rhaps you should look to point of view as an expression of the emotion of the character. you may see that person in the scene. you may see other people in the scene. i think the best example of a complex expression of point of view is in george stevens' film, "place in the sun," which is his masterpiece and one of the finest uses of a filmmaker using the studio to achieve an astounding result. (music playing) (allen daviau) we're dollying behind george as he walks in. and there's a marvelous moment where the butler walks by. the butler realizes who he is but doesn't give him any sign. it's again one of those pieces of identifying george's status as an outsider, as an unknown. he comes in and as he enters, he sees marsha, the daughter of his uncle, his cousin marsha.

and she turns in his direction and she smiles. hello, darling. (allen daviau) it is an amazing piece of screen exposition. and yet it's always from the point of view of george. you are assured that all of the characters' feelings towards this newcomer are either patronizing or snobbish. once he arrives, no matter who you're looking at you are seeing it from his emotional point of view. (allen daviau) we see him sneak away. he can't keep up the facade, and he goes down a hall and finds a room with a pool table.

(allen daviau) he sets up an impossible shot with the cue behind his back. while the shot is being made elizabeth taylor walks by, returns ... poke her head in the door, and as the ball goes in, she stuck her head back and -- wow! and as the ball goes in, she stuck hehello. back and -- hello. i see you had a misspent youth. yes, it was. why all alone? being exclusive? it's just one of those moments that you realize you have two incredible screen personalities working together. and the way the camera is handled, it is stevens' total confidence in their performances. (allen daviau) you are immediately swept into their romance.

(richard sylbert) i think the best directors, stevens and wyler, and wellman and hawks, although they had style, their style was so broad that it never ... it never overtook the story. the style is at the service of the story and the story is really about humans struggling together, pursuing certain goals, trying to get what they want, trying to find whatever they're trying to find, and is a kind of vehicle for those. in drama there is this idea of this basic action that you can reduce to a sentence. i mean, "get back home" is a basic action. you've seen it before. it's called "ulysses." and if you don't think it works there it's really terrific when it's "et." (richard sylbert) now that's what drives these things.

there is a way to te stories in american film in which a kind of simple, emotional ideas are sort of strongly and clearly presented. there are many ways you can write a movie. for example, you always fade in on a long shot. in one way or another, it'll be a long shot. and down in the front, you gotta have a sign that says "danger explosives" because that's where the chase is going to come through. so you plant that immediately, which makes complete sense. george, tell me how the picture opens.

a nazi submarine sneaks into hudson's bay. and they send a landing party to raid the outpost. along comes an air patrol, sinks the submarine, leaving the nazi invaders in canada. i want this picture to be a document. i want to hold a mirror up to life. i want this to be a picture of dignity. a true canvas of the suffering of humanity. but with a little sex. with a little sex in it. you've got to coat the pill with candy. you've got to ... draw an audience along so they're asking what's going to happen next. i know that i can make a story, at least 50% of the time, interesting for the first hour while you're falling in love. and i can make it interesting as you're falling out of love. but i'm in trouble when they're in love. that's got last not ry long or y're redud to them running through the field in slow motion that's got last not ry long or y're redud to and lling on the ground and mbling over each other and sipping wi from eacother or something. it all looks like american express commercials.

if i don't have a narrative, a strong narrative to work with and if i happen to be trying to do let's say a love story which is purely character driven, then the only story elements i have to work with are the conflict that exists between two people that has to be overcome. so there's a dynamic as long as that's not at rest. but once they capitulate, everything's okay. now i realize i'm really in trouble. now i gotta skirt this part very carefully because the next time i've got story elements to work with are when something happens. i don't think we're going to make it, katie. (sydney pollack) noit gets interesting again. why? i'm afraid when i'm working that i don't have enough story. this is something i always complain about. to myself, to the writers i'm working with.

