William Wyler

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

William Wyler

#1 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:35 am

William Wyler (1902-1981)
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“I’m here to make good pictures. If I don’t see it, I won’t touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!”

Filmography
Features
  1. The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970)
  2. Funny Girl (1968)
  3. How to Steal a Million (1966)
  4. The Collector (1965)
  5. The Children’s Hour (1961)
  6. Ben-Hur (1959)
  7. The Big Country (1958)
  8. Friendly Persuasion (1956)
  9. The Desperate Hours (1955)
  10. Roman Holiday (1953)
  11. Carrie (1952)
  12. Detective Story (1951)
  13. The Heiress (1949)
  14. The Best Year or Our Lives (1946)
  15. Mrs. Miniver (1942)
  16. The Little Foxes (1941)
  17. The Letter (1940)
  18. The Westerner (1940)
  19. Wuthering Heights (1939)
  20. Jezebel (1938)
  21. Dead End (1937)
  22. Come and Get It (1936) [co-director Howard Hawks]
  23. Dodsworth (1936)
  24. These Three (1936)
  25. The Gay Deception (1935)
  26. The Good Fairy (1935)
  27. Glamour (1934)
  28. Counsellor at Law (1933)
  29. Her First Mate (1933)
  30. Tom Brown of Culver (1932)
  31. A House Divided (1931)
  32. The Storm (1930)
  33. Hell’s Heroes (1929)
  34. The Love Trap (1929)
  35. The Shakedown (1929)
  36. Thunder Riders (1928)
  37. Anybody Here Seen Kelly? (1928) [Lost]
  38. Desert Dust (1927)
  39. The Border Cavalier (1927)
Shorts
  1. Daze of the West (1927)
  2. The Horse Trader (1927)
  3. The Square Shooter (1927)
  4. The Phantom Outlaw (1927)
  5. Gun Justice (1927)
  6. The Home Trail (1927)
  7. The Ore Raiders (1927)
  8. The Lone Star (1927)
  9. Hard Fists (1927)
  10. The Haunted Homestead (1927)
  11. Galloping Justice (1927)
  12. Straight Shootin’ (1927)
  13. Blazing Days (1927)
  14. The Silent Partner (1927)
  15. Tenderfoot Courage (1927)
  16. Kelcy Gets His Man (1927)
  17. The Two Fister (1927)
  18. The Stolen Ranch (1926)
  19. Lazy Lightning (1926)
  20. Martin of the Mounted (1926)
  21. The Pinnacle Rider (1926)
  22. Don’t Shoot (1926)
  23. The Fire Barrier (1926)
  24. Ridin’ for Love (1926)
  25. The Gunless Bad Man (1926)
  26. The Crook Buster (1925) [Partially Lost]
Documentaries
  1. Thunderbolt (1945/ 1947) [co-director John Sturges]
  2. The Fighting Lady (1944) [co-director Edward Steichen] uncredited
  3. The Memphis Belle (1944)
General Discussion

Web Resources
Appreciation by Kenneth Lonergan
NYT Obituary
Senses of Cinema

Books and Articles
  • A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler Herman, Jan 1996 Putnam’s Sons
  • William Wyler: The Authorized Biography Madsen, Axel 1973 Thomas Y. Crowell Company
  • William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Director Miller, Gabriel 2013 University of Kentucky
  • Wiliam Wyler: Interviews Editor: Miller, Gabriel 2009 University Press of Mississippi
  • A Wonderful Heart: The Films of William Wyler Sinyard, Neil 2013 McFarland & Company
Last edited by knives on Tue Jul 21, 2020 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#2 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Jul 20, 2020 4:28 am

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:35 am
hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:12 am
Unfortunately there's no William Wyler thread, perhaps understandably, but I'll post this here since it concerns Olivier just as much.

Wyler is not one of my favorites, and I'm certainly not alone as his reputation has taken a serious beating for a very long time. But as Kent Jones, David Thomson and Howard Hampton have pointed out, "it’s grossly unfair to make an also-ran out of someone who was able to deliver studio films as intelligent and affecting as The Best Years of Our Lives, The Letter (1940), Dodsworth (1936), and Carrie (the wrenching 1952 adaption of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie)." I've seen just two of the films listed there, and they do make a great argument in his favor. (As mentioned in the John Huston thread, no filmmaker or artist deserves to be completely dismissed or devalued if they've done great work, even if their entire output is often disappointing.)

