Otto Preminger

"Every minute of life I take a risk; it's part of the enjoyment." Otto Preminger was an Austrian-born film director known for his complex personality and for tackling controversial subjects that challenged industry norms. When he was very young, he joined a theater group in Vienna and soon began to produce plays, even during the First World War. He trained as an assistant to Max Reinhardt, whom he later left to direct his first film The Great Love (1931). Later, he went into exile in Hollywood and began working for 20th Century Fox. There, he established a complex professional relationship with Zanuck, executive and producer, marked by creative differences and commercial considerations. Nicknamed "Otto the Terrible" by the actors, he was known for his independence and for speaking his mind, unfazed by criticism and praise. With the film Laura (1944) he received his first Oscar nomination. Some of his best-known titles are The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) starring Frank Sinatra, and innovative for its treatment of the theme of addiction, Anatomy of a Murder (1959), one of the best judicial films according to the AFI (American Film Institute), and Exodus (1961), among others. Despite his temperament, he played a very important role in the cinema of those years, and Hollywood would not have been the same without him.