Felix Feist Biography
Felix Feist (1910 - 1965) was a director, he was also a writer and producer. His father was MGM's general sales manager in the 1920s, and Feist started the business first as a film loader for the studio's East Coast office, then shooting news footage and subway travelogues. Despite the success of his first feature film, Deluge (1933), which imagined New York being swept away by a tidal wave, Feist spent the rest of the 1930s and 1940s making short films for MGM. But in 1947, he suddenly found his niche in the rising wave of noir that swept Hollywood. Moving to RKO Radio Pictures, Feist finds that low-budget crime thrillers provide him with a template for creating striking films full of verve and violence. Above all, he preferred to operate in these B-movie trenches, as he enjoyed greater creative freedom. He was particularly skilled with desperate characters in confined spaces, as seen in the manically unnerving The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) and its equally unflinching sequel The Threat (1949). When Jack M. Warner (the studio head's son) made his first film as a producer, The Man Who Betrayed Himself (1951), he entrusted the entire production to Feist, who shot it efficiently. The production was then commissioned to Warner Bros. A bigger budget, a longer shooting schedule and a fantastic script inspired Feist to pull out everything from his baggage to create his best-known film, Tomorrow Is Another Day. The result is a masterpiece of fresh, deeply felt noir, marred only by a studio-imposed ending. Feist would make other films in the 1950s, such as The Big Trees (1952), Battles of Chief Pontiac (1952), and Donovan's Brain (1953), but these lacked the attack and artistry that he brought to his crime films. After more than a decade directing television, Feist died in 1965 at just 55 years old.
