Who the Devil Made It

March 3, 1997
Director, actor, screenwriter and critic Bogdanovich (This Is Orson Welles), who claims he learned how to make movies by asking questions of famous directors, has assembled a monumental volume of his tape-recorded conversations with 16 masters whose careers span nearly the entire history of the cinema. Included are Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Sidney Lumet, Josef von Sternberg and Raoul Walsh. The title is taken from a comment about directors by Howard Hawks, who said, "I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil was making the picture," and it expresses the spirit of individuality that characterized these giants of Hollywood's golden age. The directors' reminiscences about technique, working methods, sources of ideas and relationships with actors and studios are thoroughly entertaining. Allan Dwan, for example, humorously describes the serendipitous process of making silent movies when the medium was still in its infancy; Alfred Hitchcock shares the mischievous workings of his inventive mind; and Otto Preminger gives a no-holds-barred account of the B movies he made as a young man for Darryl Zanuck. Each interview is preceded by a summary of the director's career and followed by a list of his movies. Photos not seen by PW.