Clint Eastwood wasn't scared to make mistakes

Milan Luthria is the director of films like Taxi No 9211 and Once Upon A Time In Mumbai talks about his five favourite filmmakers.

Alfred Hitchcock
The first ‘star director’, Hitchcock created an identity as a filmmaker unlike any other. He directed masterpieces for an incredible 51 years. His is a name that evokes a strange response. Your mind thinks suspense… horror… murder! And yet there’s a smile on your lips. That’s the genius of the man — he turned suspense, horror and murder into an entertaining art form. The masterpieces that leap to mind, many of which are textbooks in crisp, clever filmmaking, with tremendous repeat value are: The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Thirty Nine Steps, Birds, North By Northwest, Dial M For Murder and of course… Psycho! But my personal favourite is Spellbound, starring the dashing Gregory Peck and the ethereal Ingrid Bergman. He believed in letting the audience stay “a half step ahead” to fully enjoy the suspense.

Clint Eastwood
Did you know that this legendary cowboy has directed 35 films, the first of which was in 1971? When he turned to making Spaghetti westerns like A Fistful Of Dollars for his bread and butter, everyone thought he was making the biggest mistake of his life. In Italy, he asked for the Italian word for mistake, and was told the word was malpaso. On returning home, he named his production company ‘Malpaso’. Among my favorite of his many superbly-directed films are Play Misty For Me, The Eiger Sanction,

The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, Absolute Power, True Crime, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, and Invictus (after which my wife has named her horse). The list of good films made by Eastwood is long, and conveys the range of ideas he has covered, and continues to.

Steven Spielberg
An obvious choice, you may say, but not for all the obvious reasons. From the path breaking Duel, in which one can see flashes of his early brilliance (it’s a MUST watch if you haven’t seen it already), the first major milestone of Spielberg’s career was understanding that attracting audiences in the age group of 11 to 14 is of primary importance. If you get them, you have a box office smash at your hands. Jaws, Sugarland Express, Close Encounters, The Indiana Jones films and the Jurassic Park franchise prove that. After hitting the bull’s eye on so many occasions, one wondered what he would do next. But the classics kept coming: Schindler’s List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal, Munich. And counting.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee
He started his career as an editor and used that to make his films amazingly sharp and accurate. He was the king of emotion without spectacle, and straddled the spectrum, from tragedy to comedy with equal panache. Here was a filmmaker who didn’t offer grand bonanzas, but most of his films were quiet box office hits, and all of the time he was chased by the best talent in the business, be it Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, or Amitabh Bachchan. His range is amply displayed from the dark Mili, Anand, Abhimaan and Namak Haraam to the effervescent Guddi, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, Baawarchi, Khubsoorat and many more.

Guru Dutt
For me, Dutt’s was one of the best and most tragic careers in the world of movies. Deep and dark as the night, but each dark classic like Kagaz Ke Phool, Pyaasa, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, had an entertainer like Mr & Mrs 55, Baaz and Aar Paar to back it. Credited with only eight films as director, he provided a launch pad for several stalwart talents of the sixties, seventies and eighties. When one sees the several books and documentaries of which he is the subject today, one wonders why his films that failed then and allegedly drove him to despair, and perhaps even death, are revered today. And how much more this enigma could have achieved had he not allegedly taken his life at the age of 39?
 

Milan Luthria
Milan Luthria is the director of films like Taxi No 9211 and Once Upon A Time In Mumbai. Here, he talks about his five favourite filmmakers