I noticed in one of my five-year posts above that I came across an article singling out Carrie as the best cinematic proof of Olivier's worth as an actor. I wish I hadn't forgotten that, but it wasn't until now with the ongoing pandemic that DVDs and streaming have taken up most of my viewing. (For the most part, I had been relying on Blu-Rays and whatever was programmed at a local venue, which was more than enough to keep me occupied.)

I never heard anyone bring up Carrie as a defense for Wyler either, at least not until recently when I came across supportive remarks made by Thomson, Hampton, possibly Jones (can't remember if he vouched for it as well) and the late Elliott Stein, so I finally gave it a chance. I wasn't eager to see it before due to Wyler's most famous collaboration with Olivier, Wuthering Heights. A poor adaptation, it made Olivier a star and it was distinguished by Gregg Toland's cinematography, but its merits as a film and Olivier's performance have been torn apart by Wyler's detractors for good reason.

Michael Billington is not wrong, and Carrie is a wonderful surprise. I'm reluctant to call it a great film, but it's certainly no embarrassment to Dreiser's celebrated masterwork. The film is indeed wrenching largely because of Olivier, and that is a revelation because this is the first time I've been genuinely and thoroughly moved by an Olivier performance. To be fair, I still have not seen his recorded stage performances (it's often said his legend truly rests there, not on-screen), and the best and most memorable performances I've seen involved scoundrels - Richard III, Archie Rice, Christian Szell - so it comes down partly to his choice of roles, but he brings such a profound sadness this film, it may very well be my favorite Olivier performance. Absolutely wonderful.
Wyler’s output is not “often disappointing”... you’ve obv done a board search for Wyler to find there was no dedicated thread and so you surely must have seen he’s actually quite broadly well-liked here, and for good reason? “Understandably” a filmmaker thread only gets created when someone has the impetus to make one, and given Wyler’s enormous filmography (which you should see more of before taking your chosen critics’ opinions as your own), I can’t blame anyone for not carving out a couple hours to do the thankless task
Dom, I welcome any disagreement, but this escalation is completely unwarranted.

I'm not sure if this needs a point-by-point rebuttal, but 1) searching "Wyler" by title doesn't inform anyone how broadly liked he is here. For whatever reason, in the past I haven't seen that many posts about Wyler. I'm sure they're there, but anything can be missed in the labyrinth that is a message forum. 2) I welcome disagreement, not insults. You're apparently an enormous fan, so I can forgive the uncharitable and dishonest distortion of "taking my chosen critics' opinions as my own." Ben-Hur, Jezebel, Funny Girl, Roman Holiday, Wuthering Heights (which I mentioned), The Westerner, Mrs. Miniver, Detective Story, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, How to Steal a Million, at least a few more - that may not be a majority of his films, but it's not an inadequate sampling, and I was disappointed, immensely disappointed with some. Against three or four that I actually like, that's often. 3) I was under the impression only mods could start threads - I can't tell if there's the implication that I could have started one, but regardless, if pointing out the absence of one was somehow insulting to a mod (whether it insinuates laziness or anything else), apologies, that was never the intention or implication.

And I find this far more disappointing than anything else. I've found greater appreciation in a filmmaker's work, enough that it leaves me optimistic that there's more to discover or revisit. That was the motivation for posting anything to begin with, but that means nothing. If someone came along and told me they hated Prince, his work is often disappointing, but they finally listened to Dirty Mind based on his boosters' recommendations and loved it, never would it occur to me to throw cheap shots as my first reaction.

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knives
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#3 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 6:44 am

Though the key to that sensitivity is in your original post as Wyler has unfairly taken a beating for no clear reason. His hit to miss ratio isn't far off from Ford's, though obviously not as prolific, and so that beating looks especially cruel for those who have managed to see a large amount of his films and found a great director who, as is often the case, by circumstances of the studio system made films that didn't work to his strengths or were doomed to mediocrity regardless of the director. To continue with Ford, no one damns his reputation based on that awful Queen Elizabeth cum Hepburn film the same way they do Wuthering Heights for Wyler. Instead they reasonably celebrate him for The Searchers as they should The Westerner for Wyler.

As a general rule of thumb, though not an absolute, try searching out Wyler's contemporaneously set film as they have a much higher success ratio at almost 100%.

