When you look at the logistics involved in making a movie, it's a wonder anyone even bothers. Even people who've been in the industry for ages can find the process tricky - despite having won six Oscars, Billy Wilder spent the last 20 years of his life failing to get pictures off the ground. And as for a first-time filmmaker, well, the very fact they wind up with a movie in a can is a feat worthy of an ovation. Sometimes, just sometimes, however, they end up with something more - a motion picture for the ages. A film like...
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) - Arguably the greatest of all directorial debuts, what makes Citizen Kane particularly remarkable is that George Orson Welles was just 24-years-old when he began work on it. And if shooting a feature film at such a tender age wasn't impressive enough, Welles also co-wrote, edited and produced this account of an enigmatic media magnate. Oh, and he also played the titular Kane from the age of 21 to seventysomething. Sadly for Welles this spectacular display of single-handedness would land him in trouble with real life press baron William Randolph Hearst who interpreted the picture as an attack upon his person. All but blacklisted by Hollywood, the Third Man star didn't receive the opportunities he deserved, although he would make further classics including The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch Of Evil. Those who consider Welles' career a study in terminal decline ought perhaps to remember that when you conquer Everest on your first attempt, the only possible direction is down.
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) - It was clearly a good year for first-time filmmakers, 1941. While Welles came to Hollywood directly from Broadway, John Huston had been working in the industry since the 1930s. Son of the character actor Walter Huston, John had been writing screenplays since the early '30s. And it was when he did a bang-up job of adapting Dashiell Hammett's best-selling thriller that he was ushered towards the director's chair. Of course, you could argue that when you're working with actors like Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, you'd have a hard time making a bad movie. But while Bogey is the undoubted star of The Maltese Falcon, it's Huston's hand on the rudder that keeps the film afloat when the dense plot threatens to capsize it. And what did our man do next? Why, he created some of the greatest motion pictures in the history of film - The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King - together with Annie and Escape To Victory.
Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) - Before he made Jaws, Steven Spielberg shot the so-so Sugarland Express and a whole lot of bad television. Fortunately for him, he also filmed Duel, a telemovie so superb it was granted a cinema release in the UK. Scripted by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend and many of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone), it's the simple story of a business man (Dennis Weaver) who encounters a truck while driving across the desert. Unfortunately for our hero, the (unseen) lorry driver becomes obsessed with running Weaver off the road. So suspenseful a scenario provides Spielberg with countless opportunities for jump-out-of-the-seat moments of the sort he'd later employ in everything from Jaws and Jurassic Park. If it's rarely been rivaled as a thrill ride, Duel is also a good vehicle for Spielberg's less widely acknowledged skills, such as his ability to get a lot out of actors, even when the script gives them relatively little to do. Taut, short and unbelievably tense, there isn't a better ad for TV movies than Duel..
This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1982) - Son of the actor-writer-director Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner had already won Emmys for his on-screen work in All In The Family (the American version of Till Death Us Do Part) before he turned his hand to directing. Given his comedy background, it made sense for him to hook up with Saturday Night Live stars Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest. Talented as the quartet was, no one could have guessed that these greenhorns would come up with a mockumentary - or, if you will, rockumentary - as drop dead hilarious as This Is Spinal Tap. A study of a hard-working band on the road that's so well observed some people thought it was real, Tap's the film that gave us lines like "You can't really dust for vomit," and "I'm tired of sticking up for his intelligence." As for writer-director Reiner, he's made some terrific movies since - The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, - but it's fair to say that Spinal Tap was the first and only time he turned it up to 11.
Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996) - Paul Thomas Anderson's doesn't particularly care for his first feature film. At least, he's not too keen on the version that was released theatrically. But even with a new name - the Magnolia director had christened it Sydney - and some unauthorised edits, Hard Eight is both a terrific first bash and a movie that shares the thematic concerns of later PTA pictures such as Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. Philip Baker Hall, a spectacularly bejowled performer who hadn't made a film for five years, is Sydney, a professional gambler who takes John C Reilly's hapless drifter under his wing after the pair meet on the road between Vegas and Reno. What follows is a hugely affecting story about skulduggery, fatherhood and the longest of odds. When MGM didn't so much release Hard Eight as flush it, one imagines Anderson felt like he too was something of a long shot. A year on, however, he, Hall and Reilly would make Boogie Nights and neither his career or Hollywood would ever be the same again.