Toronto-born Sidney J. Furie has enjoyed an incredibly distinguished
career that has spanned more than five decades. Having dabbled in every
genre, Furie has directed films starring Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra,
Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Peter O'Toole, Rodney Dangerfield, Barbara Hershey, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, Laurence Olivier and countless others.
He directed the first two feature-length fiction films ever made in
English Canada, A Dangerous Age (1957) and A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), both independently financed, before emigrating to London in
1960. In 1961 he directed five feature films in a single year, before
finally scoring his first box-office success with Hallo, Mr. Twen (1961), starring the "British Elvis Presley", Cliff Richard. The critical
and commercial success of Furie's 1963 British New Wave film Die Lederjungen (1964), a kitchen-sink drama starring Rita Tushingham and Dudley Sutton, delivered him to the attention of high-powered producer Harry Saltzman, who hired him to direct the groundbreaking film Ipcress - streng geheim (1965), which won the BAFTA award for Best Picture. Michael Caine
became an overnight star because of the film's success. The film also
screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Furie then emigrated to Hollywood to direct Marlon Brando in Südwest nach Sonora (1966) and Frank Sinatra in Der Mann am Draht (1967) for
Universal and Warner Brothers, respectively. Paramount Pictures, then
under the aegis of the new Gulf+Western management regime, hired Furie
in 1967. He would work as a Paramount filmmaker for the next eight
years. Beginning in 1968, he directed five films for the studio. His
box-office hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972) was nominated for five
Academy Awards and was Paramount's second biggest money-maker that
year, behind only Der Pate (1972).
In 1981 he directed Entity - Es gibt kein Entrinnen vor dem Unsichtbaren, das uns verfolgt (1982), a cult classic that was named
by Martin Scorsese as the fourth best horror film ever made, ranking
ahead of both Shining (1980) and Psycho (1960). Furie was assigned to direct
Superman IV - Die Welt am Abgrund (1987), but was challenged by
substantial last-minute budget cuts and a script he could not change
(engineered personally by Christopher Reeve).
Throughout the 1990s and
2000s he returned to his native Canada to helm a series of films,
often direct-to-video pictures, ranging from the war drama Going Back (2001) to the Canadian-British co-production Global Heresy (2002), a
comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright. Other career
highlights include Die Boys von Kompanie C. (1978) (one of the first Vietnam War
pictures about combat soldiers, later to provide the basis for Full Metal Jacket (1987)), the underrated action epic Der Hit - Der Kampf gegen die Drogen (1973), and the "Iron
Eagle" series. He has also maintained dual citizenship between the U.S.
and Canada. In 2010, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the
Directors Guild of Canada.
