This collection of interviews provides a revealing self-portrait of Martin Ritt (1914-1990), America's preeminent maker of social films and one of the most sensitive portraitists of the rural South.

Ritt's Hollywood career began in 1958 with "Edge of the City" and ended in 1990 with the release of "Stanley and Iris." In all, he directed twenty-six movies, including some of Hollywood's most enduring films--"Hud," "Hombre," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Brotherhood," "The Molly Maguires," "The Front," and "Norma Rae."

Although he gave mostly boilerplate interviews to the press when promoting a movie, Ritt provided more revealing interviews for seminars, oral histories, and documentary filmmakers. The most significant of these, published here for the first time, create a close-up portrait of this distinguished director of plays and films.

Ritt speaks eloquently about his years with the Group Theatre and recreates the passion of the director Harold Clurman. He tells how the Group shaped his ideas about art and the communal nature of the theatrical enterprise, which he extended into his work in film. He speaks of his relationship with Clifford Odets and Elia Kazan, and he talks in detail about his experiences with the blacklist, directing and acting in TV during its Golden Age, his career as a theater director, and his experiences working with such actors as Paul Newman, Sally Field, Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, and Robert De Niro. Ritt discusses his philosophy of directing, the place of film in the history of art, his quarrels with "auteur theory," and the influence of his politics on his work.

Gabriel Miller, a professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author of "The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man" (University Press of Mississippi). Articles by him have appeared in the "Los Angeles Times," "American Book Review," and "Literature/Film Quarterly," among other publications.

During his forty-five-year career, William Wyler (1902--1981) pushed the boundaries of filmmaking with his gripping storylines and innovative depth-of-field cinematography. With a body of work that includes such memorable classics as Jezebel (1938), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Ben-Hur (1959), and Funny Girl (1968), Wyler is the most nominated director in the history of the Academy Awards and bears the distinction of having won an Oscar for Best Director on three occasions. Both Bette Davis and Lillian Hellman considered him America's finest director, and Sir Laurence Olivier said he learned more about film acting from Wyler than from anyone else. In William Wyler, Gabriel Miller explores the career of one of Hollywood's most unique and influential directors, examining the evolution of his cinematic style. Wyler's films feature nuanced shots and multifaceted narratives that reflect his preoccupation with realism and story construction. The director's later works were deeply influenced by his time in the army air force during World War II, and the disconnect between the idealized version of the postwar experience and reality became a central theme of Wyler's masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). None of Wyler's contemporaries approached his scope: he made successful and seminal films in practically every genre, including social drama, melodrama, and comedy. Yet, despite overwhelming critical acclaim and popularity, Wyler's work has never been extensively studied. This long-overdue book offers a comprehensive assessment of the director, his work, and his films' influence.

Fred Zinnemann (1907-1997) was one of Hollywood's most honored directors. In a career that spanned fifty years, he won four Academy Awards and directed such classic movies as "From Here to Eternity," "A Man for All Seasons," "The Day of the Jackal," and "High Noon."

Covering thirty-three years of conversations (1964-1997), "Fred Zinnemann: Interviews" provides a revealing glimpse into the director's vision as he discusses in his cultivated, elegant voice his varied experiences as a filmmaker. He defends himself against charges that his films are too objective or unemotional. He reminisces about his experiences with independent director Robert Flaherty and his early years in the American studios and recounts his disappointment and frustration over his abortive attempt to film "Man's Fate." Filled with intelligent commentary and recollections about all of his important work, the interviews disclose an artist committed to his craft, his vision, and the human enterprise.

Despite the range of genres in which he worked-the western, the musical, film noir, and the "social problem" film-Zinnemann was aesthetically committed to social realism. Due in part to his training under Flaherty and his upbringing in Austria, where he witnessed firsthand the rise of fascism, Zinnemann was always drawn to stories that highlighted the testing of conscience in people caught up in a historical moment. World War II provided the backdrop to much of his work. As he put it, "I have always been concerned with the problem of the individual who struggles to preserve personal integrity and self-respect."

Gabriel Miller is a professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and has written several other books on film and theater.

Some of the most memorable movies of Hollywood's Golden Age were based on novels that never received the acclaim they deserved. No-one who saw Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker could forget the actor's wrenching performance but does anyone remember the author of the book on which the film was based? The same can be said of Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Greta Garbo in Susan Lenox, and Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This book retrieves these novels and re-evaluates the careers of the eight neglected novelists whose works inspired eight different directors - among them Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, John Huston and Sidney Pollack. Each chapter offers detailed analysis on both the original text and the resulting movie. Taken together, the double examination of novel and film raises some important questions about the nature and problems of cinematic adaptation.

William Wyler (1902-1981) was one of the most honored and successful directors from Hollywood's golden age. One of the film industry's most influential artists, he received three Academy Awards, twelve nominations for his direction and five nominations for his work as a producer. No film director in history has guided more actors to Academy Award nominations (thirty-one). During his fifty-year career, he directed some of Hollywood's most enduring films--among them "Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Funny Girl, Jezebel, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, Roman Holiday, " and "Wuthering Heights."

"William Wyler: Interviews" spans his career and includes three previously unpublished exchanges. Despite the accolades, Wyler has not received the kind of academic and critical appraisal lavished on contemporaries such as John Ford, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, George Stevens, and Billy Wilder. In his later interviews he seems good-natured about this neglect, but it clearly rankled. He dismisses detractors by explaining that he was always interested in trying out new forms, variety being more important to him than mining the same territory.

In a Hollywood career that spanned more than thirty years, Martin Ritt (1914-1990) directed twenty-six films. Among them were some of Hollywood's most enduring works--"Hud," "Hombre," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Molly Maguires," "The Front," and "Norma Rae."

In addition to displaying a passionate commitment to social issues, Ritt's body of work represents a sustained exploration of the American myth and American national character. This study of his films shows how his work articulates the communal, agrarian ideal and its perversion as industrialism and urbanism have denatured the landscape.

Encompassing a hundred years of American life, these films follow the common man through the chronology of social history, including the arrival of the railroads in the West, coal mining in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jack Johnson's rise as the first black heavyweight champion of the boxing world, the television blacklist, spying and the Cold War, trade unions, and the war in Vietnam. The subjects he treats project a cultural framework for examining what America means as a nation and as an experience.

The sixties was the decade of Ritt's most sustained achievement. This period culminated in his masterpiece, "The Molly Maguires," perhaps the finest film ever made on the subject of American labor. In the first detailed analysis of this great realistic film "The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man" shows that its greatness lies in Ritt's complex interweaving of love and friendship, the labor struggle, the story of the immigrant dream, and the ideal of upward mobility.

The book includes analyses of all twenty-six films, including such early works as "Edge of the City" and "The Long Hot Summer," as well as such later successes as "Norma Rae," "Sounder," and "Murphy's Romance." Ritt's work in theater, notably in the Group Theatre, which he joined in 1937, and his being blacklisted from television during the 1950s, informed his directorial philosophy throughout his career. Many recognize him as America's finest director of social films.