who's going to pay attention to these people if we don't have some sort of a story to lean on? in the times where the films have been successful, and they aren't always, but when they are successful it's because in some way character substitutes story. (sydney pollack) the nerve that got punched in "the way we were" was that these two characters were obvious prototypes here. the wasp american and the ethnic immigrant. the one that has everything and the one that has nothing. the one to whom everything comes easily, the one to whom everything seems difficult. everybody seems to identify with one of these characters. usually both. once you get them captured,

once they are playing that game with the people on the screen, this is like you've got them by the throat. you squeeze a little more and more and more. don't let them escape. don't let them -- don't wake them up. don't let them realize, "look this is only a movie." (narrator) winner of 5 academy awards, billy wilder ranks among the top award-winners for writing and directing. he learned in the studio system of the 30's how to escalate the drama by exaggerating characters. ole! hiya, jerry. everything under control? have i got things to tell you. what happened? i'm engaged. congratulations. who's the lucky girl? i am. what? osgood proposed to me. we're planning a june wedding.

what are you talking about? you can't marry osgood. you think he's too old for me? jerry, you can't be serious. why not? he keeps marrying girls all the time. but you're not a girl, you're a guy. and why would a guy want to marry a guy? security. you have to ... exaggerate some in order to make your point. billy, being the writer, knew precisely what he wanted in every scene as a writer/director does. the director makes choices. and he chooses what to leave in and what to take out. and then you bend it as you're doing it. you sometimes take the idea of a scene and you embellish it or change it or change the focus of it in some way, and you end up in a sense telling the story. as the writer and director i can say to the audience, "this is what you see now because i think it's best

for you to see this now, you'll be most influenced by it and most affected by it." (narrator) joseph mankiewicz went to hollywood in 1929. he honed his skills at mgm and paramount. once he came to direct, he captured audiences with his sparkling wit and stylized dialogue. she's a girl of so many interests. pretty rare quality these days. a girl of so many rare qualities. so she seems. so you've pointed out so often. so many qualities so often. loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection and so young. realistic dialogue as spoken in everyday life cannot be brought to the stage or screen. it would bore everybody out of their minds. honored members, ladies and gentlemen, for distinguished achievement in the theatre, the sarah siddons award to miss eve harrington.

(audience applause) (joseph mankiewicz) i wanted to do a film about the getting of an award. what you go through to get it if you want it badly enough and what happens to you and the manipulation of people and ambitions in the theatre. (audience applause) (joseph mankiewicz) i have several peculiarities as a director. one is: don't change dialogue once the picture starts. the actor cannot say, "can i say it my way?" not a syllable is changed. take "all about eve" off the screen, and it's the script syllable for syllable. (addison dewitt) eve, eve, the golden girl. the cover girl, the girl next door. the girl on the moon. time has been good to eve. (addison dewitt) life goes where she goes. she's been profiled, covered, revealed, reported.

what she eats and what she wears whom she knows and where she was when and where she's going. miss davis, ever since i've been on this set i've heard nothing but discussion of eve. may i have your opinion of her? the golden girl, the cover girl, the girl next door, the girl on the moon. time's been very good to eve. life goes where she goes. she's been profiled, covered, revealed, reported. what she wears and where and when, whom she knows and where she was when and where she's going. (narrator) the hollywood tradition, formed in the studio era, has been re-vitalized by each new generation of american filmmakers. it's a tradition that's prospered by its ability to absorb and utilize different styles of filmmaking.

we were influenced by this -- all of the european films. (martin scorsese) we had, you know, the french and italian new wave. and they were trying to express new ways to write with a lens. (martin scorsese) to find a new vocabulary. (sydney pollack) at that time the whole idea of not seeing who was talking or beginning a scene before another one was over, flash cuts in the middle of a scene, all these techniques, they'd been in foreign films. when i first started to work on "they shoot horses don't they" i had to try to find a visual approach for the film that allowed the maximum amount of freedom. i took lessons every lunch hour on how to rollerskate.

and i could hold the camera and i kind of rollerskated with the group of people. it was a way for me to get right in among the people, to get closer and tighter and to be a part of them. i could actually skate in among them. i could retreat backwards in front of them or i could move forward with them. i'd get over their shoulders and be right in the crowd. i was so enamored of the eisenstein editing, the montage and pudovkin. and i would play at nyu, would play and make up images that way, and make them up in my head and draw the pictures and figure out how many frames i'd have to shoot and where i'd have to cut, and a lot of that worked. you see a lot of that in "raging bull."

