Great Directors: Frank Capra

Frank Capra

Frank Capra was born in Palermo, Sicilia the 19 of May 1897, and when he was only 6 years of age, his family decided to immigrate to America.

After the filming of one of his films, he began collaboration with Robert Riskin writing dialogs. Their work together was known as “Caprinskin Formula”, that is comedies with a social underground where the main actor had to confront a corrupt institution.

He was one of the greatest filmmakers between the great wars period, he made his films to foment optimism in the people despite the Great depression. It was this mixture, the one that granted him his popularity and excellence as a director.

• Greatest Films:

1- The Strong Man (1926)

2- The Donovan Affair (1929)

3- It Happened One Night (1934)

4- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

5- Meet John Doe (1941)

6- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

7- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

This is one of my all favorite movies, Arsenic and Old Lace. They had to wait till the play it’s based on finished, and even after the huge success of the play the film was a blast, XDD, no wonder why…

Cary Grant is a genius ^_^

Great Directors: Orson Welles

Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin (United States). He started his career in the movie business as an actor, he began in theaters and he also got to direct some of the plays. On 30 October 1938 he also managed to make people flee their houses after a radio program on an alien invasion, an adaptation of H. G. Welles’ “the War of the Worlds”. But it wasn’t till 1940 that he came to direct his first movie. In 1941 it was all set and ready for the screening of his great masterpiece, “Citizen Kane”. After this magnificent film he directed some other greats films, but never achieved the same level of excellence.

But not everything in his life went so smoothly; he was considered to be part of an organization feared to be communist.

 

Here is the opening scene of his great masterpiece “Citizen Kane”

 

• Greatest Films:

1- Citizen Kane (1941)

2- The Lady from Shanghai (1948)

3- Touch of Evil (1958)

4- Chimes at Midnight (1965)

5- The Immortal Story (1968)

Great Directors: Billy Wilder

 

Billy Wilder who’s real name was Samuel Wilder was born in Sucha (Austria) the 22 of June 1906. While being a child he was called Billy mostly because of his obsession about Buffalo Bill and Westerns.

 

After finishing his secondary studies he started studying law at the Vienna University, but he gave up law studies to start working as a reporter for a newspaper. But it wouldn’t be till 1929 in Germany that he would start writing for the movie business, at this time he would meet some other important future figures of Hollywood such as Robert Soidmak or Fren Zinnemann.

Not only was he capable of doing the greatest acid and caustic comedies, he also matched himself to the great Alfred Hitchcock with his “Witness for the prosecution” or to the best Mankiewicz with “The Private life of Sherlock Holmes” and the most Noir film of the detectives and Noir stories with his “Double Indemnity”.

He was a master with film narration, plot construction and crazy dialogs, and that makes him one of the most talented directors of cinema history.

His sense of humor was unique, you just have to see the speech he gave when he received an award for his career when he was 90 years of age…

Or his grave.

Some of his greatest films:

 

1- The Major and the Minor (1942)

2- Double Indemnity (1944)

3- A Foreign Affair (1948)

4- Sunset Boulevard (1950)

5- Sabrina (Sabrina Fair) (1954)

6- Love in the Afternoon (1957´)

7- Some Like it Hot (1959)

8- The Apartment (1960)

9- Irma La Douce (1963)

10- The Front Page (1974)

11- Fedora (1978)