Customer Reviews

Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers

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I wasn't expecting much, having been disappointed by another entry in this series (the decidedly lackluster Secret Lives of the Civil War--the product of a different, and inferior, author). But having opted to wet my beak a second time I was pleasantly surprised. It's a well-researched, tartly crafted survey of more than 100 years of movie history, told through the lives and foibles of some 40 or so famous directors. I learned quite a few things I didn't know, and a few others I wished I hadn't learned (the anecdote about Frank Capra and adult circumcision will stay with me forever). All in all, a feast for film buffs--if a bit of a dog's breakfast!

I bought this book as a gift for my 62 year old father, & he said it was THE best gift he had ever received! He said he just can't put it down! I am now buying him "Secret Lives of Great Composers" also.

I found this book to be an amusing collection of unknown facts about filmmakers. It is a quick read and the author gets to the point concerning the "juicy stuff" after giving a very brief synopsis of the filmmaker's formative years. He tries with success most of the time to link personal life-changing events to the creative (or destructive)forces which caused them to make their unique movies. I highly recommend this to not only the person new to cinema, but also the seasoned student of film.

Beyond its broad title and garish cover, "Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers" is a surprisingly thorough, well-organized film reference.

It contains 36 chapters devoted to great directors, sequenced by the year of their birth and running from early masters D.W. Griffith, John Ford and Howard Hawks to more recent names like Pedro Almodovar, the Coen brothers, Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino.

Each chapter includes a short biography of a filmmaker and a section of wild trivia, but along the way, author Robert Schnakenberg also periodically offers sections devoted to important movie moguls, unsung female directors and key genre figures.

The book's merits almost make it good enough to recommend it to fledgling film buffs. Unfortunately, the authorial tone running through "Secret Lives" is as bitter as cold lemon juice. Schnakenberg has an extensive knowledge of great directors, but he certainly doesn't seem to like them very much.

"If film directors truly are like voyeurs ... it's only fair that we turn the tables on them," he writes in his introduction, then goes on to introduce Francois Truffaut as "the bastard son of a Parisian wonton," to deem Lee "a tiny man filled with rage" and to dismiss novelist and screenwriter William Faulkner as an "unstable, alcoholic Mississipian."

Irreverence is one thing, but again and again the book is downright mean-spirited, filled with stories and scandalous accusations that usually appear without any attribution.

Everyone has character flaws -- and creative souls often collect them with a vengeance -- but Schnakenberg seems to resent the people he's profiling. At best, he seems to have lost sight of the fact that they're remembered or talked about today because, first and foremost, they created rich and fantastic works of art.