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King Vidor

 

TSPDT Rating

 TOP 100 
 
 The Far Side of Paradise 
 
Jean-Pierre Melville's 64 Favourite Pre-War American Filmmakers (Cahiers du Cinema, October 1961)
 
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Victor Fleming
John Ford
Sam Fuller
Abel Gance
D.W. Griffith
Edmund Goulding
Otto Preminger
Douglas Sirk
John M. Stahl
Raoul Walsh
William Wellman
View video clips relating to this director at YouTube.com
Director / Producer / Screenwriter
1894 - 1982 
Born February 8, Galveston, Texas, USA
Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Drama, Melodrama, Psychological Drama
Key Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Hugh Wynn (Editor), Irving Thalberg (Producer), Laurence Stallings (Screenwriter), Sidney Bracey (Character Player), Jennifer Jones (Leading Player), Hedy Lamarr (Leading Player), Robert Young (Leading Player), Joseph Cotten (Leading Player), John Arnold (Cinematographer)
Highly Recommended: The Crowd (1928), Stella Dallas (1937), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Fountainhead (1949), Beyond the Forest (1949), Ruby Gentry (1952)
Recommended: The Big Parade (1925), Show People (1928), Hallelujah! (1929), Our Daily Bread (1934), The Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), Man Without a Star (1955)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Reel Classics Page ] [ International Silent Movie Profile ] [ Senses of Cinema Article (2007) ]
Books: [ King Vidor ] [ The Men Who Made the Movies ]
DVD's: [ Amazon ] 
1,000 Greatest Films: The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), Hallelujah! (1929), Our Daily Bread (1934), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Fountainhead (1949)
250 Quintessential Noir Films: Beyond the Forest (1949)
 
The Crowd (1928)Stella Dallas (1937)Duel in the Sun (1946)Ruby Gentry (1952)
 
     
  "King Vidor is a director for anthologies. He has created more great moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank. Vidor's is an unusually intuitive talent, less grounded than most in theory. The classics of his humanistic museum period - The Big Parade, The Crowd, Hallelujah - are no less uneven or more impressive than the classics of his delirious modern period - Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)  
     
  "Though Vidor was a versatile director whose finest films include sophisticated comedy (Show People) and poignant melodrama (Stella Dallas), his most typical work is notable for an emotional and visual boldness, later often bordering on bombast...Though Vidor's work was seldom subtle, the vigour and scale of his storytelling and imagery make for enjoyably forthright entertainment." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)  
     
  "Informing most of his lasting work is the struggle of Man against Destiny and Nature. In his great silent pictures, The Big Parade and The Crowd, the hero wanders through an anonymous and malevolent environment, war-torn Europe and the American City, respectively...Vidor exercised more control on his films after Our Daily Bread (1934), often serving as producer, but his projects continued to fluctuate between intense metaphysical drama and light-weight comedy and romance." - Michael Selig (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)  
     
  "A great populist of the American cinema, Vidor never let theme or story obscure the needs of his characters. Sometimes this resulted in lumbering productions, but more often his work radiated a real, warm, humorous tone." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
 
 
 
 
 
 

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