This collection of interviews provides a revealing self-portrait of
Martin Ritt (1914-1990), America's preeminent maker of social films and
one of the most sensitive portraitists of the rural South.
Ritt's Hollywood career began in 1958 with Edge of the City and ended
in 1990 with the release of Stanley and Iris. In all, he directed
twenty-six movies, including some of Hollywood's most enduring
films--Hud, Hombre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The
Brotherhood, The Molly Maguires, The Front, and Norma Rae.
Although he gave mostly boilerplate interviews to the press when
promoting a movie, Ritt provided more revealing interviews for seminars,
oral histories, and documentary filmmakers. The most significant of
these, published here for the first time, create a close-up portrait of
this distinguished director of plays and films.
Ritt speaks eloquently about his years with the Group Theatre and
recreates the passion of the director Harold Clurman. He tells how the
Group shaped his ideas about art and the communal nature of the
theatrical enterprise, which he extended into his work in film. He
speaks of his relationship with Clifford Odets and Elia Kazan, and he
talks in detail about his experiences with the blacklist, directing and
acting in TV during its Golden Age, his career as a theater director,
and his experiences working with such actors as Paul Newman, Sally
Field, Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, and Robert De Niro. Ritt discusses
his philosophy of directing, the place of film in the history of art,
his quarrels with "auteur theory," and the influence of his politics on
his work.
