Another tyrant that comes to mind has to be Fritz Lang.
H
>>
>
> Well I'm sorry, Mike, but it's my understanding that Hitchcock had enormous respect for the majority of the actors with whom he worked. He treated them as professionals - had faith in them - and gave them parameters within which they were free to be and invent their characters, including improvising bits of business that he, Hitchcock, might happily incorporate in his mise-en-scene. There were many far more despotic and far less pleasant directors than Hitchcock, and his ability to pre-conceive an entire film in his head (while still leaving the actors the freedom I have indicated) was a mark of genius, and a valid cinematic methodology. (Read Bill Krohn's 'Hitchcock at Work', for starters.) To my mind, Robert Bresson was just as much or more of a 'tyrant' than Hitchcock.
>
> What does Mike make of this from Bresson about film performers:
>
> 'Models who have become automatic (everything weighed, measured, timed, repeated ten, twenty times) and are then dropped in the medium of the events of your film - their relations with the objects and persons around them will be RIGHT, because they will not be THOUGHT.' (Bresson, 'Notes on the Cinematographer', p. 32)
>
> - KM
>
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