The person in charge of all the various creative elements of moviemaking. Though the creation of a film is a collaborative effort, it is the director to whom the other creative and technical people must report, and on the set, the director's word is law. Despite the mythology, it is not the director who yells "action" on the set; it's the assistant director. Working with the producer, writer, cinematographer, and actors, he or she helps the director shape the production in planning sessions, rehearsals, and during shooting. The director is also involved in the editing and scoring of the film in the postproduction process.
In addition to directing, a number of talented and/or successful directors have been known to write their own scripts. Some examples of writer-directors include PRESTON STURGES, SAMUEL FULLER, and BILLY WILDER. Fewer directors have managed to produce as well as direct. Among their number are such well-known examples as WILLIAM WYLER and CECIL B. DEMILLE. Directors also occasionally star in their own films, but in these cases, they generally tend to act as the producer, as well. Some of the best-known examples of these multitalented individuals are CHARLIE CHAPLIN, CLINT EASTWOOD, and WARREN BEATTY.
Directors who make movies about themes of personal interest are known as AUTEURs, a French term denoting creative authorship. Yet a director may be considered an auteur without writing, producing, or starring in a production. A few of the directors who are considered auteurs are ALFRED HITCHCOCK, JOSEF VON STERNBERG, and MARTIN SCORSESE.
If there were no such thing as disasters, they would have been created by the movies. No other medium - not fine art, not the theater, not even literature - can capture both the spectacle and the personal horror of a disaster the way a movie can. The huge, ever-changing canvas of the movie screen gives the audience a vicarious sense of danger and tragedy on a massive scale, whether by a volcano burying a city in ashes (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1935), an earthquake destroying Los Angeles (Earthquake, 1974), or a fire consuming a high-rise building (Towering Inferno, 1974). At the same time, in the hands of a skilled writer and director, a disaster film can also capture the human side of what otherwise might be a numbing experience.
With the aid of special effects, Hollywood has been able to recreate the sinking of the Titanic, the burning of Chicago, and the destruction of San Francisco. Most disaster movies have a moralistic element in them, at least in that some sort of corruption or hubris usually leads to the disaster. But in the ever-hopeful endings of Hollywood's disaster movies, as in The Hurricane (1937), good people always seem to survive to begin anew.
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