Directors make stories come to life. They write with images that turn into scenes. A collage of emotions fills the screen, moment by moment. Audiences are exposed to their visions with a precise lens. The landscape directors work with every day become part of the every day, a cultural touchstone. Directors tell stories through film, but it's not often that their own stories are told in biopics.
10 All That Jazz (1979)
All That Jazz is a musical drama inspired by the dancer and director Bob Fosse, who struggled to balance both professions. Fosse is presented as theater director Joe Gideon, producing his Broadway musical NY/LA.
The heavy-drinking, chain-smoking Gideon also sleeps with his dancers during the play's production. Stress and his self-destructive habits put him in the hospital with heart problems. Gideon is bedridden, and his play is canceled, leaving him to direct his remaining ideas in dreams before he dies.
What Makes It Great
The film is semi-autobiographical and based on Bob Fosse's time as a choreographer, dancer, and director. In the mid-1970s, Fosse was working on the movie Lenny and the Broadway play Chicago. The set designs and costumes, coupled with the stress of stardom and performing, complement the fantasy that Fosse was capable of producing.
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9 A Ray of Sun (1997)
A Ray of Sun recounts the lives of the Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini and his brother, film music composer Renzo Rossellini. Both pursue their passions and work together to not portray, but depict reality as is.
Blending sound and sight, the Rossellini brothers reawaken Italian cinema, and save it from its romanticized past. Despite success during cutbacks in 1940s Hollywood and creative differences with his brother, Roberto came to realize that his lens, his true experience in reality, was just a corner of the world's eye.
What Makes It Great
A Ray of Sun is poetry in motion. German director Georg Brintrup gives an expressionist view of two adamant artist brothers. Both were trying to capture not just what was happening, but what was real. Post-World War II Italy suffered economic strife and moral decay, but Roberto Rossellini made films that preserved rather than exploited the moment as it was lived.
8 The Buster Keaton Story (1957)
The Buster Keaton Story follows silent film actor and comedian Buster Keaton. His brand of physical comedy earns him a contract to make silent films. When the film industry transitioned to talkies, Keaton was at a low point in his career.
He falls into an alcoholic depression while his casting director, Gloria Brent, supports him. Keaton returns to his vaudeville routine after learning his fans still care to see him perform.
What Makes It Great
Buster Keaton, like many silent film stars, was one of the hardest working actors. The body can only take so much, and for Keaton, his soul was losing its will to make people laugh. When he signed over his creative independence in the late 1920s to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Keaton's career and home life were in shambles. Keaton did recover from his alcoholism, remarried, and received an Academy Honorary Reward for his work as a vaudeville performer.
7 The Disaster Artist (2017)
The Disaster Artist
- Release Date
- March 12, 2017
- Director
- James Franco
- Cast
- Alison Brie, Zoey Deutch, James Franco, Lizzy Caplan, Zac Efron, Bryan Cranston
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Drama
The Disaster Artist is a dramatized biopic of Tommy Wiseau, the director of The Room, one of the worst films ever made. The eccentric Wiseau decides to make the movie after multiple rejections from Hollywood professionals.
He casts his friend, actor Greg Sestero, but the filmmaking process is strained by Wiseau's creative incompetence. The project that should have been a failure for Wiseau went on to become a so-bad-it's-good success.
What Makes It Great
Tommy Wiseau is enigmatic, if not creative, in his approach as a director. He is as odd as they come, but to understand his process is almost child's play. James Franco decided to make a film based on Wiseau because he was a fan of how unintentional mistakes become art. The anomaly of a bad film that is entertaining cannot be faked, only loved.
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6 Ed Wood (1994)
Ed Wood
- Release Date
- September 27, 1994
- Director
- Tim Burton
- Cast
- Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, G.D. Spradlin
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Biography
Ed Wood is about the B-movie director Ed Wood. His approach was as unusual as his films. Shooting scenes in one take with aimless plots and a heavy use of stock footage was not appealing to a wide audience. Wood still managed to work with strange icons like Bela Lugosi and Maila Nurmi of Vampira fame. Though he did not have a warm reception during his career, Wood received posthumous recognition and a cult following for his work.
What Makes It Great
Ed Wood was not a celebrated director in his lifetime. His films were incoherent, unexpected madness. Above all, Wood was misunderstood. He wrote smutty pulp fiction, cross-dressed due to childhood trauma, and had faulty relationships and marriages. Audiences did not see Wood die penniless and drunk in Hollywood, but in the 1980s, the director rose from obscurity and garnered a cult following. Wood also had no obituary upon his death, so this film is a proper sendoff.
