ReFocus: The Films of William Wyler

In a forty-five-year career, William Wyler not only traversed the silent and the sound eras, but also connected classic Hollywood to “new Hollywood.” The range of his films spans a wide spectrum of genres: from westerns to adaptations of classic literature, from crime thrillers to rom-coms, and from controversial topics to musicals - a body of work capped by his three Best Picture/Best Director Academy Awards. Wyler also garnered awards for those he worked with, steering five actresses and two actors to Academy Awards in leading roles, as well as seven acting Oscars in supporting roles. The variety of his work and his role in the studio system make Wyler an interesting, if not enigmatic, study in “auteurship.” His life experience as one of Hollywood’s early immigrant artists also speaks to the foreign influence on classic Hollywood. Yet despite his awards and commercial success, artistic recognition has mostly eluded Wyler. These are just a few of the thematic areas with which this collection of scholarly essays seeks to contextualize and theorize selections from Wyler’s canon and his relationship to American cinematic history and American culture. This collection has successfully gathered contributions from international authors of extremely diverse backgrounds, and therefore differing perspectives, who have employed a variety of academic methodologies and theoretical analyses.