Alfred "Fred" Zinnemann (April 29, 1907 - March 14, 1997) was an Austrian-born Hollywood director.
Zinnemann started out wanting to be a musician, but when he realized he didn't have a good ear for music, he gave that up and studied law. When sound films came along, he moved to Berlin and became a camera operator. Among the early films he worked on was People On Sunday, which was co-directed by Robert Siodmak (and written by Billy Wilder). Moving to the United States in 1929, he was an extra on All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and later moved on to directing short films (including That Mothers Might Live and Forbidden Passage) before moving on to features. His first major film was The Seventh Cross, with Spencer Tracy, a World War II drama about a man on the run from the Nazis. After the war, he gained recognition for The Search, another WWII-themed movie which marked the film debut of Montgomery Clift.
Although Zinnemann directed two Academy Award-winning films (From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons), directed Academy Award-winning performances for Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed (both for the former), Paul Scofield (for the latter), Gary Cooper (High Noon), Jason Robards and Vanessa Redgrave (both for Julia), and directed the film debuts not only of Clift, but also Marlon Brando (The Men) and Meryl Streep (Julia), he was generally dismissed by proponents of The Auteur Theory, who felt he had no personal style and whose filmography consisted of little more than Oscar Bait. In reality, Zinnemann generally followed the path of documentary filmmakers (Robert Flaherty, director of the controversial Nanook of the North, was an early influence) and directors of the Italian Neorealism era, as he preferred to shoot on location whenever possible and aimed for psychological realism in all of his movies.
Zinnemann is also remembered today for something that he insisted he never said. According to the story, in the 1980's, when his career was on the decline (his last film was Five Days One Summer, starring Sean Connery, which came out in 1982 to poor reviews and indifferent box office), Zinnemann met a studio executive who, having no idea of his accomplishments, asked Zinnemann to list what he had directed, to which Zinnemann supposedly replied, "Sure, you first," and walked out of the meeting. Although the story has been used to illustrate the ageism that was in Hollywood at the time and still today, as well as the complete ignorance studio executives at the time had about movies in general, Zinnemann stated it was actually Billy Wilder who told him the story about himself.
Zinnemann was married to Renee Bartlett from 1936 (with one son) until his death, with his wife dying on December 18 of that same year.
Films directed by Zinnemann with their own page:
- That Mothers Might Live (1938) (short film)
- Forbidden Passage (1941) (short film)
- The Lady, or the Tiger? (1942) (short film)
- The Search (1948)
- Act of Violence (1949)
- High Noon (1952)
- From Here to Eternity (1953)
- Oklahoma! (1955)
- The Old Man and the Sea (1958)note
- The Nun's Story (1959)
- The Sundowners (1960)
- A Man for All Seasons (1966)
- The Day of the Jackal (1973)
- Julia (1977)
