TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Drama, Comedy, Period Film, Action, Adventure, Romance, Sports, Crime, Coming-of-Age, Comedy Drama, Buddy Film
Key Collaborators: Henry Bumstead (Production Designer), Elmer Bernstein (Composer), Paul Newman (Leading Actor), Robert Redford (Leading Actor), Stuart Gilmore (Editor), William Reynolds (Editor), Julie Andrews (Leading Actress), William Goldman (Screenwriter), Robert L. Crawford (Producer), Miroslav Ondrícek (Cinematographer), Robert Surtees (Cinematographer), Dede Allen (Editor)

"Maker of entertaining, feel-good Hollywood dramas with a comic touch… Hill could moderate his soft-focus style to produce grit, but there was always a sense he was straining hard with material that would have come easier for Michael Ritchie, Robert Altman, or the early Steven Spielberg." - Kim Newman (501 Movie Directors, 2007)

"Hill made his first film at 40 and enjoyed two massive box-office hits, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). For the latter he won the best director and best picture Oscars. Sandwiched between the two blockbusters was a critical success, Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), taken from Kurt Vonnegut's wartime Dresden-set SF novel. Most of the remainder of his output, however, including a couple of interesting films, is largely forgotten, and his critical standing is negligible. Hill came to movies late having enjoyed an intriguing early life, including long periods of study, two stints as a pilot with the United States Marines and success in the theatre and television." - Brian Baxter (The Guardian, 2002)

"The director of such popular hits as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, for which he won an oscar, Hill has not been a favourite with critics, one of whom has described his work as 'idiosyncratically odious oiliness'; however, Hill's best films remain irresistible entertainment." - The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, 1983

"George Roy Hill was a filmmaker active in the 1960s and '80s. He started as an actor off-Broadway before directing theater, TV, and, eventually, features. His work spans a range of genres: rom-coms, musical spoofs, crime capers, epic dramas, sports films, sci-fi, black comedies, and revisionist Westerns. A history buff, Hill's films tend to be nostalgic and are mostly set in the past… Not all of his projects succeed, but his best movies have aged well and feel fresh decades later, showing off his mastery of striking images and his economical approach to storytelling." - Luc Haasbroek (Collider, 2024)

"After considerable experience in the theatre, he began the direction of films in the 1960s with Period of Adjustment (1963). His later films included Toys in the Attic (1963), The World of Henry Orient (1964) and Hawaii (1966), but he achieved his greatest success with the strongly contrasting films Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)… Both were stylish, and the latter was in the van of contemporary American cinema in its oblique interest in violence." - The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972

"I've always wanted to do entertaining films. I'm not a very deep thinker, I'm more for entertainment than something that has deep meaning to it." - George Roy Hill