MARITAL STATUS
Professions Director , Producer , Actor
Birth name Otto Ludwig Preminger
Nationality Austrian
Birth December 5, 1905 (Austria-Hungary – Current Ukraine)
Death April 23, 1986
BIOGRAPHY
Son of a high-ranking Jewish official in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto Preminger grew up under the yoke of latent anti-Semitism, rampant in the Austrian capital. A brilliant young man, deprived of physical exercise due to a heart murmur, he studied law and philosophy while nurturing a passion for theater and the stage. Thus, alongside his doctorate in law, he distinguished himself within Max Reinhardt ‘s troupe , as an assistant to the famous man of the theater then as a director. He was then 19 years old. In 1931, it was the cinema that won his favor: he made his first film Le Grand Amour , a production inspired by a news item, which went unnoticed. From Vienna to Salzburg via Prague, Otto Preminger participated in the creation of two theaters under the aegis of Reinhardt, before succeeding him as director of that of Josefstadt, in Vienna. With around fifty pieces, the author quickly acquired a solid reputation in the field. So, it was only natural that Joseph Schenck, president of Fox, who was looking for new European talent, heard about him and invited him to Hollywood. Three years before the advent of Hitler, Otto Preminger left his hometown and arrived in the city of cinema, not without having made a detour through the New York scene at the request of one of its greatest producers, Gilbert Miller.
In Hollywood, it was Darryl F. Zanuck who trained the young prodigy and familiarized him with Fox’s working methods. After a first commissioned film, a B series entitled Under Your Spell (1936), he offered him the direction of Kidnapped, adapted from a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson . Preminger’s reluctance to deal with a subject too far from his world will break the bond uniting him to the big boss who, until the end of his contract, will slow down his rise. Returning to Broadway for five years, Otto Preminger once again cultivated his talent for theatrical performance, as a director but also as an actor in Margin of Error . It is through this play that he will return to Fox, at the instigation of Zanuck’s temporary replacement (who became a war photographer for a time) who wishes to make an adaptation of it. The reconciliation between the latter and the filmmaker will take place on the set of Laura (1944), a suspense plot by Vera Caspary, carried by Preminger, who gradually and step by step acquired the right to produce it and then direct it. A masterpiece from its director who exercises total artistic control over him, this psychological thriller is a landmark in the history of film noir with its dark romanticism, the finesse of its staging and its unforgettable heroine, played by Gene Tierney . After offering the actress her greatest role, Preminger would become her favorite director, notably directing her five years later in two detectives, Whirlpool – The Mysterious Doctor Korvo and Mark Dixon, Detective (1950).
In the meantime, seduced by his work and weakened by a recent heart attack, Ernst Lubitsch called on the filmmaker to direct his Scandal at Court (1945). Relying more on situation comedy than on character consistency, the comedy features the very prominent and provocative Tallulah Bankhead . When Lubitsch died, Preminger participated once again in his work by resuming the unfinished filming of The Lady in the Ermine Cloak (1948). At the end of the 1940s, the filmmaker established himself as one of the pillars of Fox who took advantage of his European culture and his taste for historical melodrama ( Ambre ) or for atmospheric films that were both troubled and realistic, mixing detective work and often feminine psychological studies ( Crime of Passion , Un si sweet face ). Taking care to work on the fragility and mystery of his characters, Preminger is the director of the greatest, from Tierney to Robert Mitchum via Henry Fonda and Joan Crawford . Escaping as much as possible from the whims of his studio director, he manages to maintain unity in his work and within his filming, which he sets up with the same technical team. An obstinacy which will, despite itself, be eroded by the Hollywood system, its artistic concessions and its censorship. In 1953, tired, Preminger decided to produce his films alone, with the help of associated artists who ensured him complete autonomy, up to the famous control of the final editing. He inaugurated this new period with a light and somewhat scabrous comedy, The Moon Was Blue , an adaptation of his successful play, which enjoyed a triumph after escaping the wrath of the League of Decency and the Hays Code.
Subsequently, more major films punctuated his career, from River of No Return (1954) which offered Marilyn Monroe one of her finest roles, to Autopsy of a Murder(1959), worn by James Stewart , in which he dissects the mechanisms of American justice, including Carmen Jones (1955), a successful version of the famous opera, played only by black actors. At its peak, the filmmaker’s art is based on a balance of shots, a careful plastic composition and narration. This is also evidenced by the beauty of Exodus on Jewish emigration to Palestine or Sainte Jeanne , on the Maid of Orléans, in which he confirms his talent for adaptation, female psychology and the direction of beginning actresses; here Jean Seberg, whom he will re-use in Hello sadness . Pygmalion, Preminger was also for Kim Novak before Cold Sweat , in The Man with the Golden Arm , or for Liza Minnelli before Cabaret , in Tell Me that You Love Me, Junie Moon , drama sensitive to the drug scene. Among its scenarios, a series of other thorny, political or religious subjects stand out. Thus the very biting The Cardinal , nominated for an Oscar, in which the filmmaker directs the beautiful Romy Schneider or even Storm in Washington (1962), in which he lifts the veil on the schemes, blackmail and shenanigans of those in power, with so much lucidity and skepticism that it is at one time threatened with being banned internationally so as not to tarnish the image of the United States. Admirably carried by Charles Laughton and Henry Fonda , the film also celebrates the expected return of Gene Tierney to the screens, following his nervous breakdown. After these masterpieces, Preminger experienced a difficult end to his career (witness the discussed Rosebud , written in collaboration with his son Erik Lee Preminger ) which nevertheless ended with the notable spy film The Hostage War , last jewel of a remarkable career.
For film buffs around the world, including a certain François Truffaut and another Jacques Rivette , Otto Preminger remains the classic author and director par excellence, master of precision and finesse, sometimes tyrannical sometimes engaging on his sets, fervent defender of democracy and always in conflict with established conventions…
Author: Laetitia Ratane