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Fred Zinnemann: Films
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Fred Zinnemann (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) directs a taut political thriller adapted from a best–selling novel by Frederick Forsythe. It’s the 1960s, and after France’s loss of Algeria, a group of vengeful army officers hires a hit man codenamed The Jackal (Edward Fox) to assassinate President De Gaulle. With documentary–like detail, Zinnemann follows The Jackal as he coolly and meticulously prepares for the fateful moment. ”Spellbinding – not just a suspense classic, but a beautifully executed example of filmmaking” – Chicago Sun–Times.
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Fred Zinnemann's sensitive film on the plight of paraplegic WWII veterans features Marlon Brando in his superbly moving screen debut. He plays Lt. Bud Wilozek, one of a group of veterans recovering in the paraplegic ward of a hospital in his hometown. His former fiancée, Ellen (Theresa Wright),...
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Zinnemann's next film was atypical within his overall output; Oklahoma! (1955) was a musical comedy, the only one he directed. He was offered the helm of the big-budget production because of the success of his last two films, and he agreed to direct it because, as he told Neve, "I found it fascinating to try a new medium, this huge screen." The film was a hugely popular success although one critic joked that Zinnemann's rather dry style had in effect removed the exclamation point from the film's title. Zinnemann returned to more serious fare A Hatful of Rain (1957), a drama about drug addiction, and The Nun's Story, a 1959 film starring Audrey Hepburn as a Belgian missionary nurse serving in the Congo.
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Zinnemann's prime candidate for white elephant status is the bloated fantasy of Oklahoma! (1955), where cowboy Curly (Gordon MacRae) and farm girl Laurey (Shirley Jones) flirt amidst the pristine cornfields in the ostensible simplicity of romance. As the first Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration allowed to reach the screen, and personally supervised by the authors, the record-breaking stage musical was widely expected to be a sure-fire hit. Both financially and artistically... the resulting film proved only fitfully successful, despite its introduction of the new Todd-AO widescreen process. Clearly, Zinnemann's strength was as a realist who fought stereotypes, not as a purveyor of mythic Americana. After all, he spent a career dramatising subtle truths: not all handicapped people need be helpless (The Men), not all soldiers act valiantly (From Here to Eternity), not all religious commitment leads to fulfilment (The Nun's Story), and not all Germans understood the consequences of Hitler's making the trains run on time (The Seventh Cross).
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Zinnemann's penchant for realism and authenticity is evident in his first feature The Wave (1935), shot on location in Mexico with mostly non-professional actors recruited among the locals, which is one of the earliest examples of realism in narrative film. Earlier in the decade, in fact, Zinnemann had worked with documentarian Robert Flaherty, an association he considered "the most important event of my professional life".
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Three days before he started shooting The Dybbuk Of The Holy Apple Field (screening today in the Panorama) Israeli filmmaker Yossi Somer phoned Fred Zinnemann. "He gave the project his blessing," recalled Somer. Within the week, Zinnemann was dead.
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