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5 Eisenstein (2000)
Eisenstein is about Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, the inventor of the montage. His historical films, like Battleship Potemkin, were praised but challenged by the communist ideology in Russia. At the beginning of the 20th century, political upheaval swept the country, and Eisenstein wanted to capture the unrelenting violence and despair on the rise. Eisenstein was an auteur who used new film techniques to go against the grain at home and abroad.
What Makes It Great
Sergei Eisenstein touched the pulse of Soviet Russian history. Eisenstein was not so much political as he was observational. His camera angles and large-scale montages of background actors were damning. To be a nonconformist posed a risk to Eisenstein, so he traveled and lectured about film theory across Europe. Eisenstein was an allegorical director, taking issue with the quality of life due to politics.
4 Enfant Terrible (2020)
Enfant Terrible
- Release Date
- October 1, 2020
- Director
- Oskar Roehler
- Cast
- Oliver Masucci, Hary Prinz, Katja Riemann, Felix Hellmann, Anton Rattinger, Erdal Yildiz
- Main Genre
- Documentary
Enfant Terrible explores the life of German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his role in developing the New German Cinema movement. Fassbinder's work was melodramatic, with social commentary reflecting post-war Germany. Universal themes of sexual identity, race, economic status, and politics were shown as vehicles of exploitation and systematic suppression in society. Fassbinder's creative output and attention to social ills were apropos markers of the human condition.
What Makes It Great
Fassbinder was a maverick director, and the film shows it. In a turbulent yet progressive time for Germany, he wanted to depict the detraction that came with those innovations. Fassbinder made a series of fast and intimate films filled with sexuality, misgivings and all.
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3 Gods and Monsters (1998)
Gods And Monsters
- Release Date
- January 21, 1998
- Director
- Bill Condon
- Cast
- Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, David Dukes, Kevin J. O'Connor
- Main Genre
- Biography
Gods and Monsters is told in vignettes while taking place during the retirement of director James Whale. As a prisoner of war in World War I, he participated in plays held at his camp and became interested in drama.
Later, Wales was influenced by German Expressionism and directed horror classics, including Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. He was also openly gay without discrimination, but he did suffer career-ending strokes. Wales died by suicide in his swimming pool to end his pain.
What Makes It Great
Prior to his death, Whale was a successful theater director. His talents in drama transitioned well into motion pictures with sound, including his post-World War I film adaptation of Journey's End. He later met his longtime partner and producer, David Lewis, and found success at Universal Studios. Whale's relationship with the film industry and Lewis came together at the right time, but they both dwindled into creative differences and promiscuity.
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2 Hitchcock (2012)
Hitchcock
- Release Date
- November 22, 2012
- Director
- Sacha Gervasi
- Cast
- Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Danny Huston, Toni Collette, Michael Stuhlbarg
- Rating
- PG-13
- Main Genre
- Biography
Hitchcock follows acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock and his film adaptation of the Robert Bloch novel Psycho. To help him with the making of the film is his wife, film editor Alma Reville. Pitching the movie to Paramount Pictures is difficult at first, seeing how Hitchcock wanted to keep suspect character Marion Crane alive longer. By killing her sooner at Alma's suggestion, the focus would shift to the tragic villain, Norman Bates. Psycho received a positive reception, thanks in part to Lady Hitchcock's keen eye for overlooked details.
What Makes It Great
Alfred Hitchcock was a merry man of the macabre. He made a killing off of the deaths of his darlings. Working conditions were tight for Hitchcock and his crew, but the picture was made independent of the studio with the director's own finances. Hitchcock's provocative style of filmmaking evolved from suspenseful thrillers and ushered in a new horror genre.
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1 Redoubtable (2017)
Redoubtable, or Godard Mon Amour, takes a glimpse into the late 1960s affair between French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard and young actress Anne Wiazemsky. The movie-making couple married within a year of meeting each other in 1967. That same year, Wiazemsky starred in Godard's political docufiction film La Chinoise. Godard revolutionized narrative structure as he manifested the philosophy behind them. Unfortunately, in the process, his relationship with Wiazemsky was short-lived.
What Makes It Great
Jean-Luc Godard was a passionate filmmaker who carried many beliefs, both political and spiritual. His films reflect a transgressive nature, one that is neither stable nor imbalanced. Godard's views would change over time, with his marriage to Wiazemsky falling out of view. Godard was an artist who challenged the idea of celebrity and film itself.
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