Gordon Willis
Encyclopedia
Gordon Willis, ASC
, (born May 28, 1931) is an American
cinematographer
best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola
's The Godfather
series as well as Woody Allen
's Annie Hall
and Manhattan
.
His fellow cinematographer William Fraker has called Willis's work "a milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that "more than any other director of photography, Willis defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade’s moral ambiguities into stark relief".
When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003 they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.
. His friend the cinematographer Conrad Hall
named him "The Prince of Darkness" but Willis himself preferred to talk in terms of "visual relativity", saying: "I like going from light to dark, dark to light, big to small, small to big". Discussing The Godfather he said:
The director Francis Ford Coppola once said of Willis, “He has a natural sense of structure and beauty, not unlike a Renaissance artist”, while Willis was praised for his capacity to use "painterliness" to define "not just the look but the very meaning and feel of a film". Speaking of contemporary film-making in 2004, Willis said:
Another trademark is his preference for filming at the magic hour before twilight, when the sun is low and creates a golden glow. Willis created the trope of warm ambers to denote nostalgic glow for the past, for the young Vito sequences of The Godfather Part II
; many films since then have copied this cinematic technique when depicting pre-World War II America.
, New York City
. His parents had been dancers in Broadway theatre
before his father became a make-up man at Warner Brothers in Brooklyn
. As a child Willis fell in love with films. He wanted to be an actor and then became interested in lighting and stage design, later turning to photography. For a time he intended to be a fashion photographer, photographing models he knew from living in Greenwich Village
. "I didn't know shit," Willis said, "[I was] dumber than dirt, as they say. No money, no jobs etc." Through contacts of his father's he worked as "a gofer" on various movies in New York.
During the Korean War
Willis served in the Air Force, managing to join the Air Force Photographic and Charting Service in a motion picture unit. "I spent four years learning everything I could about making movies," Willis said. After leaving the Air Force a friend helped him to join the East Coast union in New York and he started to work as an Assistant Cameraman, working his way up to become a First Cameraman about 13 years later. He worked in advertising, shooting numerous commercials, and made a number of documentaries, a discipline that strongly influenced his later style. "You learn to eliminate, as opposed to adding," Willis said of his time making documentaries. "Not many people understand that." He once said, "I'm a mimimalist. I see things in simple ways... It's human nature to define complexity as better. Well, it's not." In 1969 the director Aram Avakian
hired Willis to work on his film End of the Road (1970). This was Willis' first movie.
: Klute
(1971), The Parallax View
(1974) and All The President's Men
(1976). He worked with Hal Ashby
on The Landlord
(1970), James Bridges
on The Paper Chase (1973), and Herbert Ross
on Pennies From Heaven
(1981); as well as shooting all three of Coppola's Godfather films and working with Woody Allen on a succession of films that included Annie Hall
(1977) and Manhattan
(1979).
At a seminar on film-making he gave in 2003, Willis said, "It's hard to believe, but a lot of directors have no visual sense. They only have a storytelling sense. If a director is smart, he'll give me the elbow room to paint". He added: "It's the judgment they're paying for." In a later interview he explained that when he started out in films he "did things in visual structure that nobody in the business was doing, especially in Hollywood", explaining: "I wasn't trying to be different; I just did what I liked". When asked by the interviewer how he applied his style to different genres and to working with different directors, Willis answered: "You're looking for a formula; there is none. The formula is me."
Up to the making of The Godfather (1972) Willis mostly used Mitchell
reflex cameras with Baltar or Cooke lenses. After that he used Panavision
equipment, which he had first used on Klute, returning to use Mitchells on The Godfather Part II (1974) to retain the visual coherence of the two films. Asked in 2004 about shooting films digitally, Willis was at that time sceptical: "The organics aren’t the same," he said. "The interpretive levels suffer". He added: "Digital is another form of recording an image, but it won’t replace thinking".
with his eyes hooded in shadow, a piece of lighting design that followed from the fact that Brando's make-up had to be lit from above.
