Interview with William Wyler
I've been reading up on the production of Ben-Hur, as well as the director himself William Wyler. I came across an interview with Wyler in 1946 from the New York Times, and I've pasted it below.
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“The Best Years of Our Lives”
William Wyler
and His Screen Philosophy
By Thomas M.
Pryor
November 17,
1946
The New York Times
When William Wyler was last interviewed
in September, 1945, as he was about to return to directing films in Hollywood
after serving three years in the Army Air Forces, he frankly admitted that he
was ''scared.'' His anxiety was not alleviated by thoughts of the Academy
''Oscar'' he had won in 1941 with ''Mrs. Miniver.'' In fact, that distinction
served to heighten his apprehension of the Hollywood axiom that a director is
only as good as his last picture, because, as things work out, each successive
undertaking becomes in turn that fateful last picture. Thus it wasn't what he
had done, but what he was about to do which would really matter. ''I with,'' he
said at the time, ''that I could go back quietly and make a small picture just
to get the feel of things.''
But he couldn't do that. He was committed
to make a picture right off for Samuel Goldwyn in order to terminate a pre-war
contract. Moreover, he had then just organized a new independent producing
company, Liberty Films, Inc., in association with Frank Capra, George Stevens
and Samuel J. Briskin. Like himself, those gentlemen also had absented
themselves from Hollywood to help out in the war effort. Being thoroughly
versed in the foibles of Hollywood, he reasoned that since his picture for
Goldwyn would be out first, the movie colony's estimation of Liberty would blow
hot or cold, depending on the showing he made.
Confidence Restored
Fourteen months and the completion of
''The Best Years of Our Lives'' has restored Mr. Wyler's self-confidence. The
other afternoon he chatted freely and with the assurance that befits an
accomplished craftsman who has enriched the screen with such pictures as ''Dead
End,'' ''These Three,'' ''Dodsworth,'' ''Wuthering Heights'' and ''The Little
Foxes,'' in collaboration with Samuel Goldwyn; ''Mrs. Miniver,'' for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer;
''The Letter,'' for Warner Brothers, and the brilliant documentary of a bombing
mission over Germany, ''The Memphis Belle,'' for the Army Air Forces.
Mr. Wyler discovered during the making of
''The Best Years of Our Lives,'' which opens on Thursday at the Astor Theatre,
that no appreciable differences in technique had been developed during his
absence. He speaks with confidence, devoid of any trace of braggadocio, of the
picture as the fulfillment of a deep-rooted personal obligation to do something
''worthwhile,'' as ''the best'' film he has yet made and ''the most important''
in terms of what it has to say.
Homecoming
''The Best Years of Our Lives'' tells of
the homecoming of three veterans to the same town. There is a middle-aged
sergeant (Fredric March), with a wife and grown son and daughter and a good job
awaiting him. There is an Air Forces captain, a lead bombardier (Dana Andrews),
who has outgrown his pre-war job as drug store soda jerker, returning to a
philandering wife whom he married before going overseas. There is a disabled
sailor (Harold J. Russell, a non-professional who was incapacitated in the
Army), who was a star athlete in high school and lost both hands.
''This is the kind of picture I couldn't
possibly have made and done with conviction if I had not been in the war
myself,'' said Mr. Wyler. ''If Sam (Goldwyn) had handed me this story five
years ago I would have had to say, if I didn't want to make a fool of myself,
'Wait just a minute! I'll join the Army and come back in three years after I
get to know these characters.''' As Mr. Wyler thinks back over some of his
earlier pictures, he realized that he didn't understand the characters well
enough. ''But I know these fellows,'' he continued. ''I've come home twice
myself from the war and I know just how these fellows would feel and act. One
character is very much like myself in the sense he comes back to a nice family,
a good job and a little money. This fellow has lived with the same woman for
twenty years, yet he feels a bit strange and out of place at first. No man can
walk right into the house after two or three years and pick up his life as
before.
''I explained all my own fears and
problems to Bob (Robert E.) Sherwood, who wrote the script, and he worked them
in just the way I wanted them. He did a wonderful job in weaving the characters
together. Writing the script was like doing an original story. The three
characters we have now are not at all like the ones MacKinlay Kantor had in his
book 'Glory For Me,' which he wrote at the suggestion of Mr. Goldwyn. Kantor's
story was good for 1944-45, but we wanted a story that would stand up in
1946-47. Our toughest problem was shaping the character of the disabled veteran.
