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King Vidor |
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Director / Producer /
Screenwriter |
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1894 - 1982 |
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Born February 8,
Galveston, Texas, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres: Drama,
Melodrama, Psychological Drama, Romantic Drama |
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Key
Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Hugh Wynn (Editor), Irving Thalberg
(Producer), Henry Blanke (Producer), Samuel Goldwyn (Producer), Laurence Stallings (Screenwriter),
Renee Adoree (Leading Character Player), John Qualen (Character Player), Sidney Bracey (Character Player), Max Steiner (Composer) |
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Highly Recommended:
The Crowd (1928)*, Stella Dallas (1937), Duel
in the Sun (1946)*, The Fountainhead (1949)*, Beyond the Forest (1949)#,
Ruby Gentry (1952) |
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Recommended:
The
Big Parade (1925)*, Show
People (1928), Hallelujah! (1929)*, Our Daily Bread (1934)*, The
Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941),
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), Man
Without a Star (1955) |
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Worth a Look: La
Boheme (1926), The Champ (1931), Street Scene (1931), The Stranger's
Return (1933), The Wedding Night (1935), An American Romance (1944), War and Peace (1956), The
Metaphor (1980) |
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Approach with Caution:
Comrade X (1940) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB
] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Senses of Cinema Article (2011) ] [
International Silent Movie Profile
] [
Wikipedia ] |
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Books:
[
King
Vidor ] [
The
Men Who Made the Movies ] |
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"King
Vidor is a director for anthologies. He has created more great
moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank.
Vidor's is an unusually intuitive talent, less grounded than
most in theory. The classics of his humanistic museum period -
The Big Parade, The Crowd, Hallelujah - are no less
uneven or more impressive than the classics of his delirious
modern period - Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby
Gentry."
-
Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"Though Vidor was a versatile director whose finest films
include sophisticated comedy (Show People) and
poignant melodrama (Stella Dallas), his most typical work
is notable for an emotional and visual boldness, later often
bordering on bombast... Though Vidor's work was seldom subtle,
the vigour and scale of his storytelling and imagery make for
enjoyably forthright entertainment." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"Informing
most of his lasting work is the struggle of Man against Destiny
and Nature. In his great silent pictures, The Big Parade
and The Crowd, the hero wanders through an anonymous and
malevolent environment, war-torn Europe and the American City,
respectively... Vidor exercised more control on his films after
Our Daily Bread (1934), often serving as producer, but
his projects continued to fluctuate between intense metaphysical
drama and light-weight comedy and romance." -
Michael Selig (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991) |
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"A great populist of the American cinema, Vidor never let theme
or story obscure the needs of his characters. Sometimes this
resulted in lumbering productions, but more often his work
radiated a real, warm, humorous tone." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include Wild Oranges (1924), Bardelys the
Magnificent (1926), The Patsy (1928), Billy the Kid (1930), Not So Dumb
(1930), Bird of Paradise (1932), Cynara (1932), So Red the Rose (1935),
The Texas Rangers (1936), Japanese War Bride
(1952), and Solomon and Sheba (1959). |
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"No
other American director of his time is more engaging or less
easy to pin down. Vidor could be radical and conservative
(Our Daily Bread and The Fountainhead). He could
handle so many genres while retaining such a vibrant sense
of the oddity of people. For example, in the very
melodramatic setup of Duel in the Sun, notice how the
characters grow in complexity as the film advances.
Moreover, Vidor could be shocking - there's
a kind of spiritual violence in, say, Beyond the Forest,
The Fountainhead, or Stella Dallas that is
still engrossing. Was he optimist or pessimist?"
-
David Thomson,
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
The Far Side of Paradise |
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●
Jean-Pierre Melville's 64 Favourite Pre-War American Filmmakers (Cahiers
du Cinema, October 1961) |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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●
Michael Curtiz |
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●
Victor
Fleming |
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John
Ford |
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Samuel
Fuller |
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Abel
Gance |
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D.W.
Griffith |
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Edmund
Goulding |
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Henry King |
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Douglas
Sirk |
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John
M. Stahl |
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Raoul
Walsh |
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●
William
Wellman |
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King Vidor's Favourites |
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Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
William Wyler,
The Big Parade (1925)
King Vidor,
Brief Encounter (1945)
David Lean,
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles,
City Lights (1931)
Charles Chaplin,
Intolerance (1916)
D.W. Griffith,
The Last Laugh (1924)
F.W. Murnau,
The Red Shoes (1948)
Michael Powell &
Emeric Pressburger,
Rome, Open City (1945)
Roberto Rossellini,
Sunrise (1927)
F.W. Murnau.
Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952) |
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