J. Edgar
For nearly 25 years, John Edgar Hoover (1895 - 1972) headed the FBI and, according to some, held the real power in America by influencing the policy of six successive presidents, from Coolidge to Nixon. He reformed the bureau in the 1920s in the fields of collecting information and investigations, declared war on anarchists and the mob and, during WWII, ran counterintelligence activities. After V-Day, however, he made real and imagined communists public enemy No. 1. Eastwood shows Hoover as his own worst enemy: a crypto-homosexual dependent on his mother who ruthlessly manipulated others, a man obsessed with power and control. Despite Hoover's nefarious aura, Eastwood attempts to do the FBI director justice by showing his positive achievements alongside his dark deeds, and thanks to the auteur medium of Leonardo Di Caprio, portrays the protagonist as something of a Citizen Kane. As a period biopic, "J. Edgar" is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably, writes Roger Ebert in his review.
awards
AFI Awards 2012 – Movie of the Year
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930, San Francisco) is a living Hollywood legend. Steven Spielberg called him maybe the last real man in American film. He abandoned sports and military careers in favor of television, making his debut in the Rawhide TV series. From there, he ventured to Italy where, inspired by Sergio Leone, he created the man with no name for the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy. After getting back stateside, he portrayed another now iconic character, inspector Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry. On the set of that film, he replaced the director, Don Siegel, in several scenes. The same year, he debuted as a director in his own right with the thriller Play Misty for Me, produced by his own Malpaso studio established in 1967. Up until Bird, Eastwood's directorial efforts (mainly Westerns and action movies) were primarily a successful reworking of genre schematics. Starting with the Charlie Parker biopic, Eastwood's seasoned work takes on qualities of realistic psychological cinema with a moralist streak. Winner of two Oscars for directing, the Irvin Thalberg prize and an honorary Golden Palm (2002).
Selected filmography
1971 Zagraj dla mnie, Misty / Play Misty for Me
1980 Bronco Billy
1992 Bez przebaczenia / Unforgiven
2000 Kosmiczni kowboje / Space Cowboys
2003 Rzeka tajemnic / Mystic River
2006 Sztandar chwały / Flags of Our Fathers
2006 Listy z Iwo Jimy / Letters from Iwo Jima
2014 Jersey Boys
