American Directors Volume II: A Book Review

To state the mind-numbingly obvious, American Directors, Volume II is the sequel to an earlier book, American Directors, Vol. I. Whereas the first book detailed those directors who basically invented the art of filmmaking, Volume II features mainly those film directors who rose to prominence after the old Hollywood studio mill had collapsed. This is pretty old book, however, so not only should not expect to find any mention of such directors as Quentin Tarantino or Richard Kelly, but nothing made by such latter day masters as Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg made after 1980. Alphabetically, the directors covered in this book begin with Robert Aldrich and ends with Fred Zinneman. Chronologically, consider it a book that looks at Hollywood filmmaking from Orson Welles to Spielberg.

American Directors, Volume II is actually an anthology of essays by various writers, so there is no coherent viewpoint that maintains itself throughout the book. In other words, don’t be taken aback to find that a director held in high esteem in the essay about this works is perhaps less well though of by a writer elsewhere. In fact, the book overflows with contradictory opinions of even some well-established geniuses of the cinema. 

Probably the most frustrating thing about the book is that if one of these directors is your favorite and you want a comprehensive view of his career, you are out of luck if he is still active today. For instance, if you are a big Martin Scorsese fan and you want some insight into his later masterworks like Raging Bull, The King of Comedy or Goodfellas, then you will find this book woefully inadequate.