Sometimes, when you're editor of a web magazine relying on volunteer writers, it can be hard to get enough material together. Back in the 2000s, I came to the end of one week with absolutely nothing to show for my efforts but two paltry reviews. So I lashed up this piece of nonsense, hoping that finding out your favourite director's star sign might alleviate any cosmic boredom you might be feeling.
Tuesday 21st March is the first day of the Zodiac year. So, here at Close-up Film, we thought we’d have a bit of fun and look at just how the stars influence our favourite directors. Francis Barrett-Holmes is our guide.
Aries (Mar 21st – Apr 20th)
Akira Kurosawa (23rd March, 1910)
Their films are bold, brash, visually dazzling. Subtlety is not an option – the Arian wants to engage their audience with epic brushstrokes, not minute detail. There is a strong emotional drive throughout their pictures, but they can feel less complex or nuanced than those of their rivals.
Other directors: Lindsay Anderson, Charlie Chaplin, Francis Ford Coppola, Roger Corman, Peter Greenaway, David Lean, Russ Meyer, Quentin Tarantino, Andrei Tarkovsky
Taurus (Apr 21st – May 21st)
Satyajit Ray (2nd May, 1921)
Taureans are the great realists of cinema – they find beauty in the everyday or the unspectacular. However, their natural love of luxury and comfort means they focus closely on mise-en-scene and can be very fussy and pedantic in their attention to detail. They are sticklers for particular styles of filming and will show great patience and go to extraordinary lengths to get things just so.
Other directors: Theo Angelopoulos, Jane Campion, Frank Capra, David Cronenberg, George Lucas, Kenji Mizoguchi, Max Ophuls, Roberto Rossellini, Douglas Sirk, Jean Vigo, Josef Von Sternberg, Orson Welles
Gemini (May 22nd – Jun 21st)
Alain Resnais (3rd June, 1922)
Geminis are the magpies or butterflies of the Zodiac, flitting from one idea to the next, churning out theories, then contradicting them. Their filmographies will be extremely varied, as they try out new genres to keep themselves interested. They are prolific in their output but their films often lack an emotional kick and there’s a studied down-to-earthness in much of their material.
Other directors: Clint Eastwood, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Howard Hawks, James Ivory, Ken Loach, Jean Rouch
Cancer (Jun 22nd – Jul 23rd)
Ingmar Bergman (14th July, 1918)
For the Cancerian, relationships are the key. They concentrate on the interaction between their characters – dialogue is very important. They are the great humanists of the Zodiac, but their view of people is often tinged by sadness or regret, sometimes cynicism, as if no human connection can ever be wholly satisfying. For this reason, they can be the most psychologically acute of directors.
Other directors: Tod Browning, Claude Chabrol, Jean Cocteau, George Cukor, Vittorio de Sica, Abbas Kiarostami, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Charles Laughton, Sidney Lumet, Anthony Mann, Sydney Pollack, Paul Schrader, James Whale, Billy Wilder
Leo (Jul 24th – Aug 23rd)
Stanley Kubrick (26th July, 1928)
Leo is the sign for “men’s men” – these directors are forthright, bold, ambitious, they tell it like it is. There’s a very masculine directness and attack in their films, often mixed with a wry sense of humour. They favour visually stark cinematography, which is cold, almost metallic, but always impressive to look at. Their politics can be crude and their attitude towards human society abrasive, but there is a burning honesty throughout their work.
Other directors: Robert Aldrich, Budd Boetticher, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Cecil B De Mille, Blake Edwards, Bill Forsyth, Sam Fuller, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Chris Marker, Roman Polanski, Nicholas Ray, Leni Riefenstahl, Nicholas Roeg, Raul Ruiz, Kevin Smith, Peter Weir, Wim Wenders
Virgo (Aug 24th – Sep 23rd)
Jean Renoir (15th September, 1894)
For the Virgo director, attention to detail is paramount. There’s a patient, if sometimes obsessive, concentration on the rightness of the setting, the mise-en-scene, the movement of the actors. Occasionally, there’s a flash of mad genius or wild emotion but the accent is on control. People and places are very important to Virgoans – history and social problems interest them and are often explored.
