By Samuel Wigley
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreader: Qin Tian
Source: Sight & Sound (February 13, 2014)
Following Toby Jones' portrayal of the slightly obese Hitchcock in the recent TV film The Blonde Muse, Anthony Hopkins also cast the big-screen image of the master of suspense films in Sasha Jevasi's new hitchcock. It's safe to say that film directors — those who dominate ideas behind camera — have recently become the subject on the silver screen.
Anthony Hopkins in Alfred Hitchcock vs Hitchcock (2012).
As the medium of cinema entered its second century, its history and legends have become a mineral deposit of modern cinema. Of course, since the silent film era, the motto "Write what you know" has led writers and directors to start making films about the industry, and many classics about filmmaking have been born, from "In the Rain" (1952) and "Eight and a Half" (1963) to "Mulholland Drive" (2001).
But the director's roles in these types of films are almost always fictional, or, if they are imitations of real people, there will also be fictional names. For example, Clint Eastwood's role as John Hustonian "John Wilson" in The White Hunter's Black Heart (1990), or Marcelo Mastruanni's portrayal of the tortured director Guido Ansemi in Eight and a Half, were fellini's own stand-ins.
Eight and a Half (1963)
In the past, if a real-life director was going to be in a movie, why not let the real director play himself — like Cecil Lee in Sunset Boulevard (1950). B. Demir, or Fritz Lang in Contempt (1963)?
Fritz Lang (left) plays himself in Contempt (1963).
There are very few films in which actors play real directors, but they are slowly reaching a kind of group effect. Hitchcock will also appear next year in a film about the life of Grace Kelly, and Orson Wells, the great talker and performer, is the most common protagonist in films about film directors.
And the young Jean Renoir (played by Vincent Rotier) appeared in the biopic "Renoir" (2012) about his father, Luis Buñuel has also made frequent appearances in films in recent years, and recently there has been a kind of film about filmmaking disasters (from "The Vampire" to Gevasi's "Hitchcock"), and the studio about the director's image remodeling has begun to take shape...
Charlie chaplin
Anyone with a fake beard and a top hat is likely to look like the hapless tramp played by Charlie Chaplin, who has always been a hit at the masquerade ball. But, as the contrasting pictures show, Robert Downey Jr. also proves his resemblance to the great comedy director.
Robert Downey Jr. in Charlie Chaplin vs Chaplin (1992).
Directed in 1992 by Richard Attenborough, the biopic flashbacks chaplin from his poor childhood to his apprenticeship in a London theatre company to his early career in Hollywood and his extraordinary world fame. Robert Downey Jr. cleverly mimicked the comedian's ballet-like gait and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
F· W·茂瑙
Although his career came to an abrupt end in a car accident before the premiere of his posthumous work Taboo (1931), F. Kennedy was killed in a car accident. W. Mauna remains one of the greatest directors of the silent film era. A key figure in expressionist German cinema in the 1920s, he was drawn to Hollywood in 1927 for a major production, Sunrise, which was hailed as a milestone in the film industry for its poetic lighting and roaming mirror movements.
Sunrise (1927)
The 2000 film The Phantom of the Vampire is a fictional rendition of Mauna's horror film Nosferatu (1922), a film adaptation that bypasses copyright and is based on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. John Markovich plays Maunau, a show-off freak who hones his skills at all costs and even hires a real-life vampire to play the grotesque Count Oroch.
F· John Markovich in W. Mauna vs. The Phantom of the Vampire (2000).
Luis Buñuel
Artists and writers who are canonized as saints are more likely to be brought to the big screen than film directors. In Paul Morrison's A Little Ashes, set in the avant-garde atmosphere of Madrid in the 1920s, aspiring film director Luis Buñuel (Matthew McNaughty) takes on the role of passerby in the same-sex relationship between his friends Salvador Dalí (Robert Pattinson) and Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltran).
As the two of them drew closer, Buñuel felt isolated and left Paris, where he began his film career, filming the surrealist masterpieces A Dog of Andalus (1929) and The Golden Age (1930).
In A Little Ashes, Buñuel is portrayed as an egotistical homophobic. In Woody Allen's nostalgic comedy Midnight in Paris (2011), Buñuel is slightly better, and the director (Adrian de Van) gets one of his best inspirations from Owen Wilson, who traveled through time, the 1962 Mexican film The Lost Angel.
James Wheel
In the early 1930s, British-born James Wheel brought the dark, exaggerated style of the German horror silent films "The Birth of Clay Man" (1920) and "Dr. Carrigalry's Cabin" (1920) to Hollywood, directing a series of influential horror films for Universal Pictures. Frankenstein (1931) and its 1935 sequels The Bride of Frankenstein, Lost Souls in The Old House (1932), and adaptations of H. Scott The Invisible Man (1933), G. Wells's novel of the same name, is one of the wittiest and most imaginative masterpieces of the genre.
