Otto Preminger, so fond of ambiguity, must enjoy this mystery: his centennial year either just ended or is just beginning--the records are unclear. Born in Vienna during the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Preminger studied law but was an actor/director prodigy in theater, quickly moving up under mentor Max Reinhardt. The 1930s forced Jewish Preminger to France, then Hollywood. A promising start was almost sidetracked when he resisted Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck's overtures to direct a big-budget version of the book Kidnapped. Seven years later, Zanuck replaced director Rouben Mamoulian with Preminger on LAURA. Preminger made it a hit--and delivered a string of urban thrillers and zesty melodramas throughout the 1940s. In the 1950s, he realized his greatest successes as an independent. Only Alfred Hitchcock was more recognizable--making the relative obscurity today of some of Preminger's memorable films all the more troubling. Rediscover the groundbreaking, wide-ranging work of a true Hollywood auteur.

Special thanks to the following institutions and individuals for making this series possible: Twentieth Century Fox Film Library, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Victoria Preminger. ALL FILMS UNRATED UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

AFI Member Passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Otto Preminger Series.

LAURA

This irresistibly haunting thriller (#73 on AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Thrills) put Preminger on the map. Featuring the stunning Gene Tierney with Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson, Clifton Webb--and David Raksin's music (#7 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores). Five Oscar nominations, including Preminger's first for Best Director. Named to the National Film Registry, 1999.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhart, from the novel by Vera Caspary. US, 1944, b&w, 85 min.

FALLEN ANGEL

Based on a piece of popular pulp fiction by Marty Holland, this darkly beautiful film elicits postwar Hollywood, when good and bad were temporary character definitions. The second film of Preminger's "Fox Quintet." Dana Andrews is a charming drifter who cons local heiress Alice Faye for enough cash to run off with Linda Darnell, a sultry waitress. But Darnell is murdered. With Andrews the prime suspect, he must now depend on his former prey to clear his name.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Harry Kleiner, from the novel by Marty Holland. US, 1945, b&w, 97 min.

DAISY KENYON

Censured by the Production Code for its frank depiction of adultery and implied skepticism about marriage, this classic '40s "women's picture" was the perfect vehicle for Joan Crawford. She's a headstrong fashion designer in a love triangle between brash attorney Dana Andrews and honest WWII vet Henry Fonda. Preminger makes a typically sober case for each man and holds back Daisy's choice to the very end, transforming a routine melodrama into a probing study of postwar sexual politics.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR David Hertz, from the novel by Elizabeth Janeway. US, 1947, b&w, 98 min.

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS

Dana Andrews is a violent, neurotic cop with unshaken moral conviction--until his "interrogation" kills a mobster suspect. Andrews tries to save himself by framing mobster Gary Merrill, while trying not to fall in love with his victim's estranged wife, Gene Tierney. In this dark side of the city, adapted from the crime novel by William L. Stuart, Preminger remains coolly objective in his exposure of the characters' moral trajectories under extreme stress.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Ben Hecht, from the novel by William L. Stuart. US, 1950, b&w, 95 min.

ANGEL FACE

Unbalanced teenager Jean Simmons wanders through the huge mansion that is her home, babbling on about "not knowing" and "not understanding." Obsessed with her father, she holds a grudge against her stepmother. Robert Mitchum is the ambulance-driver-turnedchauffeur who becomes her accomplice-- and victim. "ANGEL FACE must be the one lyrical nightmare in the cinema."--Ian Cameron, National Film Theatre, London. Barbet Schroeder cited the film as a strong influence for his paranoid SINGLE WHITE FEMALE.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Ben Hecht, from novel by William L. Stuart. US, 1950, b&w, 95 min.

THE MOON IS BLUE

"I am not a crusader," said Preminger of his refusal to make the edits required for a Production Seal, "but it gives me great pleasure to fight for my rights." Today considered the first shot in the fight against the film community's antiquated self-censorship system, THE MOON IS BLUE helped propel its director to household-name status. Preminger wouldn't remove forbidden words--virgin, pregnant, seduce-- from this light romantic comedy with William Holden, David Niven and Maggie McNamara. It was his first film as an independent producer, based on the play he'd directed on stage.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR F. Hugh Hubert, from the play by F. Hugh Hubert. US, 1953, b&w, 99 min.