in the more formal days i think they didn't -- they didn't do what we would now call an "extreme mtv cutting." (theme music to "psycho") (dede allen) "psycho" was a big revolution in cutting for certain scenes, like the shower scene. i was very influenced by all those films which had editing that was not the standard form because they were exciting. (multiple gunshots) (david bordwell) at the level of style the biggest changes come from a generation of directors who have tried to blend or fuse hollywood with european traditions of "art cinema." (sexy music playing) (narrator) in the 60's, roman polanski was a leading european director.

many foreign directors came to america to try their hand at a hollywood picture. they gave foreign sensibility to classic hollywood style. "chinatown," one of the most admired films of the 1970's, adheres to the hollywood style with its strong storyline told from the perspective of the central character. okay, pal, let's have us a big smile. my fight during the work on the script took 8 weeks, was to simplify it, to make it a personal story. roman is just spectacular on insisting the narrative be lucid. the basic action in "chinatown" is very simple. it's called "find the girl." and it's very clear because it's actually said. just find the girl.

i'll look into it. (roman polanski) the film is presented as a subjective description. i mean, whatever you see you see from his point of view. (roman polanski) i wanted the audience to feel with the detective, as if they were investigating, as if they were witnesses of what's happening, peeping over his shoulder. i do lot of camera movements. i make very complicated scenes,

but i try to make it so you're not aware of it. it serves the purpose of the scene. "chinatown" is a very skillful updating of a tradition that goes back some way in hollywood cinema. i might also add that to a large extent the hollywood cinema of the 70's and 80's is characterized by a very strong self-consciousness of the old hollywood. a trend of the 70's and 80's american studio cinema is a very strong awareness of classical hollywood tradition. i wanted to bring back some of the virtues i had seen not only in literature and drama, but in earlier american films. where was i? where was i? (lawrence kasdan) movies you're seeing are very intimate with characters and you can see them in a private moment, you see how they react to what's going on around them,

and sometimes just the way a person walks is more powerful than anything he says or does in the movie. hi. my name's david, building 78, the whole building. you should stop by. i have something for you. greatest town on earth. go left here. where was i? the thing about writing and film directing is that you are presenting a view of the universe. each time ... every scene, every line, every time you put the camera down anywhere you're saying here's a version of the universe as i see it. mac, did you ever see the movie "sullivan's travels"? no. that's part of your problem, you haven't seen enough movies. all of life's riddles are answered in the movies. it's a story about a man who loses his way. he's a filmmaker like me and he forgets for a moment just what he was set on earth to do. fortunately, he finds his way back.

that can happen, mac. check it out. hey, there's a town up ahead. let's get off and see what happens. what town is it? i don't know. i suppose it's hollywood. (david bordwell) classical hollywood style has not ended. it continues in most popular american cinema and most popular cinema in the world obeys the guidelines laid down in the classical system. i don't think you would find that the thinking about how to make a scene play has changed. what's changed are the tools with which you work. the so-called classical style from the 30's, 40's, from the golden age of cinema, we use it every day.

i mean, elements of that style. (allen daviau) we're doing it with modern tools. with color film and modern lenses. and as a result we get a different effect. but the heart of the technique was always there. the nature of filmmaking is you're always experimenting. if you ever know it all you're finished. you're always trying something that you've never done before or something you attempted and didn't think you did well. you have to keep the train, rolling forward all the time. within that forward movement create things in your mind. (lawrence kasdan) the fun of it is living on some kind of edge moment to moment and saying, "well, we're committing now, this is how we're going to see this scene." when i talk to an actor and they say to me, "what's happening here, what should i be?" we're making fine judgments about how it should be played.

and it matters. it matters what expression is on mary mcdonnell's face when she looks after that train. i won't be able to change it once i commit to it. and i may be wrong on the day at union station for what i need 2 months later in the cutting room. and that is the part that sort of energizes you. that's what makes movies different from theatre where you can go back the next night and change it. and there's something about that heightened reality that is what makes movies the excitement that they are and why movies are different from everything else. and why people pour out to see what came out of that. there's some added juice that comes from that process. go back to the beginning. i'm the audience in a sense. i'm the audience. and i sit there and i react to the performances as the audience.

this is a rehearsal. stand by everybody. stand by, please. let's hit the train, please. and we're rolling. (music playing)