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Is A Director Really That Important?

When young baby-faced Producer Irving Thalberg fired legendary director Eric von Stroheim from his film Merry-Go-Round in 1923 it was apparent to all involved in the motion picture business that the age of director had ended. Prior to this and another event in 1927 – the release of the first all-sound picture, The Jazz Singer – the director had been king, ruler of the faces and guide to poor lost actors and actresses.

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Some directors often makes changes to scripts, a generally dislikeable action on the part of the writers who prefer to have their film, their idea, transmitted to the screen in its delivered format. Ang Lee is a noted director who hardly ever diverts from his script – bravo! In the classic, golden era of motion picture the writer would work directly with the producer and then ultimately a director would be summoned and given the choice to film it or not. I’m sure I sound very critical of directors – and I am – but that’s partially only because I am a writer, or rather, a wordsmith. Directors are necessary to the making of a film but it just so happens that more essential are the writers and technicians.

“When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically.”

– Ingmar Bergman

Like I have previously mentioned, some of our famed filmmakers happen to have remained in control because they have an additional talent for screenwriting. These filmmakers are Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, to name but a few. Kubrick directed and wrote almost all of his films, to astounding success with the single exception of Fear and Desire.

Bergman generally did the same and produced The Seventh Seal, a work of such wonder. Then there’s Allen, who has pretty much created a film a year for over forty years. Am I committing a faux pas herein? I wonder. Slandering the “director” so much, will I be prosecuted for this by the film fans? Before you do attack me, think to yourself how easy directing is. I can guarantee that there is not a film technician alive who cannot do what any modern director can do – with the notable exceptions of certain filmmakers of course. I guarantee it.

Film is an art form, probably our most important alongside the written word. We can have films as novels or novels as films. The film equivalent of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina would surely be Casablanca or some love story along that line. And then we have films like Movie 43 which would be the equivalent of that awful series of novels by Stephanie Meyer, The Twilight Saga. There are many bad movies, many bad novels and many bad directors. But for all of my dislike of many directors I must be biased in saying that there are also a great many bad writers, especially in the world of motion pictures. In the end, it’s all just a matter of opinion.