Edit: Changed things because of jokers.
Last edited by knives on Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#4 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:26 am

hearthesilence, I think you may have read more aggression into my words than was intended. Unless they are a DarkImbecile creation, most filmmaker threads don’t originate from Mods, so no insult exists in pointing out a thread doesn’t exist. As for Wyler, it seemed to me that you were using low opinions of Wyler from critics you’ve read to justify dismissal of a director whose films are better liked by your fellow board members and indeed have topped multiple list projects here. If that was not the intent of your words, then I offer my apologies in kind. I think you can absolutely decide for yourself whether you’re interested (or not) in seeing more films from a director based on watching a dozen films, but when that director has a career that spans six decades, it’s probably not helpful to make overarching claims about their output when you haven’t seen enough of it to know. Also worth keeping in mind that many critics, especially those writing in or coming up with the writing of the sixties and seventies, saw Wyler as an establishment director with a record number of nominations from the Oscars, which lead to wildly unfair opposition to the Enemy over names that are now probably overvalued in comparison

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#5 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:51 am

God I love Elizabeth Hepburn, so much better than her overvalued sister Katharine.

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knives
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#6 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:57 am

You know what I was referring to. No need to be a jackass when I was trying to be kind to someone who had just felt bitten.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#7 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:13 am

Sorry knives - that was meant to be a friendly joke. Maybe I should have gauged the situation better.

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dustybooks
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#8 Post by dustybooks » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:15 am

I had the impression that Wyler was getting more and more appreciation in recent years with the full-fledged restoration of Dodsworth and the widespread rediscovery of The Heiress among other things. I certainly think of him as among my favorite Hollywood directors. I remember there being talk about Wyler not receiving a lot of attention in the early stages of the auteur movement, as DH mentioned, but I feel like that has corrected itself by now.

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knives
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#9 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:17 am

Rayon Vert wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:13 am
Sorry knives - that was meant to be a friendly joke. Maybe I should have gauged the situation better.
I just realized that might have been a possibility and was about to edit my post. I'm probably overly testy right now anyway because of personal life stuff (got pink slipped in June on account of Covid and right now no one knows if they're hiring teachers anywhere in the country).

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#10 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:19 am

That's OK. Very sorry to hear about your situation - hope things work out with finding new work.

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knives
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Re: Laurence Olivier

#11 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:21 am

I'm not too worried about finding work, the country desperately needs special educators, I just really hate applying for jobs and waiting.
dustybooks wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:15 am
I had the impression that Wyler was getting more and more appreciation in recent years with the full-fledged restoration of Dodsworth and the widespread rediscovery of The Heiress among other things. I certainly think of him as among my favorite Hollywood directors. I remember there being talk about Wyler not receiving a lot of attention in the early stages of the auteur movement, as DH mentioned, but I feel like that has corrected itself by now.
I think he alongside a whole host of significant and great directors who were laid by the wayside for polemical reasons, DeMille comes to mind, are still in the process of recovery. Just to put things in perspective: our board is pretty open minded and idiosyncratic, but I doubt a Wyler list would have much success let alone the level that Wilder and seemingly Hawks are having to provide two names that probably should be about equal to Wyler.

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senseabove
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#12 Post by senseabove » Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:11 pm

I would be all over a Wyler list, fwiw... My limit for participating in a director list has been already having seen enough that, assuming a similar success rate with a few more, I should be able to comfortably make a list of 10 movies that I genuinely like, with no filler toward the bottom, and I could easily do that with Wyler.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#13 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:38 pm

Similar to Hawks, he has enough perfect films to carry that list. I'd have a hard time ranking, in chronological order, Counsellor at Law, The Good Fairy, The Westerner, Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Heiress, Detective Story and Roman Holiday- and that's excluding at least a handful of other films that I still like a lot.

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senseabove
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#14 Post by senseabove » Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:51 pm

I also just want more people to see Counsellor at Law. Whoever let that slip by as an orphan on the pre-code list without a peep in favor of it, shame on you.

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domino harvey
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#15 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:57 pm

We voted on Wyler in the last survey and he came close but didn't make the top echelon of auteurs for the slew of list projects we are in the midst of. He and Soderbergh came close enough that I floated tacking them on to the end of this cycle, but we'll see

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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#16 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 20, 2020 2:00 pm

senseabove wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:51 pm
I also just want more people to see Counsellor at Law. Whoever let that slip by as an orphan on the pre-code list without a peep in favor of it, shame on you.
I agree that it's the best Wyler I hear next to nothing about. If I had participated in that list, it would have probably made my top ten.