The 1998 film Gods and beasts is based on a fictional novel about the relationship between the openly gay director and his male gardener. The film focuses on the last turning point in Wheel's life, where a string of strokes makes him vulnerable and tormented by the past.
James Wheel vs. Ian McLean in Gods and the Beasts James Wheel vs. Ian McLean in Gods and the Beasts
Ian McLean was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance and gave the silver-haired director a mischievous, sparkling glow. In addition, George Cook, played by Martin Ferrero, is another great director of The Golden Age of Hollywood.
Jean Viggo
Director Julian Temple always liked to feature passionate and often doomed characters, whether punk rock stars (Filth and Rage[2000]) or romantic poets (Chaos.[2000]). In the 1998 film Vigo: The Passion of Life, Dumbo turned to film directors, who had one of the most tragic short lives in film history.
Jean Viggo vs James Flein in Viggo: The Passion of Life (1998).
Paris-born Jean Viggo died of tuberculosis at the age of 29, leaving behind only three short films and a landmark feature film, The Atlanta (1934), which still makes its mark on the critics' list of the best films. It blended naturalism with surrealist poetry, which had an important influence on later film directors, including the French New Wave.
USS Atlanta (1934)
Dumbo let James Flyn, who had starred in the TV series Tudor, play the troublesome young director, and gave him a simulated Vigo hairstyle to dive into the Seine and experience what it was like to be an underwater ghost, just like the young lover in Atlanta.
Ed Wood
Ironically, the sometimes listed as the worst director of all time has become one of the most satisfying biopic themes. Ed Wood was the geek director of some of the most vulgar Z-rated sci-fi and horror films of the 1950s, a director who never let his meager budget get in the way of pursuing his vision. Movies like Monsters of the Atomic Man (1955) and Project Outer Space 9 (1959) are full of cardboard spaceships, rubber monster suits, and incongruous expansion packs.
Johnny Depp in Ed Wood vs Ed Wood (1994).
Tim Burton tells the story of Wood's life at the bottom of Hollywood, with Johnny Depp playing the charismatic director who loves to wear the opposite sex costume, and Depp enjoys every second, whether it's putting on Wood's beloved sweater or being fascinated by the moment of inspiration, above his slender mustache, his eyes are full of enthusiasm.
Orson Wells
"The vision is worth fighting for. Why spend your life creating dreams for others?" This is the advice that Orson Wells (Vincent Donofou) gave to the popular B-movie director Ed Wood in "Ed Wood". Perhaps due to his talent as a storyteller, or as a legendary archetype of a dynamic artist, Wells must have been the most often imitated film director on screen.
Christian McKay in Orson Wells vs. Orson Wells (2009)
Angus McFaedden played Wells, who was active in the New York theater in the 1930s in The Building Will Fall (1999); Levi Schreiber played Wells during the filming of Citizen Kane in the television film The Legend of the Great Nation (1999); Danny Heston played Wells in the aftermath of his doomed marriage to Rita Hayworth in The Curtain (2006); Christian McKay in Richard Linklater's "Me and Orson Wells" as shown above. Wells ( 2009 ) , who was rehearsing the 1937 stage play Julius Caesar , was undoubtedly one of the best incarnations.
Lawrence Oliver
As an actor-director, Kenneth Branagh's adaptations of Shakespeare's works were critically acclaimed on stage and on screen, and he was often likened to the great Lawrence Oliver to the point that it was inevitable that one day he would play Oliver.
Although Oliver is best known for his ingenious Shakespeare trilogy Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), In Simon Curtis's 2011 film My Week with Monroe, Branagh played Oliver in preparation for Dragon Play Phoenix (1957), which was heavily criticized.
Kenneth Branagh in Lawrence Oliver vs. My Week with Monroe (2011).
The film depicts the turbulent relationship between Oliver and his partner Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), leaving Brana with plenty of room to create a sophisticated, plump oliver figure. As Peter Bradshaw points out in The Guardian: "It's so funny to see Oliver, played by Branagh, explode into noble frustration with Marilyn's late arrival, wandering vagueness and absurd methodological performances." He sometimes seems to be playing the older, more evil Oliver in Thunderbolt."
Marvin Van Peebers
Marvin van Peebers' 1971 independent film Song of Sweetbuck, which tells the story of a young African-American trying to escape police persecution in South Central Los Angeles, is considered a landmark in awakening Hollywood's awareness of potentially young black audiences. Black exploitation films such as Black Street Detective (1971) and Super Fly (1972) followed.
But making a film with such revolutionary intent on the fringes of the conservative film industry naturally faced no small challenge, and the film's chaotic production history was later adapted into the film The Great Rogue (2004), the director's son, Mario van Peebers.
Mario van Peebbs in Marvin van Peebers vs. The Big Rogue (2003).
Among the classics in which actors play real-life directors, Mario (who plays Marvin) may have a natural advantage in appearance: he has a beard and always smokes a large cigar, resembling his groundbreaking father.