We had a spastic case first, but I realized such a character would never ring
true; that no actor, no matter how great his talent, could play a spastic with
conviction.
''One day while I was looking at some
Signal Corps films about disabled veterans I saw 'Diary of a Sergeant,' which
showed a fellow who had lost both hands trying to get accustomed to hooks,
artificial hands. I knew that he was to be our sailor. Bob Sherwood agreed with
me and we approached Goldwyn, fully believing that he would reject the
suggestion as too gruesome. But he saw what we were driving at and said 'Go
ahead.' We decided to take up this boy where 'Diary of a Sergeant' left him and
show him returning home fully readjusted and determined to live among other
people and to act like them in every respect. We wanted to show people that
these disabled men were thoroughly capable of doing ordinary things with
artificial hands; that we, in fact, are the ones who are maladjusted, since we
annoy and embarrass them with our patronizing attentions.
''I sought out Harold Russell for our
film. He never was overseas but he was a war casualty just the same. He lost
both hands in an accidental explosion in an Army training camp in Georgia.
After seeing him in 'Diary of a Sergeant,' I knew no one else could play the
role. He isn't an actor, of course, and he has no acting technique, but he
gives the finest performance I have ever seen on the screen. I didn't try to
teach him to act. I concentrated on guiding his thinking more than his actions,
because I reasoned that if he was thinking along the right lines he just
couldn't do anything wrong. I call his performance a 'thought' performance
because you know instinctively what he is feeling just by the expression on his
face or the way he tilts his head or covers his hooks.''
Drama Based on Facts
Mr. Wyler firmly believes that the
picture ''has something as important to say to audiences as big news story.''
Yet, he says, ''what it has to say is gotten across in such an entertaining
manner that people coming out of the theatre will think they are saying it, not
the writer or the director or the producer.'' He has not yet decided on the
subject of his first picture for Liberty, but feels pictures seeking a
world-wide audience ''cannot be detached from the great events of the world.''
''Great pictures can't be entirely
fictitious,'' says Mr. Wyler. ''Pictures that will live on for years, like 'The
Birth of a Nation' and 'Gone With the Wind,' had great historical events in the
background. The trouble with Hollywood is that too many of the top people
responsible for pictures are too comfortable and don't give a damn about what
goes up on the screen so long as it gets by at the box office. How can you
expect people with that kind of attitude to make the kind of great pictures
that the world will want to see?''
The Code
The Production Code is another barrier in
the path of screen progress, says Mr. Wyler. He doesn't deny its usefulness and
admits that there is a need for some sort of check to hold irresponsible
producers in line. However, he is strongly critical of the way in which the
Code is being enforced and cited an experience he had in making ''The Best
Years of Our Lives'' to illustrate his contention that the ''Code is too rigid
when enforced according to the letter.''
Mr. Wyler was called on the carpet by
Joseph I. Breen's Code staff and reminded of ''the sanctity of marriage''
because the ex-bombardier had fallen in love with the daughter of the sergeant
and obviously desired to get a divorce from the wife who was two-timing him.
''On the other hand,'' he went on, ''there was one scene which was full of sex
and quite vulgar, not because of any dialogue that was spoken, but because of
the way it was played. It was out of key with the rest of the picture and it
actually embarrassed the preview audience. I cut out the scene myself after
that because I knew I had done the wrong thing. But the point is that the Breen
Office raised no objection, either on reading the script or after seeing the
picture.
''Incidents like that convince me that
those people have no real judgment. They apply the Code evenly to all pictures,
which is just like giving an aspirin to mend a broken arm. If we must have the
Production Code than I think the only way to use it effectively is to judge a
film as a whole and determine whether its effect is good or bad.''
Turning to a discussion of filming
technique, Mr. Wyler said he deliberately refrained from cutting sharply from
one scene into another and also held back on using close-ups of the players.
''I shot most of the scenes through from beginning to end and by letting the
camera turn with the actors it caught their actions and reactions. In that way
the players did their own cutting. I don't believe in overworking the close-up
and only use it when I want to make a point by excluding everything else from
the audiences' view for a certain length of time. The close-up is a tricky
business and must be done in silent agreement with the audience, because if
they don't want to look at a specific face or object at the precise moment you
want them to do that, then it's no good.''
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