10 Great Jewish Film Directors
As well as being instrumental in establishing the Hollywood studio system in the early 20th Century, Jews also brought their artistic talents to bear by producing and directing motion pictures. The directors noted below were responsible for many of Hollywood's most successful, entertaining and influential movies.
Martin Ritt
(b. 1914, New York, USA; d. 1990, Santa Monica, California, USA)
Starting as an actor and then theatre and television director, he moved into film directing after being blacklisted by the television industry because of his alleged communist affiliations. He directed over 20 films and in 1976 made The Front, starring Woody Allen, the first movie about the Hollywood blacklist. He was nominated for many awards including Best Director for Hud at the 1964 Academy Awards. Matin Ritt - Gerald Peary Interviews
Books:
Martin Ritt and Gabriel Miller, Martin Ritt: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series), (University Press of Mississippi, 2003)
Carlton Jackson, Picking Up the Tab: The Life and Movies of Martin Ritt (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1995)
Sydney Pollack
(b. 1934, Lafayette, Indiana, USA; d. 2008, Los Angeles, California, USA))
Film director, producer and actor. After theatre studies in New York and army service, he worked in television in the 1960s, directing programs such as "The Defenders," "The Naked City," "The Fugitive," and "Dr. Kildare". He eventually established himself as a film director, capable of handling period drama (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, 1969), romantic drama (The Way We Were, 1973), suspense (Three Days of the Condor, 1975) and comedy (Tootsie, 1982) with equal skill. In 1986 he won Best Director Oscar for Out of Africa.
Anthony Minghella interviews Sydney Pollack
Books:
Michele Leon, Sydney Pollack (Pygmalion, 1991)
Janet L. Meyer, Sydney Pollack: A Critical Filmography (McFarland & Company, 1998) Susan Dworkin, Making Tootsie: A Film Study With Dustin Hoffman and Sydney Pollack (Newmarket Press, 2002)
Sydney Lumet
(b. 1924, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA)
A child actor in the Yiddish theatre and on Broadway in the 1930s, he worked in television after wartime service before moving into film directing. In 1958 he received a Best Director Oscar nomination for his first film, 12 Angry Men, and went on to direct many critically acclaimed and commercially successful films. He won an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, for his "brilliant services to screenwriters, performers and the art of the motion picture".
More on Sydney Lumet
Books:
Sidney Lumet, Making Movies (Vintage, 1996)
Richard Aloysius Blake, Street Smart: The New York Of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, And Lee (University Press of Kentucky, 2005)
Ernst Lubitsch
(1892, Berlin, Germany; d. 1947, Hollywood, California, USA)
Pioneering film director who, like fellow émigré directors William Wyler and Billy Wilder (see below), brought a European eye to the American cinema. Leaving school at the age of 16, he worked in his father's tailoring business during the day while pursuing a stage career at night. He became an actor in silent films, and in 1914 started to write and direct his own films, eventually attracting notice abroad with films such as Madame DuBarry (1919) and Das Weib des Pharao (The Loves of Pharaoh, 1922) . His career in Hollywood began in 1923 when he directed his friend Mary Pickford in his first American hit Rosita. Further silent films followed (mostly for Warner Brothers) and success with sound came with films for Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM including Ninotchka (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). The sophisticated wit, style and elegance in his work became known as "the Lubitsch touch". He received an honorary Academy Award in 1947.
Books:
Leland A Poague, The cinema of Ernst Lubitsch (A. S. Barnes, 1978)
Scott Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)
Stanley Kubrick
(b. 1928, Manhattan, New York, USA; d. 1999, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England, UK )
Influential American-born screen writer, film director and producer. He became interested in still photography as a boy and after leaving school worked as a photographer for Look magazine. In the early 1950s he spent time as a documentary film maker before moving into feature films, making his debut with Fear and Desire (1953) and taking over from Anthony Mann for Spartacus (1960). Working both in Holywood and the UK, he made a number of notorious and controversial films including Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He was nominated for many awards and won the Oscar for Best Director for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The Authorised Stanley Kubrick Web Site
Books:
Michel Ciment, Gilbert Adair, Robert Bononno, and Martin Scorsese, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition (Faber & Faber, 2003)
Alexander Walker, Sybil Taylor, and Ulrich Ruchti, Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000)
Stanley Kubrick and Gene D. Phillips, Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
Billy Wilder (Samuel Wilder)
(b. 1906, Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary; d. 2002, Beverly Hills, California, USA) 
Writer, director, producer and one of Hollywood's most enduring filmmakers.