Willis said that it was the colour that stitched the Godfather films together. The visual structure of the films was, he said, his, but he gave Coppola credit for hiring him, saying: "I'm not that easy to deal with". He praised the director for the "management hell" of his struggles with Paramount
, adding: "I’m grateful he could separate the visual structure of these movies from the mess that went on to fashion them".
Willis's collaboration with Woody Allen began with Annie Hall (1977). Willis described making films with Allen as being so comfortable an experience that it was like "working with your hands in your pockets". On Annie Hall he contrasted the warmth of Annie and Alvy Singer's romance in New York with the overexposure of the film's California scenes, while in Allen's Manhattan (1979) he was responsible for what has been called "a richly textured black-and-white paean to the beauty and diversity of the city itself". Willis, whose idea it was to use anamorphic widescreen for the filming, said: "We both felt that New York was a black-and-white city".
Willis also worked on the Allen films Interiors
(1978), Stardust Memories
(1980), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
(1982), Zelig
(1983), Broadway Danny Rose
(1984) and The Purple Rose of Cairo
(1985). Allen said that working with Willis had helped to improve his technical skills, saying of him: "He's an artist. He's got a great sense of humor —he taught me a lot."
(1990). In 2009, at the inaugural Governors Awards
, the Academy chose Willis as the recipient of the Academy Honorary Award
for his life's work.
Willis's last film was The Devil's Own
(1997), directed by Pakula. Of his decision to retire, Willis said: "I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain".
American Society of Cinematographers
The American Society of Cinematographers is an educational, cultural, and professional organization. It is not a labor union, and it is not a guild. Membership is by invitation and is extended only to directors of photography and special effects experts with distinguished credits in the film...
, (born May 28, 1931) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
series as well as Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
and Manhattan
Manhattan (film)
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
.
His fellow cinematographer William Fraker has called Willis's work "a milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that "more than any other director of photography, Willis defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade’s moral ambiguities into stark relief".
When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003 they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.
Character of work
Willis's work became celebrated for his ability to use shadow and underexposed film "with a subtlety –and expressivity– previously unknown on colour film stock", as one commentator had it, citing as examples Don Corleone's study in The Godfather and Deep Throat's parking garage in All the President's MenAll the President's Men
All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists investigating the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial...
. His friend the cinematographer Conrad Hall
Conrad Hall
Conrad Lafcadio Hall, ASC was an American cinematographer from Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia. Named after writers Joseph Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn, he was best known for photographing films such as In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty, and Road to...
named him "The Prince of Darkness" but Willis himself preferred to talk in terms of "visual relativity", saying: "I like going from light to dark, dark to light, big to small, small to big". Discussing The Godfather he said:
"You can decide this movie has got a dark palette. But you can't spend two hours on a dark palette. . . So you've got this high-key, Kodachrome wedding going on. Now you go back inside and it's dark again. You can't, in my mind, put both feet into a bucket of cement and leave them there for the whole movie. It doesn't work. You must have this relativity."
The director Francis Ford Coppola once said of Willis, “He has a natural sense of structure and beauty, not unlike a Renaissance artist”, while Willis was praised for his capacity to use "painterliness" to define "not just the look but the very meaning and feel of a film". Speaking of contemporary film-making in 2004, Willis said:
"I’m delighted that people can fly, dogs can talk, and anything destructive can be fashioned on the screen, but much of what’s being done lacks structure or taste. As I’ve asked in the past: can anyone give me the definition of a camera? It’s a tool, a means to an end. So is a light, and everything else you can pile on your back. They’re all meant to transpose the written word into moving pictures that tell a story."
Another trademark is his preference for filming at the magic hour before twilight, when the sun is low and creates a golden glow. Willis created the trope of warm ambers to denote nostalgic glow for the past, for the young Vito sequences of The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script co-written with Mario Puzo. The film is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, chronicling the story of the Corleone family following the events of the first film while also depicting the...
; many films since then have copied this cinematic technique when depicting pre-World War II America.
