King Vidor

From mineworker to manufacturing mogul. A mixture of family chronicle and economic documentary, the film follows the ascent of a European immigrant to the US from the early 20th century through the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

In the 17th century, a cavalier at the French court makes a wager that he can win the affections of a beautiful, but prickly member of the landed gentry. King Vidor’s sumptuous swashbuckler tells the story of a romantic adventure with ease and irony.

In New Mexico, a bloody feud erupts between settlers and a criminal cattle baron, with Billy the Kid and his revolver playing a decisive role. This raw western set in magnificent landscapes was made before the restrictive Hays Code limits took effect.

The wife of a small town doctor yearns for big city life. When her lover shows up to take her to Chicago, she throws all scruples to the wind. An over-the-top film noir, with a heroine who is even more depraved than was already customary for the genre.

While Reggie is a “slacker”, his younger brother Bud wants to do his patriotic duty and fight in World War I. He devises a way to turn Reggie into a war volunteer. This is the earliest surviving short film by King Vidor.

In Stalin’s Moscow, an easy-going American journalist falls in love with a streetcar conductor who is a committed communist. A screwball comedy in the style of Ernst Lubitsch’s ‘Ninotchka’, the film is splendidly cast with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr.

A London barrister embarks on an extra-marital affair with a shopgirl, with fatal consequences. While he may think it no more than a mere dalliance, she takes their liaison much more seriously. A romantic tragedy.

This outsized Technicolor melodrama is a story of untamed love and unbridled hate on a Texas ranch. Producer David O. Selznick wanted King Vidor’s cult western with Jennifer Jones to be even bigger than ‘Gone with the Wind’.

A thrilling drama of jealousy about a sharecropper turned preacher after a murder. Traditional spirituals and blues music rhythmically underpin this first talkie by King Vidor, which features an almost entirely Black cast.

The daily routines and the marriage of a Boston businessman are disrupted when a woman from his past turns up in the city. This drama about an “unlived life” is a plea for individual self-determination that transcends convention.

Returning from the Korean War, an American soldier brings his Japanese bride with him. Back home in a small California town, they face xenophobic hostility. An anti-racist B movie with a dramatic plot that is a plea for cross-cultural marriage.

In the Latin Quarter of Paris, the penniless playwright Rodolphe falls in love with the even more destitute seamstress Mimi. This poignant melodrama, starring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert, is based on Giacomo Puccini’s famed opera.

An actress falls in love with a Texas rancher who has narrowly escaped death row after being tried for the murder of his wife. She is uncertain whether to believe in his innocence. A romantic thriller set on the rough Texas plains.

A group of unemployed city folk and landless workers run a community farm. With a nod to the New Deal, King Vidor counters the glamour of Hollywood with compelling images of the reality in the USA in the wake of the Great Depression.

A young woman in a small coastal town takes revenge on her childhood sweetheart after he spurns her to marry a rich heiress. It was the second time, after ‘Duel in the Sun’ that King Vidor cast Jennifer Jones in the role of a provocative woman.

After her first successful comedy, starlet Peggy Pepper becomes a star of serious dramas. The film is a tumultuous homage to the early Hollywood of paste-on moustaches and cream pies in the face, starring fabulous comedienne Marion Davies.

The Egyptian pharaoh allows the queen of Sheba to go to Jerusalem to beguile Solomon, the king of Israel, with her wiles. An opulent widescreen spectacle full of intrigue, equestrian battles, and sensual delights, with Gina Lollobrigida and Yul Brynner.

During the Civil War, events force the spoiled daughter of a Mississippi plantation owner to evolve into a responsible young woman. The atmospheric southern drama is considered a forerunner of the more popular ‘Gone With the Wind’.

A factory worker’s daughter hopes to better herself socially. Later, she will give up everything for her own daughter to achieve that. At the centre of this classic melodrama is a complex female character, equal parts self-sacrifice and triumph.

The talkative residents of a New York City tenement while away the time on the building’s stoop, while inside, a tragedy is unfolding. With a cast featuring a number of émigrés, King Vidor created a metropolitan symphony of the spoken word.

Three young men from New York experience the horrors of World War I in the French trenches. With scenes in King Vidor’s silent film showing an anti-war bent, its radical naturalism was a key influence on anti-war films to follow.

With the support of his young son, a dissolute former heavyweight boxing champion tries to make a comeback. King Vidor’s homage to Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Kid’ provides a mighty pull on the heartstrings. The film won two Oscars.

An idealistic young doctor in a Welsh mining town despairs at the workers’ miserable conditions. He moves to London, where he ends up treating rich hypochondriacs. King Vidor’s drama became an exemplar for the social realism of British post-war cinema.

An acclaimed silent film about the very average life of a New York office clerk and the blows fate delivers to his family. Featuring street scenes shot partially with a hidden camera, the film anticipated the neo-realism of the 1940s.

An architect refuses to compromise the integrity of his modern designs. The conflicts that result drive this “experimental masterpiece of commercial film” (Heinz Emigholz) to great heights – in the strictest sense of the term.

During a range war, a drifter and cowboy finds himself caught between two fronts – small ranchers trying to protect their land with barbed wire, and the ambitious and beautiful lady rancher. A late western about land grabbing in the wild west.

About 1760, a young painter joins a punitive mission against Native Americans. He is unprepared for the terrible hardships and a massacre along the way. Spencer Tracy is impressive as the shady ranger Robert Rogers in this Technicolor western.

Returning from World War I, the heir to a steel mill wants to exercise the class solidarity he learned in the trenches. But ultimately, he follows his father’s advice of “no sentiment” in business, an attitude that turns his fiancée against him.

Young Pat is in love with her older sister’s beau. To attract his attention, she wants to “get some personality”, a premise rife with comedic promise. Marion Davies steals the show with her Chaplinesque cavorting in this light comedy.

A young wife leaves her wealthy husband to pursue a career, determined to prove herself an equal partner. In this early silent directed by her husband, Florence Vidor embodies with verve an emancipated heroine.

A preacher in the wild west proves himself as a boxer and cowboy. This unusual snowbound western combines exciting action and serious soul-searching in a film whose heroes prove to be a cowgirl and a Native American servant.

From a group of three outlaws, two join the Texas Rangers to garner inside information for their raids. This black-and-white western boasts grandiose location cinematography of the unforgiving encounter between civilisation and savage natural landscapes.

A married writer falls in love with a Polish immigrant. He is not deterred by the fact that her father has already arranged her marriage to a fellow Pole. A tragic conflict ensues in King Vidor’s prize-winning drama.

Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda star in this visually opulent period film, based on Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel. It chronicles the lives and loves of the Russian aristocracy against the backdrop of the fight against Napoleon’s invasion from 1805 to 1812.

In order to choose between two suitors, a young woman decides on a brief “test marriage”. This triggers a severe crisis at home with her parents. This generational drama is also a resounding celebration of the Jazz Age.