He worked as a reporter in Vienna and Berlin before breaking into films as a screenwriter in 1929. On the rise of Hitler he moved to Paris and then the United States. Thanks to contacts in Holywood such as Peter Lorre, he was able to launch his career in American films as a talented screen writer and director. Some of his most notable films are Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960). He won six Oscars, both for his writing and directing, and was nominated for many more.
Billy Wilder Obituary
Books:
Charlotte Chandler and Billy Wilder, Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography (Applause Books, 2004)
Glenn Hopp and Paul Duncan, Billy Wilder: The Complete Films (Taschen, 2003)
Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Wilder (Knopf, 2001)
Otto Preminger
(b.1905, Vienna, Austria-Hungary; d. 1986, New York, USA)
Film producer and director whose work was marked by craftmanship and objectivity. Giving up his law studies at the age of 17, he joined the theatre company of Max Reinhardt as an actor (like Ernst Lubitsch before him), later progressing to director. His theatre successes soon gained the attention of producers in America and in 1936 he arrived in Holywood to embark on a career lasting more than 40 years. Among his most memorable works are Laura (1944), Forever Amber (1947), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Exodus (1960). He was nominated for three Oscars and won BAFTA and Berlin International Film Festival Awards.
More on Otto Preminger
Books:
Otto Preminger, Preminger: An Autobiography (Bantam Books, 1978)
Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (Knopf, 2007)
Chris Fujiwara, The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger (Faber & Faber, 2008)
Fred Zinnemann
(b. 1907, Vienna, Austria-Hungary; d.1997, London, England, UK)
While studying law at the University of Vienna he became interested in American film. After cinematography studies in Paris he moved to America and began making documentaries and later feature films, directing the film debuts of Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and Meryl Streep. A recurrent theme in his films is the conflict of conscience facing the lone and principled individual, as explored in High Noon (1952) and the Oscar winners From Here to Eternity (1953) and A Man for All Seasons (1966).
The Religion of director Fred Zinnemann
Books:
Fred Zinnemann, Fred Zinnemann: An Autobiography : A Life in the Movies (Scribner, 1992)
Gabriel Miller and Fred Zinnemann, Fred Zinnemann: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) (University Press of Mississippi, 2005)
George Dewey Cukor
(b. 1899, New York, NY, USA; d. 1983, Los Angeles, California, USA)
Celebrated director of such films as Little Women (1933), Camille (1936), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Adam's Rib (1949), A Star Is Born (1954) and My Fair Lady (1964). Gaining much experience working in theatre in Chicago and New York, he was recruited by Hollywood in 1929 to direct sound films and in a long career made over 50 movies, ranging from witty comedies to dramas and musicals. He won many awards and was nominated for five Oscars for best director. American Masters - George Cukor
Books:
Gavin Lambert and Robert Tractenberg, On Cukor (Rizzoli International Publications, 2000)
Patrick McGilligan, George Cukor: A Double Life: A Biography of the Gentleman Director (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997) Robert Emmet Long and George Dewey Cukor, George Cukor: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series) (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
Steven Allan Spielberg
(b. 1946, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)
Director of some of the most popular and commercially successful films in movie history. He developed his interest in film-making as a child (using the family's home movie camera) by becoming one of the youngest film directors at Universal Studios. Following his highly regarded television film Duel (1972) he went on to direct cinema hits such as Jaws (1975), E.T. (1982), Empire of the Sun (1987) and Jurassic Park (1993). In 1994 he received both an Oscar and two BAFTA awards for Schindler's List.
Spielberg Films
Books:
Douglas Brode, The Films Of Steven Spielberg (Citadel, 2000)
Kathi Jackson, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies) ( Greenwood Press, 2007)
Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Da Capo, 1999)
Philip M. Taylor and Daniel O'Brien, Steven Spielberg: The Man, His Movies, and Their Meaning (Continuum Intl Pub Group, 1999)
This page was last modified on 13 June 2008