Early life and beginnings
Willis was born in Astoria, QueensAstoria, Queens
Astoria is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of the borough of Queens in New York City. Located in Community Board 1, Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside , and Woodside...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His parents had been dancers in Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
before his father became a make-up man at Warner Brothers in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. As a child Willis fell in love with films. He wanted to be an actor and then became interested in lighting and stage design, later turning to photography. For a time he intended to be a fashion photographer, photographing models he knew from living in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
. "I didn't know shit," Willis said, "[I was] dumber than dirt, as they say. No money, no jobs etc." Through contacts of his father's he worked as "a gofer" on various movies in New York.
During the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
Willis served in the Air Force, managing to join the Air Force Photographic and Charting Service in a motion picture unit. "I spent four years learning everything I could about making movies," Willis said. After leaving the Air Force a friend helped him to join the East Coast union in New York and he started to work as an Assistant Cameraman, working his way up to become a First Cameraman about 13 years later. He worked in advertising, shooting numerous commercials, and made a number of documentaries, a discipline that strongly influenced his later style. "You learn to eliminate, as opposed to adding," Willis said of his time making documentaries. "Not many people understand that." He once said, "I'm a mimimalist. I see things in simple ways... It's human nature to define complexity as better. Well, it's not." In 1969 the director Aram Avakian
Aram Avakian
Aram A. Avakian was an American film editor and director.Directed ground-breaking indie film End of the Road- Life and work :...
hired Willis to work on his film End of the Road (1970). This was Willis' first movie.
Making films
Willis went on to work for some of the most acclaimed directors of what is now seen as a golden age of American film-making. He captured America's urban paranoia in three films he shot with Alan J. PakulaAlan J. Pakula
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.-Career:...
: Klute
Klute
Klute is a 1971 film which tells the story of a prostitute who assists a detective in solving a missing persons case. It stars Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider. The movie was written by Andy Lewis and Dave Lewis and directed by Alan J. Pakula.Klute was the first...
(1971), The Parallax View
The Parallax View
The Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer...
(1974) and All The President's Men
All the President's Men
All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists investigating the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial...
(1976). He worked with Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
on The Landlord
The Landlord
The Landlord is a 1970 film directed by Hal Ashby, which was based on the novel by Kristin Hunter. The film stars Beau Bridges in the lead role of a well to do white man who becomes landlord of an inner city tenement, unaware that the people he is responsible for are low-income, streetwise residents...
(1970), James Bridges
James Bridges
James Bridges was an American screenwriter and film director.Bridges was born in Paris, Arkansas. He got his start as a writer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one of his episodes, "An Unlocked Window", earned him a 1966 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Episode in a TV...
on The Paper Chase (1973), and Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross
Herbert Ross was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.-Early life and career:Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942...
on Pennies From Heaven
Pennies From Heaven
Pennies from Heaven may refer to:* "Pennies from Heaven" , a popular American song by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston* Pennies from Heaven , starring Bing Crosby and Madge Evans, and introducing the song...
(1981); as well as shooting all three of Coppola's Godfather films and working with Woody Allen on a succession of films that included Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
(1977) and Manhattan
Manhattan (film)
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
(1979).
At a seminar on film-making he gave in 2003, Willis said, "It's hard to believe, but a lot of directors have no visual sense. They only have a storytelling sense. If a director is smart, he'll give me the elbow room to paint". He added: "It's the judgment they're paying for." In a later interview he explained that when he started out in films he "did things in visual structure that nobody in the business was doing, especially in Hollywood", explaining: "I wasn't trying to be different; I just did what I liked". When asked by the interviewer how he applied his style to different genres and to working with different directors, Willis answered: "You're looking for a formula; there is none. The formula is me."
