George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1984
Running Time	110
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	George Stevens Jr.
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Jean Arthur Fred Astaire Montgomery Clift James Dean Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Cary Grant Katharine Hepburn Rock Hudson Sam Jaffe Alan Ladd Fred MacMurray Joel McCrea Jack Palance
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Carl Davis Catherine Shields Gail Schumann

     George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey is a 1984 documentary about a classic figure in Old Hollywood. Less well known than some of his contemporaries, he was a cinematographer and later a director of motion pictures. As a director he was a bridge between the beginnings of Hollywood and the new directors of the late 60's and early 70's.

    The film focuses on his directorial career and consists of film excerpts as well as interviews with fellow directors, actors and other people who worked with Stevens over his lengthy career.

    Stevens began his career playing child parts on stage before he gained employment in the exciting world of the movies as a cameraman for silent film producer Hal Roach. After directing a few comedy shorts himself he had a major break when the studio allowed him to do Alice Adams with rising star Katharine Hepburn in 1935. The movie was a great success and so began a series of films that were received well both critically and at the box office.

    The early Stevens films such as Woman of the Year cemented his reputation as a superb comedic director. The documentary shows a lengthy comedy excerpt from that movie to illustrate his skill for drawing out the maximum humour of the situation through nuance and underplaying. He also directed the classic comedy The More The Merrier and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the musical Swing Time.

    When his reputation was at its height (having just finished Gunga Din, a huge success albeit one that threatened to bankrupt the studio with its cost overruns) Stevens saw the Leni Reifehnstal documentary glorifying Hitler, Triumph of the Will. So concerned was he with the movie that he joined up in the Second World War and became a filmmaker of war. By far the most stunning images in the documentary are those taken by Stevens on his own camera during the D-Day Invasion. At the time of the making of the documentary these images were the only films of the war in Europe in colour. He filmed the journey through the invasion and the liberation of France, into the heart of Germany and, finally, inside the concentration camp at Dachau. The horrific images he saw and filmed there changed him and Stevens never made another comedy.

    After returning from the war Stevens entered his golden period with such movies as A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant and the Diary of Anne Frank earning him Oscar nominations for each and Best Director statuettes for A Place in the Sun and Giant.

    The documentary was directed by his son George Stevens Jr and to that end should be seen as a tribute to Stevens and not really an examination of what made him tick. In recent times there have been some excellent documentaries about filmmakers such as Cecil B DeMille and Elia Kazan which dissect both the men and their work. This is not such a film. The interviewees are polite to a tee, as Stevens Jr was doing the interviewing. Therefore we hear about what a great guy Stevens was but gain little more insight into his makeup. Although part of the Hollywood system, Stevens was also something of a maverick, producing many of his own films, and driving studios mad with his use of film stock and slow and methodical approach to the editing process.

    Still, Stevens is an often overlooked figure and it is good to see this testament to his work. It is also good that Stevens Jr included fairly lengthy excerpts from the movies which really help the viewer to get an idea of his father's skill as a filmmaker. He died in 1975 having made only 2 films in the past 15 years including his version of the messiah story, The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Video

    George Stevens: A Filmmakers Journey is brought to DVD in a 1.33:1 transfer which is probably consistent with its original aspect ratio.

    Of course, the film excerpts are from a variety of aspect ratios and whilst the footage from the early movies may have also been 1.33:1 it has been necessary to mix it with the widescreen films such as Giant. The scenes from that movie are used to demonstrate key points in the movie and therefore the pan & scan that has gone on is not really detrimental to the whole documentary.

    The source print used for this DVD transfer betrays its origins. It looks like a 1980's movie. There is an appreciable amount of grain in the interview scenes and the film excerpts have not been brushed up for DVD. There is an abundance of artefacts in the whole film and the telecine wobbles at times. I could not detect any edge enhancement except in the opening scene, an excerpt from Giant where Jett Rink stakes out his land, where poor James Dean is given a blue/green halo of alien origins!

    However, I suspect that the audience for this documentary will not despair at the technical issues. Given that the documentary was assembled in the early 80's what is on the DVD is about as good as this film can look without a major restoration.

    There are subtitles for the hearing impaired, as well as for a number of other languages, and the English subtitles give a clear account of the dialogue.

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Audio

    The sound for the movie is Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) which, again, will probably not trouble the cinema history enthusiast. The sound is adequate at best and at times the presence of subtitles was a blessing. Some of the interviewees have strong accents which can be hard to follow. In the film segments I found the music mix a little high to hear some of the crucial dialogue.

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    The Region 1 DVD is essentially the same except for a cast and crew biography. Given that all this information is freely available on the internet I don't see any reason to opt for anything other than the Region 4 DVD.

    George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey is a heartfelt tribute to one of the most successful directors in film history, both with the critics and at the box office. It is a little old-fashioned in its approach which rarely strays from reverential in its tone. Despite this, and despite the age and condition of the DVD source, it is recommended for anyone who has a keen interest in the history of cinema.

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