Page 65 - FILM STUDIOS CROPPED

Fred Zinnemann The Last Interview
Think of a movie director and you might well muse about the old school of hard- bitten, hard-living film-makers who bestrode Hollywood in its Golden Age. Then again, your mind’s eye might con- jure up one of the more streetwise modern breed - a Spielberg, Scorsese or Tarantino.
Fred Zinnemann doesn’t really fit into either category. Until his death in March a month before his 90th birthday and just after a Lifetime Achievement Award from the London Film Critics, Zinnemann remained a gentleman in the best sense of the word, still imbued with an irresistible old world charm.
He also happened to be responsible for a stream of modern classics, movies which brought him no less than seven nominations (and two wins) for Hollywood’s Best Director Oscar. Just
consider this rollcall: The Search, The Men, High Noon, From Here To Eternity, Oklahoma!, The Nun’s Story, The Sundowners, A Man For All Seasons, The Day Of the Jackal, Julia ...
Zinnemann himself recalled skipping universi- ty lectures in his native Vienna to go to the cinema in the 1920s. By the end of that decade he was studying the theory of film-making at the Technical School of Cinema in Paris before learn- ing more practical lessons as an assistant camera- man, then cameraman and, in due course, direc- tor. In his autobiography, he noted: “The more experience a director has had with the four main elements of film-making - writing, acting, camera and editing - the more fully can he explore and extend the outer limits of their possiblities.”
That’s certainly what Zinnemann did in a career that spanned seven decades and while the
Some of Fred Zinnemann’s film classics, from top: Day Of The Jackal • High Noon From Here To Eternity • Directing Robert Shaw in A Man For All Seasons (BFI)
EXPOSURE • 26 & 27
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