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Drucker
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#17 Post by Drucker » Mon Jul 20, 2020 2:22 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 2:00 pm
senseabove wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:51 pm
I also just want more people to see Counsellor at Law. Whoever let that slip by as an orphan on the pre-code list without a peep in favor of it, shame on you.
I agree that it's the best Wyler I hear next to nothing about. If I had participated in that list, it would have probably made my top ten.
I'll third this film. I'm just dipping my toes into Wyler, but saw this at the Nitrate Film Festival last year and it was my favorite discovery of the weekend.

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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#18 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:15 pm

The only Wylers I've seen that I really didn't like are Ben-Hur and The Letter (which I just watched recently and hated). I'm cooler on some that people here have expressed admiration for, like The Big Country and Dodsworth, but still like them. Even The Little Foxes, which I know many adore and I wouldn't place near his best, is a good film that deserves more attention than it gets.

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domino harvey
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#19 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:30 pm

Just as an FYI, this thread will at some point be moved and converted into a Wyler filmmaker thread, so feel free to continue having civilized discussion about the director even though you're in the pisstake subforum!

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hearthesilence
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#20 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:33 pm

Apparently this isn’t everyone’s experience, but frequently when I’ve come across Wyler in print, there’s not much love for his work as a director. Compliments are usually qualified or even backhanded, so without realizing the appreciation board members here had for his work, I was under the impression that he did not enjoy the broad support usually given to his more celebrated peers (Ford, Hawks, etc.). In hindsight, I can see how this created a different context than the one I presumed, so I do apologize for that.

I respectfully disagree with the comparison to Ford. A good percentage of his work may indeed disappoint, but I’ve only see one or two of his silents (I’m not sure how many of them are considered lost) and only a handful of his ‘30s films (all great, but I have not seen the Queen Elizabeth film). I’ve seen most of his films from the ‘40s on, and they consistently impress. His films are rarely perfect, and they can be messy, but I always find something extraordinary about them that is unique to Ford as a filmmaker. So from that experience, his batting average feels extraordinarily high, and it’s just one reason why my appreciation for him has grown exponentially with time.

FWIW, before it was taken down altogether, one of the best discussions to erupt on Dave Kehr’s blog was a debate over the merits of The Best Years of Our Lives - it was obvious even that had its detractors (Kehr among them), but there were skeptics of Wyler’s work that still came to its defense, which is a strong testament to the film’s greatness. I wish I saved it, but FWIW, the one point that stuck out was how many older critics believed there was a generational divide in terms of how that film was seen (between adults at the time and what their children saw decades later - these were all Americans, so there may be another cultural difference as well, especially given the subject matter).

I will absolutely see Counsellor at Law. I certainly wish I caught that nitrate screening.

And knives, I’m sorry to hear about your situation, but I’m glad that things are likely to turnaround soon, at least job-wise.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#21 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:37 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:15 pm
The Little Foxes, which I know many adore and I wouldn't place near his best, is a good film that deserves more attention than it gets.
I need to re-visit that one. I haven't seen it in years, but I wasn't that crazy about the film even though I admired its strengths. Teresa Wright's performance was probably the most egregious problem for me - the rest of the cast was wonderful, but at the time, she seemed to unbalance every one of her scenes. It was like she was doing the right play but doing it for the wrong production.

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knives
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#22 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:37 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:30 pm
Just as an FYI, this thread will at some point be moved and converted into a Wyler filmmaker thread, so feel free to continue having civilized discussion about the director even though you're in the pisstake subforum!
Because I have too much free time I just started on the opening post. Do you want me to continue on that or no?

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domino harvey
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#23 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:39 pm

Counsellor at Law has a DVD from old school Kino. KL Insider already said they're not pursuing a Blu-ray, so that may be as good as we get, but I don't recall any issues with their disc

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knives
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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#24 Post by knives » Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:56 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:33 pm
Apparently this isn’t everyone’s experience, but frequently when I’ve come across Wyler in print, there’s not much love for his work as a director. Compliments are usually qualified or even backhanded, so without realizing the appreciation board members here had for his work, I was under the impression that he did not enjoy the broad support usually given to his more celebrated peers (Ford, Hawks, etc.). In hindsight, I can see how this created a different context than the one I presumed, so I do apologize for that.

