You do not have to be a great admirer of a film director in order to take an interest in a film about him. But a shared admiration will be a great help in getting you through those stretches of hot air, whitewash, looking the other way, putting the best face on, etc., which seem to follow inevitably from the desire to make a film about a director in the first place. And this one is about nine-tenths hot air, whitewash, etc. With John Huston, Fred Zinnemann, Joseph Mankiewicz, Frank Capra, Alan Pakula, Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, et al., paraded onto the interviewing dais, it obtains the overall feel of one of those televised AFI Life Achievement wing-dings (only posthumous, in this case), flowing over with tall tales and testimonials from after-dinner speakers who worked with the honoree, or knew him, or met him, or always wanted to, or something -- hardly a surprising approach when you consider that the documentarian here is the founder and long-time head of the American Film Institute, George Stevens, Jr. Somehow, though, his total and unequivocal embrace of everything ever done by Stevens seems all the more dubious and dishonest when coming from the vantage of a son than when coming from that of a supposed film historian. (It would seem less so, perhaps, from that of a paid press agent.) There is nonetheless undeniable pleasure to be found in the copious film clips, especially the 16mm color documentary footage, never before seen, from the Second World War. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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