Up to the making of The Godfather (1972) Willis mostly used Mitchell
Mitchell Camera
Mitchell Camera Corporation was founded in 1919 by Henry Boger and George Alfred Mitchell. Their first camera was designed and patented by John E. Leonard in 1917, from 1920 on known as the Mitchell Standard...
reflex cameras with Baltar or Cooke lenses. After that he used Panavision
Panavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...
equipment, which he had first used on Klute, returning to use Mitchells on The Godfather Part II (1974) to retain the visual coherence of the two films. Asked in 2004 about shooting films digitally, Willis was at that time sceptical: "The organics aren’t the same," he said. "The interpretive levels suffer". He added: "Digital is another form of recording an image, but it won’t replace thinking".
Collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen
Originally Willis turned down the first two Godfather films before Coppola told him they wouldn't look the same without him. His work turned out to be groundbreaking in its use of low-light photography and underexposed film, as well as in his control of lighting and exposure to create the sepia tones that denoted period scenes in The Godfather Part II. His contributions carefully strengthened the themes of the story, as when shooting Marlon BrandoMarlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
with his eyes hooded in shadow, a piece of lighting design that followed from the fact that Brando's make-up had to be lit from above.
Willis said that it was the colour that stitched the Godfather films together. The visual structure of the films was, he said, his, but he gave Coppola credit for hiring him, saying: "I'm not that easy to deal with". He praised the director for the "management hell" of his struggles with Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, adding: "I’m grateful he could separate the visual structure of these movies from the mess that went on to fashion them".
Willis's collaboration with Woody Allen began with Annie Hall (1977). Willis described making films with Allen as being so comfortable an experience that it was like "working with your hands in your pockets". On Annie Hall he contrasted the warmth of Annie and Alvy Singer's romance in New York with the overexposure of the film's California scenes, while in Allen's Manhattan (1979) he was responsible for what has been called "a richly textured black-and-white paean to the beauty and diversity of the city itself". Willis, whose idea it was to use anamorphic widescreen for the filming, said: "We both felt that New York was a black-and-white city".
Willis also worked on the Allen films Interiors
Interiors
Interiors is a 1978 drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Featured performers are Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard Jordan, Diane Keaton, E. G. Marshall, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and Sam Waterston....
(1978), Stardust Memories
Stardust Memories
Stardust Memories is a 1980 film written and directed by Woody Allen, who considers this to be one of his best films in addition to The Purple Rose of Cairo and Match Point. The film is shot in black-and-white, particularly reminiscent of Federico Fellini's 8½ , which it parodies...
(1980), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is a 1982 film written, directed by and starring Woody Allen.The plot is loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. This was the first of 13 movies that Allen would make starring Mia Farrow...
(1982), Zelig
Zelig
Zelig is a 1983 American mockumentary film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Allen and Mia Farrow. Allen plays Zelig, a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he's near.The film was shot almost entirely in...
(1983), Broadway Danny Rose
Broadway Danny Rose
Broadway Danny Rose is a 1984 American black-and-white comedy film written, directed by and starring Woody Allen. It was screened out of competition at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.- Plot :...
(1984) and The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Inspired by Sherlock, Jr., Hellzapoppin, and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is the tale of a film character who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real...
(1985). Allen said that working with Willis had helped to improve his technical skills, saying of him: "He's an artist. He's got a great sense of humor —he taught me a lot."
Academy Awards
In the seven-year period up to 1977 Willis was the director of photography on six films that received between them 39 Academy Award nominations, winning 19 times, including three awards for best picture. The fact that Willis did not receive a single nomination was a subject of some controversy. His frequent absence from this period's nominees has been ascribed both to his unhidden "antipathy for Hollywood" and his work being ahead of its time He was once quoted as saying of Hollywood, "I don't think it suffers from an overabundance of good taste". Willis was later nominated twice, once for his inventive recreation of 1920s photography in Woody Allen's Zelig, and then for The Godfather Part IIIThe Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American gangster film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire...
(1990). In 2009, at the inaugural Governors Awards
Governors Awards
The Governors Awards presentation is an annual award ceremony hosted by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center. Three awards, the Academy Honorary Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and the Irving G. Thalberg...
, the Academy chose Willis as the recipient of the Academy Honorary Award
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...
for his life's work.