Other directors: Tim Burton, Alexander Dovzhenko, Werner Herzog, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Elia Kazan, GW Pabst, Victor Sjostrom, Oliver Stone, Preston Sturges, Erich Von Stroheim
Libra (Sep 24th – Oct 24th)
Michelangelo Antonioni (29th September, 1912)
There can often be an arid, austere feel to Libran films, sometimes in their visual texture, but always in their philosophy of human relationships, where connections are often made with difficulty or on fragile terms. However, that does not mean Librans are cynical about love and friendship – on the contrary, they can be cinema’s great romantics. There is often an intellectual dimension to their work, though, which revels in the expression of knowledge or the investigation of form.
Other directors: Pedro Almodovar, Robert Benton, Robert Bresson, Buster Keaton, Rouben Mamoulian, Leo McCarey, Jean-Pierre Melville, Arthur Penn, Michael Powell, John Sayles, Jacques Tati
Scorpio (Oct 24th – Nov 22nd)
Martin Scorsese (17th November, 1942)
Scorpion films are impulsive, aggressive, tenacious – they grip onto their audience and never let go. They can be edgy and exciting, but are fond of the grand gesture and sweeping, romantic touches. Scorpions explore relationships on a sexual, sensual level but rarely dig deeper. Their films can often be superficial, their beauty only skin deep, but they are always memorable.
Other directors: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Abel Gance, Hal Hartley, Patrice Leconte, Louis Malle, Mike Nichols, Don Siegel, Jacques Tourneur, Luchino Visconti
Sagittarius (Nov 23rd – Dec 21st)
John Cassavetes (9th December, 1929)
There’s an impulsive hot-headedness in the Sagittarian that makes them want to break rules, throw caution to the wind and expose their innermost demons to the lens. They don’t like the strictures of authority or being tied down to convention, and often make bold statements of intent. But their focus is always on people and there is an intense sympathy for the ordinary man running throughout their best work.
Other directors: Woody Allen, Busby Berkeley, Jean-Luc Godard, Emir Kusturica, Fritz Lang, Terrence Malick, Yasujiro Ozu, Abraham Polonsky, Otto Preminger, Alan Rudolph, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg
Capricorn (Dec 22nd – Jan 20th)
Federico Fellini (20th January, 1920)
Capricorn films tend to be baroque, highly stylised, worlds of the individual imagination. These are the visionaries of the cinematic world, not its social commentators. Their films can be long, visually elaborate, often obtuse, their meaning not readily apparent and frequently far removed from the shores of reality. But it’s fair to say that, without their excesses, film would be a lot less fun.
Other directors: John Boorman, John Carpenter, Michael Curtiz, Sergio Leone, Richard Lester, Joseph Losey, David Lynch, Friedrich Murnau, Sergei Paradjanov, Carol Reed, Steven Soderbergh
Aquarius (Jan 21st – Feb 19th)
Sergei Eisenstein (23rd January, 1898)
Aquarians are the great thinkers – it’s no accident that many of them are pioneers of major film movements or theories of cinema. They are less interested in human interaction than in aesthetic philosophies or social reform. Their films tend to be very serious or touched by a dark sense of humour.
Other directors: Constantin Costa-Gavras, Carl Dreyer, Louis Feuillade, Robert Flaherty, John Ford, Milos Forman, John Frankenheimer, DW Griffith, Jim Jarmusch, Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Mann, Vsevelod Pudovkin, George Romero, John Schlesinger, Francois Truffaut, King Vidor
Pisces (Feb 20th – Mar 20th)
Sam Peckinpah (21st Febuary, 1925)
The romantic poets of the Zodiac, Pisceans produce films that burn with emotion. But they have a tendency to be unrealistic, to idealise and fantasise, which means their movies are either mythical or cynical, depending on how attainable their dreams are. Piscean films are often clumsy or broken-backed in structure, as the director’s emotional responses shift and change, but that means they throw off shards of genius that cut into the viewer in a way other more controlled films could never do.
Other directors: Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bertrand Blier, Luis Bunuel, Neil Jordan, Spike Lee, Vincente Minnelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jacques Rivette