Live Life Team
So which is it, quantity or quality, Must we choose, I ask myself these questions when I watch the films of my favourite directors and marvel at them for different reasons. I wonder how Hitchcock put out so many terrific films one after another. Then I watch something by Kubrick and wonder if this one took eight years to make or only five.
In his 54-year filmmaking career, Alfred Hitchcock directed 67 films, with the most successful (box-office and critical) spread throughout. He directed “Rebecca”, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, early in his career while “The Birds”, “North by Northwest”, and “Psycho” came out decades later.
In sharp contrast, Stanley Kubrick’s career spanned 48 years and 15 films, each of which is a film student’s delight. The added features to his DVDs include interviews by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese who go on and on about lighting and attention to detail.
Contemporary directors (the good ones, in any case), tend to gravitate toward Kubrick’s volume. Tarantino: six films in seventeen years. Wes Anderson: five films in fourteen years. PT Anderson: five films in twelve years. It seems as if the old Hollywood output of one film per year is dead. The true artists of film take their time. That is until I consider Spielberg, Scorsese, and Clint Eastwood and reconsider Hitch’s influence. In any case, I’m still astounded by their genius.
