Barson, a historian of American popular culture, profiles more than 150 directors who have worked in Hollywood between 1929 and 1995 and whose careers began before 1975. He excludes directors who have worked primarily in silent films (though he does include Charlie Chaplin) and those who have worked primarily in the British film industry, which he hopes to cover in later volumes. (He expects to include Hollywood film directors such as Oliver Stone and Rob Reiner in his next volume, which is devoted to directors who began their work after 1975.)
The book is divided into two parts: a main section consisting of two-to ten-page essays on prominent directors and a supplementary section titled "Short Subjects: More Profiles in Brief," which consists of shorter essays on lesser-known directors. Each entry in the first part of the book is accompanied by at least one black-and-white photograph showing the director "at work or at play" along with "graphics representing one of his or her most important films." (There are only two female directors in the book: Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzner.)
Most of the essays begin with an overview of the director's influence on American cinema followed by a couple of paragraphs summarizing relevant biographical information. The largest portion of the essay consists of a descriptive and evaluative survey of each film directed by the person; this survey almost always includes a mixture of positive and negative comments about individual films of the director (even for highly acclaimed directors such as Capra, Ford, and Hitchcock). Barson is unusually upfront in his negative criticism of films by the masters (such as Hitchcock's I Confess and Capra's Here Comes the Bride) as well as in his favorable comments about films produced by less-talented directors (such as Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall). All of the films mentioned in the book's essays are indexed at the end of the volume.
The Illustrated Who's Who is an opinionated and informative analysis of Hollywood film directors; it is more focused on individual films than on how the directors fit into cinema history and what styles and philosophies of film direction they followed. World Film Directors (Wilson, 1987^-88), a two-volume set edited by John Wakeman, is more concerned with analyzing how the lives of the directors and their theories of film direction affected their work and set their place in film history; it contains longer essays than Barson but covers many of the same directors. Most academic libraries, large and medium-size public libraries, and specialized film libraries will find The Illustrated Who's Who an accessible source of information--either as a supplement to World Film Directors or as a primary reference source.
With a style and format reminiscent of David Shipman's The Great Movie Stars (1970), Barson's book engagingly analyzes the work of 197 important directors whose directorial careers began before 1975. Two- to eight-page essays on 151 men and two women (Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino) are supplemented by briefer summaries of 44 others. George Sherman seems to be the only prolific director omitted. A few Brits are included: Hitchcock, John Schlesinger, and John Boorman but not, surprisingly, J. Lee Thompson. Alongside great filmmakers like John Ford and Howard Hawks are genre and low-budget impresarios Jack Arnold, Roger Corman, and William Castle, as well as Disney's live-action expert Robert Stevenson. Portraits, candid on-set shots, and posters highlight the text. Though not filmographies per se, the well-written articles cite, describe, or evaluate every film each director helmed. Numerous books on directors exist, some of them mere lists and others, like John Wakeman's World Film Directors (LJ 4/15/88), definitive but expensive. Barson's is a worthwhile acquisition for libraries on a budget.?Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
