Stevens - Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywoods Golden Age at the American Film Institute

This book contains the ideas and wisdom of many of the great filmmakers of what is often called the Golden Agethose adventurous years when a new art was flowering and when filmmakers were innovators creating from original impulses. Throughout history, art forms evolved slowly over one or two civilizations, but motion pictures grew from a crude photographic device to maturity in only a few decades. There were no models and imitation did not yet prevail.

The one thing the ideas in this book have in common is that they were discussed in seminars with young filmmakers at the American Film Institute. They are the ideas of many of cinemas most accomplished creators, and represent a summing up in which men look back over long careerspassing on knowledge gained from decades of practical experience. It is unlikely that there will ever be a comparable era in which so many films of lasting value will be producedfilms that if you happen upon them late at night on television and decide to watch just a few minutes, you are drawn to stay to the final fade-out.

These films were made during the relatively short period in cinema history when the only way to see a motion picture was to gather in groups in a darkened theater to watch larger-than-life images. The movies existed only as a shared experience. Beginning in the 1950s people started watching films on small television screens by themselves, or with one or two others, and later video and DVDs increased private viewing. The filmmakers of the Golden Age worked for a large and vibrant communal audience that no longer exists. David Thomson, in his book The Whole Equation, reminds us that they were making five hundred films a year, as opposed to two hundred todaywhen so few films hold or entertain the whole audience, let alone speak for the nation.

In his foreword to What Is Cinema?, Jean Renoir wrote, Civilization is but a sieve through the holes of which there passes the discardthe good remains. The filmmakers in this volume are responsible for much of that goodthe relative handful of fine films that remain popular from among the many thousands made during the twentieth century.

The first class gathered at AFIs Center for Advanced Film Studies in September of 1969. Most of the pioneers who had created the classics of American film were still alive. I grew up in Hollywood, so I knew most of the people in this book and was able to enlist them to meet with the fellows who were at AFI to study before embarking on a career.

The roots of this book and of the AFI itself go back to an occasion in 1961 that changed my life. I was twenty-nine years old and living in Hollywood, working as a television director and collaborating with my father on the preparation of The Greatest Story Ever Told. President Kennedy had been elected a year earlier and had asked Edward R. Murrow to come to Washington to head the United States Information Agency, the organization dedicated to telling Americas story overseas. Murrow announced a visit to Los Angeles to meet with motion picture leaders at a Saturday night dinner at Chasens, one of the film communitys favorite restaurants. Invitations were prized as a symbol of who counted among the mighty of the movie world.

A few of us young turks knew we had no chance of making the cut at Chasens, but we believed we were more in tune with the New Frontier that Kennedy had spoken of in his inaugural address than were most of the old guard who would assemble at Chasens. So we sent a telegram to Murrow suggesting that he might be interested in hearing the ideas of some of the younger people in Hollywood. A Friday afternoon meeting was added to his schedule, and we reserved a room at the offices of the Screen Directors Guild.