Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance

Fred Zinnemann directed some of the most acclaimed and controversial films of the twentieth century, yet he has been a shadowy presence in Hollywood history. In Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance, J. E. Smyth reveals the intellectual passion behind some of the most powerful films ever made about the rise and resistance to fascism and the legacy of the Second World War, from The Seventh Cross and The Search to High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and Julia. Smyth's book is the first to draw upon Zinnemann's extensive papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and brings Fred Zinnemann's vision, voice, and film practice to life. In his engagement with the defining historical struggles of the twentieth century, Zinnemann fought his own battles with the Hollywood studio system, the critics, and a public bent on forgetting. Zinnemann's films explore the role of women and communists in the antifascist resistance, the West's support of Franco after the Spanish Civil War, and the darker side of America's national heritage. Smyth reconstructs a complex and conflicted portrait of Zinnemann's cinema of resistance, examining his sketches, script annotations, editing and production notes, and personal letters. Illustrated with seventy black-and-white images from Zinnemann's collection, Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance discusses the director's professional and personal relationships with Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, Audrey Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, and Gary Cooper; the critical reaction to his revisionist Western, High Noon; his battles over the censorship of From Here to Eternity, The Nun's Story, and Behold a Pale Horse; his unrealized history of the communist Revolution in China, Man's Fate; and the controversial study of political assassination, The Day of the Jackal. In this intense, richly textured narrative, Smyth enters the mind of one of Hollywood's master directors, redefining our knowledge of his artistic vision and practice.

Fred Zinnemann and the Cinema of Resistance is as richly researched and rigorously argued as any landmark study in the field of film history. As such, it will profoundly change the way film historians view post-World War II Hollywood cinema. More remarkable still is the elegance of Smyth's prose, which manages to convey dense archival detail and complex reasoning with verve and accessibility, catapulting the book far beyond academe into the realm of quality popular scholarship. A major publishing event.--Roy Grundmann, editor of The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, Vols. I-IV, Deftly blending archival research and astute readings of Zinnemann's films--a staggering output that included High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and Julia--Smyth probes the inner workings of a progressive and fiercely independent director whose films and filmmaking were case studies in resistance.--Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era

J. E. Smyth is associate professor of history and comparative American studies at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom). She is the author of Reconstructing American Historical Cinema from ""Cimarron"" to ""Citizen Kane"" and Edna Ferber's Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History and is the editor of Hollywood and the American Historical Film.