New 35mm Print!
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

Preminger's second challenge to the MPAA Production Seal system, in black and white to underscore the seriousness of the subject. Coke addict Frank Sinatra tries to get clean--hindered by his neurotic wife, Eleanor Parker. He's accused of killing a drug dealer, and turns to girlfriend Kim Novak to clear him and finally kick his habit. In this controversial adaptation of Nelson Algren's award-winning novel, Preminger's treatment softens the bleaker aspects. Saul Bass's groundbreaking title design became a Preminger trademark.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Walter Newman and Lewis Meltzer, from the novel by Nelson Algren. US, 1956, b&w, 119 min.

RIVER OF NO RETURN

Ex-con Robert Mitchum wants to start all over again, out West with his son, Tommy Rettig. They run into Marilyn Monroe, who's looking for her no-account husband (Rory Calhoun). The quests flow together on the fatefully named river, with Preminger bringing his theatrical sensibility to the nuanced plot and symbolic staging. Shot on location in the Canadian Rockies, Preminger's first attempt at wide-screen aesthetics was the first CinemaScope western. "Somehow it embraces more," he said. "We see more widely, and it fits into long takes better."

DIR Otto Preminger; SCR Frank Fenton; PROD Stanley Rubin. US, 1954, color, 91 min.

BONJOUR TRISTESSE

A major inspiration to the French New Wave (François Truffaut loved this movie). The controversial Arthur Laurents adaptation of teenager Françoise Sagan's explosive first novel stars Jean Seberg, Deborah Kerr and David Niven in a sordid, incestuous love triangle.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Arthur Laurents, from the novel by Françoise Sagan. US, 1958, b&w/color, 94 min.

CARMEN JONES

Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte lead an all-black cast in Oscar Hammerstein's adaptation of Bizet's classic opera Carmen--with their voices dubbed. Director Otto Preminger explained his choice of Marilyn Horne and Le Vern Hutcherson: "The music is still Bizet--I can't change that. The two leads are not operatic singers. But it is important to cast singers in the roles. They know how to 'sell' a song. If you have an actor do it he merely mouths the words without feeling."

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Harry Kleiner, from the musical by Oscar Hammerstein II. US, 1955, color, 105 min.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Edge-of-your-seat courtroom drama unfolds to Duke Ellington's Grammy Award-winning score. Nervously hilarious interludes give only intermittent relief from the emotional pyrotechnics. James Stewart leads a distinguished cast as the small-town ex-prosecutor who's defending Ben Gazzara for the murder of wife Lee Remick's alleged rapist. His opponent is powerful prosecutor George C. Scott, with real-life McCarthy adversary Joseph N. Welch as the judge and Duke Ellington doing a cameo as Pie Eye. Seven Oscar nominations.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Wendell Mayes, from the novel by Robert Traver. US, 1959, b&w, 161 min.

ADVISE AND CONSENT

One of the greatest of all Washington films, a "masterpiece of ambiguity and objectivity."-- Andrew Sarris. A Senate confirmation struggle to the death whose astonishing all-star cast includes Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney, Burgess Meredith, Paul Ford, George Grizzard, Peter Lawford, Will Geer and Betty White. And yes, that's Frank Sinatra singing in the club.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Wendell Mayes, from the novel by Allen Drury. US, 1962, b&w, 140 min.

EXODUS

The 1947 birth of Israel, as adapted from Leon Uris's bestseller (he disavowed Preminger's work). A sweeping widescreen epic shot on spectacular locations in Cyprus and Israel, with the breakout from Acre prison filmed at the actual site. Thousands of Jewish Displaced Persons are interned behind the British blockade in Cyprus. General Ralph Richardson is sympathetic, and Haganah officer Paul Newman packs 600 aboard the old freighter Exodus for a hunger strike. Romances and personal conflicts abound. Ernest Gold nabbed an Oscar for his haunting hit score. Dalton Trumbo's on-screen screenwriting credit was the first to break the blacklist.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR Dalton Trumbo, from the novel by Leon Uris. US, 1960, color, 208 min.

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

Unwed mother Carol Lynley, of questionable mental stability, desperately tries to track down her missing four-year-old daughter. Keir Dullea plays her seemingly supportive brother, and Laurence Olivier is the detective assigned to the case. A critical and commercial failure upon its release, BUNNY LAKE deserves to be reevaluated as a darkly poetic paranoid thriller and "a reflective mid-'60s return to the ghostly film noir style [Preminger] developed at Fox in the '40s."--Dave Kehr.

DIR/PROD Otto Preminger; SCR John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer, from the novel by Evelyn Piper. UK, 1965, b&w, 107 min