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A two-week retrospective of two-time Oscar-winning director GEORGE STEVENS (1904-1975) will run at Film Forum from Friday, October 4 - Thursday, October 17. Known for his attention to detail, a photographer’s eye for composition, and his sensitive work with actors, Stevens is among the pantheon of Golden Age Hollywood directors. Stevens also distinguished himself as one of the most important chroniclers of World War II, heading a special film unit that would document the D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris, and the atrocities of Dachau.
The son of well-known stage actors, and himself a child actor, the Oakland-born director began his career at 17 as a camera assistant for producer Hal Roach. When Roach had trouble photographing the pale blue eyes of his new English comedian, Stan Laurel, Stevens solved the problem by changing the film stock, thus making Laurel’s film career possible. Roach soon teamed Laurel with comedian Oliver Hardy, with Stevens becoming their principal photographer on 35 silent and sound shorts. Stevens would later credit the team for teaching him that comedy could be “graceful and human.” (A program of comedy shorts shot by Stevens will be shown as part of our Film Forum Jr. series.)
After two years making minor comedies for RKO in the early 30s, Stevens was given the chance to direct his first “A” picture, ALICE ADAMS (1935), an adaptation of the Booth Tarkington novel starring Katharine Hepburn. A huge success that revitalized Hepburn’s career, it elevated Stevens’ position at RKO as a director of important pictures and important stars. His subsequent films at RKO included ANNIE OAKLEY (1935), starring Barbara Stanwyck; SWING TIME (1936), widely considered the best of the Astaire & Rogers musicals; A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1937), Astaire’s first Ginger-less musical, with songs by George and Ira Gershwin; and GUNGA DIN (1939), starring Cary Grant, Fontaine, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the decade’s greatest adventure film and RKO’s most expensive movie up to that time.
Stevens left RKO to freelance, first at MGM, where he made history with the hit comedy WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942), the first of nine films co-starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. At Columbia, he made two of his most memorable films: the romantic comedy THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943), starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn (in an Oscar-winning role), for which Stevens was Oscar-nominated, and the comedy-drama THE TALK OF THE TOWN (1942), starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman. Both will be shown in the festival in new 4K restorations.
A viewing of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda movie TRIUMPH OF THE WILL convinced Stevens to join the Army Signal Corps during WWII. With the rank of Lt. Colonel, Stevens led a special film unit assigned to document the D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the surrender of the German commandant, the meeting of American and Soviet forces, and the horrors of the Duben labor camp and the Dachau concentration camps. The footage of the camps shot by Stevens and his unit became the most important evidence of Nazi atrocities at the Nuremberg trials. The 16mm Kodachrome color footage shot by Stevens himself is some of the only color film (not colorized) of the war .
Following the war, and the horrors he bore witness to, Stevens would change his focus from the lighter fare of his pre-war films. His post-war films include no straight comedies, though are not without comic elements, as in his first film back as a civilian: I REMEMBER MAMA (1948), starring Irene Dunne, a nostalgic look at the more innocent days of the San Francisco of Stevens’ youth.
Stevens’ next three films may be the three he’s best remembered for: A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951), an adaptation of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift; the Technicolor Western SHANE (1953), starring Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, and Brandon De Wilde; and the epic GIANT (1956), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean in his final role. Stevens received Best Director Oscars for both A PLACE IN THE SUN and GIANT. In 1954, he received the Academy’s Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, recognizing his work as a producer.
Stevens’ wartime experiences greatly influenced his decision to film THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959), the first Hollywood movie to deal with the Holocaust, and THE GREATEST STORY OF EVER TOLD (1965), an epic telling of the story of Jesus Christ (played by Max Von Sydow), but with the anti-Semitism removed. THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD will be screened on Saturday, Saturday, October 19 in a rare 35mm print from George Stevens, Jr.’s’ own collection at the Academy Archive.
The festival concludes on October 17 with a full day of movies starring Jean Arthur (1900-1991), commemorating the anniversary of her birth that day, including the three films she made for Stevens (THE MORE THE MERRIER, THE TALK OF THE TOWN, and SHANE), and an early appearance in THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID (1929), being shown as part of our concurrent festival of “It Girl” Clara Bow (most Mondays, October 7 - December 23; press release to follow).
George Stevens’ son, George Stevens, Jr., who worked as a production assistant on SHANE and GIANT and as associate producer on THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, will introduce several screenings in the opening week of the Film Forum festival. A new 4K restoration of his acclaimed documentary about his father, GEORGE STEVENS: A FILMMAKER’S JOURNEY, will have its world premiere as part of the festival.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: YEARS OF LIGHTNING, DAYS OF DRUMS (1965), a documentary produced by George Stevens, Jr. following JFK’s assassination, will also be screened as a sidebar to the festival.
Among his many accomplishments as a writer, filmmaker, producer and playwright, George Stevens, Jr. is the founder of the American Film Institute, creator of the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Awards, and served as co-chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities for President Obama. His awards and honors include fifteen Emmys, eight Writers Guild Awards, two Peabody awards, the Humanitas Prize, the Spirit of Anne Frank Award, an NAACP Legal Defense Fund Award and an Honorary Academy Award in 2012. His memoir, My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington, will be available for sale at Film Forum during the festival, with book signing events to be announced. - Bruce Goldstein
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