Movies - Fred Zinnemann

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	Movies - Fred Zinnemann

Fred Zinnemann (April 29, 1907—March 14, 1997) was a noted film director. He was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, and died of a heart attack in London, England. While growing up in Austria, he wanted to become a musician, then studied law. He was drawn to films, while studying at the University of Vienna, and eventually became a cameraman. He worked in Germany with several other tyros (Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak also worked with him on the 1929 feature “People on Sunday”) before coming to America to study film.

One of his first assignments in Hollywood was when he found work as an extra in “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), although he was fired from the production for talking back to the director, Lewis Milestone. After some success with short films, he graduated to features in 1942, turning out two crisp B mysteries, “Eyes in the Night” and “Kid Glove Killer” before getting his big break with “The Seventh Cross” (1944), a top-notch A picture starring Spencer Tracy, and his first hit.

He directed many different film genres including thrillers, westerns, film noir, and play adaptations. Nineteen actors appearing in Zinnemann's films received Academy Award nominations for their performances: among that number are Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Glynis Johns, Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Gary Cooper and Maximilian Schell. Zinnemann's 1950 film The Men
is noted for giving Marlon Brando his first screen role.

Zinnemann enjoyed an outstanding career spanning six decades, during which he directed 22 features, 19 short subjects and won four Oscars. Perhaps his best-known work is "High Noon" (1952), one of the first 25 American film classics chosen in 1989 for the National Film Registry. With its psychological and moral examinations of its lawman hero, played by Gary Cooper, its allegorical political commentary (on McCarthy-era witch-hunting) and its innovative chronology whereby screen time approximated the tense 80-minute countdown to the confrontational hour, "High Noon" shattered the mould of the formulaic shoot-‘em-up western.

The director's other eminent films, all compelling dramas of lone and principled individuals tested by tragic events, include "From Here to Eternity" (1953); "The Nun's Story" (1959); "A Man For All Seasons" (1966); and "Julia" (1977). Regarded as a consummate craftsman, Zinnemann traditionally endowed his work with meticulous attention to detail, an intuitive gift for brilliant casting and a preoccupation with the moral dilemmas of his characters.

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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