[In the following review, Brewer favorably assesses On Directing Film, contending that it provides insights on Mamet's filmmaking approach.]

David Mamet has never wanted for confidence. With workmanlike application of his talent, he has succeeded as playwright, but also as poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. On Directing Film consists of revised lectures from a course Mamet taught at Columbia University. The preface apologizes for his scant experience behind the camera, only two films: “… I was the most dangerous thing around. I had unquestionably progressed beyond the neophyte stage but was not experienced enough to realize the extent of my ignorance” (xiii). However, Mamet's ideas on directing derive primarily from his more substantial work and study as a screenwriter. Much of the information offered on filmmaking is as useful to the aspiring author. Mamet keeps his theory, based on Eisenstein's montage model, simple; good film is “a succession of images juxtaposed so that the contrast between these images moves the story forward in the mind of the audience” (2). The film is told through the cutting together of the uninflected shots. The shots make the scene, the scenes make the movie. Period. Simple. This is, writes Mamet, “virtually the only thing I know about film directing” (2).

Mamet has presumably honed his montage skills during a decade of screenwriting, developing a full-fledged, or anyway functional, theory of directing. The most crucial component of such a method is the director's contemplative time before the cameras roll, when selecting the shot list. “The work on the set is nothing. All you have to do on the set is stay awake, follow your plans, help the actors be simple, and keep your sense of humor. … It is the plan that makes the movie” (5). According to Mamet, the film is like a dream: both “are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question” (7). Mamet remains, as in his essay collections, a happy name dropper: Eisenstein, Stanislavsky, Freud, Jung, read these men to learn film. Read Bettelheim, too, for a good movie shares the unspecified quality of the fairy tale.

This simple rule of uninflected montage is the heart of Mamet's approach. The technical material contained in On Directing Film—a short book of 107 pages—would scarcely constitute one meaty essay. Mamet, however, then introduces his true agenda: to show these principles at work, in the process proving himself a teacher. Short theoretical chapters are sandwiched between two Socratic dialogues, where Mamet and students create and “direct” films. The author's fascination with the mentor-protege dynamic manifests in what are effectively little plays, with Mamet cast in the senior role. The class meticulously, laboriously constructs their shot list. Mamet expounds, elaborates, discusses mistaken suggestions, pontificates as he chooses: “… there is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago” (13). He is dogmatic, aphoristic, endlessly repetitive, occasionally abrupt, and finally quite effective in ingraining the simple tenets of his approach. “The important thing is always apply the criteria. This is the secret of filmmaking” (18). And the criteria, recall, are to remember the objective of the scene, keep it simple, and cut together uninflected shots which will move the story forward.

“Make the beats serve the scene, and the scene will be done; make the scenes, in the same way, the building blocks of the film, and the film will be done” (35). Mamet's bludgeoning repetition of these basic precepts is the belief in filmmaking, and presumably all arts, as learnable craft: “Practice with these tools until you find them boring, then practice some more” (52). Clearly the discussions are revised chapters of text, not merely classroom transcriptions, but they are fascinating. Mamet is deservedly pedantic, and as well humorous, knowledgeable, and above all dedicated to his principle. “Any good drama,” he says, “takes us deeper and deeper to a resolution that is both surprising and inevitable” (95), citing Oedipus as the example. The creation of the film becomes analogous to its final effect: shot selection is a process of circularity, self-scrutiny, revision, and “a continually emerging aesthetic understanding of the story” (96). Mamet attempts to apply a blue collar pragmatism to film, reducing it to its component parts and reconciling a scientific approach to his mystical, which is to say artistic, ideals: “As you have devoted yourself consciously, honestly, and gently to the story, you will have created a certificate of deposit, if you will, in your subconscious, on which you can draw for simple answers …” (101).

The center chapters of On Directing Film lend the book its ideological cogency. Mamet has introduced his principles, shown them at work, and now discusses their aesthetic significance. The subtext of this credo of simplicity and storytelling is indictment of performance art, method acting, and theatre without knowledge of or respect for tradition. There is a reason, Mamet argues, why stories are told simply: to respond to the natural ordering faculty of the human psyche “to perceive two events, determine a progression, and want to know what happens next” (60). The artist should anticipate and thus capitalize on this tendency. “When the film is correctly designed, the subconscious and the conscious are in alignment, and we need to hear what happens next” (62); the audience, in other words, is willingly manipulated by the respectful artist/craftsman. Mamet adds, with understatement: “If you want to tell a story, it might be a good idea to understand a little bit about the nature of human perception” (65).

The more common questions of filmmaking, those ostensibly central, the author dispatches with frustrating disinterest. What do you tell the actors? “Perform the physical motions called for by the script as simply as possible” (68). Where do you put the camera? “That's the simple question, and the answer is, ‘over there in the place in which it will capture the uninflected shot necessary to move the story along’” (72-73). Both answers fit Mamet's equation of the writer/director. “Directing is just a technical skill. Make your shot list” (77).

Mamet has always been a moralist, lamenting lost classical values of unity and simplicity in art. Many have been surprised by his rapid, impressive move from a verbal to visual form (stage to screen), but it is the transference of the principle, a love of storytelling, that has ensured his cinematic success. “The task of any artist is not to learn many, many techniques but to learn the most simple technique perfectly” (106). Mamet plays a diversity of roles: both novice and expert, philosopher, raconteur, scientist, magician, technician, prophet, alchemist. On Directing Film is clearly a book he enjoyed writing and is an educational and challenging text to read, in its few pages both instilling a practicable film method and challenging preconceptions of performance and presentation.