Zinnemann, Fred

Zinnemann, Fred (1907-1997), Austrian-born film director/producer, born in Vienna, who graduated in law, studied film-making in Paris, and entered cinema in Berlin before leaving for Hollywood in 1929. His first film as director, Los Redes (1937; The Wave), a 60-minute documentary-drama with a theme similar to that of La Terra Trema (1947; The Earth Trembles), by Luchino Visconti, and Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954), was filmed in the Gulf of Vera Cruz.

Zinnemann frequently used professional and non-professional actors together, with the sometimes-depraved brutality of some of his characters balanced by an instinctive humanity in others. Figures were often isolated within narrow, tunnel-like shapes, and he made dramatic use of natural shadow, while extending moments of tension, qualities most noticeable in his High Noon (1952). His skill in building dramatic tension, as a component of serious argument, reached its climax in The Day of the Jackal (1973). His films exploit a passionate rhetoric through sometimes outstanding acting. Performances from Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Julie Harris, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, and a host of supporting actors led to numerous Hollywood Academy Award nominations and honours.

Zinnemann's own views were influenced by the ways in which civilized European countries embraced Nazism. The Seventh Cross (1944), made at the height of World War II from the best-selling novel by Anna Seghers, looks at the ways in which the civilian population in parts of Europe accommodated, even embraced, Nazism and its values. The Search (1948; Die Gezeichneten), The Men (1950), High Noon, The Member of the Wedding and From Here to Eternity (both 1953), The Nun's Story (1959), A Man for All Seasons (1966), and Julia (1977), all evolve around a moral debate on the themes of conviction and responsibility. Similar preoccupations appear in all his best work. Even seemingly light-hearted films such as Oklahoma! (1955) and The Sundowners (1960) are closely linked to Zinnemann's concerns with families that relocate themselves in new territories and try to rebuild their lives. If his films are sometimes over-refined, they confirm the principle of human dignity and are central to Hollywood's image of itself as the focus of moral debate in the United States.