Great Directors Series on Turner Classic Movies

Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre, Oskar Werner in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim

In June, Turner Classic Movies‘ month-long series "Great Directors" will be celebrating the efforts of 52 films directors, from past and present, from Hollywood and overseas (though, as to be expected, mostly Hollywood).
Among TCM’s "greats" are, inevitably, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg, and John Ford, but also Jacques Tourneur, Mervyn LeRoy, and Budd Boetticher.
Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Carol Reed, and Ingmar Bergman are four of the non-Hollywood filmmakers who have been included in the series.
Each weekday of the "Great Directors" series will feature two directors — one during the day; the other at night.  The daytime lineup includes Victor Fleming (June [...]

Maurice Jarre

Maurice Jarre, best known for his Oscar-winning association with David Lean in films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1984), died in his sleep on March 28 at his home in Malibu after a brief illness. Some reports claimed that Jarre had cancer. He was 84.
Throughout his five-decade career in film and on television Jarre was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning Oscars for the three aforementioned films with Lean. (Following Lawrence of Arabia, Lean only made three more films, all with Jarre as composer. Their other collaboration was Ryan’s Daughter in 1970.)
Jarre also won two British Academy Awards — for Witness (1985) and Dead Poets Society (1989); four [...]

Berlin 2009: Maurice Jarre to Receive Honorary Golden Bear

The 59th Berlin International Film Festival’s Homage will be dedicated to Maurice Jarre, 84, who will receive the Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement on February 12, 2009.
Among Jarre’s screen credits are the David Lean epics and sub-epics Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter, and A Passage to India, plus Les Yeux sans visage / Eyes Without a Face, The Collector, Grand Prix, The Tin Drum, and the Peter Weir-directed dramas Witness, Dead Poets Society, and Fearless.
From the Berlinale’s press release:
"Born in Lyon in 1924, Maurice Jarre began his musical career with studies in percussion and conducting at the Conservatoire de Paris. He became the musical director of the Théâtre National Populaire in 1950, and composed [...]

The DGA vs. the Academy

Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi in Summertime

In 1948, the 12-year-old Directors Guild of America (DGA), then known as the Screen Directors Guild (SDG), began handing out yearly achievement awards. George Sidney, Frank Capra, Delmer Daves, John Ford, H. Bruce Humberstone, Irving Pichel, Norman Taurog, and, ex-officio, Guild president George Marshall took part in the initial Awards Committee, which selected the Directors Guild Award honorees.
Before 1970, the Guild’s yearly list of finalists consisted of a variable number of directors, usually more than five. From 1970 on, when the Directors Guild began restricting its list of nominees to five directors per year, a DGA nod has usually translated into an Oscar nod. There have been, however, quite a few exceptions to [...]

Best Films – 1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
FILM
Blithe Spirit
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
d: Christian-Jaque; scr: Henri Jeanson
Brief Encounter
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Dead of Night
d: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer; scr: John Baines, Angus MacPhail
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Prévert
Leave Her to Heaven
d: John M. Stahl; scr: Jo Swerling
Love Letters
d: William Dieterle; scr: Ayn Rand
Mildred Pierce
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Ranald McDougall, Catherine Turney
A Royal Scandal
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer
State Fair
d: Walter Lang; scr: Paul Green, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
d: Elia Kazan; scr: Tess Slesinger, Frank [...]

Best Films – 1944

John Hodiak, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat

FILM
I Bambini ci guardano / The Children Are Watching Us
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Giulio Viola, Adolfo Franci, Margherita Maglione, Gherardo Gherardi
Crime by Night
d: William Clemens; scr: Joel Malone, Richard Weil
Dragon Seed
d: Harold S. Bucquet, Jack Conway; scr: Jane Murfin, Marguerite Roberts
Laura
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Jay Dratter, Samuel Hoffenstein, Betty Reinhardt
Lifeboat
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Jo Swerling
Mr. Skeffington
d: Vincent Sherman; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Phillip G. Epstein
This Happy Breed
d: David Lean; scr: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
The Uninvited
d: Lewis Allen; scr: Dodie Smith
 

Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker, Joseph Cotten in Since You Went Away
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Arsenic and Old Lace
d: Frank Capra; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Phillip G. Epstein
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