‘Ajuxtaposition of incompatible elements.’ So Chris Fujiwara describes one of Otto Preminger’s more obscure films in his critical biography of the Hollywood director. But the phrase so encapsulates what I had come to think about Preminger’s entire output that I underlined it, underlined it again, and made a mental note to quote it at the beginning of this review. You see, from urbane noir flicks to period romps to weighty historical dramas, his work seems to differ in tone and content almost as much as it does in quality. Incompatible elements, indeed.
Little wonder, then, that the auteurist critics of the 1960s — whose mantle Fujiwara adopts here — enjoyed the challenge of sifting through Preminger’s work for any common creative threads, before celebrating him as one of the greats. Preminger’s reputation may have faded in the intervening years, but you can still see what excited them all in the first place.
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