provide some new and welcome surprises for even the most assiduous browser of rental store
shelves and online DVD catalogues.
With new DVDs being released every week and the likes of eBay offering second-hand
copies of those titles that have fallen out of print, nearly all the films in the book will be avail-
ii
able for viewing immediately (for a price) one way or another. This means our film selections
have not been dictated by availability. Instead, the authors have been free to recommend
whichever films they consider to be the very best of a director’s work.
Of course you won’t always agree with the film choices we have made, but if you write to
us at [email protected] we’ll be pleased to hear your views, and take them into account
when preparing the next edition. We wish that even more films could have been included;
feel free to let us know what you think they should have been, though it’s worth checking
out our other film books (see inside back cover) for specific guidance on genres from hor-
ror to chick flicks.
Sadly there are no Oscars we can hand out to the many writers and critics who have
contributed to this Rough Guide, but there are many deserving cases, none more so than
the four main authors, who have exercised tremendous patience and stamina for over three
years while the book was being completed. If their passion for their subject gets you hooked
on new directors, revives your interest in old favourites or just sends you off on a magical
movie tour, then that’s just what we intended the book to do.
How this book works
After the name of each director listed in this book we have supplied birth and, where appro-
priate, death dates. However, rather than indicate a director’s nationality, we have supplied
their country of birth, calling it by its current name (but indicating if it had a different name
when the director was born). Details of where the director’s career subsequently took them
are outlined in the biographical sketch that follows.
The short reviews of a director’s most important films are preceded by the film’s title, its
registration date, its running time, and (where applicable) whether it is in black and white
(b/w). In the case of non-English-language films, we have given the name by which the film
is best known in the English-speaking world, followed by either a translation of the title or
the original. The key personnel involved in the making of the film are then listed: the major
actors under cast; the cinematographer under cin; the composer under m. In the case of a
documentary, participants are listed under with; in animation the voiceover artists are listed
under cast (voices).
iii
Essential films
& filmmakers
Out of the hundreds of directors listed and the thousands of films reviewed in The Rough
Guide To Film, we have made a further selection that offers pointers and routes into the
book. Arranged by genre and by country or continent, each list is further divided into five key
directors, five essential classics and five less well-known films that deserve to be more widely
seen. None of these lists is meant to be definitive, since discussion about which films constitute,
say, the five greatest comedies or the five greatest Westerns is potentially limitless. The following
represent the individual, and often highly personal, enthusiasms of our four expert authors and
our other contributors, and they are designed to encourage browsing and exploration. Enjoy!
Action • Ousmane Sembène p.503
• Abderrahmane Sissako p.517
5 Great Directors: 5 Essential Classics
• Howard Hawks p.217 • Cairo Station (1958) p.89
• Walter Hill p.226 • Moolaadé (2004) p.504
• Sam Peckinpah p.418 • The Silences Of The Palace (1994) p.555
• Raoul Walsh p.580 • Xala (1974) p.504
• John Woo p.612 • Yeelen (1987) p.96
5 Essential Classics: 5 Lesser-Known Gems
• Children Of Men (2006) p.116 • Abouna (2002) p.215
• Die Hard (1988) p.358 • Man Of Ashes (1986) p.57
• Dr No (1962) p.619 • Tilaï (1990) p.404
• Face/Off (1997) p.613 • Waiting For Happiness (2002) p.517
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) p.528 • The Yacoubian Building (2006) p.xviii
5 Lesser-Known Gems
• Hatari! (1961) p.220 American Indie
• House Of Flying Daggers (2004) p.625
• The Right Stuff (1983) p.267
5 Great Directors
• The Wages Of Fear (1953) p.101
• The Warriors (1979) p.227 • John Cassavetes p.83
• Todd Haynes p.220
• Jim Jarmusch p.253
Africa • Richard Linklater p.321
• John Sayles p.488
5 Great Directors 5 Essential Classics
• Nouri Bouzid p.57 • Bad Lieutenant (1992) p.167
• Youssef Chahine p.89 • Before Sunset (2004) p.321
• Souleymane Cissé p.96 • Dead Man (1995) p.254
ix