Anthony Mann (June 30, 1906 – April 29, 1967) was an American film director, most notably of Films Noir and Westerns.
He was born Emil Anton Bundsmann in San Diego, California to a family of Austrian immigrants. He eventually found work as an actor in The Great Depression and a theatre director in the early '40s, noted especially for his productions of Greek tragedy. He eventually came to Hollywood by which time his professional handle became Anthony Mann.
Mann's career is divided into three main phases starting from the mid-late forties and ending in the early sixties. The first phase was a period of apprenticeship where he made many B-Movie collaborating with the famous cinematographer John Alton (author of "Painting with Light" an important textbook for film school students). These films (T-Men, Raw Deal) are famous for their use of Chiaroscuro and for their psychological insights. Included alongside this are unusual period films like Reign of Terror and The Tall Target. He also made a well regarded film about the Korean War starring Robert Ryan (Men in War).
The second and most famous phase is a series of films with James Stewart resulting in eight films, several of them westerns known for their use of colour, powerful sense of landscape, psychological complexity and intensity, and moments of shocking violence. This period with also included important westerns not made with Stewart such as The Furies with Barbara Stanwyck, The Last Frontier with Victor Mature and Man of the West (with Gary Cooper). Mann is considered by cinephiles to be the greatest director of westerns after John Ford. Mann was especially proud for the fact that he used a diversity of western landscapes instead of Monument Valley, Utah used by Ford. His films are especially remarkably for expanding the biomes one associates with the West; the characterestic red rocks and brown deserts are there, but you also have lush greens, forests, rivers and in the case of The Far Country a Western in a snow-bound region with a bleak atmosphere that anticipates McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Some of these westerns were admired in Europe by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard.
Mann's final phase were movies made for Samuel Bronston as part of the Epic Movie craze of The '50s and The '60s. He was incidentally the original director of Spartacus before he was replaced by producer/star Kirk Douglas in favor of Stanley Kubrick. The two epics he made are considered by Martin Scorsese to be among the best ever made. He died in 1967 but he remains highly admired and influential in America and around the world.
Films with pages on this wiki:
- The Furies (1950)
- Winchester '73 (1950)
- Bend of the River (1952)
- The Naked Spur (1953)
- The Glenn Miller Story (1954)
- The Far Country (1955)
- The Man from Laramie (1955)
- Strategic Air Command (1955)
- Serenade (1956)
- Man of the West (1958)
- El Cid (1961)
- The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
