Sloan de Forest - The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinemas Most Influential Filmmakers

W hen all five TCM hosts were asked, Who is the first director you were aware of, three of us said that director was Alfred Hitchcock.

Eddie Muller, Alicia Malone, and I all recalled watching Hitchcock films on television when we were kids. Eddie and Alicia said that the landmark interview collection Hitchcock/Truffaut was the first film book they ever owned. For me, the experience of seeing Hitchcock films was striking because no matter who the stars wereJames Stewart in Rear Window, or Cary Grant in North by Northwest, or Laurence Olivier in RebeccaI was always keenly aware that there was another artistic presence shaping the look and feel of the film. Dave Kargers first director awareness came watching the films of John Hughes. And for Ben Mankiewicz, it was Martin Brest. As different as these directors are in their styles, they inspired the same response from us during our film formative years: a consciousness of the director as the person behind the scenes pulling all of the elements of a film together.

Hitchcock, of course, did show up in cameos in his films. And he cultivated a public persona that made him a household name. A key aspect of his brilliance is the way he kept us aware that we are watching a Hitchcock film while simultaneously immersing us into the worlds he crafted so meticulously on screen. As Sloan De Forest, author of this wide-ranging appreciation of influential directors, points out: a directors main job is not simply to call Action! but to make us believe; to make the audience forget there is a director.

Over the years, it has arguably become harder to forget there is a director when we watch a film. More and more directors have achieved celebrity status. And film fans (not just scholars and critics) routinely recognize directors signatures, from the freeze-frames of Martin Scorsese to the double dolly shots of Spike Lee. What is more, we are learning details about the personal lives and behind-the-camera conduct of current and past directors, including revelations about inappropriate and discriminatory behavior, that can make it difficult to separate artists (including Hitchcock) from their art. And yet, even when we are aware of the directors presence (in positive or negative terms), we rarely appreciate the full range of skills, activities, and responsibilities that film directing entails.

The Essential Directors highlights the many facets of directing. These profiles illustrate how directors actualize their vision on screen. And they trace the influence directors have on their collaborators, on subsequent generations of filmmakers, and on cultural history. Importantly, De Forest shines a light on directors who have been forgotten not just because they created compelling narratives but because they hail from historically marginalized groups. Filmmaking pioneers Lois Weber and Oscar Micheaux get the attention they deserve here, alongside underrecognized studio directors of the classical Hollywood era and many more famous and celebrated auteurs. As we read about their trailblazing careers and visionary films, we are inspired to pay closer attention to the history and craft of directing in all of its diversity and complexity.