"Robert Wise... Robert Wise... Robert Wise"

Fledgling film directors are often taught to mutter those words to themselves before yelling “Cut!” in order to get those magic vulnerable moments when the actor has run out of words or instructions. (I have tried this myself and it works, sometimes anyway.)

Why Robert Wise? I don’t know. Perhaps because he was such a superb craftsman. In any case, the man who edited Citizen Kane and directed The Sound of Music is now gone. One of the greats.