WHO WAS VICTOR FLEMING?

WHO WAS VICTOR FLEMING? It is remarkable that Victor Fleming, who directed two of the most popular movies of all time in the same year—GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ— is still relatively unknown. Fleming is finally getting some deserved recognition in a new biography by Michael Sragow and in this article by David Denby. The two movies couldn’t be more different, and that may be one reason that Fleming has gone unrecognized. Many critics and theoreticians decided that a movie director should be an auteur, with a distinctive style (Alfred Hitchcock is the usual example). A consequence has been that a director who could tell several kinds of stories was underrated, just as directors who were unobtrusive were underrated.