John Sturges

I have always admired John Sturges and I deeply feel that he was an underrated director. Born in the same year as Akira Kurosawa, Sturges has made a number of truly iconic films, such as 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'The Great Escape'. However, he is not particularly well known in the history of film because he is seen as more a craftsman, than an auteur with an original style. You may have heard of the 2 famous films I have just mentioned, yet it is less likely that you know who made these classics.

Indeed, I have been acquainted with Sturge’s film at a rather young age! When I was a kid, we had a number of laserdiscs at home, one of which was ‘Gunfight at O. K. Corral’ by John Sturges. With Burt Lancaster at Wyatt Earp, it was certainly a wonderful experience for a young kid like myself. Though the incidents depicted in the film are far more dramatic than the real thing, I still think it is a rather decent work for one to go after.

His films often involve an all male ensemble cast, and many of these films involve the 'men on mission' theme, about the male characters conquering difficult tasks - the 'Seven Samurai' type. Since these films are rather macho in tone, female audience will be less likely to identify with Sturges’ work. Also, he had a roller-coaster sort of track records - while he has made really monumental films, he did also direct rather shallow and lesser work, often with poorly developed scripts. As Sturges has not really committed to develop a signature style, he has not be compared favorably to contemporary filmmakers like Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Otto Preminger and others.

Nevertheless, most of Sturges’ best films have been able to capture the zeitgeist of their time, providing social critique - such as McCarthyism and Eisenhowerian conformity - in his diverse films. He was able to embrace with the latest film techniques and applied them to its own advantage. Sturges has been able to shoot pictures in anamorphic format, and he has been venturing in CinemaScope compositions in his 1950s efforts, which Preminger, Ray and Mann were also well-versed in. He has also been able to craft a number of nice genre works. Take ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’, the film which was recognized at Oscar and Cannes, as an example. Not only having Spencer Tracy showcasing a nice Judo throw, the film can be seen as a modern Western, and the elements of Film Noir are also evident in the film. It was a sense of paranoia so commonplace in the 1950s films, about people not trusting each other and having secret motivations. ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ resembles many of the psychological Westerns of Anthony Mann in the 1950s, where the darkest psyches are rumbling on the brightly-lit Western landscapes. On the other hand, Sturges also showed a mastery of generating suspense in his film, and ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ or ‘Ice Station Zebra’ are some nice examples. I suppose suspense was an element quite widely treasured by filmmakers before the New Hollywood era! His more iconic films, like ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Great Escape’, all illustrate a humanism that is universal for audience, hence the enduring popularity of these films. 

Sturges has certainly achieved a craftsmanship that can be compared on equal terms to the other original artists of his era.

by Ed Law 

Film Analysis