I respectfully disagree with the comparison to Ford. A good percentage of his work may indeed disappoint, but I’ve only see one or two of his silents (I’m not sure how many of them are considered lost) and only a handful of his ‘30s films (all great, but I have not seen the Queen Elizabeth film). I’ve seen most of his films from the ‘40s on, and they consistently impress. His films are rarely perfect, and they can be messy, but I always find something extraordinary about them that is unique to Ford as a filmmaker. So from that experience, his batting average feels extraordinarily high, and it’s just one reason why my appreciation for him has grown exponentially with time.

FWIW, before it was taken down altogether, one of the best discussions to erupt on Dave Kehr’s blog was a debate over the merits of The Best Years of Our Lives - it was obvious even that had its detractors (Kehr among them), but there were skeptics of Wyler’s work that still came to its defense, which is a strong testament to the film’s greatness. I wish I saved it, but FWIW, the one point that stuck out was how many older critics believed there was a generational divide in terms of how that film was seen (between adults at the time and what their children saw decades later - these were all Americans, so there may be another cultural difference as well, especially given the subject matter).

I will absolutely see Counsellor at Law. I certainly wish I caught that nitrate screening.

And knives, I’m sorry to hear about your situation, but I’m glad that things are likely to turnaround soon, at least job-wise.
I think one of the best things about Ford is how crazy and sloppy his career is especially early on. I've seen 67 of his films, the most features of any director thanks to the forum's list project, and the trend you note is definitely a thing. I'd argue part of it is that Ford just became better as he got older, but also because he became less prolific though still more so than many other directors and had more choice in his projects. Ford spent years developing the cache to make Stagecoach, but by the '50s had a much easier time getting those sort of personal projects off the ground. Once you have the pleasure to experience his full output you'll encounter plenty of Arrowsmiths or Riley the Cops which are frankly terrible movies that nonetheless deepen the beauty of Ford's output.

It wouldn't surprise me that most of your encounters with Wyler in print have been extremely negative because Wyler was one of the biggest giants the critics of the '60s and '70s bludgeoned in order to promote their favorite directors. He is a massive victim of auteurist polemics in America. Looking at professional publications on Wyler it seems the first was a biography published in the '70s. This is a piece of evidence to the importance he held once upon a time. Many other directors who we know consider giants took much longer to have any books published on them, McCarthy makes this point in his Hawks biography. After that though there doesn't seem to be another major published work on Wyler 1996 with recent years giving a large outflow of critical works on Wyler showing a small rehabilitation from the damned in the last ten years.

Thankfully it seems we are going past the polemics over the studio era and can now assess the artists of the day for their art and not what it represents as a cultural signifier.

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Re: Wyler So Serious?

#25 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 20, 2020 4:10 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:33 pm
Apparently this isn’t everyone’s experience, but frequently when I’ve come across Wyler in print, there’s not much love for his work as a director. Compliments are usually qualified or even backhanded, so without realizing the appreciation board members here had for his work, I was under the impression that he did not enjoy the broad support usually given to his more celebrated peers (Ford, Hawks, etc.). In hindsight, I can see how this created a different context than the one I presumed, so I do apologize for that.
I think this leads back into domino's point from the Hawks list project thread: Something made explicitly clear in McCarthy's bio is that Wyler was actually deeply revered during the studio era, considered to be one of the most celebrated directors, but I believe auteur theory and modern ways of defining the importance and value of directors by clear stamps has softened his reputation.

Edit: knives beat me to it
hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 3:33 pm
FWIW, before it was taken down altogether, one of the best discussions to erupt on Dave Kehr’s blog was a debate over the merits of The Best Years of Our Lives - it was obvious even that had its detractors (Kehr among them), but there were skeptics of Wyler’s work that still came to its defense, which is a strong testament to the film’s greatness. I wish I saved it, but FWIW, the one point that stuck out was how many older critics believed there was a generational divide in terms of how that film was seen (between adults at the time and what their children saw decades later - these were all Americans, so there may be another cultural difference as well, especially given the subject matter).
I didn't read the blog, but I could see the generational divide having a strong effect especially in the era of auteur theory being born occurring during a movement away from nationalism among the younger generation. There is going to be something inherently "dated" to many people who aren't distracted by technical flourishes, but the dramatic weight he drew out of his scenes is incredibly impressive. I do think (or maybe just hope) we're reaching a point of critical re-evaluation where we can go back and acknowledge the emotional and social universality of experiences in these films with dressing that may deter audiences from full engagement. The feeling of being ashamed and self-destructing by pushing people away as a result of their core beliefs, like Homer does to his fiancé, is wildly relatable to modern audiences who can get past the fact that their shameful deficits aren't specifically amputated limbs.

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