Anthony mann

Born on June 30, 1906, in San Diego (California, USA), Emil Anton Bundsmann –real name of the filmmaker– was the son of an Austrian emigrant and a Georgian from a Jewish family, both philosophy professors. At first, the young man intended to become an actor. When his family went to live in New York, he took the opportunity to audition for supporting roles in productions on the off-Broadway circuit.

In one play, he caught the eye of powerful producer David O. Selznick , who hired him as casting director and talent scout. When Mann embarked on his epic cast search for Gone with the Wind , Mann was tasked with directing the filming of numerous auditions.

Later he was promoted to assistant director, at the service of comedy specialist Preston Sturges , with whom he collaborated on several, including the unrepeatable Sullivan’s Travels . Delighted with his work, Sturges encouraged him to start his own career as a filmmaker. Paramount gave him the chance to debut with the crime comedy Dr. Broadway , on the condition that he finish it in 18 days. His first major title is certainly The Great Flamarion , a crime story with Erich Von Stroheim playing a showbiz shooter.

At that time he specialized in film noir, series B, and specifically is considered one of the most illustrious representatives of docu-noir, who treated the genre with a realistic style very close to documentary. In this field, the suicide brigade and Executor stand out . Another of his early works is The Reign of Terror , which, although essentially a historical adventure film at the time of the French Revolution, also has the tone of a film noir.

He proved his worth for the western with the unforgettable Winchester 73 , with James Stewart , a highly original film that follows in the footsteps of a rifle that passes from hand to hand. The results were so satisfactory, both for the director and for the actor, that they formed a professional ‘marriage’ in four other impeccable western titles. In Far Horizons , Stewart plays Glyn McLyntock, a gunslinger who leads a caravan to redeem himself from his career as a gunslinger. Colorado Jim stars the violent Howard Kemp, in search of an outlaw for whom they pay a substantial reward that he will use to buy new land and forget that his ex-girlfriend went off with someone else and got hers. in distant landsStewart plays the unsympathetic Jeff Webster, who in snowy Alaska tries to sell cattle, avenge his best friend, and forget about a woman of yesteryear. Finally, in The Man from Laramie , the actor plays Will Lokhart, a former soldier who investigates who sold the weapons to the Indians who killed several soldiers, including his brother. Themes are repeated in all of them, the escape from the past, the search for revenge, etc. and the open scenes in which the action takes place acquire special relevance, which enthused the critic master André Bazin: “Give Mann a landscape, a mountain and an itinerary. And we will already have a masterpiece”.

Mann and Stewart came close to repeating for a sixth Western, specifically The Last Bullet , but Mann eventually realized that the script was pretty mediocre, so he dropped out of the project, leaving Stewart in the hands of the very bottom filmmaker James Neilson .

They also collaborated on three other films that did not belong to the genre: Black Bay (about two oil prospectors), Strategic Air Command (about an Aviation officer) and Music and Tears , (biography of the musical figure Glenn Miller ). Without Stewart, Mann shot several first-rate westerns, including The Last Frontier , The Westman, and Cimarron . He especially highlights The Devil’s Door , with Robert Tayloras a Navajo Indian who, despite having become a hero fighting in the Civil War, suffers racist harassment from a lawyer who turns the entire town against him. It was one of the first Westerns to champion the Indian perspective, but it was overshadowed because it was released around the same time as the much more successful Broken Arrow .

During the filming of the drama about an aspiring tenor Dos pasiones y un amor , adaptation of a work by James M. Cain , he fell in love with one of the high school girls, a rising Spanish girl named Sara Montiel . After abandoning his wife, Mildred, with whom he had a daughter, he would end up marrying Sara Montiel in articulo mortis, because the filmmaker had suffered a heart attack, and the doctors feared for her life.

While with the actress, Mann filmed El Cid , one of his best-known titles, in Spain, with Charlton Heston as the heroic knight of Vivar. According to Sara Montiel, the producer, Samuel Bronston, offered her the role of Doña Jimena, but preferred to recommend Sophia Loren . The director divorced from La Mancha in 1963.

Again alongside Bronston and Loren, Mann is tasked with the remarkable The Fall of the Roman Empire . A good war adventure film followed, The Heroes of Telemark , with Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris as members of the Norwegian resistance who must stop the Nazis from developing the atomic bomb.

Another heart attack ended the life of the great Anthony Mann in the middle of the job, while filming Judgment for a dandy , on April 29, 1967 in Berlin. The actor Laurence Harvey was in charge of finishing the tape.