The Essential Directors
Sloan De Forest has a way with a snappy phrase. Describing director Ernst Lubitsch, she writes that he had a “profound influence on the art of motion pictures, steering the medium away from the obvious and toward the elegant.”
De Forest’s latest TCM tie-in book, The Essential Directors, contains chapters on 56 directors who emerged from the silent age through the ‘70s. The focus is on Hollywood feature filmmakers, albeit European influences are referenced. De Forest takes the auteurist position that “the individual credited as ‘Director’ has the greatest authority over the final movie.” This was not always so clear cut in old Hollywood, as she tacitly acknowledges when writing that in the 1930s, “directors answered to the almighty studio, and many were unable to do much except grind out product” under the directives of producers and moguls. However, the directors De Forest choses were largely able to maintain thematic and stylistic consistency through much of their work. They were artists in a commercial enterprise.
De Forest nails the main points on each of her directors. She has command over film history and gets the wider historical context mostly right. She acknowledges accusations against the personal lives of her subjects (Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen) and the content of their pictures (D.W. Griffith) without diminishing their contributions to cinema. The Essential Directors is enjoyable to read and organized for easy reference. Each chapter includes a list of must-see movies and a scene that exemplifies the director’s work.
The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema’s Most Influential Directors is published by Running Press/Turner Classic Movies.
D The TCM tie-in book, The Essential Directors, contains chapters on 56 directors who emerged from the silent age through the ‘70s.
