Fred Zinnemann - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)
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Fred Zinnemann - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography
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Fred Zinnemann - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Director, Producer, Writer, Actor.
April 29, 1907, Vienna - March 14, 1997, London - American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor of Austrian descent.
He wanted to become a musician, but entered the University of Vienna, where he studied to be a lawyer. He began his film career as a cameraman, and in 1930 he became one of the directors of the film "Sunday People", on which future Hollywood directors Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak also worked.
Arriving in the United States, Zinnemann became an assistant and translator for another emigrant from Austria - the writer and director Berthold Fiertel. Thanks to Fiertel, Zinnemann met actress Greta Garbo, directors Sergei Eisestein, Friedrich Murnau, Robert Flaherty. Zinnemann calls his work with documentary filmmaker Flaherty on the unfinished project “the most important event of my professional life”.
Zinnemann played as an extra in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930; based on the novel by Remarque), and made his first full-length film in 1935 in Mexico. It was a documentary film about fishermen "Volna", commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture. In 1936, Zinnemann obtained American citizenship and married Renee Bartlett, whose marriage would last until his death. Four years later, they had a son, Tim, a future film producer.
After returning from Mexico, Zinnemann directed eighteen short films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For one of them, "These Mothers Could Live" (1938), he received an Oscar. In 1942 he directed the feature-length detective stories Eyes in the Night and The Killer in Gloves. His first famous film was the military drama "The Seventh Cross", filmed during the Second World War, with Spencer Tracy in the title role. In the post-war years, Zinnemann discovered two actors who would become stars: Search (1948) became a feature-length debut for Montgomery Clift, and Men (1950) for Marlon Brando. In 1951, the director shot the last short film in his life, Benji, for which he again won an Oscar.
1952 saw the release of one of Zinnemann's most famous films, the Western High Noon. Based on the script of the disgraced Karl Foreman and telling about the sheriff, who was left alone with the bandits, as the townspeople were afraid to help him, it was perceived as an allegory of American society of the McCarthy era. Conservative-minded Howard Hawks and John Wayne criticized the film, their western "Rio Bravo" was a kind of response to Zinnemann's picture. Released in 1953, the drama From Now and Forever and Forever, based on the novel by James Jones, won eight Oscars, including awards for Best Director and Best Film.
Despite the recognition and active employment, the director was dissatisfied with the atmosphere of the "witch hunt" that reigned in the United States, and in 1963 he left for the UK. Here he made several films, the most famous of which was Thomas More's biography "A Man for All Seasons" (1966), which won many awards. The story of the Catholic More, who came into conflict with King Henry VIII, received the approval of the Vatican, and in 1994 it was ranked first on the list of the best conservative films, despite the director's liberal reputation.
Zinnemann's last film was released in 1982, after which he retired from cinema. In 1992, his autobiographical book Fred Zinnemann on Cinema was published.
