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Review by Michael Sims
Once upon a time, the 75-year-old John Ford exclaimed to the 29-year-old Peter Bogdanovich, "Oh, for God's sake, Bogdanovich! Can't you do anything but ask questions?"
Bogdanovich certainly can do other things. He directed Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show, and he has written numerous other books. But because of his knowledge of filmmaking and film history, he is a master at asking intelligent and insightful questions. He has been doing it ever since he first encountered the movie business in 1961. As a result, he has evolved two simultaneous careers, director and critic.
The almost 800 pages of Who the Devil Made It? are packed with fascinating talks with some of the most important directors in the pantheon -- George Cukor, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Chuck Jones, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and many others. Leo McCarey complains about the nonstop antics that hampered his directing what is surely the best Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup (and remarks that he thought Harpo the most creative brother). Otto Preminger describes wrestling with Daryl Zanuck over the noir classic Laura. Chuck Jones talks about the evolution of Wile E. Coyote. Don Siegel remembers his attempts to portray the mindless conformity of pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bogdanovich certainly subscribes to the auteur theory of the director as the artistic force behind a film. "In all the films I really liked," he says in his lengthy introduction, "there was a definite sense of one artist's vision, a feeling of the director's virtual presence within and outside the frames we watched. . ." The many interviews confirm this thesis.
Arranged in the order of the directors' births, the 16 chapters create a history of film from McCarey's early Laurel and Hardy shorts through Siegel's work with Clint Eastwood. Usually composed of several talks woven together, the interviews range from a few pages long to over 80.
"Pure cinema," Hitchcock said to Bogdanovich, "is complementary pieces of film put together, like notes of music make a melody." Journalism can be accomplished the same way. Bogdanovich has pieced together chats, asides, and near-interrogations into an impressive whole, and in doing so has created a series of tributes that convey his passion for the twentieth century's most influential art form.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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