written directed, produced by George Stevens, Jr.
110 minutes
This documentary is an overview of the life of director George Stevens (1904-1975), mostly by examining films he directed. The films of his that are spotlighted can be split into two categories. There are clips of all these movies plus a few more included in the documentary.
Pre-war films
- Alice Adams
- Swing Time
- Gunga Din
- Woman of the Year
- The More the Merrier
Post-war films
- A Place in the Sun
- Shane
- Giant
- The Diary of Anne Frank
- The Greatest Story Ever Told
There are clips of interviews of the following people, all of whom worked with or for George Stevens.
- Fred Astaire
- Warren Beatty
- Pandro Berman
- Drank Capra
- Douglas Fairbank, Jr.
- Katharine Hepburn
- John Huston
- Rouben Mamoulian
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Joel McCrea
- Ivan Moffatt
- Alan Pakula
- Hermes Pan
- Millie Perkins
- Hal Roach
- Ginger Rogers
- Irwin Shaw
- Jack Sher
- Yvonne Stevens
- Toni Vellani
- Max Von Sydow
- Fred Zinnemann
There are also spotlights on Stevens' early life, his early career in film as a camera man, his time spent in the army during World War II, and the role he played in preventing the attempted ouster of Joseph L. Mankiewicz from the presidency of the Screen Directors Guild in 1950 by Cecil B. DeMille.
Thoughts
This movie is one of the extras included on Disc 2 of the Criterion Collection DVD set of Woman of the Year.
I don't know how widely this movie was available for viewing when it was first released. My guess is that it just played on the festival circuit. At some point it aired on PBS in the United States but according to my research that may have been a trimmed down version of the movie.
There is some audio of Stevens talking about some of the movies he made. There is a little bit of footage of him talking about The Greatest Story Ever Told, but nothing from earlier than that.
One of the most interesting parts of the movie were the color behind the scenes footage of movies like Gunga Din. The movie itself was filmed in black and white. There was also color footage from Stevens time in Europe during World War II. I believe there is another, shorter documentary made from his color footage from World War II. I have not seen that documentary.
I'm interested in seeing more of Stevens movies but mostly his pre-war films. The only one of his post-war films that I have any interest in seeing, and I think I may have seen it back in the 1980s, is Shane. I know that I have seen Gunga Din, more than once, and I think I may have seen A Place in the Sun. I don't think I have seen any of his other movies.
This is a decent piece of work. It provides an overview of much of Stevens work and some of his life related to his work. I'm not a film scholar. I was not bored by this film but I didn't find it to be terribly deep. It rests very heavily on the film clips it includes. The interviews add depth but they aren't the focus. If you are interested in an overview of the movies listed above then this might a good thing to watch, otherwise I don't think that it is essential viewing.
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