The Dead End Kid who married Gloria Vanderbilt and never looked back. The actor’s director. A master technician, who thinks nothing of...
A terrible waste of talent. ‘Ah, but though eighty percent of his oeuvre is undeniably formulaic pap, is he not Hollywood’s only...
A director from over there who did rather well over here. He brought speeded-up film back out of the silent age to...
Always ‘the Master’. Would think nothing of spending a fortnight on getting a three-second seascape shot just so. More fond of trains...
With The Blues Brothers, he took the one Saturday Night Live sketch with no discernible jokes, and turned it into a multi-million...
The doyen of disembowelment. A greater influence on Hollywood than Hitchcock and Truffaut combined. ‘He borrowed our mise-en-scene, now we’re borrowing it...
The middle-brow’s middle-brow. Always ‘that bearded recluse, the shy, indefatigable Stanley Kubrick’. Perennially mistreated by his countrymen, he sought refuge from the...
The controversial Irish firebrand. Roguish male punters should allude to the lasting impression made by an adolescent encounter with Danielle Dax in...
The gay Spike Lee. Scourge of the establishment. Would think nothing of making a Pig Latin musical in which Michelangelo is transported...
The Grand Moff of gore. In a review of his latest blockbuster, be sure to mention how far he’s come since the...
The harbourmaster of heritage. His chocolate box recreations of our colonial past are now so internationally renowned they are in danger of...
The erstwhile brigadier of bachelor rudery has grown up to become the chief petty officer of children’s slapstick. In a wry profile...
Always ‘the Master’. His influence remains so all-pervasive in modern cinema it is perfectly possible to write a wry article about his...
Always ‘the steely-eyed Teutonic polymath’. Never felt a film was worthwhile if it didn’t involve hypnotising his all-dwarf cast to drag a...
The middle-brow’s middle-brow. Creates visual enigmas rather than films in the conventional, Hollywood sense. Has a knowledge of the classical painters so...
The cold-hearted romantic. Who else but Godard could take a minor Gregory Peck western, strip it apart shot by shot, then reassemble...
Paradoxically, the eternal child of Hollywood is now making more mature films than any of your so-called Dogme school of directors. Has...
Turned a dime-store horror novel into a milestone of modern cinema. Mark Kermode writes: ‘Not only is The Exorcist the scariest film...
Always ‘the Master’. He painted the broad canvas of the American west with the meticulous brush of personal dignity. ‘Of course, the...
In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, make mocking references to Nescafe adverts.
Always ‘the Master’. Philip French writes: ‘Fellini’s La Dolce Vita marks the consummation of his ‘mature’ style. Gone are the self-conscious neo-realist...
A decidedly wayward comic talent. Consistency may elude him, but on his day he can turn a pool cue, a toilet roll...
The Dauphin of decomposition. Make reference to his ‘Freudian use of prosthetics’. Can’t adapt books for toffee. His catalogue of aesthetic obsessions...
Always ‘British cinema’s prodigal son, the much-maligned maverick Alex Cox’. His films may not be to anyone’s taste, but you have to...
The budget behemoth. Personally oversaw more than two thousand motion pictures from 1960-65 alone, on an average budget of fifty dollars apiece....
Always ‘the bearded colossus of the sprawling American saga’. The director’s director. In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, speculate on...
Always ‘those enigmatic sibling auteurs, the mysterious Coen brothers’. Only they truly understand their own films. In a wry article for the...
The folie de grandeur that was Heaven’s Gate may have put paid to the idea of the true Hollywood auteur once and...
The no-budget polymath. Never happier than when directing a high- octane action sequence with one hand and simultaneously playing the score on...
Mention his ‘unmatched on-set generalship’. The De Mille de nos jours. He may not know one end of a camera from the...
The spindly small-town elf who made Goth respectable. The Obergruppenfuhrer of odd. ‘When he was a little boy, the circus left to...
Scourge of the establishment. He knew better than anyone the dark, perverted heart beating at the centre of the Catholic church. ‘Of...
A decidedly wayward comic talent. Consistency may elude him, but on his day he can turn a plate of beans, a comfort...
He only makes a film every six years, but every one is a masterpiece. If someone mentions Exorcist II: the Heretic, say:...
The stylist’s stylist. So confident of his own talent he thinks nothing of spending $50 million filming an idle daydream he had...
In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, always ‘the sombre Swede’. More people have filmed humorous sketches parodying The Seventh Seal...
An institution. Always ‘the indefatigable Sir Dickie’. The professional’s professional. Never approaches the cinematic wicket at half-cock, however small the job. Only...
The baron of bloodshed. His colleagues advised him that using contemporary synthesised prog rock to soundtrack his films would cause them to...
The socialist Eisenstein. Had a rough time of it at school, by all accounts. ‘The introverts always scream the loudest.’ ‘Not true!...
The king of ensemble satire. Never happier than when filming twenty simultaneously yammering actors from atop a giant crane. His films reflect...
The most gravely serious of celluloid clowns. Always ‘New York’s neurotic nebbish’. In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, pick September...
Relatively gargantuan celluloid arm of the World Group, as founded in '59 by former head of PR at Associated Television John Heyman,...
Conjured up in the late ’50s by playwright John Osborne and director Tony Richardson, you’d expect plenty of angry, heavyweight modernist drama...
Founded in 1950 by a pre-Bond Cubby Broccoli and Polish director Irving Allen, initially turning out derring-do such as Cockleshell Heroes and...
A horror stable with quite a pedigree – founded by the son of esteemed director/cinematographer Freddie Francis, with the old man himself...
Established by Italian immigrant producer Filippo Del Giudice and director Mario Zampi in 1937, the Tower Bridge logo heralded films from a...
Early name for Stanley A Long’s brand of nascent nudity during the ’60s, prior to the notorious Salon Productions (qv). Responsible for...
Odd name for a very British company, Producing very British comedies mainly directed by Roman ex-pat Mario Zampi (but cf Two Cities)....
Begun in ’64 by Robert Hartford-Davis, who’d directed girlschool perv-up The Yellow Teddybears and 18th century horror The Black Torment for Compton...
Whizzkid publicist Tony Tenser went from small-time distributor Miracle Films (‘If it’s a good film, it’s a Miracle!’) to strip club-sponsored Compton...
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