Directing and Retirement
Willis directed one film of his own, Windows, in 1980. He admitted the film had been a mistake, and later said of directing that he didn't really like it. "I've had a good relationship with actors," he reflected, "but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am'".Willis's last film was The Devil's Own
The Devil's Own
The Devil's Own is a 1997 action thriller movie starring Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Rubén Blades, Natascha McElhone, Julia Stiles and Treat Williams. It was the final film directed by Alan J...
(1997), directed by Pakula. Of his decision to retire, Willis said: "I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain".
Partial filmography
- End of the RoadEnd of the Road"End of the Road" is a 1992 Grammy Award-winning, number-one song recorded in May 1992 by Boyz II Men for the Motown label. Written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Antonio "L.A." Reid and Daryl Simmons. It is Boyz II Men's most successful single and replaced Diana Ross and Lionel...
(1970) - The LandlordThe LandlordThe Landlord is a 1970 film directed by Hal Ashby, which was based on the novel by Kristin Hunter. The film stars Beau Bridges in the lead role of a well to do white man who becomes landlord of an inner city tenement, unaware that the people he is responsible for are low-income, streetwise residents...
(1970) - KluteKluteKlute is a 1971 film which tells the story of a prostitute who assists a detective in solving a missing persons case. It stars Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider. The movie was written by Andy Lewis and Dave Lewis and directed by Alan J. Pakula.Klute was the first...
(1971) - The GodfatherThe GodfatherThe Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
(1972) - The Godfather Part IIThe Godfather Part IIThe Godfather Part II is a 1974 American gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script co-written with Mario Puzo. The film is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, chronicling the story of the Corleone family following the events of the first film while also depicting the...
(1974) - The Paper Chase (1973)
- The Parallax ViewThe Parallax ViewThe Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer...
(1974) - All the President's MenAll the President's Men (film)All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post...
(1976) - Annie HallAnnie HallAnnie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
(1977) - InteriorsInteriorsInteriors is a 1978 drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Featured performers are Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard Jordan, Diane Keaton, E. G. Marshall, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and Sam Waterston....
(1978) - ManhattanManhattan (film)Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
(1979) - Stardust MemoriesStardust MemoriesStardust Memories is a 1980 film written and directed by Woody Allen, who considers this to be one of his best films in addition to The Purple Rose of Cairo and Match Point. The film is shot in black-and-white, particularly reminiscent of Federico Fellini's 8½ , which it parodies...
(1980) - Pennies from HeavenPennies from Heaven (1981 film)Pennies from Heaven is a 1981 musical film. The film was based on a 1978 BBC television drama. In 1981, Dennis Potter adapted his own screenplay for a film of the same name for American audiences, with its setting changed to Depression era Chicago. Potter was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award...
(1981) - ZeligZeligZelig is a 1983 American mockumentary film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Allen and Mia Farrow. Allen plays Zelig, a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he's near.The film was shot almost entirely in...
(1983) — Academy Award nomination. - Broadway Danny RoseBroadway Danny RoseBroadway Danny Rose is a 1984 American black-and-white comedy film written, directed by and starring Woody Allen. It was screened out of competition at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.- Plot :...
(1984) - The Purple Rose of CairoThe Purple Rose of CairoThe Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Inspired by Sherlock, Jr., Hellzapoppin, and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is the tale of a film character who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real...
(1985) - Presumed InnocentPresumed Innocent (film)Presumed Innocent is a 1990 film adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by Scott Turow, which tells the story of a prosecutor charged with the murder of his female colleague and mistress....
(1990) - The Godfather Part IIIThe Godfather Part IIIThe Godfather Part III is a 1990 American gangster film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire...
(1990) — Academy Award nomination. - MaliceMalice (film)Malice is a 1993 American thriller film directed by Harold Becker. The screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank is based on a story by Jonas McCord.-Plot:...
(1993) - The Devil's OwnThe Devil's OwnThe Devil's Own is a 1997 action thriller movie starring Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Rubén Blades, Natascha McElhone, Julia Stiles and Treat Williams. It was the final film directed by Alan J...
(1997)