User Reviews

This documentary about the career of director/producer William Wyler, appropriately, begins with the music from one of his best films, "The Big Country". It consists of footage, many interviews with stars and footage taken of Wyler only days before his death.

The reason I loved seeing this film is that for a long time I have felt that Wyler was probably the greatest American director. Although John Ford won more Oscars and Hitchcock (yes, he was British--but his best films were made in America) today gets all the recognition, Wyler was somehow able to consistently make great films. He didn't have a particular style...other than GREAT. Here, his contemporaries such as Billy Wilder, John Huston, Bette Davis, Greer Garson and Wyler's wife are all interviewed and give insights into his personality and style.

I enjoyed this film a lot but it did have one problem. Because Wyler made so many great films, the movie went too fast and one hour was simply too little. Excellent otherwise.

By the way, of all the reminiscences in the documentary, probably the most boring and pointless was the one involving Ralph Richardson walking about his beard. A lovely actor and a lovely film...but a really dull thing to include in the documentary!

This is a good introduction to the work of one of cinema's finest and most professional directors. Although Wyler was sometimes criticised for having no discernible style of his own (he was no auteur, and I imagine he probably though the very notion ridiculous), he was famed for his meticulous approach to film-making, and willingness to have a crack at almost anything. As he himself said, he didn't want to just make the same film over and over -- he wanted to try different genres and make as many varied movies as he could.

This documentary features interviews with Wyler himself (recorded just three days before his death -- you can't possibly get tighter timing than that!), along with his wife and many of the stars he worked with over his long decades as a Hallywood A-list director. We don't get huge insights into the man behind the camera, but we learn a bit about his personal life, his background, his enthusiastic approach to living. There are also lots of clips from his better known films.

What shines through is Wyler's dedication to his work, his insistence on getting scenes right. He was (in)famous for making his actors do a shot numerous times -- there are legends that he sometimes did 40, 50, 60 or more takes of certain scenes. Charlton Heston and Wyler question the accuracy of those claims, but other actors insist they were no exaggeration. Either way, there's no doubt he was a perfectionist -- or that those he bossed around respected and admired him regardless of how badly he treated them on set. As Gregory Peck pointed out, every actor wanted to work with Wyler, because more actors won Oscars in his films than any other director's!!! This will be of only passing interest to hardcore Wyler fans, who would love to learn more about the man, to perhaps see dailies of him at work (if any exist), to see even more of that final interview. But as a quick way of getting familiar with his work, it does the business, and does it quite well. Because he eschewed the whole auteur approach to movie-making, Wyler has been somewhat marginalised over the years -- I think critics prefer directors with a one-track vision, as that makes it easier for them to write about! But as the testimonies on display here prove -- from the likes of heavyweights like Billy Wilder, John Ford, Laurence Olivier and Bette Davis -- Wyler's name should be revered with the very best of Hollywood's directors.