The Day of the Jackal
1973
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Fred Zinnemann. Writing, Evil, Necessary Evil. 47 Copy quote. I had an enormous complex about my looks. I thought I was ugly and I was afraid nobody would marry me. Fred Zinnemann. Looks, Ugly, Marry Me. 6 Copy quote. Discover Fred Zinnemann famous and rare quotes.
I'm in it for the joy of it. [on directing Ethel Waters in The Member of the Wedding (1952)] Every time I'd try to help her, she'd roll her eyes to the heavens and say, "God is my director!" How can you argue with that?
Nov 28, 2023 · Fred Zinnemann quotes. last updated: November 28, 2023 “Dialogue is a necessary evil.” ...
- Overview
- Early life and work
- Films of the late 1930s and 1940s
- Films of the 1950s
Fred Zinnemann, (born April 29, 1907, Rzeszów, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]—died March 14, 1997, London, England), Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films are distinguished by realism of atmosphere and characterization and often grounded in crises of conscience. He was nominated seven times for Academy Awards as best director,...
Zinnemann, the son of a Jewish Viennese physician, studied music and then law at the University of Vienna (1925–27) before pursuing a career in film by studying cinematography in Paris (1927–28). After working as a cameraman for Robert Siodmak on the 1930 documentary Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday), Zinnemann traveled to Hollywood, where he ...
Zinnemann’s first assignments for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), with which he signed in 1937, were installments in the Crime Does Not Pay series and short subjects such as That Mothers Might Live (1938), a study of 19th-century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweiz’s pioneering efforts in hospital sanitization, which won an Academy Award for best one-reel short subject. The director’s first B-films for the studio were Kid Glove Killer (1942), a mystery that starred Van Heflin as a police chemist who solves a murder, and Eyes in the Night (also 1942), in which Edward Arnold played a blind detective. The Seventh Cross (1944) followed; a taut thriller, it featured Spencer Tracy as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
MGM then assigned Zinnemann to Little Mister Jim (1946) and My Brother Talks to Horses (1947), a pair of comedic vehicles for child star Butch Jenkins. Zinnemann’s next project, The Search (1948), was considerably more prestigious. The first film shot in Germany following the conclusion of World War II, it was the moving story of an American soldier (played by Montgomery Clift, in his second film) stationed in Berlin who tries to adopt a nine-year-old concentration-camp survivor and apparent orphan whose mother is scouring the war-torn city hoping to find him. Ivan Jandl, the nonprofessional actor who played the orphan, received a a special Academy Award, and Zinnemann (best director) and Clift (best actor) also were nominated. Act of Violence (1949) was much darker. In it Robert Ryan played a disabled army veteran who seeks revenge on a former officer who betrayed his platoon while being held as a prisoner of war.
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The Men (1950), written by Carl Foreman and produced by Stanley Kramer, also dealt with crippled war veterans, but this time the emphasis was not on vengeance but on the long, laborious process of healing. Marlon Brando, in his film debut, gave a powerhouse performance as a paraplegic vet whose bitterness over his injury threatens to poison the entire ward and drive away his loyal fiancée (Teresa Wright). Zinnemann’s next film, Teresa (1951)—the story of an Italian war bride who encounters prejudice when she accompanies her U.S. soldier husband home—introduced another set of Hollywood newcomers, Pier Angeli (in the title role), Rod Steiger, and Ralph Meeker.
Another Kramer production, the distinctly unconventional westernHigh Noon (1952), proved to be one of Zinnemann’s most prominent contributions to film history. In one of his most iconic roles, an aging Gary Cooper played a highly principled town marshal whose retirement and wedding (to Grace Kelly) are interrupted by the imminent return of a notorious gunman seeking revenge on the marshal, who had sent him to prison. Unlike the typical marshal in a movie western, Cooper’s Will Kane, anxious, conflicted, and afraid, seeks help from his deputy and other townspeople only to be left to face the threat on his own. (This desertion under pressure was widely interpreted as analogous to the behaviour of some in the Hollywood community during the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of communist activity.) Unbowed, Kane, a man of conscience, stays to fulfill what he sees as his responsibility rather than fleeing. Partly because Cooper had a bleeding ulcer during filming and was in excruciating pain, the anguish the marshal suffers is palpable throughout the 85 minutes of the story’s fictional action, which corresponds directly to the film’s running time, a device that is used to exciting effect. Cooper’s memorable performance earned him an Academy Award for best actor, and Zinnemann’s direction, Foreman’s screenplay, and the film all were nominated.
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Zinnemann followed this triumph with The Member of the Wedding (1952), an adaptation of a lauded Broadway production (by way of Carson McCullers’s coming-of-age novel of the same name). It used five members of the original cast, including Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, and Brandon deWilde.
Zinnemann’s next project, From Here to Eternity (1953), the screen version of James Jones’s enormously successful best seller about a group of U.S. soldiers in Hawaii on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, was among the most-anticipated film releases of the early 1950s. The star-studded cast included Clift as a rebellious private, Frank Sinatra as his charming but luckless wise-guy buddy, Burt Lancaster as their sympathetic sergeant, Deborah Kerr as the sergeant’s mistress and wife of his commanding officer, and Ernest Borgnine as the loathsome military jailer Fatso. The film was a huge hit and won eight Academy Awards, including best picture, best director (Zinnemann), best supporting actor (Sinatra), best supporting actress (Donna Reed as Clift’s love interest), best screenplay (Daniel Taradash), and best black-and-white cinematography (Burnett Guffey). Clift and Lancaster were also nominated, for best actor, as was Kerr, for best actress.
- Michael Barson
Fred Zinnemann. Director: A Man for All Seasons. Initially grew up wanting to be a violinist, but while at the University of Vienna decided to study law. While doing so, he became increasingly interested in American film and decided that was what he wanted to do.
- January 1, 1
- Rzeszów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
- January 1, 1
- London, England, UK
Famous Quotes by Fred Zinnemann, American Film Director, Born 29th April, 1907, Collection of Fred Zinnemann Quotes and Sayings, Search Quotations by Fred Zinnemann.
(1953) Title From Here to Eternity. Year 1953. Director Fred Zinnemann. Genre Drama, Romance, War. Interpreted by. Burt Lancaster. Jack Warden. Joan Shawlee. Deborah Kerr. Plot – In 1941 young soldier Prewitt is transferred to Hawaii, where the only pastime is boxing.
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