Directors Before Their Time

[happyfilmluvguy]

Afred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Fritz Lang.

Who else?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Chester Novell Turner.


About his most famous film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193013/usercomments


.

 

[Jay]

Fritz Lang is the guy who did Metropolis, right?
Oh and what about the fellow who did Eraserhead. Does that count as ahead of their time? Or just crazy?

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

Yes.

And "M".

David Lynch, maybe a little of both. I haven't seen his work yet, though, but have heard a lot about it.

Isn't every brilliant mind just a little not right in the head?

 

[Jay]

Isn't every brilliant mind just a little not right in the head?

Yeah, it's true. And once they're famous for it there's no going back.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Carol Reed, discuss...

 

[Senator Jack]

I wouldn't consider any creative type ahead of his/her time, just progenitors. Sure, Lang would have gone nuts with CGI, but he needed to be where he was in order to propel the medium. Look at Spion (Spies). It's pretty much the first spy picture, and, except for the gadgetry, there's not much difference between it and the Bond series of 40 years later.

Lynch needed to be where he was too. Only three years passed between Eraserhead and Elephant Man. By the mid-eighties, many directors were ripping him off. Just becase the great unwashed didn't appreciate their output, it doesn't mean they were ahead of their time.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Senator Jack]

Certainly, Carol Reed needed to be where he was, too. (I'd love to do an article for CS about Carol and Graham) Graham was a mid-century novelist and Reed knew how to get that mid-century grit on celluloid. Reed's films are marked by an intense quiet. He could never get away with that today. The studio would inisist on explosions and gunplay. All of Our Man in Havana leads up to Wormold's pulling of the trigger (brilliantly shot by Reed). How can that be a climax in the cinema of today? In most today's output, it barely makes a prologue.

 

[Feraud]

Don Siegel. The guy created an archetype that is still going strong today.
Don created the cop who works outside the law he is sworn to uphold.
It began with Madigan and reached the apex with Dirty Harry. Guys like Bruce Willis and Steven Segal made their names playing these characters.

 

[MrPumpernickel]

Edward D. Wood Jr.

I mean, he made a movie about crossdressing in 1953, that's being before his time if anything. That's not to say his movies were any good though, in fact calling them trainwrecks is an insult to railway employees all over the world.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

I think ahead of one's time is when what they have created surpassed what was in the current market. Like Citizen Kane. It was controversal and it was modern for 1941. If the director created something that wasn't typical for the time, it would be considered ahead of it's time. That's how I define ahead of their time.

 

[CharlieH.]

Tex Avery and Bob Clampett.

 

[jazzzbaby]

Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Ida Lupino

 

[Novella]

Sergei Eisenstein

 

[Feraud]

Peckinpah.

 

[Quigley Brown]

Walt Disney

 

[Doctor Strange]

Walt Disney wasn't a director, per se. He only took a handful of director credits on his short films, and that was in the early days - his last one was on a Silly Symphony called "The Golden Touch" in around 1934.

As a famous quote about him said, "Walt Disney was not a director of films, he was a director of men." He was indeed a genius in terms of matching his animators and directors to the material, in long-term planning for moving into features (and later TV and theme parks), for providing inspiration to his staff, and story doctoring (he was famous for looking at a planned cartoon when it was just a wall full of storyboard sketches - a Disney invention, BTW - and indicating where it needed laughs, what could be cut, how to build and manipulate audience sympathy, etc.) And his ability to recognize genius in others and have the guts to take a chance with new emerging technologies (sound, Technicolor, stereo, TV, animatronics, etc.) was legendary.

A creative genius way ahead of his time? Most assuredly. But not really a director in the conventional sense.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Oh, and I never mentioned anybody:

Buster Keaton - you simply couldn't make his films better today, and you almost get the sense that he *could* have used sound and color if he wanted to... but it just wasn't appropriate for his style

Willliam Wyler - for his outstanding handling of actors and an outrageous run of all-time-great films

Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, John Huston - the writer-to-director school of the early 40s, who all pushed the envelope

David Lean - for his uniquely intelligent epics (not to mention the wonderful early Dickens adaptations)

Ingmar Bergman - if you've seen any of his best films, you know why

Stanley Kubrick - virtually defined "ahead of his time" at every moment of his career

I could surely come up with more, but that's a nice list for now...

 

[Quigley Brown]

Walt Disney wasn't a director, per se. He only took a handful of director credits on his short films, and that was in the early days - his last one was on a Silly Symphony called "The Golden Touch" in around 1934.

As a famous quote about him said, "Walt Disney was not a director of films, he was a director of men." He was indeed a genius in terms of matching his animators and directors to the material, in long-term planning for moving into features (and later TV and theme parks), for providing inspiration to his staff, and story doctoring (he was famous for looking at a planned cartoon when it was just a wall full of storyboard sketches - a Disney invention, BTW - and indicating where it needed laughs, what could be cut, how to build and manipulate audience sympathy, etc.) And his ability to recognize genius in others and have the guts to take a chance with new emerging technologies (sound, Technicolor, stereo, TV, animatronics, etc.) was legendary.

A creative genius way ahead of his time? Most assuredly. But not really a director in the conventional sense.

My apologies. Jeesh.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

I agree, Kubric was well before his time...