Final Rating: 4.5/5
4K Recommendation: Enthusiastic Recommend
For the number of great classic Hollywood era films that he directed, it feels wrong to call George Stevens underrated. It feels even more incorrect when you consider the scale of so many of his most renowned films: the towering ornate house standing on the desolate prairie landscape of Giant, the traditional homestead from Shane nestled in a mountainous valley, the battle formations across the long vistas of Gunga Din, and the immense period detail sprawled across the Ultra Panavision 70 frame of The Greatest Story Ever Told all suggest a grandiose personality controlling massive artistic visions.
And yet, the picture that is painted of the man in 1985’s George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey does not fit that mold. His story is much more interesting than that and has an impactful pivot point outside of the traditional film industry he worked within for decades.
This film, directed by George Stevens Jr., is an early entry into the now-more-prevalent subgenre of documentaries about movies and making movies. It follows the story of his father’s life within Hollywood going from an apprentice photographer to trusted director of stars and starlets to venerated American director.
Unlike something like Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, this documentary is not a comprehensive look at everything he ever directed. The “filmmaker’s journey” within the title is the film’s guiding principle, so the focus is really on films and collaborations that shaped his career and perspective on the art form. To directly cite the film, it shows how George Sevens went from “dreamer to realist” and became one of the greats.
From his earliest days working on two-reel short comedies with Laurel and Hardy, Stevens found a way to be successful within the Hollywood studio system of the 30s and 40s. He found his big break as a director at RKO Pictures with the 1935 Katherine Hepburn-starring comedy Alice Adams and would make twelve films over the next eight years between RKO, Columbia Pictures, and MGM.
Many of these films have lived on in classic film buff’s minds and collections over the years, with Swing Time, Gunga Din, Woman of the Year, and The More the Merrier chief among them.
While these varied in genre and scale, they always had aspects of them that make the viewer relish in the magic of moviemaking: Cary Grant leaping from a cliff into a river several stories below, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers telling a tragic pantomime through song and dance, Spencer Tracy calmly watching the slowly-building chaos of Katherine Hepburn trying to make him breakfast. Stevens had a patient style as a director that served his stars and stories well.
A viewing of the infamous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will had made a deep impact on Stevens, and when the United States joined the Allied forces in World War II George was one of several film directors who enlisted. He headed up a company of professionals that were to film combat operations and events that would be sent back home to be made into newsreel shorts for cinemagoers to see.
While this was occurring, George also shot footage on his own handheld 16mm color camera. He and his men were among those that captured the D-Day attacks, the liberation of Paris, and the meeting with their Russian allies as the war’s European theatre reached its end. Rather infamously, George also led the filming of the discovery of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at Dachau which would be shown during the Nuremberg Trials.
George’s handheld color footage of these battles and horrific events had not been publicly shown prior to this documentary’s 1985 release. The decision to showcase a good deal of these unique, stark, and unflinching scenes from his father’s archive is what makes George Stevens Jr’s documentary much more gripping than your average filmmaker’s journey.
As one can imagine, this experience made a deep impact on the man who had been more used to making movies that audiences would cheer for, laugh with, and fall in love to. He returned from his tour of duty a changed man, and the kinds of stories he was interested in telling on the screen changed too.
His later career films would all tackle much more serious and less lighthearted topics, but they would become some of his most revered. These would include I Remember Mama, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Greatest Story Ever Told, as well as what would come to be known as his “American Trilogy”: the dramatic post-war army veteran story A Place in the Sun, the Technicolor western-as-war allegory Shane, and the sprawling Texas family drama Giant.
This could be seen as a somewhat surprising choice for the Warner Archive Collection to release on a 4K disc, as it is only their fifth release on the Ultra HD format. As expected, the visual presentation looks great across all the different footage qualities throughout the documentary.
The clips from the different Stevens films are all great, and the fact that a good many of these have had recent 4K restorations of their own may have contributed to Warner Archive wanting to release it on this format. Sound also does play a bit of a factor to this doc, especially in sections talking about the auditory impact of the gunshots in Shane, and as expected it comes across in great quality.
The Warner Archive disc also includes a trio of special features that all revolve around a unique annual event: the George Stevens Lecture on Directing. This event, put on by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, was initiated in 1982 as a short lecture given by a director, actor, or filmmaker prior to a screening of one of Stevens’ films. Two of the most recent lectures, given by Christopher Nolan and Guillermo del Toro, are included on this disc in their entirety courtesy of the Academy Museum.
An introduction from Martin Scorsese is also included, and all three of these supplements give great insight to the artistry of George Stevens and just how revered and influential he is as a Hollywood director.
Chances are good that one of your favourite directors loves and admires the work of George Stevens, and this makes the re-release of this documentary a timely one. His evolution as a filmmaker moved gracefully from the heyday of the studio system into the ethos of the New Hollywood of the 70s, and his films continue to find interesting ways to surprise new viewers. This journey, coupled with his involvement in filming one of the largest wars in human history, make this release a vital watch.
Thank you Allied Vaughn and Movie Zyng for the screener.
Buy your copy of George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey here: https://moviezyng.com/pbakgq
