ABSTRACT
When studied in detail, William Wyler’s directing style reveals obvious differences for each of his films, both in the use of the camera and in the quality of the photography. Nothing is stranger to the form of The Best Years o f Our Lives (1946) than the form of The Letter (1940). When one recalls the major scenes in Wyler’s films, one notices that their dramatic material is extremely varied and that the editing of it is very different from one film to another. When one considers the red gown at the ball in Jezebel (1938); the dialogue in the scene in The Little Foxes (1941) where Herbert Marshall gets a shave, or the dialogue in his death scene in the same film; the sheriffs death in The Border Cavalier (1927); the traveling shot at the plantation at the beginning of The Letter, or the scene in the out-of-use bomber in The Best Years o f Our Lives, it becomes clear that there is no consistent motif in the work of Wyler. One can find such a motif, however, in the chase scenes of John Ford’s westerns; the fist fights in Tay Garnett’s films; or in the weddings or chases in Rene Clair’s work. There are no favorite settings or landscapes for Wyler. At most, there is an evident fondness for psychological scenarios set against social back grounds. Yet, even though Wyler has become a master at treating this kind of subject, adapted either from a novel like Jezebel or a play like The Little Foxes, even though his work as a whole leaves us with the piercing and rigorous impression of a psychological analysis, it does not call to mind sumptuously eloquent images suggesting a formal beauty that would demand serious consideration. The style of a director cannot be defined, however, only in terms of his predilection for psychological
analysis and social realism, even less so here since we are not dealing with original scripts.
