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Frank Borzage 

 

TSPDT Rating

Director / Producer
1893 - 1962 
Born April 23, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Key Production Country: USA 
Key Genres: Drama, Romance, Romantic Drama, Melodrama
Key Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Margaret Sullavan (Leading Player), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Producer), Franz Waxman (Composer), Joan Crawford (Leading Player), Robert Young (Leading Player), William Fox (Producer), George Folsey (Cinematographer), Janet Gaynor (Leading Player), Lawrence Hazard (Screenwriter)
Highly Recommended: A Farewell to Arms (1932), Man's Castle (1933), Three Comrades (1938), Moonrise (1948)
Recommended: Seventh Heaven (1927), Lucky Star (1929), Little Man, What Now (1934), Mannequin (1937), History is Made at Night (1937), The Shining Hour (1938), Strange Cargo (1940)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide[ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Village Voice Article (2006) ] [ San Francisco Chronicle Article (2006) ] [ Slant Magazine Article (2006) ]
Books: [ Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic ] [ Souls Made Great Through Love and Adversity: The Film Work of Frank Borzage
DVD's: [ Amazon ]
1,000 Greatest Films: Seventh Heaven (1927), Moonrise (1948)
250 Quintessential Noir Films: Moonrise (1948)
 
A Farewell to Arms (1932)Man's Castle (1933)Three Comrades (1938)Seventh Heaven (1927)
 
     
  "By the mid-1920s, Borzage was one of the most successful Hollywood directors - as witness the fact that he won the newly created Oscar for direction twice in its first five years - for Seventh Heaven and Bad Girl. War, and the consequent taste for realism, destroyed the world he had created and after The Mortal Storm, only one other film - Moonrise - properly revealed his talent. As a result, he is now badly neglected." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "Frank Borzage was that rarity of rarities, an uncompromising romanticist...Borzage never needed dream worlds for his suspension of disbelief. He plunged into the real worlds of poverty and oppression, the world of Roosevelt and Hitler, the New Deal and the New Order, to impart an aura to his characters, not merely through soft focus and a fluid camera, but through a genuine concern with the wondrous inner life of lovers in the midst of adversity." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)  
     
  "Crucial to his films' incandescent romanticism were his fluid use of the camera, floating through unoccupied spaces to suggest mysterious invisible forces existing beyond the material realm, and a focus on luminous faces; his attention to actresses, especially Janet Gaynor and Margaret Sullavan, made unusually palpable the strength of their undying love." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)  
     
  "Borzage's top films are laden with romance and expressive camera work and lighting." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
 
 
 

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