Few Hollywood directors had a higher profile in the 1930s than Frank Capra (18971991). He served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of the Screen Directors Guild. He won three Academy Awards as best director and was widely acclaimed as the man most responsible for making Columbia Pictures a success.

This popularity was established and sustained by films that spoke to and for the times--It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These replicated the nation's...

At first glance, George Stevens (19041975) appears to be the quintessential Hollywood director. A closer look at his achievements shows him to be more than just the creator of some of the smartest melodramas and comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, including Annie Oakley, Swing Time, and Gunga Din. Several of his films--Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank, Shane, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and A Place in the Sun--are regarded as some of the most important and enduring dramas of postwar American cinema. As a leading producer...

Of all the American filmmakers who emerged from the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939) may be the one most passionately revered by both critics and mainstream audiences.

The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II are landmark epics whose shots and dialogue sequences have become wholly absorbed by popular culture. Apocalypse Now, his visionary reworking of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, remains an enduring and controversial template for all future films about the Vietnam War.

Coppola's films featured pivotal roles for such actors as Robert Duvall, Al...

Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997) was one of Hollywood's most honored directors. In a career that spanned fifty years, he won four Academy Awards and directed such classic movies as From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons, The Day of the Jackal, and High Noon.

Covering thirty-three years of conversations (1964-1997), Fred Zinnemann: Interviews provides a revealing glimpse into the director's vision as he discusses in his cultivated, elegant voice his varied experiences as a filmmaker. He defends himself against charges that his films are too objective...

Sidney Lumet (b. 1924) is considered one of the most gifted and socially conscious American filmmakers of his generation. His best-known movies--including Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, 12 Angry Men, and Network--have garnered him an Honorary Academy Award in 2005, multiple Oscar nominations for Best Director, the D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement, and numerous other tributes.

This book features over twenty interviews with the director, including an interview conducted by the editor for this volume. One of the few mainstream...

Woody Allen (b. 1935) is one of America's most idiosyncratic filmmakers, with an unparalleled output of nearly one film every year for over three decades. His movies are filled with rapid-fire one-liners, neurotic characters, anguished relationships, and old-time jazz music. Allen's vision of New York--whether in comedies or dramas--has shaped our perception of the city more than any other modern filmmaker. -On the screen, - John Lahr wrote in the New Yorker in 1996, -Allen is a loser who makes much of his inadequacy; off-screen, he has created over the years the most wide-ranging oeuvre...

Liv Ullmann (b. 1938) has played many roles over the course of her long life: actress, mother, activist, author, and director. Her lead performances in such Ingmar Bergman classics as Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Cries and Whispers kept her in close proximity to crafts involved in screenwriting, film direction, and production. In 1992, Ullmann directed her first film Sofie and, with the quick succession of such recent masterpieces as Private Confessions, Kristin Lavransdatter, and Faithless, Ullmann has emerged as one of the most...

Howard Hawks (1896-1977) is one of America's great film directors. During a career that spanned fifty years and produced more than forty films, this writer, producer, and director made highly successful movies and managed to maintain remarkable artistic control during a time when studio moguls usually ruled. Hawks conquered virtually every genre, including action/adventure, comedy, western, film noir, gangster, science fiction, and musical films.

The remarkable diversity of his work may have kept Hawks from being as easily recognized as his contemporaries Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford....

Joel and Ethan Coen (b. 1954, 1957) started their careers in obscurity on a shoestring budget cajoled from family and friends in Minneapolis. Working entirely outside the studio system, the Coen brothers scored an unlikely first success in 1984 with their postmodern noir film Blood Simple. Two decades and nearly a dozen movies later, the Coens are now among the best-known writer/directors in Hollywood, turning out major studio releases featuring such stars as George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Tom Hanks.

The Coens' films all share a distinctive, quirky ambience that...