AIRED: PBS
AIRDATE: 1987

AWARDS RECEIVED:
Gold Hugo Award
Executive Producer: Catherine Wyler
Producer: Catherine Tatge
Director/Editor: Aviva Slesin
Writer: A. Scott Berg
1986

1987 Blue Ribbon Award
Directed by William Wyler
American Film & Video Festival
1987

National Educational Film & Video Festival
Gold Apple Award
1993

Golden Gate Award
Honorable Mention
International SFilm Festival

Blue Ribbon Award
Tatge Productions Inc.
The American Film & Video Festival

REVIEWS

NY TIMES REVIEW:
Directed by William Wyler
1986 - USA - Biography

This excellent biographical documentary looks at the life and work of director William Wyler. The film is dominated by clips from many of Wyler's better-known works, such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, and Funny Girl. A long interview with the director himself (conducted a few days before he died) provides his personal perspective on his work and interviews with his actors and colleagues offer some surprising comments about the man. Terence Stamp feels Wyler may not have had a good command of English, while Laurence Olivier notes that Wyler taught him how to drop theatrical exaggerations and act for the camera. Bette Davis gives the most extensive commentary. Excerpts from home movies show Wyler and his family on vacation and also record a bit of the making of Wuthering Heights. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Late-silent movies with a few jarringly gratuitous talkie scenes are among the freakiest evolutionary specimens Hollywood history has to offer. Unlike most such films, however, The Love Trap takes a quantum leap in quality when it switches to talkie mode for its final reel. Now, this trifle about a chorus girl (the lumpish Laura La Plante) who escapes from a caddish high-society type (Robert Ellis), gets married to a nice high-society type (Neil Hamilton), and triumphs over his priggish family's hypocrisy never comes close to being a memorable comedy. But the minute director William Wyler has to stage a dialogue scene, his camera suddenly becomes alive to space, depth, and his actors' physicality in a way that anticipates the deep-focus dynamism of his mature visual style. You can learn more about Wyler in the 55-minute companion documentary, Directed by William Wyler, featuring an all-star cast of interviewees and a funny, leprechaunish "performance" by Wyler himself--three days before his death, as it turned out. --Richard T. Jameson

Amazon Customer Review
Delightful Antique!, April 19, 2004
Reviewer: jery tillotson (see more about me) from New York, NY United States This part-talkie from l929 is a must-see for any film buff who wants to behold that weird quasi-combination movie--"Part Talkie!"--popular back in those days.The first half of "The Love Trap" is a fast-moving silent with a pleasant musical score. Then the second half is an equally fast-moving talkie. And this is when you discover for yourself why the adorable blonde, Laura LaPlante, was such a big star back then. Her voice is musical and normal, so it's a mystery as to why she never continued far into the early talkies. She retired soon after making this movie. William Wyler let's her shine and despite all the horror stories one hears about how frozen actors were in l929 because of the microphone, you certainly don't see any of that stiffness here. Kino has done a beautiful job restoring and bringing us this unknown comedy from the great William Wyler. I'm getting ready to watch it again--and wonder anew why Laura quit the movie business only a year after "The Love trap" was released.

DESCRIPTION/SYNOPSIS

DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER is an intimate film portrait of the life and career of perhaps one of Hollywood's most skilled and renowned directors. From silent pictures to talkies, from westerns to adaptations of classic novels and Broadway plays, William Wyler left a body of work that documents Hollywood's coming of age. Over a span of fifty years, he made some of the best loved movies of all time: Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, Ben Hur, Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday, and Funny Girl. This sixty-minute film, now in its final stages of editing, will be broadcast on public television's new series AMERICAN MASTERS.

Production on DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER began in late spring of 1981. Over the course of a week, Wyler recounted his life on film--his early years in Europe, his arrival in America to begin a career in motion pictures, and his steady climb through the industry to become one of its most celebrated directors. His recollections touch on the stormy but fertile association with Sam Goldwyn: "They say one day it's a Wyler touch, the next day it's a Goldwyn touch--you end up not knowing whose touch it was!" He later describes his flying missions to shoot Air Force documentaries during World War II, and of the injury that impaired his hearing and nearly ended his professional life as a film director. He was the personification of the American dream and he told his tale with humor and gusto. Forty-eight hours after committing his life story to film, he died.

Wyler's stories are substantiated or sometimes contradicted in interviews with some of Hollywood's greatest legends: Bette Davis, John Huston, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Hellman, Greer Garson, Billy Wilder, Barbra Streisand, and others. A dialogue emerges between the director, the actors, and the films they made together. Wyler was a tough, persistent director whose legendary demands for perfection earned him the nickname of "40-take Wyler." The flamboyant Bette Davis exclaims: "He made me do 48 takes in front of 250 extras. And I had never done more than 2 takes...ever." Wyler responds: "Everything in Hollywood is exaggerated. I'd make six or eight takes and it turns out to be forty." Actors came to appreciate the painstaking care Wyler took in building a scene. Laurence Olivier, for example, says: "He made me a good film actor by teaching me, in a very rough, insulting way, that I didn't know who I thought I was....I owe so much thinking in my life since then to Wyler...so much thinking." In the interviews we hear funny and poignant stories which above all betray an overwhelming respect for William Wyler. Lillian Hellman, writer of three Wyler films and close friend, recounts: "I remember coming out of Mrs. Miniver and crying. He said, 'why are you crying?' and I said, 'because its such a piece of junk, Willy, junk from a great man.' Someone behind me said, 'Are you crazy? It's going to be the biggest hit!'" And it was, winning Wyler's first Academy Award.

Illustrating these exclusive interviews are a treasure-trove of Wyler's personal photography, hundreds of rare photographs and home movies and some of the most luminous moments from Wyler's motion pictures: Frederick March's homecoming to Myrna Loy in Best Years of Our Lives; Bette Davis treacherously refusing to give the ailing Herbert Marshall his life-saving medicine in The Little Foxes; Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver capturing the German flyer; the passionate love scene between Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights; Bette Davis as Jezebel appearing at the ball, in her scandalous red dress.

The film shows Wyler's special artistry in his ability to develop complex characters and stories in a revealing, unforced manner--to take a situation and allow it to unfold naturally. Barbra Streisand in discussing the making of Funny Girl said: "I can't tell you how many directors don't know they have the moment of truth in front of them and they cut. He recognized the truth always."

Few directors in the history of American cinema have earned the popular and critical acclaim achieved by Wyler. "He had an unparalleled string of hit after hit after hit." (Billy Wilder) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him more than any director in its history with three Academy Awards, twelve nominations for Best Director and another three for producing. Gregory Peck: "A picture with Willy Wyler was almost a guarantee of success." From the 37 feature films he directed, 35 actresses and actors were nominated for Academy Awards, 14 of them walked off with the Oscar. "He was the finest director of actors this country ever had." (John Huston)

Short Description

DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER, the Emmy-nominated documentary on the life and work of the American film director for the AMERICAN MASTERS series, which won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the CINE Golden Eagle and was selected by the Venice, New York, Montreal, London and Chicago Festivals (1986).