The Nun's Story (1959)

Nora's nite

Bob Allen on Fred Zinnemann:

Fred Zinnemann was born in Vienna in 1907. In his late teens while studying law he became interested in movies. Impressed with the films of Eisenstein and von Stroheim he decided to quit law, and to the dismay of his family. went off to Paris to do an 18 month camera course. After the course he moved to Berlin and got work in German studios as a camera assistant.

With the arrival of talking pictures, European production slowed down so the young Zinnemann decided he must chance his luck in the USA to learn about the new technology. He arrived in Hollywood in 1929. Despite the fact that his application to join the cameraman's Local was sponsored by the great Billy Bitzer, he was turned down. That was the end of his camera career.

He got work as an extra on All Quiet On The Western Front which lasted several months. Later, during a job as personal assistant to Berthold Viertel, he met Robert Flaherty, the father of story documentary features. He talked Flaherty into taking him on as an assistant and returned with him to Berlin to set up a new mid-Asian documentary expedition.

It would seem he learnt a great deal from this relationship. In all his films Fred Zinnemann managed to get a believable feeling of reality as if the pictures had been taken of actual events. His years working in MGM's short film department on series such as Crime Doesn't Pay taught him how to tell stories economically and how to shoot without fuss.

He made a total of 21 feature films, five of which yielded 23 Oscars. He himself had three Oscars for best direction - From Here To Eternity, A Man For All Seasons and a short subject in 1938 That Mothers Might Live.

His films were far from stereotyped, ranging from Oklahoma, a musical, to High Noon, perhaps the greatest western; from Here To Eternity, surely the best film about the US Army, to A Man For All Seasons, certainly the best historical drama.

In 1967 he settled in Britain and had lived here ever since with his with Rene, an English girl he met 60 years ago when she worked in Paramount's wardrobe department. Their son Tim is now a Hollywood producer.